how to win at pinball & life

0:05But the problem with shadows is that they tend to form in our life when we're really young, and we develop them, and then as we get older we're taught, "Hey, that's not okay," or, "You shouldn't be doing that X, Y or Z addiction," or, "You shouldn't be thinking that way." So we tend to keep it kind of buried over here, like in the shadows. And a lot of shadow work is about bringing those hidden parts of us out into the open, because it's a part of us. So it's not like, "I need to heal this shadow," or like, "deal with the devil and get rid of it." It's coming at it from the perspective of: it is a part of us. It's a part of all of us. Welcome to another episode of Nectar of Time. I'm your host, Tamir Barzilai. Today

0:55we're going to be speaking with Ian Coll. Ian is a facilitator of wisdom. He is someone who is dedicating his life to helping people find clarity. I personally met Ian when I went on a retreat which he was leading, which he was facilitating, and I found him to be very curious, very thirsty for knowledge and wisdom, and someone that appreciates the world around him and understands what it is to be a monk within a city and not a monk in the mountains. He's a really great individual, and I'm really excited to share this conversation. What are we sipping? This is like a vanilla

1:45cinnamon something. It's decaffeinated. Okay, but cheers. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, third episode of Nectar of Time. Thank you for having me. Still hot. It's so good, though. Nice and smooth on the throat. Cold day. It's a cold day out there. It's true, it is. It is cold, yet you still go and cold plunge, from what I saw yesterday. Indoors. Indoors, yeah. Indoors, not the outdoor one. Not the outdoor, no. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here today with Ian Coll. Ian is a friend of mine. Ian is many things, but of more notable, at least of note for my experience with him, he's been a facilitator for entrepreneurs, for men. He's based out of Squamish, British

2:35Columbia. And well, I guess rather than do this intro, which is going to already have happened for people listening to this, I'm going to say a few words about what I feel, I think, you do, and your impact. From my perspective, I went a few months ago to a, I guess it was like a day retreat, to an outdoor cold plunge/sauna/meditation facility in the middle of nowhere in Squamish. I was looking at the map and I'm like, "Where am I going here?" Because I thought I was going to Squamish, and then I wasn't going to Squamish, I was going to the woods. It was like 30 minutes into the valley, like, no service. Yeah, I see no service. I'm like, "Well, I probably should have

3:23told my team that I wasn't going to have service for like four hours." But it was really cool, and I got to meet a bunch of entrepreneurs. I know you do a lot of male-only get-togethers and retreats and things like that, but this was mixed. Yeah, this was a bunch of different entrepreneurs, co-ed. And it was a great experience, and it took you away from the rat race of everyday life, literally in the middle of the day. I think it was like 11 to 3 or something like that. Yeah. And you just got to reflect on what the heck is going on. You zoom out and then you see everything for what it is. And obviously you facilitated that. I thought you did a fantastic job at it, and I didn't realize all the training that you have done, because for those of you that don't know, in

4:10Ian's previous life he's a cinematographer, but he's sort of transitioned into this, with a ton of training and your own life experience, and now you're really leaning into that, and you're having a huge impact from what I'm seeing. So tell me a little bit about that role that you have right now, and then we'll tie it back into what we're doing here today with Nectar of Time. Totally. Do you want me to speak to the facilitation? Yeah, in your words, what are you doing right now? Because so many people do things adjacent to this, right? Yes. So what is Ian's version? So yeah, I'll try to put this as simply as I can. So the way that I see the world right

4:57now is that we've got a big problem, in that men are struggling in silence. So many men are carrying the weight of work, of their finances, of their relationship. A lot of times they're carrying it on their own, and they don't have a good support system around them to be able to be held through their experience of life. This has led to increased mental health rates. Suicide rates are high, and men are feeling more and more lonely. So this summer I launched my first men's group in Squamish, and I've been a part of men's groups for four years now. So it was always kind of just this part of my own personal life and training that I kind of kept to myself, and then the further and further I got into it, I just felt called to be able to provide spaces and share

5:46everything that I've learned in my life that I've been able to apply, and bring it to the community up in Squamish. And so I started that, and everything's kind of just been lifting off from that point on. So I just have a huge desire to help men heal, to grow, to expand and just live life fully. So that's what I'm currently focused on these days. Gotcha. Okay, so I think that's a good overview, a good summary. And now I really want to get into the themes of today's episode. I gave Ian zero notice on what we're going to be talking about today, so this is coming at him as a surprise, but I think it's sort of within the wheel of what you typically operate in. I'll start with this. I'll start

6:35with something that I've had on my wall for about 10 years, maybe even slightly longer than 10 years. But it was at my old apartment, which was a bachelor studio with no washroom. I shared a washroom with three other units on my floor. Didn't even have a full kitchen in there, and there was no comfortable furniture, there were no pictures of family, there was no art. It was a few IKEA desks, it was a single bed. I didn't even have the bed frame. For the whole time, to make more room, I got rid of the bed frame and just slept on the mattress on the floor. And the reason I did this, because obviously, for those of you that don't know, I run a startup, and in the early days of the startup, that was the, well, that was

7:24the mindset. It's just grind, grind, grind and do all the hard stuff. And so to give me hope at those times, I would put a lot of visuals on the wall that would remind me of why I'm doing what I'm doing, and to help me through the tough time. So one of the excerpts that I had on my wall is called "Makers of Empire," and you can see that it was on my wall, and it's still on the wall in my new office. And I do have a bed frame in my apartment now, for those wondering. This is called "Makers of Empire." It's an excerpt from a book called The Master Key System, Charles Haanel. He was an author. He's one of the guys who is responsible

8:14for what we know now as self-help nowadays, that entire section at Indigo. There were some people like James Allen, he was an English philosopher; Napoleon Hill, he wrote Think and Grow Rich; Ralph Waldo Emerson, who came before all of these guys. And Charles Haanel was one of the guys that influenced Napoleon Hill with his Think and Grow Rich. So say what you will about his books, about that. You know, in the early 20th century you had some weird stuff that people were talking about. So if you can sort of set aside all the weird stuff and keep the good stuff, you get something like this. So let me just read it to you, and I'm curious to see what your feedback is and what your comments are. We'll take it from there.

9:03"Makers of Empire. They are the architects of greatness. Their vision lies within their souls. They peer beyond the veils and mists of doubt and pierce the walls of unborn time. The belted wheel, the trail of steel, the churning screw are shuttles in the loom on which they weave their magic tapestries. Makers of Empire, they have fought for bigger things than crowns and higher seats than thrones. Your homes are set upon the land a dreamer found. The pictures on its walls are visions from a dreamer's soul. They are the chosen few, the blazers of the way. Walls crumble and empires fall. The tidal wave sweeps from the sea and tears a fortress from its rocks. The

9:51rotting nations drop off from Time's bough, and only the things the dreamers make live on." Hm. Okay, how does that fit in with your ethos and what you do with your facilitation and your groups? Because the one thing I will say, before you comment: there's an idea that we have to achieve these lofty goals for greatness. However, you and I both know that it's not the case, because if you keep saying, "I'm going to be happy when I hit this goal, going to be happy when I hit this goal," you're going to be miserable your whole life. Yeah. So really the theme for today is discussing the strategies to

10:40reconcile the desire for greatness and the detachment from outcome. Yeah. And so with that in mind, okay, take it away. Sweet. No, I appreciate that. That was on your wall for 10 years, or how long is it? Yeah, I mean, it was my old place, and it's here at the office now, and every so often I read it. I love it, like the "only the things the dreamers make live on." Yeah, yeah. I think what first stands out to me is that ultimately, for me, the path to freedom is an internal process. So when I think

11:30about what you just read and the comment you just made around, like, "I will be happy when," or the grass is always greener on the other side, when I think about what most people want, which is internal peace, internal freedom, in my experience those things aren't found through achievement. It's like an internal process, it's an internal journey. And especially in terms of how does this fit into my work: so many men especially are just on that, like, trying to achieve, trying to strive, make more money, build a bigger house, all this stuff. And a lot of guys arrive at like 40, 50, and they feel empty. And what stands out for me is, because they never really had a vision

12:18for their life. You know, they just wanted to build more walls and build things in the physical world, but they never really stopped and paused and thought, like, you know, what was the... Is that what... What was that final "live on," what was the final sentence? "And only the things the dreamers make live on." And before that, "the pictures on its walls are visions from a dreamer's soul." Yeah, yeah. "Homes are set upon the land a dreamer found." I mean, yeah, there's like, you need to have a vision. In the first sentence, right? "Their vision lies within their souls." Exactly. And maybe, you know, if you're getting your visions exogenously, that's a problem. Exactly. Yeah. And I think especially this

13:07day and age, life is so fast-paced that I don't think that people have a vision for, like, what do they want their life to feel like? What impact do they want to make in the community, right? It's all externally driven, through money, achieving, like, "What can I take?" Well, I've fallen into this trap where you need to have X amount of money and security in order to start living your life. Yeah. And a lot of people, they get to that point, and then you're so caught up with life at that point that you're just too busy to actually start living it anymore, and you're stuck. Exactly. I mean, what's the... I think it was Benjamin Franklin that said this. It could have been Benjamin Disraeli, I don't know which one. Which Benjamin? Yeah. But that most

13:57men die at 30 but they're not buried till they're 80. 100%. Yeah, yeah. I think that was Benjamin Franklin. I don't know, both could be wrong. It's so true, though. And the funny thing around men and achieving or accumulating wealth is, like, we all know that money doesn't bring us happiness, but everyone's always like, "But I'll find out for myself. Let me get there, let me reach a certain point." And then they realize this isn't doing it. And I know so many guys that have just done that time and time again, and it just doesn't work. I think that, you know, there is a part of our biology that wants to strive towards something, but if it's missing that vision, if it's missing that

14:45deep meaning behind it, or that deep why, you're just going to reach the end and you're going to feel empty. It's like, think about how many Olympians have gotten to the top of their sport and they hate it. There's athletes that have played professionally at the highest level, and once they retire, they're just done. Yeah, there's a lot. Andre Agassi in tennis, huge one. Yeah, absolutely. I even just recently learned Michael Phelps really struggled with depression, anxiety, his entire career. Like, everybody thought he was just this machine of a swimmer, which he was, but he has mentally battled his own demons for his entire career. And it makes you wonder, did he even want to swim, or was that some external thing, like we're talking about, where he didn't have the vision for his life? He kind of got on a

15:31path of like, "I'm good at this, I'm going to do it," and he just went for it. So I think what that quote really speaks to me is taking the opportunity to pause, and like, yeah, vision on the wall. Like, what is it that you want? What is it? Yeah, yeah, you're right. It does make you pause. There's a lot of beautiful imagery there, and it's non-dogmatic. It's not actually telling you what type of dream you need to have or what you should do, and it covers the entire gamut of what dreams could look like, really. "Your homes are set upon the land a dreamer found." This is like, you know, a huge expedition to go and find new land, to be the explorer, right? And

16:19that could be a metaphor as well. But even if you took it literally, that could be the most extreme, as you know, going and finding new territory, right? Totally. Or summiting some mountain or something like that, something crazy, physical and long and treacherous. But then you also have "the pictures on its walls are visions from a dreamer's soul." That's like, wait a second, we went from conquering land and pioneering to painting a nice picture, a beautiful picture, which I think shows the wisdom here. 100%. Because some people in this day and age, in the so-called, quote-unquote, manosphere online, yeah, where you have all sorts of, oh, you know,

17:09unsightly characters that exist there, and they list: you need to have this, and you need to have that, and you need to have that. Mostly these are material things. Yeah. Or it's like, you got to have a six-pack and abs, or six-pack and pecs, and this and that, in order to be happy and get some partner that is going to love you, and without those characteristics they're never going to love you. Of course, no one's saying don't work out, don't go to the gym or anything like that. But I mean, you never hear them say, "Create a beautiful piece of art. Leave an impression on the world that's unique, your own thumbprint, whatever that may be." These are not the terms that things are discussed in. And what it shows, for me at least, is a lack of empathy and

17:57understanding that, it's a novel idea, but there could be more than one archetype or life experience to be lived. Totally. Everyone wants to replicate themselves somehow, right? Don't you see that? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah. Well, and your comment about, yeah, a huge piece of what the manosphere world, or the red pill community, or whatever you call it, like, there's no heart. There's no emotion, there's no art being made, there's no, like, what are you devotional to, right? So on that, you know, something that my coach has had me do is assignments in the world. He's like, "Start to look for ways that you can make art and give it to the world in a way that you don't need to be recognized for it." So he's had

18:46guys build rock shapes by the ocean, right? Like inukshuks and stuff. Or he's had me, he's like, "You know, open the windows in the summer and play guitar and fill the community with music." He calls it a devotional offering. Like, how can you, using your art, your awareness, everything, how can you give that to the world? Because so much of it, yeah, is like: make money, build a business, cold plunge. It's very ego. And people have lost touch with their ability to create. Even, like, the most, you know, if you think about our evolution, like cavemen, they would dance around the fire and play drums. And think of the most masculine-looking dude. He's jacked,

19:34he just hunted a bison, and he's got a big beard, he's in a cave. But they get around the fire and they're dancing, they're playing, they're, you know, reciting poetry. Like, there's this entire artistic side of humanity that I've seen die. And yeah, I don't know if you've noticed. I agree. I mean, if you go to Rome, you'll see statues of warriors, but you'll also see, well, I guess not Rome, in Florence, should have said Italy, but in Florence you'll see a statue of Dante, statue of an artist, statue of a poet. That country, Italy, they really valued this. They valued a multifaceted culture that wasn't, you know, a one-track mind of, you know, being the biggest and

20:21strongest is the ideal character. It's being the ideal character, the ideal citizen, the ideal person just means: what type of an imprint are you going to have on the world while you live? And where I think literature, because in this podcast we like to highlight literature, right? One of my goals is to show how, yeah, go to the self-help section at Indigo, that's fine, but it doesn't give you the whole picture. Okay? Because you know what it does, truly? If you get addicted to self-help, you're going to look at the mirror every day and realize you're not good enough. Yeah. Even if you find a book, this is the crazy thing, even if you find a book that tells you it's okay that you're not enough, you're now

21:10struggling to get to that point where you genuinely feel comfortable that it's okay that you're not enough, right? So it's always this... it creates this chasm from where you are to where you want to be. Totally. And it's depressing. It's a little bit depressing. It's great, it's invigorating, but if you get stuck with it... You have to use it as a tool. And another tool to use is literature, and to me, literature is a tonic for empathy. Yeah. Right? Think about that. It's a tonic for empathy. It's something that you can take, and you can all of a sudden feel in ways that you weren't able to feel before. And literature can be in the form of any story, a story that's, you know, told to you by your parent, by your grandparent, by the campfire, by a friend, whether it's in a podcast, whether

21:57it's in a physical book that you read, a magazine, a short story. You can get this injected into your brain from a variety of sources. Yeah. And once you have that, all of a sudden you'll see a character, and that character, you'll assign value to that character even though they're not a billionaire, even though they don't have a Bugatti, even though they don't have a six-pack, even though they don't have a partner. Maybe they don't even have a loving family. But you look at that person and you'll still see them with value, because the author, the narrator, is showing you all of these trials and tribulations this person has gone through, and showing you their journey, and they earn your respect. And then when you do that for

22:45someone else who you perceive, let's say, is below you in the social hierarchy ranking, all of a sudden you say, "Wait a second, I don't actually believe this person is lower than me." But then when you look back in the mirror again, you realize you're also not as low as you thought you were either. You actually have a lot of value too, because if you put yourself in that same lens, if someone wrote a story about you, you'd probably be a lot more empathetic towards it. Damn. Yeah, it's interesting. Hm. Yeah, that piece around getting stuck in that personal development, I call it the hamster wheel,

23:35it really just, it kind of creates more separation, because it lacks compassion as well. When you think about self-help, even the word self-help, you're kind of approaching it, like a lot of people approach it, like we're broken. Yeah, it's almost Christian, in the sense that it's like coming from a place of original sin. Yeah, it's like, "I'm broken, therefore I need to X, Y or Z." And I think, yeah, I actually have this thing in my coaching and my work where I say to people, like, "You know, you don't need more podcasts. You don't need more books. You don't need more strategy. What you need is compassion for yourself." You need to

24:24figure out how to relax your nervous system and be more grounded. And you need to learn how to, it's more about disassembling your perception of what you know to be true and starting to remove those walls. Like you're saying, you know, you're standing next to somebody who drives a Bugatti, and it's like, man, he's no different than you and me. He's just happened to create value in the world in a way that he's got some money in return. But we're constantly creating duality, we're constantly creating duality, where in my opinion the path of personal growth and spiritual growth is focusing less on the external world. It's focusing like 100% more internally, and removing those beliefs around why you're different than me, or like... Right. Because I don't think people thought like that a

25:12long time ago. Like when you were talking about these ancient texts, right? Like, not to... yeah, I don't want to get too deep into religion, but if you look at these texts, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, but there's so much emphasis on love. Would you agree? Yeah, I mean, I think it depends which part of those texts you read, but there's certainly a notion that love is perhaps the only, the only even attempt at what a panacea could look like for the soul. That if you loved, it could cure all. Yeah. Do you believe that? Yeah, I think to a certain degree, yeah.

26:02It's very difficult to attain that feeling, that love and empathy for all and for yourself, no matter what. Totally. Unconditional love for yourself, because of course there are conditions that we have to hold ourselves accountable to, and others. There's always the pragmatic approach to life, and then the ideal version of life, the aspirational approach to life. In the same way that, you know, nowadays we'll have people, let's say, arguing about anything, right? Whether it's news, whether it's just being in traffic during rush hour. But if you zoomed out, you're on a floating rock in the middle of nowhere that goes on apparently till infinity, or until time

26:49stops. Like, love is that, in the same way where if you zoom out, it gives you perspective. 100%. But it also allows you to fill in the cracks of your, like, your imperfections, basically, and other people's imperfections. So it's like the caulking that fills it out. If you see issues with another person, yeah, and then if you just throw some love at it, you can glue them back together. 100%, man. Like, love is the antidote to everything. It softens everything. And, you know, that goes back to my point earlier, which is like,

27:38society right now lacks so much heart, right? It's why there's crazy things happening out there in the world right now, and a lot of it's hate-driven. Right. And so many people, they're not connected to their heart, they're not connected to love, they're not connected to impact, right? Going back to your question of, like, most people, you know, a man dies when he's 30 but his body's buried at 80, because it goes back to: there's no vision. If you don't know what impact you want, what's your... It's actually a good opportunity to talk about legacy. But one of the quotes that I live by is, like, "What would I need to do by the time that my pillow..." Sorry. "What would I need to do today so that I could die complete

28:26tonight?" What do I need to do today so I could die complete? And what's your answer? For me, my answer is being really present and devotional with my wife, so giving her my undivided attention when she's talking to me, and connecting with her. It would be spending time in nature, and connecting with and showing an appreciation for the awe and beauty of nature. It would be letting the people in my life that I care about know that I love them, that I care about them. It would be playing guitar, strumming some beautiful chords, right? It would be taking care of my body. These are the things that fill my soul, right? They're not like... I

29:16wouldn't... If I was going to die tonight, if my head hit the pillow, that's how I would build the arc of my day. And yes, I can't just wander around and just do those things, but those are the checklists of, like, that's how I orient my life. Those are what you'd be doing if you had a billion dollars or if you had zero dollars. Exactly. And when you start, it sounds crazy, because most people are like, "Yeah, I know I could die, I could get hit by a bus." It's like, if you ditched all of the self-help books, mm, and you didn't watch, and you just sat down for an hour, created a vision for your life that looked like, "When I die, this is what I want people to say about me." Like, write your own eulogy. Like, you know, "Ian was a guy that was like, da, da, da, da, da."

30:05Like, what do you want people to say about you? Great. Okay, what do you have to do then every day in order to meet that vision, to build that legacy? And then you just do it. And that's what people are missing. That's why people aren't fulfilled. That's why the Lamborghini or the Bugatti or the house or the tech company or whatever, it doesn't matter, because it lacks community, it lacks impact. And I mean, you can get addicted to striving for impact as well, right? You can also use that as a bit of a self-serving... Well, there, so there you... Oh, it's all good, it's all good. Well, you just got to drink it, that's the issue. Yeah, you got to drink. For the audio-only folks, we just had a little tea-spill situation, but it's all good.

30:54But I do want to touch on one key word that you just said, which is "addicted." Yeah. And you know as well as I that you can have these retreats and you can have these conversations and you can dive deep with people, but people are professional self-sabotagers. Yeah, PhD in self-sabotage. I've got one of those too. And everyone knows how to do it in the best, most clever way for themselves. 100%, man. This is a great topic, and I want to get to it, and get your thoughts on it. 100%. But I want to start by highlighting a

31:44beautiful anecdote from Alan Watts. And Alan Watts, I love when Alan Watts brings up the devil. The devil is such an interesting topic, and I don't mean it in a Christian way, but I mean it in a, this oppositional force, yeah, that lives inside us, lives outside us, is, you know, omnipresent in some sort of way. You know, there's that saying, "Wherever you go, there you are." Yeah, right. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, where you think you're going to, you know, run away from your compulsions, from your traumas, from, you know, whatever's causing you to feel, and no, that's not going to happen. So the story

32:33from Alan Watts goes something like this: let's say you have some sort of bad habit Y, and you want to get rid of that bad habit, and so you make a big announcement, saying, you know, "Now I'm starting 90 days of not doing this bad habit." Yeah. And you think you're going to keep the devil away by announcing it and saying, "Oh, I'm going to get rid of this bad habit, and you stay there, devil." And by the way, I'm fully paraphrasing the story. Yeah, totally. It's not word for word straight out of Alan Watts. I haven't memorized it completely. But as it goes on, on your first few days of attempting to beat this compulsion, this

33:20bad habit, you're faced with the highest levels of resistance. 100%. Yeah. Because you think you're having these thoughts in private, in your head. And by the way, when I say make an announcement, I mean internally. You've come to this understanding, and all of a sudden you wonder why you get all this huge resistance the next day. Because he says, "Who do you think the devil is?" Right? The devil is also you. You are both the fixer and the problem. And that's what makes it incredibly challenging for people, because you'll go to therapy, or you'll go to a coach, yeah, and they cannot replace your brain. And so how do you

34:11reconcile with that issue with some of your, you know, clients and members and people that you work with? Yeah, no, this is really good. And I mean, are you familiar with shadow work, Carl Jung's? Yeah, I'm a big fan of Carl Jung. Shadow work specifically, I have not done, so I can't say I have a personal experience with it. So yeah, I mean, maybe give a bit of context. Well, my understanding of shadow work, and the work that I've done, is that when you think about a whole person, we've got all of these positive traits, right? And then we've got all of these things that we deem as less positive. Let's call this more of the devil side, but he uses the word shadow side. But it's all of us. And shadow work specifically, our shadows are talking about the parts of

34:59us that we've either repressed, denied or avoided, and we tend to not want to think about them. We tend to not want to work with them, tell people about them. Like, what are the kind of grossest little compulsions that we have, or thoughts that only live inside of us? But like you said, like Alan Watts, we don't believe that that's us. That's just this other part of us. But it's a part of our psyche, and it's a full spectrum of all these positive thoughts and all of these things. But the problem with shadows is that they tend to form in our life when we're really young, and we develop them, and then as we get older we're taught, "Hey, that's not okay," or, "You shouldn't be doing that X, Y or Z addiction," or, "You shouldn't be thinking that way." So we tend to keep it kind of

35:47buried over here, like in the shadows. And a lot of shadow work is about bringing those hidden parts of us out into the open, because it's a part of us. So it's not like, "I need to heal this shadow," or like, "deal with the devil and get rid of it." It's coming at it from the perspective of: it is a part of us, it's a part of all of us. And for me, what comes up in my work is, it's less about trying to heal it, eradicate it, and, you know, pretend like it doesn't exist and just kind of keep going with the life over here. It's about bringing it into the open and creating compassion and acceptance around it. Like, "Hey, I have this dark part of my brain," or, "I have these weird, you know, tendencies or compulsions," or, "It's just a part of my psyche." And the sooner that you can

36:35accept that, you can start to integrate it, and you can start to be a friend to it, right? Start to become friends with the devil, if using Alan Watts's term. And that's where I think so many people, when they get on the personal development hamster wheel, they just want to be happy, be more free, be whatever, but they don't want to look at the darker parts of ourselves, the addictions, the compulsions, the things that we were taught growing up by parents or society or whatever. We don't want to look at these darker parts of ourselves, or these parts that are quote-unquote bad or taboo or whatever. But it takes a lot more energy as humans, on an energetic level, to suppress that than to actually bring it out into the light, right?

37:24So I've done some of the most healing work that I've done... Let me give you a really good example. In the business world, for a good while there, this was probably a year and a half ago, I was finding that I was really graspy. There was a bit of a needy energy with some of my clients. I would follow up with them too many times, or there was kind of this, like, "I need to... I deserve something," right? Weird energy, right? And it was kind of this, the way that I could describe it is kind of like a Gollum-style thing. So when you get into shadow work, essentially the whole point of it is to bring... So I brought that to a retreat. I had this

38:12needy kind of, like, "I need to take something from you. I need to take your business, your money, whatever." But it was really minor. It wasn't like I was like, "Hey man," like... What was this? Is this a retreat that you put on? It's a retreat that I was attending. You're attending. And I wanted to work with this part of me, because I was noticing it coming up in the business world, right? And I was noticing that I was like, oh, with certain clients, they would trigger me, and then I would want to, I don't know, there was just this leaning-in energy, whether it's through an email, whether it's through conversations, but it's like I couldn't let it go. It had attachment. So in a retreat, what I discovered was, I had this neediness shadow. It was this part of me that probably developed when I was really, really young. It really goes back to, like, there's some need that wasn't met

39:00as a child, and I developed this part of me that, given the right circumstances, it gets triggered, and I get needy. It's like this, "Ah, save me," type of energy, and it's really small. So we did a practice where we actually took the shape of that thing. So you intentionally, with a group of people, you tell them what it is, you create a character of what it looks like. And I just created this Gollum creature, and the facilitator actually had me become it. And I acted it out. It was like an art class. It's like we were doing improv drama, like, you know. And I tried to fully, like, if I were to become that gross, needy dude that wants something, I became it

39:48intentionally for like 60 seconds. I remember running around the room. It's one of those weird things that if you looked at it from the outside, you'd be like, "Are these people on LSD? Like, what's...?" But all you're doing is you're bringing that part of us into the open, in front of other people. And it's super uncomfortable, it's super weird, but then what ends up happening is, at the end you come back to a normal standing pose and you feel more whole, because you've accessed a part of your psyche, or a part of your brain, your DNA, whatever, that you've been unwilling to look at your entire life. But it's driving so many of the behaviors that we don't want. So people are like, "I don't want to be needy. I don't want to be

40:35compulsive. I don't want to have these addictions. I don't want to be constantly on this hamster wheel. Why is nothing working?" It's like, well, because you've got this very, very important thing deep inside your nervous system and your psyche that you're unwilling to look at that's causing all of this stuff. If you went back and started to work with, like, okay, you don't have to go back and heal the deep trauma, depending on what it was, but even by just becoming it... Think about how anxiety works. Anxiety softens when you face it. So by actually looking at those parts of ourselves, right? You don't need to cold plunge your way through trauma, right? It's about going and accepting everything that is you, and it starts to have less of a grasp on

41:24who you are. Or it becomes less mysterious. It becomes less mysterious. You're like, "Oh." And then when it comes up in life, you have awareness about it. You're not scared of it anymore. You're like, "Oh, okay, I'm noticing how I'm being a little bit needy in my relationship right now." And you can kind of just sit with it and go, "Okay, yeah, she's away or something, and I'm a little bit triggered, feeling a little bit whatever." I don't need to go read a book on attachment styles. It's like, sit with that and be like, "All right, I'm feeling off. I'm feeling a little bit needy," right? Rather than pushing it down. Rather than pushing it down by maybe going out and smoking a cigarette. Exactly. Or whatever your vice of choice is. Exactly. And I've heard of this scenario. Exactly. Rather than

42:11going and masking whatever discomfort or pain... It's like, I've heard people will create names for their shadows. It's like, so whenever they're feeling needy, rather than the discomfort of that, they're like, "Oh, that's Brad. Hey, Brad, I see you." You're just like... It's really, it's kind of putting yourself back wherever it was in childhood that you didn't get a need met. Now you're needy in real life. You're a 35-year-old adult or whatever, and it's showing up in relationship, it's showing up in work, this, that and the other. And it's about not trying to make it go away. It's like, bring it with you. Bring the devil with you, because we are that. That's how you create wholeness, is accepting all of the good, all of the gifts that we had, sorry, that we have. You know, I'm not saying don't do anything, like, don't just be like, "I'm a...

43:01You know," like... But you're still taking action. You're taking action, but you're integrating the parts of your past and your psyche that you don't want to look at while you do that. And that's what creates that sense of full acceptance. Like, you can't... People are like, "You need more compassion and self-acceptance." That only happens if you accept everything. Yeah, that's like... I mean, it's sort of banal in a sense, because it's like when, in dating, people say, "Well, you just need to be more confident." It's like, you have to embody that. You have to feel it. Your self-esteem has to increase. Confidence: confidere, trust in oneself, from the Latin. And you cannot just magically create confidence. I do believe

43:49it's the same for compassion. You can't just magically create compassion. "Just be more compassionate." Like, what does that even mean? Right, exactly. You know, and so much of personal development or self-help, people overcomplicate it. They massively overcomplicate it, and, you know what I mean? So yeah, a lot of things are overcomplicated because it's hard to accept that things could be as simple as doing the thing. Thinking about the thing feels like you're doing the thing. Yeah. It's the same as reading a book versus taking whatever action. Let's say on chapter one, maybe chapter one gives you a tip to take action, but you feel like reading the book is the

44:38equivalent of taking action. Totally. And that's a big problem itself. You know, Freud, I think, said something along the lines of, I think I'm not misquoting him, the gist of it is the same, but neurosis comes from ambiguity. And yeah, neuroses are basically all of the different pathologies, psychological pathologies and issues that we face, whether it is a compulsion, or whether, yeah, it's a bad habit, or whatever it might be. And I find it fascinating that he says it comes from ambiguity, and ambiguity is just another word for uncertainty. And we know that when we can't see a few steps into the future, we panic a little bit. Yeah. Basically as a default setting. And we

45:28have to work to not make that the default. And I wonder if doing the shadow work is technically an internal ambiguity, because we're sometimes even scared to ask, "Where is this coming from?" Totally. That's the first question. Then you realize it's coming from this place deep down inside, in the dungeon. "Oh man, I haven't been to that dungeon in 20 years." Exactly, right? So that also, like, the more... That's another way to, I guess, attain clarity, is first internally you're looking inside and saying, "Okay, what the heck is in this dungeon?" Totally. You got a few... Exactly. Dead things in there. Yeah, or, totally, or not even dead things, but things that are rotting, usually. Yeah, absolutely. If they're dead, it's better. Yeah, exactly. Things that are not quite

46:16dead, that's the issue. Well, exactly. And then you start to stack the normal stresses of everyday life, right? So you've got these, because I don't care who it is, mhm, our childhoods have had a massive impact on how we operate today. And everybody at some point didn't receive the love that they wanted, or whatever. And most of the time we don't even remember, we don't even know, because our brains have shut that part off of us, right, early on, as a defense mechanism. And it runs in the background our entire lives. And then you add on the stress of work and the economy, and all of the, you know, Trump, and, not to get into politics, but all of the things that can cause stress for

47:03people. And, you know, people wonder why. And then add in the food that we're eating, which is pure poison, and you start to wonder, like, why is everybody's psyche and brain so messed up? Yeah. Well, we are being rewarded with the opposite of what we need. What we need is more space, more silence. Totally, right? More nature, less noise. But we're getting the opposite of it, every day being just drowned in noise. We have an endless supply of distractions, and it's literally like a menu. It's like, I could have feelings of anxiety come up, or insecurities about, you know... For example, let me just give you an example.

47:52My last men's night, the last men's group that I ran in Squamish, I was nervous about how it was going to go. And it's really funny how many different ways that I could distract myself from the feelings of discomfort. I've got Instagram, YouTube. I could go eat food. There's a million things I could do. I could binge on Netflix. There's a hundred different ways that I could not sit with that feeling of uncertainty, right? I could put in a podcast, put in music, constantly just on the move, running, when what's actually needed in that moment is to pull everything away. Yeah, we got like a supermarket of sabotage. It's like a supermarket of sabotage. And one of my favorite quotes is, like, "The only Zen you find at the top of the

48:39mountain is the Zen that you bring with you." Hm. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, right? Oh, like, "When I can just get out for a hike, or get to the top of the mountain, I'll find peace." And it's like, the problem is that if you're not prioritizing spaciousness and peace in your life, yeah, you're not just going to magically get to the top and be like, "Ah, that's better." Right. So I want to take the conversation then to the next stage, and the next stage is this. So let's say you work on clearing up some of the gunk that's in your system, okay? You do some of the work, not all of the work, because the work is a lifelong endeavor. It's never done, right? Yeah. But you do some of it, you get to a good point. But you know, the thing about life that's

49:29so difficult, so challenging and painful is that, you know, it's so funny, because when I was, maybe like 12 years ago, I met with one of my business mentors, and we sat, and I'd gone through a really rough experience with my gut. I have a gut disease, and out of the hospital, and I had a girl that dumped me, and this, like, Murphy's Law, right? A goodie bag of despair. Yeah. And I got through it. I felt amazing, I felt ecstatic, and I was meeting with him, and I remember talking about... So in entrepreneurship, specifically in the startup world, you have this idea called the trough of sorrow, where you start at this point where you're really excited

50:17to start your business, and then you launch something, and then all of a sudden you face reality, right? Yeah. And there's literally a name for it, the trough of sorrow. Trough of sorrow, yeah, that's amazing. And it takes a long time to... There's different, like, a peak of enlightenment and blah, there's all this stuff that comes after. But in my mind, I was so naive. Maybe like, what, 19, 20 years old, maybe even a little bit older, maybe it wasn't as long, like in my early 20s. And he laughed at me when I told him that. He was in his 50s, he laughed at me, and I was like, "Why are you laughing?" He's like, "Oh, you think there's just one trough of

51:08sorrow? Oh, you think there's just one? You think you're done with life? Like, life is Gucci now?" Yeah. And I remember thinking, that's like when you're at the Muay Thai gym, and, you know, you think you're doing good, and all of a sudden you get hit clean in the face. You know? So that's exactly what happened to me. And so where I'm going with all this is that we can get over past traumas. It takes time, it takes work. We can, let's say, do the shadow work. We can become a better person. Yeah. Yet when we raise the bar to the next goal, and we have another goal, and we have all these desires that are not Bugattis, they're very worldly, yeah, like normal, reasonable desires, let's say want

51:59to own a house or whatever. Yeah. Yet there's still these obstacles that come in and remove us from the correct path, and they make it very difficult for us to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, we know that if we're only happy... And I mentioned this at the very start of the podcast, but we know that if we're only happy when we get the thing, we're not going to have a good time here. And there's a poem, I don't know if you've heard of this poem, you probably have. It's "If—" by Rudyard Kipling. Yeah. And yeah, so of course, my wife's got an "If" tattoo. Oh, bro. Right? I love that. I love that. That's very cool. Yeah, she's got the whole thing memorized. And so yeah, it's a great poem. And my favorite line there is:

52:48"If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; if you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same." Right? That triumph and disaster are impostors. So what is real, if those are impostors? If triumph, even if getting the goal, you get the Bugatti in the end, you get the house, you get the girl, you get whatever you want, the job, that's still not real. That's still Maya, as the Hindus call it. That's still an illusion. Then how do we deal with... How do we not deal with, but how do we attain that? I

53:37mean, it's a beautiful poem, but think about it from a practical perspective. How do you attain that mentality, that mindset? I mean, it's incredibly challenging. The entire Bhagavad Gita is dedicated to that subject. Yeah. Right? And I know the answer of the Gita, but I'm curious from your perspective. I mean, what type of baseline do you need to create for yourself, that adversity hits you, bounces off, winds hit you, bounces off? Yeah. The work, the path, is the thing that you're doing. The daily activity, the daily practice, ultimately becomes most important. But to put that into practice seems to be the ultimate challenge. So how do you go about that? Man, these long-winded intros. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, I mean, I feel

54:27like this is something that's super present for me right now, which is, like, massive amounts of desire, complete non-attachment. Like, I think that that's the only way, because you're right, there's always going to be triumph and there's always going to be tragedy. And the practice of, yeah, how do you... You have to make the journey... Yeah, you have to make the journey the thing that you're measuring your fulfillment or happiness on, not the end result. Because, and that's really hard to do. Like, how do you sit here and say, "I want to do all these things in my life,

55:14I want to have a big impact, da da da da da," but at the same time you have to remove all the resistance and be not attached? And I think I like to use the word practice. I think it's a practice. Like the practice... Practice is better. I think practice is better than journey, because practice assumes that there are some guardrails in place. That the practice can't just be sitting and watching Netflix all day, and that's the journey. Exactly. And like, I had a spiritual teacher that I've worked with and followed for a while. He uses the word, like, it's a yoga. Like, when you think about the practice of yoga, people say, "Oh, that person's really good at yoga," and it's like, there's no such thing as being good at yoga, because

56:02everybody, doesn't matter how flexible they are, how resilient they are, there's always a deeper layer that they can get into, whether it's in the body, whether it's in the mind, whatever. So it's like doing yoga every day. It's like you're in a pose and you're like, "Oh, my hamstring is really tight. I want to try to lean into it more, to stretch." But then the further you go, the more resistance you find, the more painful it becomes. And next thing you know, the second you back off and say, "Okay, hamstring, it's not happening today," and you start breathing, you kind of let go, and next thing you know, you can go further into the stretch. It's like, I want to do this thing, I have to remove the resistance, and then it allows it to flow. And I think that that's the same for everything in life. It's literally a practice. And I had this thought yesterday. I was in the

56:48kitchen making dinner, and I was frustrated with, like, things aren't moving fast enough in my life, right? Like content not reaching enough people. And I don't think anyone can relate to that. Yeah. And it was like, instantly I'm like, this is where I draw the line of personal growth. Where people tend to do personal development as, like, "I'm going to sit on my meditation cushion, or read that book for 30 minutes in the morning, and I'm doing personal growth." And I'm like, no. Personal growth is like: thought, feeling comes up in the moment. I'm resistant to things not moving fast enough. Yeah. Now, the moment-by-moment yoga. This is my opportunity. I'm on the mat now. I'm standing in the kitchen, I'm cooking food. I have the opportunity to take a deep breath and literally say to myself, I'm like,

57:35"Okay, I'm in resistance." Like, I literally said this to myself out loud. I close my eyes and I'm like, "I'm resistant. I'm wanting things to be different than how they are. I'm being impatient right now." And by just saying that out loud, it's like the yoga example, right? I'm like, all right, I have to back off from that desire in the moment, because all I'm doing is creating suffering, right? Like, pain plus resistance equals suffering. Mhm. Okay. So in that moment I had to practice letting go. People are like, "I don't know how to let go." I'm like, you have to practice. Like, letting go is so challenging, right? It's like the compassion thing. Or gratitude's a good example. Like, gratitude feels dumb at first. You're

58:22like, "I'm grateful for the blue sky and the mountains around me," and at first it feels like nothing. But you practice gratitude, you practice letting go, and over time it becomes a tool that you have available to you. It sounds to me, if I were to visualize this, it's sort of like Neo in The Matrix, slowing things down. Absolutely. And you become better at slowing things down, and it gives you more time to react in the way that you want to react to it. 100%. Yeah. Like, I'm only reading personal growth books right now. We're going to change that. We're going to change that after this. Right. The reason for that is because, I mean, I should be reading more. Like, I've actually had the idea to start getting into more ancient texts and literature. So I have some cool ones to recommend. But because of the 75 Hard

59:10protocol, right? Okay, so ladies and gentlemen, Ian Coll is currently doing 75 Hard. So for those that don't know what 75 Hard is, 75 Hard is 75 days straight of working out twice a day. I don't know if it's embarrassing for you, but... No. Yeah. Because it's a big deal. So two workouts per day, 45 minutes each workout. One of the workouts has to be outdoors. You got to drink almost four liters of water. You got to read, at least, I don't know, like 10 pages of a personal growth book, 10 pages of a book. And you have to eat under a certain diet. No alcohol. No alcohol, no weed, probably. Yeah. No... I think that's it, right? Yep. Take a progress photo. Kind of a weird one. It's

59:57the easiest one. It's the easiest one. Are you using the app, by the way? I am, yeah. Like night and day. I actually put money on the line too. Well, you're going to do it. It's just, it's going to be painful. It's going to be painful towards the end. What are you doing for your workouts? I'm just curious. So the outside workouts, I'm mostly either running, hiking, taking my dog for a walk, sometimes gravel biking. Just depends on the day. Like, today's a nice day, so I may get on the bike in the afternoon. Inside workouts, I mean, I play dodgeball once a week in town, so that's my inside workout on Tuesdays. But I do a combination, depends how I'm feeling. Some days they're really light workouts, some days I'm hitting the gym hard. Yeah. Other days I'm like, I'm doing mobility. Yeah, like a yoga thing. Yoga, or like mobility or rolling. He doesn't

1:00:46really specify what the 45 is, but the whole point is, like, doing movement twice a day, yeah, for 45 minutes. And so yeah, it's been a fun journey, right? It's been hard. Yeah. I mean, it's a fun... And you're on day 10? 13 right now. Like, I feel like time's moving quick. That's good. Yeah. Like, what's going to be hard, the hardest part of it, is going to be on the 22nd of December. We're flying out to Halifax, which, for those that don't know, it's a complete... We're, like, coast to coast in this country. So yeah, it'll take the whole day. I'm going to have to figure out how... I did it. Going to New York, going to New Jersey, I did both workouts in the evening, because my flight was like at 8. That's

1:01:35the thing. Yeah, so I'm debating, because we live in Squamish, we might grab an airport hotel the night we leave. Okay. So our flight's at 8:45, and I'm like, well, if I get up at 5:30 and just go straight outside for my 45-minute walk, I can be back at the hotel at 6:15, take the shuttle, be at the airport a quarter to... And then when we get to Halifax, or we have a layover in Montreal, I can do 45 minutes in the airport. But I'm going to bring my own healthy sandwiches. Like, I can't eat crappy airport food. It's good. It's forcing me to, you know, be really structured in how I think about my day, because the first couple of days I left all my water till the end, and it was just brutal. I'm trying to drink three liters of water at 9:00 at night, and then I'm up all night. So we digress, but yeah. Yeah, man, it's going to be fun. I did mine

1:02:22last year around the same time. How good did it feel to finish? It was fantastic. Something changes, something changes in you towards the end, yeah, where it just becomes such a habit, it feels weird not to do it. The only reason I stopped, actually, I actually got a bit, not burnt out, but I messed up my muscle, my lat, my right lat muscle. I just did too many of the whatchamacallit, lat raises, anyways. Yeah, rows. So, but it was really good, and I think if you have the right mindset, and it's a good challenge, then go for it. And yeah, man, it'll be interesting to check in with you once you're done this. We got to get back on track, though. So that was fun. That was fun, talking about 75 Hard. I want to

1:03:11continue by referencing... And we talked about, you said you're reading a lot of self-growth books, which is great. I mean, I think it's fantastic. People should go out and read, you know, self-help, self-development, everything. Educating yourself in nonfiction is self-growth in some way. Like, you read about, you know, AI if you want, or things like that, and technology and science and all that stuff, to me, is self-growth. You're becoming smarter. You're creating a compound effect in your brain, right? And because even something that you'll learn in one science, for example, could be used then as a model, as a formula that you might use in a totally different area of your life. 100%, I agree. You've seen

1:03:59that time and time again, just the compound. But I want to talk about this book right here. It's called, well, it's Hear the Wind Sing. It's actually a very cool... This is a custom-made cover, ladies and gentlemen. This is the only one in existence, because I bought it off some guy that makes covers, and I'm part of this Haruki Murakami book club. And anyways, I ordered it and bought it from him, and yeah, he custom-bound it, and it looks pretty awesome. He converted, like, an old book into... Yeah. Anyways, really sweet. But the point is, Hear the Wind Sing is the first book of Haruki Murakami, the Japanese... I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's one of my favorite writers. Actually, the poster behind you is one of his book covers, called Dance Dance Dance. And you

1:04:47know, it's very apt today that this is behind you, because up on that wall is that person's shadow. Interesting. And you'll notice that the shadow actually looks different than him. Dude, it's very deep. Murakami's books are actually, as we say, dripping in Jungian references. Okay. And so you would really like it. He has books dedicated to the shadow. Now, his second book that he wrote is called Pinball. These are sort of combined, because they're both more novellas than they are novels. But in Pinball, Pinball, 1973, I think is the name of it, first of all, it's a cool name for a book, but he discusses pinball as a metaphor. I

1:05:34actually made a video on this, so for those that are interested, you could check my page out and you'll see it. But he uses pinball as a metaphor for a game... Well, I'll tell you what the metaphor is for, but let's dissect what pinball actually is, because it's relevant, by the way, to what we've discussed for the last hour or so. Yeah, absolutely. Pinball is a game that you lose more than you win, okay? The ball is going into the slot, into the hole, way more than you're hitting some high score. Totally. But even if you hit a high score, the end of every pinball game is a loss, right? You can't actually win the pinball game. Eventually you have to let the ball go through. There's no way to stop it. Yeah, right. So by the very nature of it, you're set to lose.

1:06:24You're failing. You're failing, yeah, right. And you lose before you even start. And yeah, and in the same way, life is, you know, if you want to take it that far, that, you know, life is a game that you can't really win in the end. Everyone dies. There's no immortality formula or elixir that you're going to drink, at least thus far. We'll see what happens during our lifetimes. I don't know, have you seen Brian Johnson? Yeah. He's going to be the closest to it. We'll see what happens. Yeah. But what Murakami talks about is not necessarily that, but he talks about how pinball is the perfect metaphor for life, because in life you do lose things more than you win. You lose time, you lose people in your life, you lose health,

1:07:11experiences. There's a quote by Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday. He gives an epic speech in Any Given Sunday. It's a football movie. And he says, when you get older in life, things get taken from you, but you only realize that once you get older. And the things that are taken are any number of things. And so what Murakami says is, then what is the point of these losses, and what is the point of the rewards, of the wins that we get, of the high scores that we get? He says at the end of every game you get the light that shines: replay, replay, replay. Because you got to do it again. Got to do it again, the next day, the next week, the next season of your life.

1:07:57And so his point that he's trying to make in Pinball is, the entire goal of that practice, pinball is now a practice, yeah, because you're doing it electively, you're playing this game electively, the whole goal of the practice is not a goal of self-expression, necessarily. It's not something that you're going to show off by, "Here's my win," or, "Here's the loss." The goal of it is self-transformation: that you're experiencing the win, you're experiencing the high score, you're experiencing the loss, and you evolve out of it. You grow out of it, you hopefully transform out of it. Yeah. And so I think it's

1:08:44just quite an apt metaphor for what we discussed today, because, I mean, that's the whole gist of it, is that you can't really anticipate these wins or these losses, luckiness or unluckiness, but you can anticipate the practice, and you can create for yourself your own practice. Ian's practice might be different than Tamir's practice, might be different than the next person's practice. But once you create that pinball, that practice that you have, now you have your operating system for self-transformation. Exactly. Would you agree with that? 100%. I think that's a great analogy, because, yeah, the focus is not on the win or the loss. It's about the practice of being in both. Yeah, right. Pinball, that's a great example. You're

1:09:34ting, ting, ting. Like, there you're trying to control outcomes, you're trying to win, score points, but at the end of the day, that ball's going to drop in. And yeah, right. But what's funny about pinball is, nobody's ever that upset when the ball drops back, because they're expecting it. Except for the ones who are attached. And yeah, but I think that's where, when you have the acceptance that that ball is going to hit, and the game's going to be over, but you can come back and try again the next day, it's that acceptance of what is. It's that acceptance of, you know, you're going to have extreme highs in life, but you're also going to have extreme lows. The reason the highs feel so good is because the lows feel so low. Yeah. You don't want to live... Like, I don't want to

1:10:23live in that monotone. Like, I don't want to ignore all the bad stuff in life and mask it and distract myself from it, because by closing off the losses, by closing off when the ball hits the thing or whatever, you're not going to be able to experience the highs. Yeah. And I mean, I guess you could choose to elect not to play, but then you're just watching the machine and you're paralyzed. Then you die at 30. Yeah, right. You're deciding, like, you're making a conscious choice to, like, "I'm ending the game." Yeah. I love metaphors like this, where there's things that represent life. But, you know, I've heard a quote, and, you know, it's like, "Choose your

1:11:14struggle." True. "Choose your struggle, or you'll be assigned one." And I think what that really speaks to is that, if you think about Buddhism, right, and some people disagree with this, but I think that there's wisdom in it, that people say that, or Buddhism, I think, would say suffering is inevitable. Like, they say life is suffering, which I don't necessarily agree with, but I think the sooner people can recognize that part of the human experience is pain... I think, yeah, the default... The opening lines of the Dhammapada, I believe, yeah, are, "You suffer because you desire." Exactly, yeah. Or, I don't know. I don't think it's the desire that creates the suffering. I think it's that resistance

1:12:01that we're talking about. All right. Yeah, right? Because if you can live in a place of, like, "I want to do this thing," I have massive amounts of desire, but you're not dependent on reaching that. That's the nuance. That's the nuance. The nuance is the day-to-day yoga of non-attachment. "Oh, I want that thing." But, like, okay, cool, but how can I just serve the people in front of me today, so I can die complete tonight? Yeah, right? Because you can't die complete tonight if... because that goal might never happen. And that's the practice that you're talking about. Yeah. You know, in Think and Grow Rich, one of the early chapters, if it's not the first, it's the second chapter, yeah, on desire, and he says it's deeply important that you have a burning desire. Totally. And you have this feeling inside of you that you want to achieve

1:12:48this goal. And on a surface level, it's very hard to read that and then go to the Dhammapada and then see, "You suffer because you desire." But you get into the nuances, and that's why I think the Bhagavad Gita is such a special book. Yeah. Because it reconciles your desire to win the war, yeah, your desire to not cause harm. At the same time, you have conflicting desires. And at the same time, you know, Krishna's saying you got to be detached from the outcome. Totally. And, you know, the problem, I think, with the Bhagavad Gita for people who aren't spiritual, yeah, is that, you know, you have a deity, you have a god talking to a human about how to live.

1:13:37Totally. And, you know, you have a line in the Gita where he says, "I've already slain these people. You are only my instruments." And it's like, hold on a second, that's very difficult to measure practically in your own life. But other elements of it are perfectly, totally possible to integrate. Like the practice that he talks about: your dharma is your vocation, is your work. He says, "You have the right to your work, but you do not have the right to the fruits of your work." There you go. Yeah, right. Absolutely. And I feel like this is the constant battle with the human experience, is this exact thing. We just want, we just want. And because we don't know... I think it's certainty.

1:14:25Yeah, yeah, right. And I think human beings, myself included, man, like, obviously I struggle with uncertainty. I think everybody does. I don't think that our brains are wired for... You know, when you think about evolution and where we came from, there was just so much uncertainty, right? I don't know, I'm in this, like, referencing-the-cave-era of my life right now, for whatever reason. This is from early on. Yeah. "They peer beyond..." Like, in order to accomplish this, to get past the uncertainty, he called the uncertainty here "the veils and mists of doubt." They peer beyond it. They pierce the walls, right, of unborn time. They pierce the walls of unborn time. What is unborn time? It's the future. Yeah. The future is where all the uncertainty lives. Absolutely. You can pierce through it, you can remove the

1:15:12veil. But it's one of those things where it's so much easier said, it's so much easier to write a poem about, you know, piercing through uncertainty than it is to practice it. That's the hard part. But at least we have a standard. We know that it's okay to be intimidated by that, for that to be a challenge, for that to be your life's challenge. Like, what if the goal in life was to master non-attachment? Like, what if we made that the goal? Like, what if every single day I just worked on not being attached? Yeah, I think, I mean, that's a lofty goal for a lot of people. It's something they might never even attain. I don't know if, yeah, I

1:15:59don't know if I ever will. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's the pursuit of it. I think that's useful. But also there's levels, you know. There's levels to wisdom and understanding that I think are even beyond the scope of what we're talking about today. And with that, it's a much deeper dive. It's more intricate. There's more leaps of faith, there's more, you know, piercing the walls of doubt and whatever. And because we don't know... And, you know, in Proverbs, King Solomon, maybe it's not Proverbs, it could be Ecclesiastes, but he talks about how, you know, there's some questions that, just don't bother trying to get the answer for them, because it's just...

1:16:46Like, that's why detachment is such a good practice. Yeah. Because if you're going to attach yourself to a certain vision of what the world is, or an ideal, or a hope that the world is like this, or the world is like that, or the afterlife is like this, or this thing is like that, that presents a lot of problems. And we know, like, a question of the afterlife, right? It's obviously very, very interesting, compelling. There's some probability that perhaps that could exist, especially if this is some sort of simulation. You can go through that rabbit hole. Yeah. But, like, where do you actually end up at the end of that rabbit hole? Either you're a physicist and you're on the front lines of decoding our existence, absolutely, or you're not. And

1:17:3599.99, whatever the percentage of physicists are, you're not that. Totally, right. You're in the 99.99. Yeah. And so, probably better not to bother with it. As King Solomon says, just leave those questions be, because it's not relevant. It's just another way that humans are searching for certainty, right? Like, "I need to know what the afterlife's going to be like. I want to research it, I want to learn about it, I want to study it, I want to connect to it." And it's like, I don't know. It's weird. Like, I'm a very spiritual person, yeah, and I'm very grounded in the day-to-day, like, what's going to create a better experience of life while I'm here. Yeah. Like, I know that death's going to come at some point. I've

1:18:22accepted that. A lot of people haven't even accepted that yet. Which is why I think having a death practice of, like, "All right, what do I need to do to live? What do I need to do today so if I died tonight, I'd be complete?" And I think I will die on the hill of that practice, because it's changed my life. I've given it to guys in my groups, and I've done entire meditations on facing death. I've done entire, like, the scene, like, "What's the scene of your greatest victory?" I've done visualizations on, you're in the... I'm in the hospital bed, in my last moments. Like, who's around me? What do they have to say about my life? If I were dying and somebody was

1:19:10sending me cards from around the world, what do I want those cards to say? Right? In my opinion, nothing else matters. Yeah. What do you want to leave behind? I mean, it's an important value for a lot of people. Absolutely. And it completely reshifts your priorities in life, and you start to soften into the, "Hey, like, if I just did these few things..." Yeah, right. "And I built this business because I want to make an impact, but I'm not attached to it being a certain way. I just know that I'm moving in that direction. I have a vision." Yeah. And then it's like, all right, I'm creating the vision, I'm working towards it every day, and then here are these other, like, five, six, seven things that I need to do. Well, I think, yeah, so I think that's fantastic, and

1:19:59you described it so well, and it's a great practice. I had the pleasure of seeing Ryan Holiday, Stoicism guy, live last week, actually, in Vancouver. Oh, right on. Nice. Yeah. And he was just discussing the comparison between, let's say, religion and Stoicism. Yeah. And, you know, religion, a lot of its concern is with, let's say, the afterlife. I don't want to make this a religious conversation, but one of the concerns is the afterlife, and, you know, what's going to happen, how do you prevent going to hell, and this and that. Whereas the Stoics realized that their daily practice is preventing the hell which exists on Earth. Exactly. And if you're

1:20:48referencing a death practice, they were almost talking about a... Of course, they had similar death practices, but they also had like a hell practice, in the sense that if you're making these bad decisions, if you're not taking care of yourself, if you don't have the practice, you're going to create for yourself, even if you're a good, earnest person, you're going to create for yourself a hell, because you don't have the tools to deal with the losses. Like, as we see in "If—." If you can't deal with the pleasure, with the pain, with the contrast, with the fluctuations, with the volatility, it will be hell on Earth for you, because you're going to be stuck in this pain loop. Whereas if you can handle it, if you do build yourself the fortification to handle that, then

1:21:37you're going to be in a much better place. Your life still might not be perfect. Many of the Stoics' lives were not perfect. They were riddled with tragedy. Seneca is most commonly... Yeah. His consolation letters. He was killed by Nero, but before that he had family members that died, and his role was consolation. He would send people... If someone lost a brother, someone... When he was exiled, he sent a letter to his mother saying, you know, "Don't weep for me," blah, blah, blah. It's a practice, right? And thank, you know, the creator of this universe for giving us so many beautiful tools that we can use. We just have to choose

1:22:24which tool, whether it's Hinduism, Buddhism, Stoicism, Taoism, Judaism. Yeah. Whatever you want to choose, right? It's true. And that's why it really all comes back to, I think humans all want the same thing. Yeah. I think that we all, regardless of religion, background, ethnicity, for the most part, I think people want connection. They want love, they want to feel purpose, they want to make an impact. They want to be happy, fulfillment. Those aren't specific to lineages, cultures, religions. Those are just, I believe, deep human desires. Yeah.

1:23:15And I just don't think... Yeah, I know we don't want to talk too much about religion and all that, but I think that when people start to organize themselves into Stoicism, Catholic, whatever it is, I think it just perpetuates the problem of duality. It's creating more difference in the world, when, it's funny, because a lot of the teachings, a lot of these different... they tend to kind of come back to the same. A lot of times they come back to the same teachings. So I don't know if you know of J. Krishnamurti. I think his name is Jiddu Krishnamurti. But he was a Hindu... Actually, that's a mistake. I believe his background may have been Hindu, but he is a great sage, Indian sage, of the 20th century. And this is exactly what you just said. He has a

1:24:04parable about, again, the devil. Okay. I love these devil parables. Yeah. But basically the devil was walking down a street, and all of a sudden, out of his pocket fell the truth. Okay. Let's say a bunch of papers. You can visualize it as the truth, little notes flying out, just the truth of the nature of things. It fell out of his pocket, and he has a friend of sorts, or maybe it's one of his minions or something, next to him. He says, "Look, you just dropped the truth." And just as that happens, some regular person picks it up, and he's like, "Oh my God, I found the

1:24:52truth." And the minion tells the devil, he says, "Aren't you worried? Let's go get it. Aren't you worried he's going to know the truth?" He's like, "No, I'm not worried, because he's going to organize it." And that's the punchline, because we know what happens when you try to organize the truth. It becomes obfuscated by things like religion, things like dogma, which is an attempt to organize truth. Yeah. So it's a cute little thing, because Krishnamurti was not religious. He was not a fan of religion, but he was a fan of the truth, and he realized the minute you try to put it all together, you actually distract from its core meaning. Its core

1:25:41meaning, its teachings. Its teachings. I got to do a better job of memorizing these word for word, but I think that was okay. That was pretty good. All right, I like it. We're coming to the end now, so I want to give you the opportunity to, you know, if there's one point that you want to leave with our listeners today, based off of everything that we just discussed, which was a lot. I think we covered a nice amount. What would be that point that you want to leave with everyone today, from someone who's a practitioner, yeah, who brought the unconscious, as much as you can, to the conscious

1:26:31level, so you can actually make decisions? Yeah, I'd say a couple of things. First and foremost, get clear on what are the few things in your life that you really care about, and orient your life around serving those things, whether it's a relationship, whether it's a business. But make it the practice of not the result, but the journey of doing it. And it's like the warrior's journey. How can you show up every day and give your partner just the utmost presence and devotion, regardless of how that person reacts? They could reject it completely, but you're doing it for the act of service. So devote your life to

1:27:19service, and journal, like, what do you want people to say about you when you die? And let that be your compass to orient how you live your life, because it becomes really easy. You know what you want people to say about you, you're clear on who you want to serve, right? So now you're not attached to an outcome, you're committed to a process of service, and that will leave you feeling far more fulfilled than any car, any religion, any climb to the top of a mountain. It's a shift in serving. And one more thing that I want to leave everybody with is that, if you don't know, because I know people might

1:28:06be listening and they're like, "Great, Ian, but I don't know." And I'm like, well, create a practice of discovering that. Not through more books. You can, but if you know... What most people need is some time and space. Like, go into nature, go for a walk, remove the noise, remove the distractions, and you need to allow yourself the opportunity to discover what it is that you want to do here while you're on this planet, and what you want people to say about you. So I would say create the space to do that if you don't already know. If you do know, live your life like you're going to die tonight, and make sure you follow through on those things. And yeah, just continue to practice

1:28:55non-attachment. So, massive... I want a massive amount of desire. I want to serve the community, I want to serve in all these ways, so that I could die complete tonight. But at the end of the day, if I do die, I'm not attached to any result that's come from those things. It's a complete focus on serving. So brilliant. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Ian Coll. I pronounced your last name okay? Yeah. Okay, sweet. This was awesome. Thank you so much. That was a beautiful way to end this episode. And yeah, we covered a lot. This is definitely a different episode than what I've done so far, but it was really good, and I think we got a lot out of it. We still tied it to literature, and I hope maybe I've inspired you to bring in a couple more fictional books into the

1:29:42equation. I need to get into some more stories. Yeah, well, I can recommend you a lot. I know you want some of the ancient ones. There's a lot of really cool ones. If people on the podcast are interested, some really cool ones to start with are the Ramayana. The Ramayana is sort of like a Vedic-era epic. So it's the Indian version of The Odyssey, essentially. I do also recommend people to read The Odyssey. So The Odyssey is another really good one, another tale of resilience. I mean, dude's at sea for 10 years, at war for 10 years. Wow. And one that's maybe a little bit more recent is Siddhartha. If you read Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, a really good one. It's a bit shorter. I think it would do you really well on 75 Hard. But those are three good ones to start with, ancient

1:30:32texts. And yeah, stay tuned for more conversations like this, and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks, Ian. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it. You have just experienced the Nectar of Time.