Podcasts about societally

It's a day late... do to some outages and other circumstances. We're happy to sneak this one in the wire of the week. We dive down the rabbit holes of life and the situations going on around us. Hopefully we butcher the names of few when it comes to the banning of trans athletes. Nate finds himself in an interesting home with spiritual influences. Societally speaking we're looking at the FAFO part of things. Sam fills us in on the young people not having the basic understanding of TV. Be safe out there folks as we get through this a day at a time.

PART ONE: Anthony and Mirin expand on a piece she wrote for The Ringer on some of the hiring practices throughout the NBA. Were those interviews for Becky Hammon nothing more than a publicity stunt? The Lakers specifically said they wanted to do something "different" this coaching search. Well, there was one option in that regard they never considered. Subscribe to the Lakers Lounge for reports, rumors, analysis and highlights. https://t.co/dsuEHpPLDA To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most overlooked experiences is menopause and perimenopause and impact on mental health. Societally we treat it like a disease or an ‘untapped market' to sell more products. Many people feel isolated and alone in their mind-life experiences, and for some this can have extreme consequences. Today we have three experts by experience and training talking about how the system fails menopausal people and sharing their lived experiences in approaching this time of life as an incredibly transformative experience. We also discuss: how early trauma and sexual abuse can re-emerge in midlife the “second peak” of psychosis spiritual emergency and holistic healing dealing with mortality and fear of dying sacred rage in menopause developing new archetypes for the "elder" the medicalization of pms and menopause hormone replacement therapies, estradial, etc. diagnostic overshadowing capitalism and the menopause “market” Bios Leah Harris is a psychiatric survivor, activist, and independent journalist. Their work examines mental health and disability policy, with a focus on deinstitutionalization and involuntary psychiatric intervention. Leah's writing appears in Truthout, the Disability Visibility Project, The Progressive, and Mad in America; and in the anthologies We've Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health (North Atlantic Books (https://www.wevebeentoopatient.org/⁠) and the forthcoming Mad Studies Reader (Routledge). Their memoir-in-progress, NONCOMPLIANT, traces two generations of psychiatric survivorship and resistance in their family, alongside in-depth reporting and analysis of America's failed mental health policies. https://www.leahiharris.com/ Lynda Wisdo, MA, CYT: Lynda is a survivor of childhood trauma and a menopause/trauma-related Spiritual Emergency.  After several years of mind/body healing, she went on to earn an MA degree in Transpersonal Studies and Spiritual Guidance along with certifications in Trauma-Informed Yoga, Transpersonal Hypnosis, Reiki, and Tarot for Women.  She has written a memoir about her experience with spiritual emergency titled Menopause in Crisis—When Spiritual Emergency Meets the Feminine Midlife Passage (⁠https://menopauseincrisis.weebly.com⁠) her hope being to offer insights and support to women who may be undergoing similar experiences.  She can be reached through her websites at https://lyndawisdo.weebly.com  or by email at lyndawisdo@gmail.com Trauma & Menopause Conference 2024: Healing the Effects of Trauma Through the Challenges of Perimenopause with Lynda Wisdo, MA, CYT https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trauma-menopause-conference-2024-the-intersection-of-trauma-menopause-tickets-798528298637 Marie Brown, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist working in private practice and the public mental health system in New York City. She is the current President of the US Chapter of the International Society for the Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis and an original co-founder of Hearing Voices Network NYC. She is co-editor of Women & Psychosis: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (with Marilyn Charles) https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498591935/Women-and-Psychosis-Multidisciplinary-Perspectives⁠ and Emancipatory Perspectives on Madness (with Robin Brown) https://www.routledge.com/Emancipatory-Perspectives-on-Madness-Psychological-Social-and-Spiritual/Brown-Brown/p/book/9780367360160⁠. Website: https://mariebrownphd.com/ Twitter: @BrownMarieC Resources: Yale Study on Menopause & Psychosis + All resources mentioned here: https://www.jazminerussell.com/blog/menopause-trauma-psychosis-holistic-approaches-in-midlife-undoing-patriarchal-conditioning Sessions & Information about the host: ⁠⁠JazmineRussell.com⁠⁠ Disclaimer: The DEPTH Work Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Any information on this podcast in no way to be construed or substituted as psychological counseling, psychotherapy, mental health counseling, or any other type of therapy or medical advice.

Across cultures and traditions, there have always been those that speak with the dead, hear voices, enter states of oracular trance, and receive visions of what is to come. Such sensitivity, traditionally, is common. It's common to have premonitions that come to pass, to have dream experiences that translate into day-to-day life, and to be in continual felt dialogue with ancestors, with the dead, and with a larger world of animate forces. For most of human history, the people that received such visions lived right at the center of culture. But what happens when the seer is ripped from the ecology in which they traditionally lived? The intuitive is cast out, othered, vilified, and pathologized. Cast aside, relegated to the margins of society, without the context that once held it, oracular seeing can veer into charlatanry and delusion. So these days visions — like everything else in the modern world — are immediately monetized, translated into marketable pop-spirituality and much of the mastery and depth of visionary tradition is lost. But what this points to isn't something “wrong” with intuition or the practice of oracular vision — it points to something wrong with modernity's relationship with it. The proclivity towards vilifying and pathologizing intuition on the one hand and claiming it as an exotic and monetizable gift useful for attracting internet followers on the other — all of this is a function of the othering of intuition in the modern world. Societally, we would do well to rediscover the central role of the seer.  For if we lose our ability to learn from the visions of seers, we lose the feeling body of culture —  the very thing that drives culture forward. Featuring music by Marya Stark, Char Rothschild, and Peia, and featuring discussions with author Frederick Smith, psychoanalyst Bernardo Malamut, and Sophie Strand, this multi-part episode series seeks to place the seer back in their rightful place at the center of culture. It is simultaneously a celebration of the gifts of the intuitive and a reminder that dreams and visions need an ecology of accountability in which to live and grow. Listen on a good sound system, at a time when you can devote your full attention. Support the show

It's hard enough to embrace your feminine in the world, but what about in the workplace or in your own business? Societally, we're taught that it's a weakness, but what if it's actually one of your greatest strengths? In this episode, Shanon walks us through her passion in supporting and boosting women in leadership roles, from those in every day life all the way to entrepreneurs-- from encouraging inherent abilities, nursing your soul from the inside out, to embracing what makes you stand out. In This Episode:Shanon's call to boosting women and their inherent ability to lead (01:58)Leadership is more than what you do physically, it requires inner work (08:39)You don't need to shy away from your feminine power for people to listen and see you! (11:42)How you can get extra help along the way (16:23) Are you ready to take another step to embody confidence, reach your highest potential, and make a life pivot? Check out Shanon's Body & Soul Freedom group coaching experience: https://www.fuelfiresoul.com/bodysoulfreedom Click the link below to download a free healthy hypnosis meditation with Shanon:https://www.fuelfiresoul.com/healthyhypnosisOur Links: Learn More About our Services Follow us on Instagram!Like us on Facebook!

The USA is Societally Decaying and Descending into Darkness. Topics: Global News and Metaphysics 2023. This is (pt.2 of 2 ) The World Plunging into Darkness/Deconstruction of New Age Philosophy/Burgeoning Financial Woes of 2023-2025 and stealth emergence of Great Reset Stratagems.(continued) All program donations to be sent to: $aigner2019(cashapp) or PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/Aigner2019

I recently had the pleasure to interview Andy the renowned podcaster of "The Poor Prole's Almach" where we discussed some fascinating and essential subjects like:   - How to survive the collapse - The opportunity offered by agroecology - Agroecology vs. permaculture - Food & biodiversity, not just for the Human kin - Invasive species & non-native species - A more inclusive definition of "preppers" - No we are not talking about returning to being a caveman or hunter-gatherer - How to restore kinship across the political and social spectrum - The necessity to embrace the changes we are in as a collective - The potential new, innovative, and also ancient solutions. - What you can do to help - And more...   The global ecosystem is under immense pressure due to a combination of human activities, such as deforestation, pollution, overfishing, and the burning of fossil fuels. These activities have led to the depletion of natural resources, the destruction of habitats and ecosystems, and the release of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.   As a result, we are witnessing the loss of biodiversity, the collapse of ecosystems, and the degradation of soil and water quality.   Societally, we are facing numerous challenges as well. Income inequality, poverty, and discrimination are pervasive in many parts of the world, leading to social unrest and conflict. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated these issues, leaving many people vulnerable and struggling to survive.   In terms of civilization collapse, it is important to note that there is no single, widely agreed-upon definition of this term. Some experts argue that we are currently experiencing a slow collapse of our social and political systems due to factors such as economic instability, political polarization, and the erosion of trust in institutions. Others argue that civilization collapse would entail a more rapid and catastrophic breakdown of our infrastructure and way of life.   Regardless of the terminology, it is clear that our planet is facing significant environmental and social challenges that require urgent attention and action from individuals, communities, governments, and organizations worldwide.   The Poor Prole's Almanac is a project dedicated to developing a framework for an ecology-centered vision of the world after capitalism inevitably collapses. Our focus is to make ecology and agriculture accessible, replicable locally, and to highlight examples of resilience in history & people actively developing those systems in real time.   If the idea of building a better, sustainable world in which humans drive positive change through our relationship with nature across the planet, then this project and our work is for you.   If you like this talk please leave us a review (spotify, iTunes podcast) as it helps us a lot and share this content with your friends and social media networks.   Podcast editing and creation are expensive so if you want to support us, please consider joining our PATREON members donation page. https://www.patreon.com/thesanctuaryny   Andy is an accountant, farmer, writer, and spends his free time focused on food sovereignty, through a variety of formal and informal institutions. While the host and primary researcher for the Poor Proles Almanac, he also co-hosts Tomorrow, Today, The Gastropocene miniseries, and he's currently in the process of authoring three books through Bread & Roses Press. Andy's also the founder of the Proles Network, which currently hosts four podcasts, and more coming. Andy can be found scouring New England looking for lost cultivars of nut trees and restoring ecosystems he may or may not have legal access to.

The key to happiness lies in your heart ❤️ and in the change you desire. Societally, familially, communally - change has not been accepted or celebrated for a long time. Change for many of our families and those in our inner circles, has often been frowned upon and resisted. But this just keeps us in an unhappiness - unfulfilling loop…when we've actually come to live in this NOW, and use our gifts of free will to create all that we want in life

Adam and Dr. Drew open the show harkening back to their childhoods and discussing their injuries and how they were regarded by those around them as compared to how pain is treated today. Drew also discusses a recent surgery his wife had and his revelations about his time as he dedicated himself to taking care of her in the following days. Dr. Drew also talks about the latest interviews he has been doing on his streaming shows with many of the voices that were silenced during the pandemic and are now being allowed to speak. Please Support Our Sponsor Shopify.com/adamanddrew

Alas friends (and enemies), this is our last episode together. We started Transmission early in the pandemic as a sort of experiment. But the time has come to bring the experiment to a close. It has been an amazing and consequential couple of years. Societally and personally. Join us we reflect upon lessons learned and hopes for the future.

Societally, we are so uncomfortable with angry women. But what if it's an untapped sacred source for change and personal and collective revolution.We are in a season of societal tragedy. What do we do with the heartbreak and grief and rage?In a highly emotional episode, let me tell you what I think. Let me tell you why I think it matters.Links Mentioned:Daughter Elixir (May 31 - June 3) (Join now)Sacred Rage Playlist (Spotify)

You see the world through the lens of the story you believe. What you consider your truth distorts the information you take in, to fit in with your narrative. Believe the world is flat, and you'll only see, hear, and feel things which confirm that opinion.   You'll dismiss the very real evidence in order to prevent your inner world's certainty from being disrupted. Experts become shills, friends become distant, and you become ever more convinced of your opinion despite the world telling you otherwise.   Of course, the world being flat is a extreme example, but for how long did the world believe that women shouldn't lift weights, smoking had no impact on your health, and that our race denoted our worth?   Beliefs have real world consequences; Societally and personally.   Do you believe that you're always going to be the victim? Do you believe the world has missed your genius and in fact owes you something? Do you believe you'll never succeed, you're worthless, you don't deserve love, or you're inherently weak?   And more importantly, are you blind to the bountiful truth which proves otherwise, just because some inner part of you seeks the certainty of your confirmation bias?   Your beliefs aren't shaping your world in a metaphysical or hypothetical way. They're shaping your world through filtering out aspects of reality, selecting your thoughts, crafting your emotions, choosing your behaviours, and dictating your success.   You are the only person who has the power to see through your internal bullshit and realise your potential, and that begins with making conscious decisions about how you're going to interpret the world.   In this interview with the mindset coach to some of the best CrossFit athletes around, Brett Piperni, we're going to explore the way you can consciously choose your interpretation of reality and therefore set yourself free from your limits.

Is cancel culture cancelling culture? How can we move forward in the face of hurt caused by another without writing them off entirely? Societally, can we move in a more constructive direction when opinions shock and surprise us? What can we do differently when it comes to strangers, friends, ourselves and our children? Rachel Tuchman, license mental health counselor from Long Island, New York, weighs in.

Societally we juggle more than our parents ever did when they were raising us. We are a generation raised on the notion we could have it all - a great marriage, fulfilling careers, wonderful children, holidays, a big house, nice cars, after school paid activities, tutoring, the best schools, and so on and so on. Add social media, rolling news, and the need to be constantly 'on' and it's no wonder we have the mental health issues we have today. Whilst some children will need the support of a specialist, there is so much we can do to help at home, and it starts with us asking ourselves "How am I really feeling, and what am I doing to take care of my stresses, anxieties and overwhelm?".    Here are the highlights:  (00:54) One in six children have a probable diagnosable mental health issue  (06:50) Do a ‘stress audit' on your typical day  (10:18) Make small but meaningful changes  (15:12) The power of family meetings  (18:16) Include children in the decision-making process    Find out more and connect with Dr. Maryhan at www.drmaryhan.com     To access the free resources mentioned in this episode visit https://drmaryhan.com/library   

“Quitting drinking was literally my worst case scenario in life,” says Casey Davidson. “I desperately loved red wine, and I didn't want to give it up, but I knew it was an issue.” Casey explains that before she quit drinking, she was consuming more than a bottle of wine a night, seven days a week. She told herself that the wine was a necessity, that it was the only thing helping her cope with her stressful corporate job and being a mother to her two young children. But at a certain point, Casey realized her mental health was at stake, and so she cut wine out for good.    Now, Casey is a Certified Professional Life & Sobriety Coach, host of The Hello Someday Podcast and the creator of the Free Sober Girl's Guide to Quitting Drinking. Casey specializes in working with busy, successful women who are ready to drink less and live more. She tells listeners that many of her clients come to her saying they want to quit drinking forever….and Casey stops them right in their tracks. Instead of setting a “forever” goal, Casey instead encourages clients to stop drinking for 100 days. This tangible number gives clients the opportunity to create space between themselves and their drinking, so they can better understand how healthy and fulfilled they can feel without alcohol.   Tune into today's episode of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast for a tough, yet powerful conversation with Casey about alcohol and burnout. Learn about Casey's own recovery journey, how to expand your social environment to promote sobriety, and the importance of adding sober treats into each and every day regardless of your relationship with alcohol.   Quotes • “I feel like burnout and over drinking are really tied together because drinking increases depression and anxiety and feeling like one extra thing is going to break the camel's back and a lot of people drink as a coping mechanism, not even realizing that when you drink too much you wake up at 3am with crushing anxiety and a racing heart rate and just feeling like complete garbage.” (02:50-03:25) • “For so many women and I know for myself, I thought the alcohol was helping me. I thought my bottle of wine at night was my only reward, the thing that was holding me together.” (04:00-04:12) • “Alcohol is not the solution and it's actually preventing you from really taking care of yourself, really setting boundaries, really digging into what your body needs, what your mind needs, what's not working for you in your life.” (11:12-11:26)  • “So many women are in this gray area of struggling with alcohol, trying to limit it, trying to moderate it, and nobody talks about it. But, if someone actually decides to take a period away from drinking or to look at their relationship with alcohol, they are a million times ahead of so many women. It is brave, it is something incredible that you're doing. It's like deciding to run a marathon.” (36:00-36:28) • “In the year I stopped drinking, I made more new friends that I'd made in the decade before.” (44:40-44:45) • “In my first month not drinking, I saved $550. In three months, I saved $1,650. And five and a half years later, I've saved $36,000 not poisoning my body.” (47:34-47:48)   Links https://hellosomedaycoaching.com/ https://hellosomedaycoaching.com/podcast/ https://hellosomedaycoaching.com/30-day-sober-guide/   https://www.instagram.com/caseymdavidson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseydavidson/   XOXO, C   If you know that it's time to actually DO something about the burnout cycle you've been in for too long - book your free consult today: bit.ly/callcait   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Bruce Koike has gone from poultry farmer in Missouri to aquarium scientist in New Orleans to artist in Newport, Oregon. We discuss his unusual career path, the parallels between art and science, and the history of Gyotaku. Of course, we also find time for some great fish stories! Stay tuned for the creature feature to learn about the five major invasive carp species in North America!Check out Bruce's art: koikebruce.wixsite.com, where you'll also find a list of his upcoming appearances at art festivals and fisheries conferences.Submit a creature feature to be aired on the show! Learn more at: fisherwomenpod.com/ Resources (*indicates paywall or item for purchase; **AFS publications)Fisheries Blog: A compilation of fish art from the last quincentenary: https://tinyurl.com/yht424tyGuidetti and Micheli. 2011. Ancient art serving marine conservation. The Ecological Society of America. Essay: https://tinyurl.com/35t5yua7 Related news article: https://tinyurl.com/hv87n92*Miyazaki, Yusuke and Atsunobu Murase. 2020. Fish rubbings, ‘gyotaku', as a source of historical biodiversity data. Zookeys 904:89-101. https://tinyurl.com/289s8tz4 *Fukuchi, Mitsuo and Harvey J. Marchant. 2006. Antarctic Fishes: Illustrated in the gyotaku method by Boshu Nagase. Dural: Rosenberg Publishing **Publications of the American Fisheries Society**Kocovsky, Patrick M., Duane C. Chapman, and Song Qian. 2018. Asian Carp is Societally and Scientifically Problematic. Let's Replace It. Fisheries 43(7): 311-316. **Murray, Devin N., David B Bunnell, Mark W. Rogers, Abigail J. Lynch, T. Douglas Beard Jr., and Simon Funge-Smith. 2020. Trends in Inland Commercial Fisheries in the United States. Fisheries 45(11): 585-596. **Tsehaye, Iyob, Matthew Catalano, Greg Sass, David Glover, and Brian Roth. 2013. Prospects for Fishery-Induced Collapse of Invasive Asian Carp in the Illinois River. Fisheries 38(10): 445-454. **Zhao, Yingming, Liang Zhang, Chunfang Wang, and Congxin Xie. 2020. Biology and Ecology of Grass Carp in China: A Review and Synthesis. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 40: 1379-1399. **Stuart, Ivor G. and Anthony J. Conallin. 2018. Control of Globally Invasive Common Carp: An 11-Year CommercialTrial of the Williams' Cage. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 38: 1160-1169 **Hayer, Cari-Ann, Michael F. Bayless, Catherine A. Richter, Amy E. George, and Duane C. Chapman. 2021. Grass Carp Reproductions in Small Tributaries of Truman Reservoir, Missouri: Implications for Establishment in Novel Habitats. North American Journal of Fisheries Management. CreditsThank you to Bruce Koike for the great cover photo of himself on his fishing boat for this episode. Theme mixed by me, using sounds sourced from sfxgo, orangefreesound, and freesound. Please see website for full credits.  

We are taught how to defend ourselves from a very young age. But few of us are taught the pragmatic power of love. We build a series of walls we can put up whenever someone makes us uncomfortable. What if those very walls create a drag-on life that slows down our dreams? What if love is an easy-to-use tool that turns all that friction into forward momentum?"Love can't really exist without empowerment. You can be fond of. You can be scared of losing, but to actually love in a way that is beyond you, that is a deep welcoming, the only way you can deeply welcome, is to feel deeply empowered to not be worried of the result."We are taught how to defend ourselves from a very young age, but few of us are taught the pragmatic power of love. We build a series of walls we can put up whenever someone makes us uncomfortable. What if those very walls create a drag on life that slows down our dreams? What if love is an easy-to-use tool that turns all that friction into forward momentum?Today's topic is Love Over Defense. Joe, we've all heard, "All you need is love. Love will tear us apart. Love is the answer." We get hit with these phrases all the time, but it's hard to tell what anybody really means by love. What do you mean by love?Joe: That's a good question. That's a big one. Before I say what I mean by love, let me say what is often considered when people are thinking about the definition of love. One of the things that I see is, that people think about it, they dissect it the way the Greeks did, which was there's the love of friendship, like the love you'd have with a friend, the love you'd have that's romantic, the love that you would have with God, the love that would be very much dissected by who you were loving and how they had different visceral experiences in the body.For me, I think about love slightly differently. I think about love as in, there's a love that feels a lot like peace and there's a love that feels a lot like enjoyment and there's a love that feels a lot like care and there's a love that feels a lot like a deep welcoming. When I'm speaking about love, I would say that it's closest to a deep welcoming. They're all components of love. It's not like one of these is a better love than the other or one of these is a separate love than the other, but that deep welcoming seems to be the biggest leverage point. It's what seems to activate everything else the most.Brett: What makes that the deepest leverage point?Joe: I'm not sure if I have a great answer for that outside of experience. It's a dance, for sure, meaning that, when I really put myself out there and deeply care for myself or care for others, then that absolutely helps me have a deeper welcoming of all life, all people, all parts of myself. What I notice is the focus on that deep welcoming towards self, towards others, towards life, that seems to have a very big influence on my sense of peace, my sense of enjoyment and my sense of care.It just seems like it has the biggest turbo booster. In my life, what I've noticed is different ones at different times have bigger turbo-boosting potential, so to speak, but that deep welcoming seems to be the center of gravity for all of it.Brett: It sounds like what you're saying is that the deep welcoming is letting information, letting the world be seen by you and be felt by you and letting it impact you.Joe: As it is, yes. Exactly. It's allowing myself to be touched.Brett: What would be the next most important leverage point?Joe: For me, I think it's care. It's self-care and care of others. If you look at different religious traditions, you'll see that they fall into these different categories. They're focused on these categories, more or less. The Buddhist piece has a big emphasis. Daoist enjoyment has a deep emphasis and the Christianity care has a deep emphasis.For me, the care one seems to have a big impact. There's something about being generous and being giving that also dissolves the self in such a way that it creates a lot of peace and a deep welcoming. It's another really influential one.The dilemma with the care one is that all of these ways of loving, they have a dark shadow on the other side. The peace side of things, for instance, can become disassociation. The enjoyment side of things can be hedonism. The care can be codependency. A deep welcoming can become an apathy of sorts and it can become a giving up of responsibility. All of them have a way to have a shadow take over them.Brett: It sounds like, that the deep welcoming and the dark shadow, that the apathy, a lot of that seems to relate to surrender and the way that people talk about surrender. How does this relate to surrender for you? Many traditions have surrender as an important part of the journey to love.Joe: Yes, that's exactly right. Surrender, it's a path to love and it's also the result of love. Or the other way to say that is, surrender is a path to a deep welcoming, but it's also the result of a deep welcoming. So many traditions have surrender being the first step. The first step is to surrender to Jesus, or in Buddhist monasteries, for instance, in China in particular, the first Buddha that you see is this happy, fat Buddha who's plenty and that gets you into the temple.Once you're into the temple, then it's surrender. Then once you've surrendered and it's surrender to the teacher, to Buddha, or to the teachings, or to the Dharma and then beyond that is compassion, is a deep care of self and others. They have different Buddhas or different archetypes in the different stages of the temple, depending on how far in you are allowed to be. It is a great description of how that journey works, generally.In the Western world, however, surrender has some connotations and some issues that I don't know whether it's just people thought of surrendering differently then as they do now. The dilemma, generally, with surrender is that it's been used to subjugate people. It's been used to have people follow without their full authenticity involved. I stray away from the word for that reason.The real key is, what are you surrendering to? If you surrender to Jesus, you're not just surrendering to Jesus, you're surrendering to the concept of Jesus in your head, or what you think the scripture says. Surrender is so incredibly powerful and it's very, very much a deep welcoming, when you're surrendering to that very quiet call inside of you, to that impulse, to that thing that is always there and always knows the right direction.Brett: That we always have a voice in our head that shoots it down, perhaps surrendering to that. What do we lose by not emphasizing surrender, given that it's been so useful in so many traditions, but also there's this problematic aspect and particularly, in the way that it's conceptualized in the west? What do we lose by you not emphasizing it in your conception of love here?Joe: What we lose in not emphasizing it, is another way to lose our identity. In general, all of these methods, the deep care, the surrender, the silence of meditation, all of them are just ways to get past the illusion of self. It is to evaporate the identity, to see yourself beyond the small me that you think you are, to see yourself outside of your everyday cares and worries. It is to not be able to identify with the voice in your head anymore. That's generally what all these paths are pointing to.There's other less known traditions, too. There's a way of losing your identity in a group that's healthy, unlike most of the ways people will lose identities in groups. The Quakers had some great work on that as well. There's lots of ways to do it, but these are the big ones and love itself is that same thing. It's an expression. That's why, in some of the writings, you'll see people talk about love as your inherent state, because love, as you walk down that path of love, the identity evaporates as well and you see that your identity is love. You are love and love is what you are, just as you are nothing and nothing is what you are. It is when the sense of self dissolves into the whole, if you will, then love is the result, not emptiness is the result.Brett: It seems like a lot of people are onto this love being so healing, but there are just so many ways that you can get caught in an eddy or a backwater or in a shadow. What are some of the main misconceptions about love that we hold?Joe: Everybody's a little bit different here and people's misconceptions of love are based on their childhood. If the thing that you looked for to be your role model of love beat you, then love is painful. If the role model that you looked to was critical, then love is critical. If love meant being nice, then love is nice, or if love meant not holding boundaries, then love is not holding boundaries. Whatever you experienced love to be when you were young, those are usually exactly the misconceptions you hold about love.Societally, however, there's some pretty big normal ones. There's nice. Nice is a big one. If I'm nice to you, then I'm loving you, which is horribly inaccurate. That being compassionate is often a very sharp sword. Being compassionate is often saying a hard truth in a loving way with an open heart.I remember when I was a kid, I lied all the time. I was compulsively lying. I was a freshman in high school and it was to make people like me. This guy, his name, I remember it was Alex Bellini, this was like a week before the end of school and he said, "Hey, Joe, we all know that you're lying all the time and we would all like you so much more if you didn't." It was the most profound act of love that I had experienced to that date. I'm sure it was scary as shit for him to say and nobody else had said it. Nobody else had given me that information and my lying just stopped. Nothing else needed to happen. My lying just stopped at that point or reduced by 97% or something like that.That's an act of love, but that sure as fuck wasn't nice. I think a lot of times people mistake being nice-- because they think that if they love somebody, there's not going to be conflict or something like that. That's just not how love works.The other thing that's often the case is a lot of people are scared to be in love, because they have a conception that love doesn't hold boundaries, as if Gandhi didn't hold boundaries, as if Mother Teresa didn't hold boundaries. Love is holding boundaries. Great mothers-- the thing that we think as loving as mothers, they hold boundaries all the time. That's another one I think that people really have a problem seeing, that love is holding boundaries.I think that the other one that's most commonly not seen, is that love can't really exist without empowerment. You can't really love if you're not empowered. You can be fond of, you can be scared of losing, you can really, really, really want, you can desire, but to actually love in a way that is beyond you, that is a deep welcoming. The only way you can deeply welcome all the good and the bad and the dangerous and the unknown and the mystery is to feel deeply empowered, to not be worried of the results. Brett: What are some other examples of how this has shown up in your life, or just shows up in people's lives day to day?Joe: Wow so many-- you see lovers, husbands, wives say that they deeply love each other, but they're constantly trying to change each other or they're scared of losing one another. That's not love. That's a habit. I don't think it's really possible to love somebody fully and want them to change. Then you're loving them if they show up a certain way, or loving yourself that way is another example of it. Being in a job and being scared to get fired is another example of what isn't love. There's a famous coach who used to say, “Lead with love.” and if you're scared of getting fired, you can't lead with love. Then you're leading from fear. There's a lot of things like that.The thing I think that people don't really understand is, people say, “Love is the answer”, or “Love will find a way”, all those things about love, but nobody really talks about the mechanism of what makes love so powerful. What makes it, that if I love a part of myself, or if I love a part of you, I have more power over that part of you than if I don't. What makes that happen is the question that I think a lot of people don't fully understand. The best way to look at it is internally, which is, if I love an aspect of myself that, so far, I haven't been able to love, it gets to move, it gets to express and it gets to evolve.If I'm saying that that part is bad, I'm containing it, I'm holding it, so it can't move and so it can't evolve. That's how the mechanism works. It's like, if I love you unconditionally, then you don't have to be constantly managing yourself and then evolution can double-time it. That's how it works, is that, that loving of ourselves and others or a situation is one of the best change agents for it. The only difference is it's not changing in the way that you want it to. It might change in the way that you want it to, but it's going to change in a way that's best for it and you, but that doesn't always correspond with what you want.The mechanism of love is that you allow for something to be able to move and therefore, it can evolve instead of holding it in place. It's just like if you have a kid and you want them to evolve, don't stick them in a room with no lights on. You let them play and explore and learn and grow.Brett: So, this allowing something to move, allowing things to move feels a lot like undefendedness, which brings us to the second half of this topic of Love Over Defense. What do you mean by defense and how does that relate to this?Joe: On the mind side, defense is any way that you've decided that there's separation. "They don't understand. I'm better than them. This course moves too slow for me." Any way that you're creating separation between you and other people, that they come from an inferior race. They are better than me. They come from a better race. All of it, all of that is separation and that's the mental place.Somatically, it's literally like a wall, typically, in front of you, typically, somewhere from the perineum up into the top of your head and it's stronger for different people in different places, but it's literally, you can just feel like the “crr--” shutting down. And on a gut-level it's a subtle fear. That's what defense is.Brett: Clearly, there are times in life when you need to defend yourself and we've talked a lot about how boundaries are a part of love and that can feel like defense.Joe: Yes. The thing is, we mistake that defending ourselves can't be welcoming. That's the way that I would say it. Just because I have to draw a boundary or I want to draw a boundary, doesn't mean that I can't love you. Just because I am in a fight with you, if I'm literally going to say, "Okay, I can't allow this person to throw trash all over my front lawn," so I'm in a fight with you, it doesn't mean that I can't welcome you. I think that this is best in any religious book I've ever seen is, I think it's the Bhagadavida and-- Oh, I'm so bad with names.Brett: Bhagavad Gita.Joe: Yes. It starts off with a man who's about to get into a war with his brothers, with people that he loves and he prays to, I think it's Krishna, who has the conversation with him, which is what most of the book is about. He says, "Hey, you got to fight." He doesn't say, "No, don't fight." He says, "You got to fight.” It doesn't mean you have to give up loving to fight. Life is tension, generally, call it a fight, call it tension. Life is tension. If I took all the tension out of your cell, it would die. If I took all the tension out of your body, you would die. Tension and life require one another, or at least life requires tension. If you give it up, then you're dead. The only thing left then is how you hold it. How do you hold the fight? That's what this book really talks about really well. It's like, "Okay, this is the fight, but how do you hold the fight?" That's the same thing here. Like, just because you've engaged in the war doesn't mean that you have to stop loving people. That's the confusion that I think most people feel, is, that if I am going to be in tension with you, then I have to give up my love for you, which is not at all true. Brett: Right. I can think of any circumstance where I feel like I have a conflict with somebody, it's so easy to drop their humanness. To make them an other, to make them wrong, to make them an obstacle and that never helps the conflict.Joe: Right. You can still love them and still overcome the obstacles, so to speak. They don't have to become the obstacle.Brett: How do we start cultivating that love, that allows us to experience the fight in a different way?Joe: This is why I think I call it a deep welcoming more than any other reason is, because there's a visceral experience of that. It's like, if you close your eyes right now and you deeply welcome yourself here and love yourself just as you are right now, that's it, that's all there is to it.We can make it more complex and I'm sure we will in this podcast, but that's all there is to it. How do you deeply welcome yourself in this moment and in the next moment and the moment after that? It's a very somatic experience to be loved.Brett: Yes. I just did that and the first thing was I noticed tension in my body and then it just immediately relaxed.Joe: Right. It's literally like you have a feeling of love for something. Maybe it's for your dog, or maybe it's for your child, or maybe it's for your mother, maybe it's for a friend. How do you give yourself that same feeling that you have, that you give to them? How do you feel the same thing you feel for them for yourself?That's the best way to cultivate love, because our capacity to love all the bits of ourselves is directly correlated to our capacity to love everybody on the planet. The more that you learn to love all the parts of yourself, the more you're capable of loving everybody on the planet.Brett: What else can we do?Joe: Well, one thing for sure is if you can't love yourself, then love your resistance. It doesn't really matter in the moment what it is you're capable of loving. There's no time when we're incapable of love for anything. If you find yourself, like, "I just can't love myself right now," then love the fact that you can't love yourself.Also, the other thing you can do is, again, we've talked about this a little bit, but don't mistake love for caretaking. Loving yourself, loving somebody else isn't caretaking them. It's not saying yes, even if you want to say no, it's not going against your truth. It's not trying to make them happier. It's just having a deep welcoming for who they are.Brett: What if you identify ways that you're caretaking and you're afraid to stop doing them and then you realize, that you're not loving and then you get hard on yourself about that?Joe: Oh, you've got lots of choices there. You can love the fact that you're a caretaker. You can love the part that is so scared that it thinks that it needs to be a caretaker. You can love the part of yourself that thinks, that getting angry at yourself will actually change anything. You can love the part of yourself that is really wanting what's best for them and yourself and doesn't know how to get there. All sorts of parts to yourself to love in that circumstance.Brett: Anything else that we can do to cultivate this love?Joe: Yes, drawing boundaries is really good. That's a great way to really cultivate love in yourself and in others.Brett: Describe a boundary that you might set with yourself.Joe: Oh, that's a good one. First, the thing is people think about boundaries as a form of separation and I just said like, mentally, defense is separation. I think it's important to talk about that paradox first, which is when you draw a boundary, you're doing something that's good both for you and for the other person and that's really the opposite of separation. It's the same, actually, with being compassionate. There is nothing that you can do that's truly compassionate for you that's also not compassionate for those around you in that circumstance. It's the same with a boundary and that's the important part of a boundary. The important parts of boundaries are, that, when you draw the boundary, it increases your love for the person, no matter what they're going to say to the boundary.I know that I'm drawing a great boundary when I'm doing that. When it opens up my heart to the person that I'm drawing the boundary with. If I'm drawing a boundary to myself, I use that same thing. It's like, what's the thing that actually opens my heart to myself when I'm setting a boundary?Brett: What's an example of a boundary you might set with yourself? Joe: Let's say a boundary that I might set with myself is, if I am noticing myself getting angry, I am going to separate myself from other people, so that I don't get angry at them. That would be a boundary that I would set with myself.Brett: Elaborate a little bit more on how that helps you love yourself.Joe: If I'm angry at people, then I have shame, then I have blame, then I have a whole big mess, usually, that I have to clean up. None of that stuff is really loving and it's also making my anger wrong and making parts of myself wrong. In that boundary, I stop making myself wrong. The trick is when I'm literally thinking about drawing it, it doesn't feel like an oppression. It feels like a gift.Brett: That makes sense. The part of us that we are drawing a boundary against might otherwise feel defensive against us making it wrong.Joe: I would say with, drawing a boundary with, not against.Brett: With. Right.Joe: That's the subtle thing about boundaries that people think. The subtle thing about boundaries is that it's against, because we value this idea of freedom so greatly in ourselves. That's the other part of drawing a boundary that's so important. The other part of drawing a boundary that is so important is, that you're not asking them to be any different. You're saying, "I'm going to be different."If I'm drawing a boundary with-- this is different with children, obviously, but if I'm drawing a boundary with a friend and that person, to use the same example, has a tendency to get angry, I would say, "My boundary with you is when you get angry, I'm going to walk away and happy to re-engage with you whenever you're not yelling at me. Or if you're yelling at me, then I'm going to walk away and I'm happy to re-engage with you." I'm not asking them to stop yelling at me. I'm not asking for them to stop drinking. I'm not asking for them to stop. I'm saying what I'm going to do in these circumstances.Brett: Like creating a background of safety in connection, regardless of how they act so that they don't have to be a certain way.Joe: That's exactly right. It's the fully empowered move. It's taking full responsibility for yourself. If you start trying to love yourself to change yourself, it won't work, because trying to change yourself isn't loving yourself. What happens for a lot of people is they start to feel the power of love and they start to feel how loving unconditionally starts transforming the world, they start wanting more of it and so then they start loving to transform the world and then it stops working. Because if you're trying to love to transform the world, you're not loving anymore. It's a really important thing to see that the love, if it gets tainted, it just stops working.Brett: As we were cultivating this love and the defenses that creep in taint that love, at the same time as we're working to cultivate love, how do we work on lowering our defenses as well?Joe: Yes. There's a feeling when we lower our defenses, what we're actually doing is allowing a whole bunch of emotions we don't want to feel to be felt. Those emotions purify us. They start to dismantle that sense of self and it literally feels sometimes like it's burning away or that it's melting or something to that effect and so, there's an intensity to that.Every time we lower our defense, there's this little thing inside of us, is like, "Oh, we're going to be fucking destroyed. We're going to be destroyed. Don't do that. If I lower my defense, I'll be destroyed. Don't do that." There's an intensity with doing it.Brett: Well, there's a truth to that too, like a part of ourselves does get destroyed.Joe: Exactly. There's a great saying by Pema Chödrön, I'm going to paraphrase, it says, "Open yourself up for annihilation, because that way, you can find out what part of yourself can't be annihilated." That's what you're doing. You're just allowing that purification to happen and you know it, because there's an intensity to it of, oftentimes, a fear as well and to feel into that, to step into that deeply is the move to make around the defenses.Surrender is another really good move in these moments, it's, you're not surrendering to the circumstances. You're surrendering to not defending yourself. What do I mean by that? I had a great experience with this. There was a man and I was on the Board of Directors with this person and he was bad for the company. He also had this tendency to whatever I said, he would do the exact opposite thing. What I did was I told him, "Hey, I'm going to try to remove you from the board, I will stop trying to remove you from the board at any time that we can actually work together well and that you're in your thought processes aren't just against mine.We love contrarian thinking in boards typically any board I've been a part of, but this was just contrary for the sake of contrarian, it wasn't contrary because it was independent thinking.Anyway, so every time, for like six weeks or six months, I would call him up and I would say, "This is what I'm going to do and this is what I suggest you do." He would do the exact opposite of that the entire time. By doing exactly the opposite of what he said is how he got himself removed from the board. If at any time he would have said, "Oh, I see." And called me up and talked to me and said, "Oh, wow, you're really giving me the advice." I was constantly able to give him the advice that was actually the best for him. I was constantly able to say, "This is what I think is best for you and for it to be accurate." It is also the fact that he couldn't do it that led to his removal from the board, which was best for the company if he couldn't learn to work with people and be collaborative.Brett: That's fascinating. I'm curious, how you differentiate in that story love over defense versus knowing what's best for him and versus controlling him through suggestions.Joe: The main difference is what you're feeling internally. I am welcoming him as he is and at the same time, I am making the call, that says this company is better without you. That's my call to make, just like it's his call to make and he was making the call that the company would be better without me, or that whatever, China should win the war, or Korea should win the war. Those are calls that people are going to make. That's the war. You have to call what you think is best, but that doesn't mean I ever had to close my heart to him.The way that I could act to not close my heart to him is to constantly tell him, "This is actually what I think is the best thing to do," and to tell him, "I'm going to keep on telling you to do this stuff and as long as you keep on-- I gave him the whole map. I told him the key, I gave him everything to get out of it and he chose not to do that. It was literally me at the time, it was the first time that I was like, "Oh, I am in a war, how do I maintain an open heart?" The way I could do it was to give him every opportunity I could possibly think of. That's the only difference.I think the thing is from the outside it might not look different at all. From the inside, it's a far more effective way to fight a war. You hear this from people who are fighters all the time, try to get your opponent angry, because if they get angry, they'll be less effective. What happens if the person you're fighting has a big open heart for you and they're still determined to win?Brett: How angry did this board member get?Joe: He got pretty angry and there's definitely multiple occasions where he called up yelling. Then, for me, that was the practice. He would call up yelling and I would just keep on opening my heart and keep on feeling the discomfort and keep on feeling my emotions and lots of heartache for me. There was a lot of heartbreak in it and that was my purification was that heartbreak.Brett: Tell me more about that heartbreak.Joe: I have this saying, that every time my heart breaks, it increases my capacity to love. Heartbreak is like the feeling of it breaking open to expand or the feeling of expansion of the heart. That's the feeling. It's interesting. I've obviously never given birth, but when my wife talks about birth, she goes, "I don't know why they call them contractions when they're really expansions," but there's a feeling that it's a contraction as well as an expansion. In heartbreak, that's the visceral feeling of it, for me, anyway. There's this feeling of heartbreak that just totally increases my capacity to love.Another great example of this was, I don't know if I've shared the story, but there was a time when I was just totally bothered by all inane conversation. Just two people talking about going 65 miles an hour on the way to Santa Barbara, whatever it was, would just drive me nuts. There's this day where I recognized that I shut down when this was happening and so I was like, "I'm not going to shut down, I'm going to sit there. I'm going to feel whatever there is underneath this."I would hang out with people, having inane conversations and I would just weep. I would just cry. Probably at times, I had some idea of why I was crying. I think at the crux of it, I was crying because I had just shut this entire part of life off. It's like I'd cut off a part of myself and as I opened it up, there was just this pain of like, "Oh, wow, I've lost this for so long."Brett: What was it that you had lost?Joe: The ability to connect in this fashion, that I had judged this way of connecting. One more way of connecting with people that I had separated myself from, because of my own self-definition. I just weeped. It was very awkward. Sitting there crying, they'd be like--Brett: You did this with them in their presence?Joe: In their presence, yes. It was awkward at times and they'd be like, "What's wrong." I'm like, "Yes, it's nothing. Don't worry about it." I'd just keep on and then they keep on. They're used to having those levels of conversations, so asking me about this twice wasn't really going to happen.Then all of a sudden, I was just completely able to enjoy the more superficial way of connecting and even found out that there's some of that super "superficial" way of connecting that's not superficial at all. That connecting over flowers or connecting over food, there's a very sensual, non-heady level of connection, that is quite sweet and has a depth that deep conversations don't have.Brett: Something juicy in that story for me is, that you started weeping in front of people and then they asked you what was going on with you, inviting depth and then you were like, "Oh, it's nothing."Joe: Yes. That's exactly it, because I wanted to feel the heartbreak. I didn't want to disturb the thing that was breaking my heart. Once you realize that heartbreak increases your capacity to love, then it's like, "Man, I want it. I want that heartbreak," because I know that at the backside of it, there's so much more love available to me.Yes, if I could shut it down, I'd shut it down, because I'd want to just keep on feeling the pain of a superficial conversation, so that I could feel that heartbreak. It was the same with this guy. It's like, just to feel the heartbreak of the fact that here's two people who want something great to happen in the world, who want this company to be successful and this is the only outcome that I know how to create. I didn't have the capacity to really get them on board or bring them along or whatever. I don't know if I could have ever, but that heartbreak and that incapacity to feel into that totally increased my capacity to love.Brett: How is it that experiencing that heartbreak can be experienced as not discouraging, but as empowering?Joe: I think you have to live through it a couple times. I don't know if there's another way to do it, but to just live through it a couple of times. I think that once you live through heartbreak and you realize how much it increases the love in your life, then it's just like going into a hot sauna. If you go into the hot sauna the first time, you're like, "What the f-- are you guys doing? I'm out of here. My skin's burning, what the hell?" I'm talking about like a real sauna, not an American sauna. There's nothing logical about doing it, but then you do it a couple of times and you're like, "Oh man, I can't wait to get back to the sauna." The same goes to the cold plunge, the exact same thing. The payoff is so great that you're like, "Let's do it."Brett: It really seems that this love thing seems to be the crux of all of this teaching.Joe: Yes, absolutely it is. The first real week was VIEW, which is vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder. That's really unconditional love. If you put all those three things together, that's another great pointer to unconditional love. You feel vulnerable, because you're open and welcoming. You're impartial, because you're welcoming as is, not telling them how to be. Empathy means you're open and feeling them. You're allowing yourself to be touched and wonder is this basic nod that the universe knows more than you do, that it's still a mystery and will always be a mystery. That really prevents you from wanting to try to change stuff, change things. We start off with VIEW and we end with love and they're very much the same thing. They're the whole thing. Everything we've done in this course has been to move us towards a greater state of love for ourselves and others. I think the thing about it is that it can't be done out of order. A lot of people will move straight to love, they'll say, "Okay, I'm just going to love everything all the time." I think that's great. Don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't seem to work as well to love everything as an escape, or to love everything as a bypass, or to love everything so that you don't have to feel it. To love everything means that you're really happy to feel everything, that you're happy to express everything, that you're happy to be wrong about everything, that you're happy to be empowered and you're happy to feel helpless. It's a deep welcoming of life and a lot of times people will use love as a way to cut off a certain portion of it.Brett: The question I was about to ask, but you've just explained it, was what makes it that you didn't call this work the art of unconditional love?Joe: Oh, I don't want to answer that question. [laughs] There's a part of me that says you answer as a business guy, but also as a coach. You meet people where they are. You meet people with the problems they think they have and most people aren't walking around going, "I just don't know how to love enough."The biggest problem I have is that my heart isn't broken enough. I don't get enough heartbreak. Most people aren't walking around saying that, so you meet them where they are. Luckily, the unconditional love piece and especially with the emotional fluidity, the empowerment and seeing yourself as inherently good, which is the crux of the fulcrum that the love uses to create its leverage. Brett: It reminds me of where I first met you, which was a consciousness hacking talk entitled, "How to Make Better Business Decisions". I was, "That's what I need to do."Joe: Exactly. Check it out, though. Have you been making better business decisions?Brett: Absolutely.Joe: Yes, see. That's the cool thing, you can actually deliver on the promise, but you can deliver on it so effectively, only because you're speaking to the deeper truth. I think the other reason, just to say it, is that semantically everybody thinks about love very differently. If you say you've got 20 different viewpoints immediately, it just makes it harder to really go through the process.Brett: I think one of the main resistances to doing some kind of group work around unconditional love is, that it'll trip people's cult triggers. Maybe another question is, what is the difference between doing this kind of work in a group and finding unconditional love together and a cult?Joe: Well, this is the surrender piece. This is why I don't use surrender. That little thing about surrender that's in there, it's basically I'm going to ask you to give up responsibility for yourself. Whereas everything that we do is very much pointing directly at, “Take responsibility for yourself. The wisdom is inside you.” If you look at how I interact with students, I'm mostly asking questions and I'm also saying, “Tell me what your instinct says, tell me what's moving you”, because I trust that more than I trust me. I might know the terrain. I might know the map. I might know the six most likely places that you want to end up, but only you know where you are at this moment and know what the next move is and that's the big difference.That's why I don't emphasize surrender because as soon as you emphasize surrender, people think, "Surrender to what?" If I do say something like, "Hey, surrender to the ineffable part of yourself," then all of a sudden, there's a definition, "What is that? How do I do that?" and then that definition becomes what you surrender to instead of the thing itself.Brett: I think a lot of that, what you're speaking to comes from when people get into a teacher role, they end up subtly asking for people to surrender to them, because it sounds like that comes from a lack of trust in people's internal work. What is it that makes you feel so trusting, when you are working with somebody on one of our Q&A calls, somebody who's miles and miles away and could have just freak out and close the laptop and then go do something insane? What makes you feel so much trust for their internal compass, that you feel safe doing this work with them, without the sense of control that would lead to them surrendering to you?Joe: That's a great question. I've never been asked that question before. It's funny what happens in my system when you ask it, is just like this deep sense of humility. The intellectual answer I want to give you is, because that thing in them is the same thing that guided me. I just wasn't lucky enough or I wasn't ripe enough to be able to be given someone to guide me in this way. I had to trust my own, so I just trusted in that way.I think that's part of it, but there's another part of it too, which is, it's experience. It's just so many times, I'm like this, "I can see where the path leads," and I can watch the person just instinctually make the next right move over and over and over again. Not just that person, almost everybody, that I--. Whenever I question it, I'm like, "Oh, that's going to be like a backpedal." It turns out it's the perfect backpedal for them.I don't mean that in a hippy way of everything's perfect, just the way it's supposed to be. I mean just like roses know how to grow. They just know how to do it. Grass just knows what to do. Birds just know what to do. They just know it. I don't have to trust them. I don't have to trust the trees and people. There is a center of gravity just asking. All they have to really do is, just get out of the way. All my questions are literally just questions to help them see themselves. There's no question I'm asking that's underlying point isn't just to have them see themselves.Brett: Wow. Thanks, Joe. This has been another amazing episode.Joe: Yes, what a pleasure. I'm sad that they're done. I'm glad that they're done because I could use a little more free time, but I'm sad that they're done, because I'm not going to get to play with you for a couple.  Brett: I'm excited to see what kind of playing happens again in the future.Joe: Yes, it will for sure. What a pleasure, Brett. Thank you.Brett: Thank you.Joe: All right. Bye. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment podcast.  If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe. We would love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions and comments. To reach us, join our newsletter, learn more about VIEW, or to take a course, visit: artofaccomplishment.comResources: Pema Chödrön: https://pemachodronfoundation.org/

A brief intro on my World Religions Podcast Project. Hello :)

Speaker: Jeff Jarvis I have a confession...l really love my smartphone. Whether it’s needed directions, a weather forecast, a reminder to drink more water and breathe deeply, even an update on what my friends and family were up to last night. In fact, I’m not sure where I’d be without it. You too? It would be difficult not to notice just how much our relationships with our mobile devices and their enticing apps have intensified. Researchers, even comics are nervous. Societally, these little buggers may represent one of the most socially acceptable addictions on the planet. The consequences, however, are worth noting… Let’s talk about it this Sunday in the gym. Join us in person or online. Resources: Social Dilemma - Netflix How to Break Up With Your Phone - Catherine Price Joe Rogan Experience podcast #1558 - with Tristan Harris Joe Rogan Experience podcast #1564 - with Adam Alter Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked - Adam Alter To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast

From parents to teachers to bosses to politicians, people who are responsible for social groups of various sizes and shapes and characters all seem to share one fundamental question: what does it take to make people behave? In parenting, for example, the philosophies range from the flexibility and affection of Dr. Spock to the strict boundaries and strong discipline of Dr. Dobson. Societally, these days the debate is between the necessity of mask mandates or the need to trust people to do the right thing. When it comes to follow Christ, what is the best way to inspire Christ-like behaviour? What is the rule for becoming the people God created us to be?

From parents to teachers to bosses to politicians, people who are responsible for social groups of various sizes and shapes and characters all seem to share one fundamental question: what does it take to make people behave? In parenting, for example, the philosophies range from the flexibility and affection of Dr. Spock to the strict boundaries and strong discipline of Dr. Dobson. Societally, these days the debate is between the necessity of mask mandates or the need to trust people to do the right thing. When it comes to follow Christ, what is the best way to inspire Christ-like behaviour? What is the rule for becoming the people God created us to be?

From parents to teachers to bosses to politicians, people who are responsible for social groups of various sizes and shapes and characters all seem to share one fundamental question: what does it take to make people behave? In parenting, for example, the philosophies range from the flexibility and affection of Dr. Spock to the strict boundaries and strong discipline of Dr. Dobson. Societally, these days the debate is between the necessity of mask mandates or the need to trust people to do the right thing. When it comes to follow Christ, what is the best way to inspire Christ-like behaviour? What is the rule for becoming the people God created us to be?

Providence: The Pathway of TransformationThis is an unprecedented time in the history of our world. Each of us are desperate for some type of change. Societally, we are all desperate for hope. God is the source of hope, healing and change. Yet we have a part. Guest speaker Rich Villodas shares with us today the true pathways of change, breakthrough, wholeness and ultimately transformation.

Providence: The Pathway of TransformationThis is an unprecedented time in the history of our world. Each of us are desperate for some type of change. Societally, we are all desperate for hope. God is the source of hope, healing and change. Yet we have a part. Guest speaker Rich Villodas shares with us today the true pathways of change, breakthrough, wholeness and ultimately transformation.

Weekly Podcast from Cornerstone Church, North Gower, Ontario.  www.knowgrowshow.ca   To listen on your favourite podcast provider (Spotify, Stitcher, Apple or Google) visit knowgrowshow.ca and click on the podcast tab.  The Passage Revelation chapters 15-19. SOAP passage = Revelation 19:6-8 The One Thing Prepare for the wedding of eternity growgroup questions Take time to allow each person in the growgroup (split off into smaller groups if the group is too large) to share one of their SOAP passages this week: S: what SPECIFIC Bible verse stood out to me? O: general OBSERVATION. What is the Bible passage saying? A: APPLICATION. How do I apply this to my life? P: PRAYER: Write a 1 or 2 sentence prayer, telling God what's most on my heart and mind today. Additional questions (if needed) about the Sunday message passage. G1 Imagine that tomorrow the headline is that Washington has been attacked, and the US as a world superpower has been decimated in a wide-reaching decisive and coordinated attack. There is no more military. There is no more Wall Street. There is no leadership succession. The US is officially done. There is no comeback. What would some of the ripple effects be around the world: economically? Technologically? Societally? Legally? Militarily? Trade-wise? How would this event impact you personally?* G2 Engage with this definition of the wrath of God from the New Bible Dictionary: “God's wrath refers to the permanent attitude of the holy and just God when confronted by sin and evil. It is a personal quality, without which God would cease to be fully righteous and His love would degenerate into sentimentality. His wrath, however…is not wayward, fitful or spasmodic, as human anger always is. It is as permanent an element in His nature as His love”. How is this helpful? Are there any parts that you wrestle with? What are we missing if we leave out the wrath of God? G3 In chapter 16 nearly all of the plagues mirror plagues mentioned in the book of Exodus. What do you think God is communicating through this comparison? G4 John prophesied the fall of the Roman Empire hundreds of years before it actually happened. Imagine if you were a Christian in Rome at the time that Revelation was written. What might your response be to Revelation 17 and 18? How does God want to encourage you in 21st Century Canada? G5 The two main characters in these chapters are “Babylon the Prostitute” and the “Bride of Jesus (the Church)”. Why did God use these two archetypes to get his message across? G6 Consider the economic and trade fallout pictured in 18:9-20. Do you see any parallels between these verses and what you see in the world today? *I'm not drawing a parallel between the USA and “Babylon” in chapter 18. But as the world superpower, it helps us empathise with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 400s AD, prophesied in Revelation.

What as a parent would you do if your child was homeless, or drug addicted. Societally, we can do much more than we are doing, and do it better.

*This episode was recorded live - apologizes for the sound ahead of time* Fresh off appearing on the Steve Harvey Show, Civil Engineer and Scientist Cody Langlois details his story on this episode of Spill the Matcha. Earning six figures before the age of 25, Cody had 2 graduate degrees, a ready to get married girl friend, and house; everything he was told was needed in life. After a few years of being extremely unhappy, Cody packed up the essentials before leaving everything behind to travel to California in search of happiness. Join host RJ Tolson and Cody as they chat about modern Masculinity and the trap it sets, escaping the 9-5 job cycle, leaving everything behind and moving across the country, and more. Spill the Matcha is a CapriTaurus Studios Original Series. Follow RJ Tolson at @rjtolson and visit Spill the Matcha's social channels for more information and updates.

How can we make real changes within the practice of law to lessen the impact of stress on individuals in this profession? In this episode of the ALPS In Brief Podcast, Chris Newbold checks in with Dallas attorney and advocate for wellbeing, Brian Cuban, to discuss the state of lawyer wellbeing now, the lifesaving impact one lawyer can have upon another, and our ethical responsibility to step up for one another.  CHRIS NEWBOLD:             Good afternoon. This is Chris Newbold, guest hosting today for the ALPS In Brief Podcast. And I'm here in our offices in Missoula, Montana with attorney and advocate for wellbeing, Brian Cuban, who's in here from the Dallas area. I just spoke at our ALPS bar leaders retreat, and we thought this would be a great opportunity for us to have ... We have a similar passion in terms of seeing our profession improve on the wellbeing side, and so I thought this would be a great opportunity for us to just kind of have a conversation about where the profession's at. Where do we need to go? And Brian, you're obviously out on the speakers' network, kind of talking about this particular issue, your personal experience, and so forth. I think I'd like to start with just you kind of putting into your own frame of reference. What is the state of the profession right now when it comes to attorney wellbeing? BRIAN CUBAN:                  It's a state that is a lot better than it was a few years ago. We have much more awareness. We have many more engaged professionals from the bottom up, the lawyers, the bar professionals, the local bar professionals, the state bar professionals. And we have awareness in big law. We have awareness within the boutique and the solo practitioner. There are areas that we can certainly do better, and we can certainly be more impactful, but we are definitely light years ahead of we were just three years ago. CHRIS:                                   And what do you think has driven that improvement in such a short period of time? BRIAN:                                  I think you have to give a lot of the credit to the ABA and the Betty Ford Hazelden Report, and that would also be Patrick Krill, who authored that report, in bringing the issue to the forefront with the staggering statistics, because I think that was a catalyst in really changing the conversation. Whatever people think of the ABA, you have different opinions, but you can't deny that that report was a seminal moment. CHRIS:                                   And why do you think that the issue right now is capturing a lot of attention in the legal community in legal circles? BRIAN:                                  Well, because of that report and because of the cumulative awareness, now we are looking around us and actually noticing what's going on. We may have been aware of what's going on, we may have seen what's going on. When someone dies by suicide, we are aware of it and we grieve it. But we are now much better in taking a look at that, and deciding where things could've been done differently. And three years ago, four years ago, it was more about just grieving and handing out, in the issue of suicide, handing out the 1-800 hotlines. Now we are moving beyond that, and really look at how we can make systemic changes to at least lessen the odds of those things occurring. CHRIS:                                   You talk a lot about kind of the impact that one lawyer can have on another lawyer. Right? And the responsibility that we have to not be kind of casual observers in this. Talk about that a little bit more as it relates to how we looked at, engineer a culture shift in the profession, and how every lawyer can make a difference one by one. BRIAN:                                  Sure. I talk a lot about not minding your own business. We have to create a culture where we are comfortable, or even if we're not comfortable. Let me step back from that because that's not comfortable. It's okay to be uncomfortable not minding your own business. That's a human emotion. But we have to get comfortable understanding that for what it is and taking that step anyways. When we see someone struggling, when we think we might be able to, or we are wondering, you just don't know. Is there a drinking problem? Is there a mental health struggle? Maybe the person's just having a bad day. To be able to not mind our own business for one moment, step outside of our struggles, step outside of our busy day, our billing, the things we have going on, and say, "How are you doing? Are you doing okay? Do you know that if you're not, you can come to me, and we can talk?" That doesn't require anything but empathy. And every lawyer, every person has that ability. CHRIS:                                   Is that a tough conversation for an associate to have with a partner? BRIAN:                                  Absolutely. And we have to follow protocols. Law firms need to establish protocols for when people are struggling. That is not realistic to expect an associate to confront a partner. But big law all have EAPs, so there's that. We all have lawyers assistance programs. Do you know as an associate, you can call lawyers assistance program, and you can let someone know what's going on? And they're not going to out you. I know that is a tough pill to swallow, and I know you don't believe that. But you can make that call. You do not have to identify yourself in any lawyers assistance program in this country, and you can say, "I'm in this firm, and I think this guy is struggling." And they will take it from there, so you can do that. BRIAN:                                  Within big law, we can talk about big law and then move on to something. Go down, go down. Within big law, it's important to establish protocols that are nonjudgmental, where everyone has a path. Everyone in the firm has a nonjudgmental path, a path that they feel safe voicing their concern if they see someone they think is struggling. So I can't tell them what that path is, but there should be multiple paths based on where someone is in the chain, right down to the clerk. CHRIS:                                   Talk about your opinions on ... There's an increasing body of work out there that says that the economics of wellbeing are conducive to a stronger bottom line. Right? And as we think about talent acquisition, talent retention, I know you work a lot in kind of big law firms. Right? BRIAN:                                  Mm-hmm (affirmative). CHRIS:                                   I think there's a really interesting play on the horizon for those who lead our profession from a big law perspective to be thinking about a commitment to this issue that could translate economically for the firm. Talk about that. BRIAN:                                  Absolutely. And I think, I doubt there are any managing partners, senior partners, firm CEOs are the real big ones that are not aware of that issue. It is the messaging is consistent just in general in society about the impact of addiction and mental health issues on the workplace and the economic cost. So the challenge becomes: How do we translate that into risk management? And I think they are starting to do that. That is not what I do. I'm a storyteller, I'm not a risk manager. But I think we are starting to see an industry, and people who do that, to go to a firm and say, "This is how we translate this into risk management to increase value to you," save you money. That saves the client money because on the most basic level, and we talked about the Peter Principle of Recovery. Right? How your level of competence keeps decreasing, and you keep trying to adjust your mindset to stay within that, you tell yourself you're at a high level when you're struggling. BRIAN:                                  That can be, in a general sense, stealing money from a client because you were not effectively representing the client. That is affecting the firm's bottom line, and that is the most basic level. When a lawyer is struggling, and not functioning at the non-struggling level, he may not even, or she may not even understand what that level is because they've been in the middle of it, lacking self-awareness for so long. That is affecting the firm's bottom line. That can affect client retention because there are lawyers out there who are not struggling. Everyone's trying to get the business. Right? So you have to maximize the ... You have to minimize the risk by putting lawyers in a position to succeed and to hit the top level of competence and move beyond that if possible. Keep raising that level. And it's hard to do that when someone's struggling with addiction, problem drinking, depression. BRIAN:                                  And I see lawyers all the time that talk about, well, I'm struggling with depression, but I was killing it, doing this. And I can't judge that. I don't know their situation. But I can say anecdotally, and what I see in the data, that I don't see how a person can look at the big picture, step back, and say, "I was going through all that and giving a dollar for a dollar." So I think all firms are aware of that, and I think that is achieved through a risk management model. CHRIS:                                   Again, it's going to be interesting too as big law tries to recruit talent out of the law schools, how much top talented students are actually looking for a wellness play in terms of the life, work balance that I think, generationally, I think is becoming more common. BRIAN:                                  That's a good question. I forget what the study was. Was it Am Law? Did the Am Law survey just come out? CHRIS:                                   Mm-hmm (affirmative). BRIAN:                                  And I couldn't find it. I think it may have been subsumed in one of the questions. But I reached out to Patrick Krill, who does a lot of the risk management stuff, and who authored the ABA Betty Ford Study, and asked him if he knew if we are surveying firms on wellbeing, if that is part of the survey. And I don't know that he had. I'll have to look and see if he responded, or he had an answer. But I think that may be not so much as a conscious play, but as a lifestyle play. It's just part of an overall lifestyle. Looking at the overall lifestyle, can we say that someone's going to say, "What's their drinking culture? I'm not going there"? There's no way to know that. But in the overall lifestyle play, I think lifestyle and wellness will become major factors, as Millennials and Generation Z, who have different priorities on what they want their life to look at as lawyers and as human beings. CHRIS:                                   Yeah. Talk more about, it's an interesting time in our profession given the fact that we have four separate generations all operating at the same time. Right? BRIAN:                                  Mm-hmm (affirmative). CHRIS:                                   But there are also studies out there, particularly those that have been done within the law schools, that say some of these behaviors and substance abuse and so forth are starting earlier, and are becoming more prevalent for those who have been in practice, particularly in private practice, for less than 10 years. As you think about that dynamic, and Millennials and so forth, that's soon going to be the largest chunk of lawyers in the profession. And as you think about the generational aspects of wellbeing, what's your take on that? BRIAN:                                  I think Millennials definitely have a different vision of what wellness looks like than ... I'm a baby boomer. The baby boomers, I come from, my lawyers' culture was a drinking culture. And I think when we look at things like the Sober Curious Movement, and what the Sober Curious Movement is, is not looking at drinking in terms of whether someone is a problem drinker, is an alcoholic, but what it looks like as a lifestyle, and as part of a healthy lifestyle, and whether you want it to be part of the healthy lifestyle without being judged on whether you're abstinent or not abstinent, and what that means to you, whether you're an alcoholic or you're not an alcoholic. I think Millennials and Generation Z are going to look at this differently in terms of just, I want to do the things that make me feel good, and that may not involve drinking. And I don't want to be judged for that. I don't want to have to explain myself. BRIAN:                                  And I think that is going to be a much easier transition and a much easier conversation than it is for my generation because it's beginning. It is beginning. The Sober Curious Movement is out there. We have bars within New York. There aren't any in Dallas and Austin. And you see a lot of the progressive towns, where you have bars, they just serve mocktails. And they revolve the fun around other things besides getting drunk. You go out and you're drinking fake pina coladas without alcohol. And they revolve everything around those, around the mocktails. The mocktail generation, they may be that. CHRIS:                                   That's an interesting one. If you had to assess right now, wellbeing in the legal profession, one being it's at an all-time low, 10 being, I think lawyers are both healthy, happy, engaged, where you put that on the spectrum? BRIAN:                                  I would put we're at a three or four, three or four. And that's great, and that's great. CHRIS:                                   A lot of room for improvement. BRIAN:                                  A lot of room for improvement. Four is opportunity. Right? CHRIS:                                   Yep. BRIAN:                                  Four is opportunity. Yes. And one of the biggest challenges I think we have, and if you look at big law, we with the ABA, and this isn't a criticism of the ABA at all. I think with the Wellness Task Force and everything, they have laid out the groundwork for all levels to participate, all stakeholders, solo, medium, boutique, the bar associations, all the way up to big law, corporate. I think they are laying out that groundwork. But I think when we get further down into the stakeholders, the solo practitioner, the small firm, we have a lot more work to do. And I think in that chunk is where we have the most improvement to do in our messaging, and the most opportunity because we have other challenges when we get down there. BRIAN:                                  If you work at big law, you have health insurance. And I knew big law lawyers who have health insurance, and still can't find a reasonable psychiatrist or therapist. They've complained to me about it. We have this health insurance crisis on so many different levels. And big law within the spectrum, you have privilege. You have health insurance privilege because you're going to have it. And you're going to have the EAP, and you're going to have this, and you're going to have that. BRIAN:                                  I don't know what the stats are, but I know anecdotally that a lot of the solos cannot afford health insurance. So when you can't afford health insurance, what are your options? You're going to 12 step. You are going to county. A lawyer don't want to go to county and get free treatment, that's very shameful. Right? If you even have that option as a reasonable option in your city. A lot of cities have terrible county free health services. And so we have that stigma of a solo practitioner and the medium, I don't have health insurance. I'm a lawyer, I'm not taking advantage of free. I can't. So they don't tell anyone. It's shameful. So how do we solve that? CHRIS:                                   Obviously, in our book of business with ALPS, we specialize in small firms and solo practitioners. And 65% of the policies that we issue are to solos. And they're generally a higher malpractice risk because they don't have a support network around them. BRIAN:                                  Absolutely. CHRIS:                                   You can't stop into Brian's office and say, "Hey. Let's have a conversation about this particular case." You have to build networks. You have to build connections in very different ways, which makes it I think, much more challenging. BRIAN:                                  And it does. And it's a challenge where you're struggling. It's going to be dependent on the particular situation. But you're making what would be decent money, you have a family. You can barely, after everything, then you care barely support your family. And you're more able to speak to this. You have a deductible that you can't meet anyways, even though you have health insurance. That's as almost as being uninsured. So we have all of those issues, and I don't know what the solution is to that. But that is one of the things that is a huge barrier to wellness within the profession, health insurance and the ability to pay for getting well, the ability to find people to get us well. We are becoming a cash only society in terms of wellness. BRIAN:                                  I consider myself very lucky because I have a psychiatrist, I've been seeing for 15 years, and he treats. I have one of the few treating psychiatrists out there with his therapy. But we also have the ghost networks that you may be familiar with. And I'm getting off on tangents, where you can't, even if you have health insurance, you can't find a treatment provider because they don't take insurance. CHRIS:                                   Where do we go? A lot of good activity now happening. You've got Pledge. You've got some state task forces going. Got a lot of discussion. Societally, we're seeing more vulnerability to talk about these issues, whether it's Hollywood stars, or sports stars, there's just more discussion, which I think is healthy. If we're a three or four right now, how do we get to a six or seven? How do we start to move the needle? Culture shifts in any society- BRIAN:                                  It's one person at a time. It's one person at a time. If you're talking, there's no magic pill to culture shift. We talked about this. It is one person at a time. There's one bar association at a time. There's one law firm at a time. And you hope, you hope, that the Malcolm Gladwell theories kick in, and you hit a tipping point. But it is much more, again, it is much more on different levels societal. If I can't afford treatment, what's the difference what the path is if I can't get there? Why should I tell anyone if I can't afford to get there? In Texas, we have a fund where if you go to them, a lawyer can get treatment. I believe it's an endowed fund privately. And maybe someone will correct me on this when they listen to it. But we have to find different ways to ... It's more than just laying the path. People have to be able to walk on it. BRIAN:                                  And if you can't afford to get the help, other than 12 step, and 12 step is great, Smart Recovery's great, Refuge Recovery is great, but they're all mutual aid. Mutual aid is not treatment. Mutual aid is maintaining connection, which is important. If you can't afford the treatment, and you have no way through that path, that's a huge problem that goes beyond the legal profession. When we talk about the legal profession, what we can do, I think we have to have a more societal view of that. How do we correct that? CHRIS:                                   Yeah. There's an interconnectedness to a lot of different- BRIAN:                                  You can't sever this. You can't sever out health insurance accessibility from all the other issues within the profession because most of the profession is solo and small. CHRIS:                                   And even on a tangent, one of the reasons I got involved in the wellbeing movement was I feel like there is a gap in expectations for what people think practicing law will be like, and ultimately what they find that it's going to be like, whether that happens in law school, or whether that happens because of law school debt. That again, to be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer. And more and more, people are finding themselves boxed into a spot where they're actually doing something that they're not finding professional satisfaction in, which is then causing ... It can cause other things to kind of spin off from there. BRIAN:                                  I agree. I agree. Every lawyer is a story. Every lawyer is more than just the person under stress. Every lawyer brings their entire history of trauma, of however they grew up, family. CHRIS:                                   Family. BRIAN:                                  They bring it all through the door of that firm. They bring it all to the courthouse. So whatever that stress is may not just be the product of what's going on at that moment, the case, fulfilled expectations, unfulfilled expectations. It may be the product of a life story that has shaped someone that made them more susceptible to those issues. Does that make sense? CHRIS:                                   It does. BRIAN:                                  So we have to address the story and not just the moment that the lawyer is in. CHRIS:                                   Yeah. Anything else that you want to kind of relay as we talk to our policy holders and other interested listeners about just kind of the current state of attorney wellbeing? BRIAN:                                  If we want to change the paradigm of attorney wellbeing, for me personally, I think the most powerful tool is continue to encourage people to tell their stories. Keep telling the stories. Everyone identifies with aspects of other people's lives. There's going to be something to identify with. The connections, stories bring connection. Keep bringing people in to tell stories. Just encourage that. And I think through the power of storytelling, we will start to see more and more people tell their stories, and then they'll tell their stories. And I think that is how. CHRIS:                                   That reduces stigma. That reduces vulnerability. BRIAN:                                  That's right. I think as we reduce stigma, we will better empower lawyers to seek recovery. CHRIS:                                   Yeah. Brian, thank you. BRIAN:                                  Thank you. CHRIS:                                   We appreciate your time, and we appreciate your perspectives. And obviously, you're doing wonderful work in the storytelling side of the ledger because it's important that through the experiences of you and telling your personal story that it makes a difference. BRIAN:                                  I think law firms need to realize, and I think big firms are starting to do this, is creating a wellness program has different levels. There's storytelling. There is risk management. There is- CHRIS:                                   Scientific studies. BRIAN:                                  Yes. And there is the pure wellness aspect. How do we reduce stress? How do we become happier? What can we do to allow our lawyers, within the framework of our representation of clients, to feel better about themselves and what they do? Law firms are in a business. This is a business, and they are not yogis. We have to be realistic. Law firms are there to represent clients at the highest level possible. What holes do we need to fill to make that happen? Because that is what we do. We represent clients. And so we have to fill all these different gaps, the storytelling gap, the risk management gap, the wellness gap. CHRIS:                                   Got it. Again, thank you so much. And I hope you enjoyed listening to this podcast. As you know, ALPS is committed to being a leader in the wellbeing issues of the day affecting the legal profession. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you have any other ideas for topics on the wellbeing, please let us know. Thank you.   Brian Cuban, the younger brother of Dallas Mavericks owner and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, is a Dallas based attorney, author and addiction recovery advocate. He is graduate of Penn State University and The University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Brian has been in long term recovery from alcohol, cocaine and bulimia since April of 2007. His first book, Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder,” chronicles his first-hand experiences living with, and recovering from, twenty-seven years of eating disorders, and Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Brian's most recent, best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer, Tales of The Bar, Booze, Blow, & Redemption is an un-flinching look back at how addiction and other mental health issues destroyed his career as a once successful lawyer and how he and others in the profession redefined their lives in recovery and found redemption. Brian has spoken at colleges, universities, conferences, non-profit and legal events across the United States and in Canada. Brian has appeared on prestigious talks shows such as the Katie Couric Show as well as numerous media outlets around the country. He also writes extensively on these subjects. His columns have appeared and he has been quoted on these topics on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, The Huffington Post, Above The Law, The New York Times, and in online and print newspapers around the world. Learn more at www.briancuban.com.

Shep Hyken interviews Steve Farber. They discuss how to implement love into every aspect of your business to drive customer success. The Interview with Steve Farber:Even if you love what you do, there will still be days that feel like work. You must do the necessary things you dislike in order to be able to do the things you love in your business. Doing only what you love is called retirement—but you don’t necessarily need to be retired to feel this way.Societally, we are unaccustomed to using the words “love” and “business” in the same sentence. Using the word “love” in relation to business raises the standards and expectations in a way that promotes positive growth. However, you shouldn’t use this verbiage if you don’t intend to follow through with it; if you talk the talk, you must also walk the walk.We want customers to love our products and services. If they don’t, we will have no competitive advantage. Achieving this starts on the inside with the company’s culture. You must first create an environment people love working in; do it right, and this love will be felt on the outside by the customer.A cultural focus can begin on any level of an organization and needs to happen on every level. However, you can’t create this as a leader if you don’t love it yourself first. You must love the environment you create so your employees will also love it—and then customers will feel that love too.To kickstart your cultural change, ask yourself the important questions, like what love looks like in business, why you love what you do, and how you can show it. Then ask those around you what you can do to demonstrate customer love and implement those new ideas. Many good ideas already exist within your organization. Ask the right questions so you can have the right internal conversations.Business, like love, is incredibly personal. This is the most important but also the most overlooked aspect of business.Quote: “As businesspeople, we want our customers to love what we do for them. If they don’t love the product or service, then we have no advantage at all.”  - Steve Farber About: Steve Farber is the president of Extreme Leadership Inc., a speaker and consultant, and the author of several books including Love is Just Damn Good Business and The Radical Leap. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The multiverse. Universes layered on top of each other, singing in different frequencies, never coming in contact. The hero of Earth Prime, The Rage Machine, protects his section of his universe, unaware of the vast tapestry of worlds that lies around him. But one day, a rift in space opens above his hometown. Out comes The Handlebreaker. A villainous destroyer of Earths throughout the multiverse. When The Rage Machine arrives to investigate, he learns of the diabolical plans, the concept of parallel Universes, and...... love? Yes, when these two rivals in every other sense get together, nothing can stop the inevitable. Their children will rule the multiverse and be named:Diet Food Getting Lost Picking Scabs (Warning: this one gets gross) FanfictionDiet versions of food and drink. Either they're indistinguishable and therefore still not healthy, or they don't taste like the original at all and therefore are healthy but terrible. They're made for weak people that can't live without their soda and cookies. And usually they eat/drink the amount of the diet product needed to surpass the calories of the original! If all we had we're diet foods, we'd be exactly the same, and we'd have diet diet foods.Getting lost in life stinks. The days blur together, you think you have no one to talk to, and you bottle up everything inside. At least for guys that's how it is. Societally we can't show weakness, we can't ask for help, god forbid we see a professional about it. And I don't wanna sound like an antidepressant infomercial, but you can! You can do all those things, and if anyone around you says otherwise, they're not worth your time.Why do we pick at our cuts, poke at our bruises, scratch at our bug bites? Why is it so fascinating to peel off that big scab? I chalk it up to natural human curiosity. The human body is crazy, and seeing it work for that short time, healing up that wound can be very interesting. We usually don't get to see past the skin."Sonic the Hedgehog gets knocked on the head and wakes up on the bridge of the Enterprise-D! He falls in love with Commander Worf, but Lt. Data won't allow it! So Data opens up a rift in time and space and brings mild mannered reporter for the Daily Bugle, Clark Kent to help stop the blue menace." - The Blue Blur Meets the Blue and Red Blur, Chapter 1/8,235. 4.2 Stars. Now a major motion picture!And your voicemails, and news, and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to vote for next month's movie commentary, which of course is being recorded this month, so if you wanted a Thanksgiving movie you should have suggested next month. November's commentary will be on a Halloween horror movie, it's very simple people, what don't you get! Support the show on PATREON or join the DISCORD for more fun!

October 11, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. In his book reThink, preventive medicine and public health expert Donald Louria argues that “societally connected systems thinking” can allow us to solve problems where conventional methods have failed. By analyzing an entire issue through systems diagrams rather than its component parts, problem solvers are able to examine causes and consequences, understand patterns and themes, and identify leverage points. Societally connected systems thinking offers the perspective necessary to address the big issues of our time, such as healthcare, addiction, overpopulation, and epidemic disease. rethink examines critical public issues, offering specific, provocative recommendations for solving or mitigating issues based entirely on systems diagrams.

Boom! Just like that Mzed and Vumi come at you with their 10th episode! What a way to celebrate by revealing Vumi’s big news and tackle some corporate capture in the process. They also touch on giving flowers as a non-romantic gift, they praise the legend Federer on his record winning Wimbledon win, and also weigh in on the Floyd vs Connor fight! Tune in.

Earlier this week, I felt somewhat unglued and ready for a routine. Getting kids back to school in different weeks, with one attending evening college classes as a high-school junior and shy of her driver's license, there's been a lot of chauffeuring or, rather, being chauffeured. Then labor day, a day off and a weekend of 14th-birthday celebrations for the youngest. Summer retreated with a bang. It was a great season initiated by an incredible family trip to Europe.So slinking off to school and work routines is not, exactly, exciting. Yet necessary.I crave more-focused work, balance and rhythm. The busyness has caused me to let go of a regular spiritual practice, even weekly worship twice, and my daily gym visits. It's like skipping medication.  For one day, I'd like to just wake up to the day and head onward, no swim, sinus care, supplement taking or gluten-free lunch packing. Just once. And not have to experience repercussions.Yes, I know that I am whining. Tuesday, I, dutifully, headed to the gym by 6:45 am, swam less than the usual mile (I must build up again), blended and slurped down my spinach-blueberry-and-brown-rice smoothie, dropped my oldest off at 9 am, returned to take my supplements, pack my lunch and get to the studio. Once there, my first action was to light a candle, welcoming Spirit's light, and pull out my daily devotional. The bookmark was still on August 21.The passage was about beginning the spiritual journey with a reminder that we humans center the universe on ourselves. We can't help it. The shattering of illusions, Father Thomas Keating writes, is the beginning of the journey. The real spiritual journey and the way to nowhere.The way to nowhere. I can identify with that.Who likes to admit they haven't the faintest idea where they are headed? Practically no one. It's not practiced in this culture. Everyone knows exactly where they are going: to work, careers, up the rungs of  the social and corporate ladders, and, even Heaven. We are so sure of it. Otherwise, what are we left with? Feeling out of control?Societally, we are launched on an upward path. I left that long ago and never really understood it until spiritual teacher Richard Rohr wrote that the spiritual path is one of descent ... into the messiness of life and brokenness. THAT I could identify with – over and over again like a skipping record.With a new awareness, I have begun to notice something pretty radical. When I am slumming in the sludge of life, guess who is always with me? God. I don't especially remember feeling her presence when I traipsed up and down the steps of my corporate job years ago. As I traveled, marketed, plotted and planned I felt, well, hollow. Like I was just pretending. It seemed as if we all were. The lemmings marching in sober-faced, stiff and Zombie-like (perhaps mirroring our product, caskets) each morning and flowing out each evening, together at the same time. Like them, I was probably asleep.I have since awakened and know Spirit's presence in the depths of darkness, on the average day and the heights of contentment. She is with me when I am alone, when I worship with others, when I struggle with others. I know her most intimately through Jesus and his universal Christ energy.I know it best when I keep a daily practice that opens me to that energy and love as I journey to nowhere.• What role does routine play in my life?• What happens when it's not in place?• Where do I pencil in time with God?• What difference does that make?• When have I felt I was on a journey to nowhere?beginning of theweek I amchomping to getorganized andfeel in controlagainthat holidays,and new schedulesbecome assimilated... quicklybouncing fromone busynessto the otherwhen I rememberto light the candleand let Sprit inListen to this post: