Authenticity over Improvement — Master Class Series #7

Podcast: The Art of Accomplishment
Source: whisper-base
Language: en
Duration: 2972s
URL: https://afp-933324-injected.calisto.simplecastaudio.com/e83bf197-ae48-4679-bb45-5aa4369b6e74/episodes/dab8656d-1731-48ab-bc15-18cf65139ed7/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=e83bf197-ae48-4679-bb45-5aa4369b6e74&awEpisodeId=dab8656d-1731-48ab-bc15-18cf65139ed7&feed=zksImfUP
Fetched: 2026-03-03 01:06:45

I will watch people, and if they're just following their intuition, man, they will just pick the next thing. And this is what we do when we're just following our nature. My nature, my authenticity, improved me in ways that I didn't even know were happening. Welcome to the Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kisler, here today with my co-host, Joe Hudson. When we consider how we want life to be in the future, we often create a list of things that we have to improve about ourselves. Yet we rarely consider that we could succeed in improving every aspect of our lives, and by doing so, completely lose touch with who we are and what we want. What if learning who we are creates a future far better than what we think we want? What if it creates a future better than what we could imagine? Today's episode is about valuing authenticity over improvement. So, Joe, let's talk about authenticity. What is authenticity? Authenticity is an endless spiral in one way and the fact that it's like it is evolutionary by nature. We think that there is an authentic self and it is this solid thing, but it's not. It's as we discover ourselves, there is always more to discover, and as we discover ourselves, we transform. Authenticity is really a path more than a destination, and the way that you can identify when you're on that path of authenticity is always about the process. It's never about the reward, and it's never like a means to an end. It's like a river. It's very much like a river in the fact that there's a way that a river wants to run, and that's the natural flow of the river. And next year you'll come back and that river will run a different way. So, authenticity is constantly changing, but there's just this natural flow to it. It's just this very natural course, and they call it self-discovery. They don't call it self-building. You know, we're not building ourselves, we're discovering ourselves, and that's why ultimately the path of authenticity is a path of self-realization. It is finding out the truth of who you are. And somehow, for some reason, the more we discover who we are, the more that we evolve, the more that we change, the more that we show up in a way that is far more gentle or loving and competent and capable and strong. Can you talk a little bit more about self-realization? Yeah, self-realization. There's a story of... I think it's in the umpashads. I can't remember which traditions so many times. Traditions have really similar parables. There's another parable very much like this about a tiger, but this one's about a muck deer. Muck deer is like moving along one day, and it smells, it smells, and there's a smell, and it's like, what is that smell? And it just feels like a memory. It feels like a calling. It's like something gets opened up in this muck deer, and this impulse is like, I need to follow this thing. I need to follow it. And it goes searching for the place where the scent emerges. It wants to find that scent and the origin of that scent, and so it looks and looks and looks and looks, and it's like almost upon its death still looking for the scent and falls off of a cliff and punctures its stomach. And it realizes at the moment of death that, oh, the thing that I've been searching for comes from me, that scent emanates from me. And that is the movement of self-realization, is that the thing that we're looking for in all the self-improvement, what we're actually looking for is ourselves. So how can you relate the story of the deer following its own scent to our path of self-realization? This search of the deer looking for the scent is the self-improvement. It's like, once I eat the right diet, then I'll be good enough, or I'll be awake, or then I'll be loved, or once I look pretty, then I'll be good enough. And then I'll be loved once I lose enough weight, once I meditate enough, once I have no more negative thoughts, whatever the hell, once I stop thinking, whatever it is that you think you have to do, become rich enough. And then you'll have it, and you'll find the scent that you're looking for. But the scent you're actually looking for is you, it is to understand yourself. And it's the only thing that really solves the issue. And it's why you see so many executives, and I've worked with so many executives, who are at the top of their game, they've made the successful billion-dollar company, and they're miserable. And they did everything that they thought they needed to do to improve themselves so that they will be loved, or that they would accept themselves, and nothing's really changed. And as soon as they start on that path of self-realization, as soon as they are looking for their own authenticity, and they no longer are willing to sell that authenticity, or bargain that authenticity for a result, when it stops becoming a means to an end, and it just is like this, is my authentic expression, then their life starts unfolding in happiness and joy. Right, so let's talk a little bit more about that scent trail, then how would you define improvement? Yeah, improvement is basically if this and this, right, like it's in terms of the self. So it's like, if I get sexy enough, then I will have the lover that I want. If I lose enough weight, then people will like me. If I have enough money, then I'll feel secure. It's anything that is, the improvement is like thinking that you're going to get a result from it. And authenticity is the opposite, so this is what I'm going to do despite the consequences, because it's my authentic truth. So that's basically what improvement comes in. And it comes from the idea of ways that we don't want to be who we are. It's the other way to look at all the ways we think we need to improve is all the ways that we don't love ourselves just as we are. In any point where you can unconditionally love yourself, whether that is because you yell, because you don't work hard enough, because you're lazy, because you're pessimist, whatever it is that you are telling yourself that you have to change, it just ways that you're not loving yourself. And they don't typically change. We just keep on telling ourselves that we don't love that about ourselves. And we keep on telling ourselves that we have to improve it. But when we actually accept our authenticity, those things just naturally move. They just shift. Reminds me of a quote that I've heard before where like a kid's asking or like speaking to somebody as though we're a child. And it's like, well, there's a big, there's a question, what do you want to be when you grow up? And instead thinking to ask that, like, how do you want to be when you grow up? Yeah, that's it. I have never heard that. That's beautiful. Yeah, how do you want to be when you grow up? That's usually the other way to think about self-realization is that I think it's a Pema Shodran quote. And it's basically constantly offer yourself up to annihilation so you can find out what's the part of you that can't be annihilated. And what are we annihilating these, these are like built up ideas of who exactly that's exactly it. The things that we think we are that we have to defend. You can tell them because you're defending them. It's like when someone's like, well, you didn't do that very well and you go, er, then you are defining yourself as somebody who's competent. And you're not able to love the incompetent part of yourself. And authenticity is, you know, this is how I'm competent. This is how I'm incompetent and being able to own that. And then in the owning of the lack of competence becomes more competence. You know, it's like this thing where oftentimes with executives, helplessness is this big thing where they feel it. Authentically, they feel helpless. But to allow themselves to feel helpless is incredibly difficult. Because the fear is if I allow myself to feel helpless, then I will become more helpless. But if they authentically own their helplessness, then they become less helpless. I think there's also a fear of being seen. That's almost true. During the therapy consequences. That's how you know also that part of yourself that needs needs wants to be destroyed. It's the part of yourself that doesn't want to be seen in that way. Whatever that way is, I don't want to be seen as blank, a hypocrite. I don't want to be seen as a helpless. I don't want to be seen as greedy. Whatever it is that you don't want to be seen. I don't want to be seen as weak. How would you separate improvement from growth? Even the process of finding authenticity, you can get better at it. What is that if not improvement? Don't we need some form of improvement? Whether we're tracking our growth in some way to see what the trajectory is going? The question is, what would make you need it? What will happen if you don't have it? I think that's where the key is. Does growth happen? Absolutely. If I look at, I always use this metaphor of nocturi because when I look at my window, there's an oak tree. The oak tree grows. Does it need to? No. Is it looking to improve itself? No. It's nature. Our authenticity, another way to think of our authenticity is our nature, our nature is to grow, our nature is to improve, our nature is to learn. If you take a little kid, when they're just really when their babies can't even walk, one of the things that they smile most at is when a face comes at them sideways. Not when a face comes at them straight up and down. Straight up and down faces the face that they see right before they feed. And that doesn't make them smile as much as a sideways face, which means we're here to play. And play for a kid is learning. And we have this natural desire to learn. It is authentic in us. We have a natural desire to grow. It's authentic in us. And it just all happens very, very naturally. But it's when you think you have to improve to be good enough for. When it's not just the nature of your life. And you look at a six-year-old kid they're constantly wanting to learn and grow. And it doesn't stop. It doesn't stop unless someone has kicked the love of learning out of us. It just keeps going. So I don't think we have a need to do it. I think the thing is, is that improvement is just happening naturally and that's authenticity. But if you are looking to improve yourself, then you are putting the brakes on the process. And you're often going in the opposite direction of the river. How do we address that fear of becoming stagnant if we don't improve? Yeah. Or just to be measuring, you know, measuring where we're at. And then, you know, measuring that according to some scale of value that we've created. That's a great question. Well, first of all, question your scale. That's the ultimate thing. It's easy to play a game when you have a measurement. And it's hard to play a game when you don't. So if your measurement is for life is how much money I have in the bank, then you can play. And if the measurement is how kind I am to people, then you can play. And then you have something to measure too. But if you start really questioning those measurements, what do you mean by kind? Do you mean having the most positive impact? How do you measure positive impact? What's the difference between kind and nice? And what if I was deeply truthful, but I wasn't kind? And why is kind more important than truth? So these questions, as soon as you start really looking at the end, if you really deeply look at the end, then it gets really scary. That's when the stagnation fear really shows up. It really shows up and you're like, oh, all the progress that I thought I was making might not have been to the right end or maybe there's no end. And this fear sets in like, and it's almost like this fear, like it's going to be nihilistic or something like that. But even the idea that it's nihilistic is just another way of trying to create meaning out of a situation. But the nature of life doesn't really require meaning. There's no other part of life that requires meaning except for humans. So life wants to evolve, it wants to grow, it wants to improve. And it seems as it turns out, most humans, when they understand themselves more and more, there's a deeper and deeper compassion that shows up. There's a deeper, deeper amount of empowerment that shows up. And what you find is the things that you think are opposite, such as love and being empowered, they turn out to be the same thing, that the pinnacle of loving is empowerment, that the pinnacle of empowerment is loving. And so, and you can feel this, like if you just stop for a second and close your eyes and you feel what it would be like to unconditionally love the world. And you just let that settle in your body for a moment. And your love is so big and so great that it expands everywhere. And it's not weak love, it's not love like I'm going to let people abuse me. It is the kind of love that a mother has that's a great mother. They have boundaries. And then you let that go for a second and then feel what it's like to be completely empowered. Feel what it would be like to not have to worry at all about the future, to not have to prepare, to not have to plan, to just know that you are capable of handling any situation, to be like Superman on a mountaintop with no kryptonite in the world, or Superman on a mountaintop, no kryptonite in the world. Nothing can touch you, that feeling of empowerment. And then just feel the two next to each other, like how are they different if at all? This full empowerment, this full love. So that's how it moves. And so the stagnation, the fear of stagnation, the fear of like, oh, there's no meaning or there's no place to go. And therefore I'll stop moving. It hits the human psyche, for sure. It's definitely part of this human psyche, at least in the modern world. But life doesn't require any of that stuff. Life can't stop moving. See, I mean, just try to not improve for a week. Take two weeks and do your best to not improve. Don't learn anything, don't grow, don't have any realizations, don't have any recognitions. Try that for two weeks. I told someone to do that once and they were like, oh my god, so many recognitions, so much realisation, because they stopped trying. And we feel this all the time when we're on holiday. You have two to two weeks off and then you come back and you perform better, it's smoother. The whole thing works better. You make better calls because you didn't improve for two weeks. You know, because you weren't actively trying to improve for two weeks. It's just the nature of life. We buy our nature, learn and want to grow. Something that came up for me, the exercise that we just did, was that both in the unconditionally loving the world state and the feeling fully empowered state, there wasn't any fear. But the concern of stagnating is just fear. And the fear of stagnating is the thing that, you know, I know for me in my life, I've spent a lot of time in the fear of stagnation. And that has constricted me in those times. Right. And let stagnation. Exactly, that's how it works. Yeah, we invite the things that we're scared of. That's our nature, our nature is to invite. If we have a fear of something, we're inviting it in. Because we want to learn and grow from that experience. We want to face that fear. So the fear of stagnation invites stagnation. The fear of loss invites loss. The fear of abandonment invites abandonment. So let's try to bring this back into more concrete examples. So make this real. Yeah. Yeah, I'll do a couple of them. Let's take one way to look at it is kids and their learning. So kids, we were just talking about their nature is to learn their curious. That's what they're genetically programmed to do. All humans are. And somehow or another, we can put them into a school system, tell them that they have to improve and get A's and then they stop wanting to learn. And then, yeah. Exactly. It actually happens to some 47% of highly intelligent kids. They fail high school. Yeah, I did a really great in school up until I got an IQ test that told me I was smart. And then I got my first B plus. Yeah. And this was like fourth grade. And then it was just like. Yeah, you stopped trying to hell with this whole thing. Yeah, there's some great psychological tests on this that basically if you kid tell a kid they're smart and then they try and they don't succeed, they'll stop trying because then they will prove that they're not smart. So they'll just stop trying so they can maintain the identity of smart. It's some fascinating work. But yeah, that's an example of it. But now if you take kids who've been unschooled, I think it's called non-schooling or unschooling or something like that where the kids have been somewhat traumatized in their school situation so their parents pull them out and they say, you know, you can't watch television, you can't, you know, do things that are destructive but you can not do any work until you're ready. They oftentimes don't do any work for three months or six months and then all of a sudden they're like, okay, I want to work. And those kids, when they want to learn math, they can learn basically fractions to calculus. And it's something insane like three months or like five months or something like that. You can read the studies on it because they want to learn. Because it is their desire to learn in that direction and they want to do it and they will do it. So it's like one is moving with the authenticity of the situation and one is telling the kids that they have to improve to be good enough and it's like a punishment and reward situation. So that's one aspect. Another way is like a personal story from my life to think about it is I was in high school and I started smoking cigarettes and I was kind of socially awkward at the time and I had issues that my upbringing had some turmoil in it. And so I was constantly telling myself I should improve by not smoking. I was constantly telling myself that was something that I needed to improve in. And then just by nature, I got drawn into hacky sacking and I just started to hacky sack all the time and I just really enjoyed hacky sacking and it just kind of became this thing. And then about like 10 years ago, I was with one of my daughters and my daughters having some problems in schools and this occupational therapist came to us and they said like, oh, your daughter has something of like sensory processing disorder. And it just basically means that the neurology isn't really melding the way it would with other kids and it makes you very sensitive to stimulus. Through your senses. And I said, oh, how do we solve this thing? She was like, oh, the way you solve it is through doing exercises across the midline that require coordination, et cetera, et cetera. And hacky sacking would have been a perfect example of that. And if you look at me before hacky sacking and after hacky sacking, I became socially more fluid, I became less sensitive. You know, when you have sensory processing, it's kind of like a bit of like a nerd's disease is like, you know, more likely to wear glasses. You know, you're kind of awkward and clumsy. You don't do as well socially. It's like that kind of stuff. And all that changed with me hacky sacking. So my nature knew what I needed, knew what was needed next, and did it without anybody telling me to, without anything happening. I watch this happen all the time with clients. I watch clients all the time. Like, I know basically the dance steps of transformation. And everybody does them a little bit differently. And you know, sometimes chapter three comes before chapter one or whatever, but I will watch people. And they, if they're following, if they're just following their intuition, man, they will just pick the next thing. And it'll, it'll be like, oh my god, they picked it perfectly again. And this is what we do when we're, when we're just following our nature. And then, you know, smoking for me, on the other hand, lasted until I was like 30s. You know, so, you know, as a perpetual habit into my 30s. So, and that was all the ways I was supposed to improve, but my nature, my authenticity improved me in ways that I didn't even know were happening. That's fascinating. I can think of a lot of experiences in my life that are a lot like that. You know, one of them being joining your 18 month course, where I just kind of felt like an intuition. It was, you know, felt like a lot of money at the time and retrospect it was very little. But it was just like, man, I don't know. Like this just kind of seems like my kind of thing. I don't even know what it is. And I didn't. When I got there, I was like, wait, this isn't really all that. Yeah. And yeah, they transformed your business, too, right? Which is the insane part. Yeah. The other thing. Yeah, but more than that. Exactly. I mean, that's the insane part. Like that's a great example of it as well, which is like people come because they often come to me because they want to transform their business. And we transform their life by them taking their natural steps and their business naturally transforms. If they would have just focused on their improvement, their business may or may not have transformed. And in this way, the reason I use this methodology of working on the personal stuff is because that always transforms the business. It has 100% success rate as the person transforms. Their attitude towards their business will transform and so will their business. So let's relate all this back into that. The concept you were talking earlier about, self-realization and self-discovery. Yeah. That's good. All right. So back to my journey. Let's do it from my journey for a second. So for the early part, I got really deeply into awakening enlightenment. In the non-dual sense of the word, not like woke culture, but I'm talking about like the Christ consciousness or enlightenment, whatever religious tradition you have has a word for it. And at the beginning of that journey, it was, I thought it was improvement that would get me there. You know, once I was eighth-the-right diet, or once I did the right exercises, or once I meditated hard enough or blah, blah, blah, I would become enlightened. And so that was the improvement side of things. And it's a slow, arduous, painful process. And it luckily moved enough for me to realize that it wasn't about improvement. It was just about the recognition of who I am. And when that happened, this question appeared to me as, what am I? It was a question I asked that question for 10 years. Maybe 10 times a day I would ask that question. And that is really what transformed everything for me. That just being in that question for that long, with that level of wonder, transformed everything. And it was funny. I was seeing a guy at the time, one of the, I was like reading every non-dual teacher I could find is, but the only guy that I had met personally, who I thought, well, this is a person I would want to learn from, was a guy named Adia Chante. And I got up and asked him a question once in front of this big, auditorium of people. And I said, I keep on asking this question, what am I? And all I get is silence. And some dude in the back just started laughing. And I was like, what, why would that, that's not funny. And Adia smiled and can't remember what else happened. But I remember about like three years later, I was in a meditation retreat when that question, what am I faded away? And like, the question ever gets answered, it just expires. And it expires in a, like, like a firecracker. But it expires. And I was in the back and somebody got up on the front and said, you know, I asked that question, what am I? And nothing. And I just started laughing hysterically, as if the nothing wasn't the answer, you know? And that's what it turns into. That recognition of self is something that just unfolds into nothingness. And that nothingness is incredibly free and incredibly potent and capable. So who are you now? Yeah, yeah, that question has expired. Yeah, that's a, there's a, there will be an exercise. There's an exercise on this just to like go back and forth and ask somebody, what are you over and over again? What are you? What are you? What are you? And see what happens is all your answers expire. All your answers, you know? But if I had to put what am I in words right now, which is exciting, an exciting thought process, I would say, what am I? I am infinitely you. I am everything and nothing in the silent vastness that everything arises in. And so are you. Okay, so then what happens once that question expires? It sounds like there could be a trap here in thinking that this question of who I am has expired and now I don't have to approve myself and there's just nothing to do. What am I going to do just sit in a cave and meditate until? Yeah, yeah, there's a thought that says that that might be the case. You know, and in fact, some people go through that for a while. I think it's because they're like those kids who, you know, needed to be unschooled for a while when they have that recognition of their, their essential self in that way, that there is this need to just sit there for a while and do nothing. But it becomes a bit disassociative and eventually it's no longer satisfying. And so it just turns out to be we just become more and more human. We like to play, we like to learn, we like to grow. It's our nature, it's our authenticity. And so once we have been let out of school, we realize there's nothing that we have to do to improve ourselves because our essence is unbelievably beautiful, miraculous, a dream that we never thought even possible coming true, that we couldn't even have thought of coming true. Then, yeah, there's this natural desire to rest for a while, potentially. But eventually, you just, you know, you want to move, you want to dance, you want to play, you want to be alive. And then the journey turns into how do I be alive? How does my authenticity really want to be alive? How fully can I embrace this life? How, you know, there's a book called The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I don't even know what it's about, but the title is amazing. And that's what it is. Life becomes, how do I allow myself to be more and more vulnerable to the unbearable lightness of being? I love that both of us have a kind of person who would recommend a book or reference a book that we haven't read. Yeah, I highly recommend that title. The title. So it seems like there could be another trap here where we have these, we have somewhere where we want to go. And we're like, oh, okay. So maybe like improving myself, allowing the, you know, the particular metrics that I have in mind right now, maybe that's not the best way to get there because authenticity is the best way to get there. So if I just get more authentic, then I'll become this thing that I want to be and get to where I want to go. Yeah, that's right. That is a real trap, right? So it's like you'll see this happen often time in tools. You know, you get this tool that you start working with in the realm of self discovery. And you get this tool and it works really well for a while and then it stops working. And some of the times it stops working because you are using the tool to change yourself instead of love yourself. So it stops working. And some of the time the tool stops working because you've co-opted it into improvement instead of recognition. And it's really the same thing to improve yourself isn't to love yourself as you are and to find the authentic expression of you is to love yourself as you are. And to know that that authentic expression will naturally change you, just like the natural flow of a river changes the river. And that could be your goals will shift. Yeah, I've never, I've seen a lot of things not change as people go through this journey and I've seen a lot of things change that I've never seen the goals of a person not change through the journey. That always changes. And what's often interesting is the goals that they used to have just get met naturally without any even effort or thought process because they become just a step in what's necessary for them to evolve into their authenticity. I had a goal for years of having enough money to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, somewhere along the line that I just didn't care at all about money and then money just started rushing in. And that's a really typical story, not always, but it's a very, very typical story. So, you know, we've talked about how having goals is wanting something is good. We just had a whole episode of how what you want, how wanting itself is critical. But then we're just talking now about how wanting something from ourselves or wanting something in our future can lead towards this constant improvement process and away from our authenticity. What's he ever say about that? So, wanting is critical. What you want is really inconsequential. You know, what you want is, like, directionally correct. But it is not the end all be all of anything. So, like, that wanting is what pulls you, that wanting is the natural pull of evolution of authenticity. That's what it is. What you want is a strategy to get there. And there's 10 or 20 strategies. So, what you want is inconsequential. And there's no reason to attach to it. But it is to follow your wanting and then to watch how your wanting changes and watch how what you want changes. What happens if you're going through this process and the things that you want just change so rapidly that your life starts to feel disconnected or disorienting? You're very fortunate. You might feel disturbed depending on your personality type. You know, some folks will find that to be a beautiful free ride. And some people will feel like, you know, there's that quote on sometimes falling feels like flying for a little while. And so, people will be like, oh, I'm flying, which means I must be falling. But in actuality, as they say, the bad news is you're falling, the good news is there's no bottom. So, yeah, that is part of it. Or Rumi called it a Sufi poet. He calls it like a holy confusion. That not knowing it's called the mystery for a reason. And so, it's absolutely what happens. And the goals shift and then the goals disappear. And then there's no goals for a while. And then after there's no goals for a while, there's very specific goals. And then there's just like this movement that's like, how do I describe it? It's like the goal is to live principally. Because you know that living principally will make you happier than any goal that you could ever achieve. And that's something that's entirely within your power too? Yeah. It becomes choiceless at a point. It becomes outside of your power at some point. It's like, I just can't not live principally because it's too damn painful. Give us another concrete example of how that works when you know what you want is inconsequential. But the wanting itself is important. Yeah, I can give you a funny one. So, I'm sitting with my godson and his father. And father's been a friend for like since high school. And this story is going to be one of those stories that lets you know, like, maybe you don't want to have me as a friend. And so we're sitting there and we're having lunch together in this restaurant. And my friend tells me about how his son stole $50 from him, bought a vape pan and was vaping in a classroom. And I'm just listening and sons, you know, in those teenage years. And then all of a sudden, you know, five minutes later, he says how he's like the problem, you know, with my son is that he just doesn't have, you know, ambition. He just doesn't want to do anything. And I was like, what? Of course he wants to do something. Do you know how hard it is to do what he did? I mean, stealing $50, like, he playing that stuff out, that's ambition. Then he went and did it and then like with the knowledge that he could have gotten caught, which is totally ambition. And then he figured out a way to go buy the vape pan. And then he had so much ambition to do it that he did it in a classroom and got caught. Like, you know, that is like some CEO level ambition. That's not like, what are you talking about? Like the, you know, at this point, my friend's looking to be like, shut up, Joe, shut up. And the son's looking at me like, smile like, oh, wow, I didn't know I should have visited my godfather more often. And then I was, I was just saying, yeah, there's, I mean, there's clearly ambition. It's just that you're wanting him to be ambitious in one way, but he's ambitious in another. Let's look at how he's ambitious. And so, started talking to him and, well, what is it that you want to do? And he wants to play this particular kind of sport that requires some money. And then you got to like get these guns or whatever. It's like, it's like a laser tag type thing, the next version of a laser tag. And he's telling me about it. I'm getting into it with him and then I'm like, well, how are you going to afford this? And he's like, you know, well, maybe I have to get a job. Or, right, well, what kind of job do you want to get? Well, this kind, well, you don't make a lot of money. And he's like, how? And then how are you going to get there? And we just went through this whole thing. And he was like, clearly eager to do all this stuff so that he could, so that he could do the thing that he wanted to do. And I was like, well, how can your dad help? And then he is telling his father what his father can do to help him be ambitious and get things done. And that's the difference. That's the difference between you should improve to what is the authentic expression. And the thing is that we do that internally as well as externally. Meaning we're usually like the father in that story rather than the Godfather in that story to ourselves. Right? We're telling ourselves what we had to improve, what we need to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Instead of just paying attention to what the natural thing is. And if we follow that thread far enough down, it has far better results and moves much quicker. Yeah, it's fascinating. By that measure, I was extremely ambitious and barely passing any any of my prior school. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's because they couldn't hook on to you the authentic. Your most schooling doesn't hook on to a child's authentic desire to learn. In my case, they presented a lot of different tracks and opportunities that all of which just didn't quite hook. Yeah, well, it's really hard to hook when you're telling somebody when you're grading people and say you need to improve. That's not hook worthy. It's like a culture of constant improvement. We don't listen to songs that tell us that we need to improve. We know it, you know, wow, triple platinum song by Jay Z called boy, you better work out more. It doesn't happen. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. So let's talk a little bit more about how this works in companies. And, you know, in more general sense, in cultures of self-improvement or just not even self-improvement, just cultures of everybody needs to improve. Yeah, the constant improvement culture. Exactly. Yeah, it's again, it's not assuming that people want to improve by nature is what happens here. So a great example of this is in that book re-inventing organizations. There's a nursing company in there called Herzog. I'm bad at pronouncing these things. And basically what had happened, it was in Holland. And what's happened is there's these community nurses and they got privatized. And it just became all about efficiency. It all became improved, improved, improved, improved. And it was like, this is how long it should take you to get there. This is how long it should take you to administer the shot. This is how long it should take you to get back. That's how much time you have. That's how much payment you're going to get. And everybody was going for the improved nursing efficiency. And this company came along and it did a lot of really cool things. But one of the things it did is it said, you know what, our job isn't to be as quick as possible. But our job, it's not to improve our process in that way. It's to make it so that we help people become self-reliant. And through figuring out how to get to that home and make the person self-reliant instead of administer the shot, they became 60% more efficient than their competition or something like that. Maybe it was 40%. I don't remember the numbers exactly, but it was a tremendous amount more efficient. And so one had that natural hook because we naturally want, we naturally want to help people. That is part of our nature. All mammals that are community-based mammals have altruism as part of us. And so they hooked on to that natural thing and then that led to natural improvement. They weren't trying to improve in some unnatural way. And the interesting thing is what, you know, as soon as I say where it's our nature to be altruistic, somebody will say something like, well, it's our nature to be self-interested. And I say, I agree, it is. It's our nature to be altruistic and it's our nature to be self-interested. And it's our nature to want to be rewarded and it's our nature to want our team to win. And it's in our nature for us to win. And companies that are really becoming the most efficient companies are hooking on to all of that. And if you think about that nursing company, their team won. They had individual reward for the performance. They, as it turned out, people got to decide their own reward. And also they got to help. So they're hooking on to all of these natural things in us. And if you look at the great products of our day and the great nonprofits of our day, they hook into a natural authentic desire in people. And sometimes it's a drug-like, like a Facebook or a coffee. And sometimes it is not drug-like, right? Sometimes it is just our nature to want to communicate. So that's what it means. And so it's not only does your product, but your culture needs to, if you want to be highly efficient, it needs to hook into that nature of people or our authenticity. Another one of our ESF group was recently telling me about a company that they're applying for. It's a debt collections agency that operates on transparency. And like, instead of trying to be as efficient as they can in milking the most money from people as possible and buying the debt for the cheapest possible, whatever, they're optimizing for really being in connection with people. So they purchase debt. And then they, they're transparent. They're like, hey, so we bought your debt for this much. We have this much of it. We expect to get, you know, a certain percentage of it paid back from various places. And, you know, what can we do to get this paid off? And they end up getting with that transparency and working closer to, to their, I guess, their customers, their debtors. They actually get across this sense of actually caring. And they're able to come up with much more creative solutions, which actually results in, I mean, this is a new company, but it seems like it's resulting in getting much better results for them. And also, they're getting just swas of testimonials from customers. Like, wow, I wish all of my debt had been bought by this company. This is amazing. They're actually people. Right? Yeah. Like a human. Yeah, I mean, we see this all the, you can see this in sales processes that are more effective when there's a real relationship, real connection going on. And that authenticity is there. People think they have to compartmentalize themselves to do business. And that compartmentalization that inauthenticity, it absolutely makes you less efficient. It might make things easier to do in the short term, but absolutely harder to do in the long term and it makes you less efficient because you're basically asking anybody you interact with to compartmentalize themselves that same way. So a debt collector compartmentalizes their heart and they go in hard, then their customer compartmentalizes their heart and they respond hard. Or they respond like a victim or whatever it is, but they're going to match that more on average. So if we focus on finding the authentic movement then? Yeah. How do I collect debt in a way that feels good in my system? How do I nurse in a way that feels good in my system? How do I produce a social media app that feels good in my system? All of those will be a more efficient product. And then with that container, we're asking, what am I? Like, what am I, am I an efficient collector? Yes. Or am I an agent? That's right. Right. Yeah. If I am them and they are me then, how do I want to behave here? If I feel my natural authenticity, my desire to learn and my desire to be of service to people, how do I collect debt in a way that's of service to people? And, you know, it feels horrible to not pay your debt. So to help people feel like that they are standing on their own two feet and have achieved pain off debt. I mean, that's a, that's a, it can be a real deep service for humans. Yeah. I wonder how many other industries can be... Rethought everywhere. It's endless. It's just like there's always more money to be made. There's always a way to become more authentic. And each one is an efficiency. Sounds like there's a lot of faith in this process because with each layer of authenticity you find, you really have to let go of what you value to, or what you thought was important entirely to find what's beneath it. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. You know, it feels like faith. It's like... It feels like faith until you get used to like reading the river in some way. It's the same kind of faith that maybe a basketball player would have that's going into a game is like, you can't plan out the whole game. You can't plan out everything. And so you're basically choosing, I am going to plan out my entire basketball game or I am going to learn how to read a river and learn how to read the field, learn how to read my opponents, and so that I am confident in every situation where I'm in that basketball game. And then you start having faith in your capacity to handle situations. And you become excited where you can't handle them because it means you're getting into learning something and it makes you more capable next time. And so it's the same thing. It's like if you've learned to read a river to go down that river and get to the mouth of the river, it's not an act of faith anymore. It's just what you do. And you're watching other people like build canals. And that makes them feel secure. Like I will just take a canal the whole way but I have to build the whole canal. It's a lot more effort. So it's very much like that. Once you start realizing that your authenticity naturally brings you to the next level over and over again. And that improving yourself is like building a canal. It's like this idea of safety that takes a tremendous amount of effort and is really not that safe because lots of people die building canals. That's how it works. And so it feels constantly like you're taking faith or that you're taking a risk. And then at some point you're like, oh, no. It's more risky to do the other thing. It's more risky to be six years old and have, you know, all my dreams have come true. And I am miserable. Which is where that typically leads. Yeah, I think we often over index on the cost, the perceived cost of stopping doing things the way that we're doing them. But forget about the opportunity cost of continuing to do the same thing. Yeah, that's what's interesting is that's also part of our nature. It's also part of our nature to stay with something that feels safe. So it's unpredictable of safety. Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. And luckily, as authenticity matures us, as we evolve being authentic, we become more and more sensitive and that stuff becomes more and more painful where we're naturally kicked out of those cycles because we just can't handle them anymore because they're just too painful. Thanks for listening to the Art of accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.