“Finally, I Feel Peace”

Summary

Podcast Summary

Firewall with Bradley Tusk – Episode: “Finally, I Feel Peace” (August 4, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Bradley Tusk and producer Hugo Lindgren discuss Bradley’s transformative week at the Hoffman Process—a week-long, intensive group therapy retreat in Alberta, Canada. Bradley shares his personal experiences, insights, and takeaways from the process, focusing on self-discovery, breaking negative emotional patterns stemming from childhood, and the hard work of sustaining inner peace. The episode explores not just the retreat’s structure but also broader lessons about the interplay of personal growth, self-forgiveness, and lasting change.

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Key Topics and Discussion Points

1. Why Bradley Attended the Hoffman Process

• Bradley took a week off to participate in the Hoffman Process on the recommendation of his girlfriend, Issa, herself a graduate.
• Despite external success and fulfilling relationships, Bradley felt persistent inner turmoil and a lack of self-worth:

  “Despite all the truly deep love I have for so many people in my life … I had never fully felt peace. I had never fully loved myself or felt like I was worthy.” (04:30)

2. Core Theory of the Hoffman Process

• The approach: most negative thought and behavior patterns originate from childhood, either adopted from or formed in reaction to parents.
• The process:
  • Identify negative patterns and their origins.
  • Express the impact these patterns have had (including anger toward parents).
  • Develop compassion by imagining conversations with parents’ 12-year-old selves.
  • Reframe and rewire—learn to notice and break these patterns in everyday life.
  • Ongoing work—one week at Hoffman starts lifelong personal work.

3. Essays: Six Big Lessons from Hoffman (07:10–10:16)

Bradley reads and reflects on his Substack essay (later published as “What I Learned from the Hoffman Process”) summarizing his main takeaways:

• “Your dark side does not own you.” Negative patterns are learned, not intrinsic.

  “Destroying the drawing [of your ‘dark side’] is illustrative. That our dark side is a creation of our own minds and our own patterns, which means we can change them.” (06:56)

• “Everything comes from somewhere.” Most negative traits are learned behaviors.
• “Our patterns are not set in stone.” Practices (like ‘recycling,’ energizing, ‘quadrant’ check-ins) can change patterns over time.
• “Most of the things we hate about ourselves are apparent only to ourselves.”
• “Everyone is fucked up. Everyone needs help. And almost everyone can root for each other.”
• “The past is the past.”

  “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.” —Lily Tomlin (28:15)
  “It may not last if I don’t put the work in, it certainly won’t. But for now, finally, I feel peace.” (09:55)

4. Daily Structure and Group Dynamics at Hoffman

• 25 participants, 3 teachers, diverse backgrounds and ages.
• Intense isolation: no phones, no internet, no reading, no distractions.
• Schedule: 7+AM to late evening, 14-hour days of writing, guided visualizations, group activities.
• The importance of full “buy-in” and group support, described as “the most supportive, caring, loving, nonjudgmental group” Bradley had ever experienced. (12:32)
• Expressing anger and compassion:
  • Participants wrote letters to parents expressing long-held anger.
  • Physical exercises (e.g., beating pillows with “bats”) for catharsis.
  • Dialogues with parents’ imagined childhood selves to foster compassion and understanding.

5. Specific Techniques and Breakthroughs

• Key exercises included writing lengthy letters to parents (handwritten, for maximum reflection and discomfort), expressing anger, and engaging in empathy-building visualizations.
• Participants held metaphorical “funerals” for both their parents and themselves—one for the path where negative patterns persist, and one for when growth prevails. (22:16)
• Ongoing “quadrant check-ins” touch on emotional self, intellect, body, and spiritual self to monitor progress.

6. Personal Revelations

• Understanding the roots of Bradley’s lifelong OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder):

  “On day two of Hoffman, I figured out why I have OCD… being able to trace all the different patterns and apply them together, I was able to understand why I developed OCD.” (29:36)

• Recognized that the long-held stories about oneself—especially from childhood—must be weighed against the broad reality of one’s life and relationships.
• Decoupling one’s identity from negative patterns:

  “Your negative patterns are not who you are.” (19:12)

7. Incorporating Hoffman Learnings Afterward

• Maintaining daily rituals: reading his memo (18 pages condensed from an original 42) about the experience, integrating quadrant check-ins and ‘recycling’ negative thoughts.
• Options for ongoing support: cohort reunions, coaching offered by Hoffman Institute.
• Emphasis on continued effort—lasting change requires “work every day.” (36:34)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On letting go of inner criticism:

  “If you can change the way you feel about yourself, that’s all you really need to do.” (08:33)

• On group catharsis:

  “Literally at one point, you write the patterns your parents gave you on index cards, and they give you a pillow and a wiffle bat… You beat the shit out of the patterns.” (17:53)

• On embracing vulnerability:

  “The only way for Hoffman to work is to fully buy in. And when everyone in the group is fully bought in, your only path forward is to do the work. How great would it be if more of life was like that?” (09:12)

• On the experience’s novelty and impact:

  “This is the first time in my life where I have actually really felt peace… Separating the two out has brought me a measure of peace that I’ve never really had before.” (36:02)

• On personal writing and self-perception:

  “If you are writing fiction and you fundamentally believe that you are bad or broken, it’s gonna shine through the work. The way I perceive characters might be very different now.” (36:48)

• On who benefits from Hoffman:

  “It seems almost impossible to imagine going through life without having developed negative patterns… The vast majority of people could benefit from it.” (38:37)

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• Bradley’s reading of his “What I Learned from the Hoffman Process” essay: 02:20–10:16
• Description of the retreat’s structure and early impressions: 10:16–14:53
• Group exercises and catharsis demonstrations: 16:00–18:00
• The experience of “buying in” and giving up all technology: 12:24–15:35
• Breakthrough with understanding OCD: 29:13–31:36
• Lasting changes and implementation after returning home: 32:30–34:39
• Reflections on fiction writing, identity, and self-love: 36:34–37:51
• Who should (or shouldn’t) attempt the Hoffman Process: 37:52–39:41
• Comparison with girlfriend Issa’s experience: 40:00–40:51

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Reflection & Tone

Bradley’s tone is candid, unguarded, and at times self-deprecating, shaded with a sense of newfound optimism and gratitude. He repeatedly emphasizes the experiential and labor-intensive aspects of the process, distancing it from quick-fix, “ayahuasca retreat” approaches. The discussion is respectful, practical, and avoids overly spiritual rhetoric—grounded always in personal accountability and the sustained effort required for transformation.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rare, in-depth look at a week-long deep-dive into self-improvement and emotional unlearning. Bradley’s honest testimony makes the lessons from Hoffman accessible for listeners—whether or not they ever attend such a retreat themselves. The episode closes on a universal note: while not everyone may need the Hoffman Process, most people share similar patterns, inner critics, and desires for peace that, with effort and the right tools, can be transformed.

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For further details, Bradley’s full essay is available on his Substack ([timestamp 40:51]), and recommendations for art exhibits and books are briefly discussed in the episode’s final minutes.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Okay. Welcome back to Firewall. I am your host, Bradley Tusk. It's a Tuesday episode, so where. This is our friend and producer, Hugo Lindgren. Hugo, how you doing?

[B]

Good morning, Bradley.

[A]

So what we're going to do today is I spent a week at this thing called the Hoffman Process. And in fact the reason we weren't on the air last week at all was I would have recorded the day I got right a couple hours after I got back or the next morning and just wasn't in the right head space to do so. So we missed a week. Sorry about that to our listeners, but we're gonna talk about it.

[B]

You gotta make up for it today.

[A]

Absolutely. And I have a substack coming out Tuesday called what I learned from the Hoffman Process. And I think what makes sense this time, even though Hugo usually does not like it when I just read something. But I think in this case we're doing it, we're doing it and then we'll discuss it. I just spent a week in a small town about two hours outside of Calgary undergoing of intensive group therapy known as the Hoffman Process. The process itself takes about six months to fully integrate. So my thoughts about it may change over time. But at least based on the week there itself and the week since, it was probably the single most helpful experience I've ever had. The theory behind Hoffman is pretty simple. Most of our behavior and thinking or patterns we learned in childhood either adopted from our parents or formed in reaction to our parents. Those negative patterns then harden over time until they become who and what we think we are and how we react to any number of situations. At Hoffman, you identify what those patterns are and where they came from. You think about and express how they've impacted your life. And you get out your anger about how those patterns failed you. But then you put yourself in your parents shoes and think about their childhood, including writing a dialogue with each of their 12 year old selves to understand why they developed the patterns that you then adopted. This starts to give you empathy and compassion for them and ultimately forgiveness for yourself. After that, you start to learn techniques to be able to see patterns as they unfold in real time. As you recognize those patterns, you reframe them in your head so you can start to break them or at least reduce their intensity and internalize new ways of processing information and emotions. We are human, which means we'll continue to experience anger, frustration, annoyance, addiction and so many other negative emotions. The tools you learn at Hoffman, however, help you learn how to consciously respond from versus automatically React in those moments which can make all the difference. The process itself is a week, but the work goes on in one form or another forever. I went to Hoffman and my girlfriend Issa's recommendation. She's a graduate of the process. Externally, there's nothing in my life I really need or want to change. Beyond the typical stuff people look at, like your career, I also have the things that actually matter. Like having relationships that are filled with unconditional love and support and doing things daily that impact the world and give me real meaning and purpose. But even when you have plenty of people who love you and activities and work that gives you meaning and good health and a job you enjoy and enough money to do what you want to do, if it doesn't align with how you actually feel on the inside, it doesn't matter. Despite all the truly deep love I have for so many people in my life, especially my two incredible children, and despite all the happiness those people have brought me, I had never fully felt peace. I had never fully felt calm. I had never fully loved myself or felt like I was worthy. I believed I was bad, broken, unlovable, unfixable. I tried lots of different types of therapy. Much of it helped, but it wasn't enough. The underlying emotions, the self hatred, the self criticism, still remained. If I didn't want to spend the rest of my life feeling this way, something had to change. Spending a week at Hoffman was, in and of itself not the change that would be like taking ayahuasca and declaring yourself fully healed, working out for a few days and declaring yourself fit for life. But for the first time in my life, I now see a path. I feel hope, optimism, and deep, deep gratitude. And while not everyone needs a program like Hoffman, and neither one can disappear for a week or afford the cost of the program, there are things we can all learn from it. For me, they include, first, your dark side does not own you. I always conflated my bad qualities with my intrinsic self. Because I wanted external validation and attention. Because I could be judgmental or self righteous, because I struggled with weed, because I believed I didn't deserve kindness, because I wanted people to admire me and think I'm important. Because I thought I had to give way too much for people to like me. Because I was hypersensitive to criticism, because I developed OCD as a protective mechanism to survive a childhood of bullying and isolation and misplaced emotional demands. I assume that this was who I fundamentally was and I hated myself for it. At Hoffman, we literally drew a picture of our dark side on a poster board and then took a shoe and beat the shit out of the poster for 45 minutes. Destroying the drawing is illustrative. That our dark side is a creation of our own minds and our own patterns, which means we can change them. And that means we can free ourselves from their prison and be the kinds of people we want to be. To do so, you don't need to kill the dark side entirely. You just need to learn to separate it from who you really are. Number two, everything comes from somewhere. There are absolutely pathologies that are genetic. And even my ocd, while developed from childhood experience and the patterns that stem from it, still has a clear chemical element. Specifically, dormant neurons in the dorsal medial section of the prefrontal cortex that fail to inhibit obsessive and compulsive thinking and behavior. But overall, the things we don't like about ourselves typically come from what we learn as children. But these patterns aren't intrinsic to us. They were passed down from our parents or reactions to our parents and our parents, negative patterns came from their parents and so on. This is part of being human. No matter how intentional you are in raising your own children, you're going to fuck them up in some ways, too. And while that might seem depressing, I actually found it quite freeing. Because the patterns I have don't mean that I am inherently bad. It means that I learned specific ways of thinking behavior, which means I can unlearn them, too. Number three, our patterns are not set in stone. To reduce the intensity of our patterns, Hoffman teaches you practices like recycling, the energizing, and quadrillity check ins that help us recognize our patterns, adjust them, and ultimately free ourselves from them. While Hoffman has its own approach, there are multiple methods for doing this. In fact, we just held an event at the bookstore for the publication of the 12 levers by Spencer Greenberg and Jeremy Stevenson, which does a great job detailing all the different ideas and methodologies out there. You just have to find an approach that works for you and keep doing it and doing it and doing it. It's like going to the gym. Every time you lift a weight, you break down that muscle a tiny, tiny bit and it grows back ever so slightly stronger. Four or five trips to the gym doesn't accomplish much. Four or five trips a week accomplishes a lot. Number four, most of the things we hate about ourselves are apparent only to ourselves. I tend to assume that all the things I dislike about myself see item 1 for a partial list, are obvious to everyone else that all of the ways I disappoint myself are the ways that everyone else must see me too. The reality is that couldn't be farther from the truth. More often than not, what you think is apparent to everyone else exists pretty much in your own head and nowhere else. If you can change the way you feel about yourself, that's all you really need to do. Number five, everyone is fucked up. Everyone needs help. And almost everyone can root for each other. I didn't know anyone else at the Hoffman process. There are 25 people total in our group, all from different backgrounds, different places with different lives and their childhoods. But the one thing we had in common is that we not only all wanted to help ourselves learn a new approach to our lives, we wanted to help each other learn it too. I had never been around a more supportive, caring, loving, nonjudgmental group than this. A lot of this is due to the incredible culture the Hoffman Institute has created. But a lot of it also speaks to the underlying nature of most people. Yes, we often are in competition with each other one way or another. Yes, we look different, speak different, and might have different values or priorities or views on life. But deep down, the vast majority of us just want calm, peace, light. That may sound way too woo woo, but it's also what I've always been missing. It's why I've always felt inner turmoil. And dismissing that need and desire is no different from being the kid at the school dance, hugging the wall and making fun of everyone else. The only way for Hoffman to work is to fully buy in. And when everyone in the group is fully bought in, your only path forward is to do the work. How great would it be if more of life was like that? Number six. The past is the past. In the materials they give you, there are quotes sprinkled through the binder. There's a great one from Lily Tomlin. Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better life. As much as we may relive the past in our heads or our bodies, as much as we may have regrets, anger, frustration or anything else, we can't change it. We can only change how we perceive it and how we act going forward. Another quote in the binder is even better at explaining the choice between going forward. The choice between simply living with your pain, your anger, your anxiety, your fear, or trying to do something about it. Even if you live to be 100, it's really a very short period of time. So why not spend it undergoing this process of evolution, of opening your mind and heart, connecting with your true nature, rather than getting better and better at fixing, grasping, freezing, closing down. That's by PEN Metro drone. It may not last if I don't put the work in, it certainly won't. But for now, finally, I feel peace. Okay, that was the essay. You have any questions?

[B]

I do, yeah. I mean, I guess I want to start with. Can you talk about the actual process a little bit? I'm not sure, like. So you were there for a week?

[A]

There for a week.

[B]

Okay. And you, you arrive.

[A]

Just, just walk, you arrive. So it's just like kind of nature sanctuary.

[B]

And so it's in western Canada.

[A]

It's in Western Canada. Two hours outside of Calgary, Tiny little town in Alberta. And you know, it's just, it's like three buildings. It's you know, basically a dorm, a place with different meeting rooms and then a kitchen and the grounds are really beautiful and a lot of, you know, it's all in nature. And when you get there, the first thing you do once you kind of get settled in is, you know, and there's a bunch of pre work that you do before you go there.

[B]

Is everybody starting at the same place?

[A]

Exactly the same place. No one's ever. You can only really go once. There's like a couple like follow up things, but basically you do it once and you know, I didn't know anyone, I don't think anyone knew anyone else left. I know that no one knew anyone else.

[B]

And how many people?

[A]

25 people, which is smaller than they usually have it, but that's what it was. Three teachers and age was about. Age was a range, you know, anywhere from like late 20s to mid 60s. I think about 2/3 of the people were American, about a third were Canadian.

[B]

Did it feel like a group that was familiar to you when you first saw them?

[A]

Not necessarily, no. I felt, you know, over time you don't really talk that much while you're there, you know, as opposed to about kind of your own life in terms of your. It's not a network stuff. Right. But you know, at the end you're allowed to. And I would say a third of the people probably had backgrounds are not that different than mine. And then 2/3 were really diverse. I mean you had schoolteachers, you had physical therapists, you had people who work insurance companies, people work in hr and you had some tech founders and venture capitalists. Well, one founder of one venture capitalist being me and other people that just do a variety of stuff. They were from all over the US and Canada. It was probably, I think it was 18 women and seven men. Some more female than male in my group. And what was pretty incredible about it was just that everybody was really nice, really supportive. When you get there, they talk about the notion of surrender. And the idea is like, this is only going to work if you just buy into the whole process. And there are things throughout that are not going to work for you or you're going to think are silly or whatever else you got to buy in. And what was so great about our group is it really felt like from what I could tell, everyone bought in. And because of that, everyone was just so supportive of each other and nonjudgmental and kind of caring and kind that it just made the whole process. It's difficult. It's seven straight days, about 14 hours a day. And to be clear, there's no outside stimulus. So you give in. You hand them your phone, your iPad, there's no TV, there's no books, nothing.

[B]

You could bring a book, right?

[A]

You know what? They said? I could. But then when I got there, it turns out you couldn't. So I just stuck it in my bag under the bed and didn't. Didn't look at it. And yeah, you could probably find ways to cheat it, but you're just cheating yourself, in which case there's no reason to go in the first place.

[B]

Talk about your state of mind, just like arriving, because you. You we've talked to many times. You're. You're sort of. You. You can be a little socially phobic in group settings.

[A]

I was, you know, when I very, very first got there, I got there, like the day of arrival, but a little later. So it was already a big group of people together. And I was a little hesitant to sort of, you know, join them, but once they started sort of organizing. Okay, here's what you're supposed to do now. Here's what's next. And it was structured. I was fine.

[B]

And you get like a name tag.

[A]

Yes. You have like a lanyard with your name around it. And after a couple of days, people stop wearing them because you know everyone's name at that point.

[B]

So you walk into the situation. How long was it before? I mean, I feel like everything like that there's that moment where you're like, I might want to leave. Right?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I don't really. I never. I didn't feel that because my view was I went there for a reason and it's was fucking far away, and if I went to all that trouble, there was no way I was gonna leave. It's funny, the cab driver who picked me up the airport in Calgary and drove me out there. Does that run all the time? And he was saying there was someone who told the driver, well I'm not gonna give them my phone. I was like, well I think you kind of have to. And he's like yeah. And he's like, I'm like so what happened? He's like I picked the guy, that guy back up a few hours later and drove him back to the airport.

[B]

So that does happen.

[A]

It does happen. I guess not with us. I will say I was surprised at how unanxious I felt about giving up my phone and giving up connection to the outside world. You know, people who there was, you know, my kids, some others had the emergency number. And my view was if there's an emergency they'll call that number and they'll, someone from Hoffman will come tell me, you know, hey, you got a call and absent that it's fine. And I will tell you I got super lucky that like after, when I was in the cab back to Calgary afterwards, you know, I called, made a bunch of calls and some of them were my kids and others and everybody was fine. But then even work wise I called Bob and Chris and Megan and everyone's like, yeah, it was one of the quietest weeks we've ever had.

[B]

So go away more often.

[A]

Yeah, I mean really nothing particularly bad happened and I didn't write this in here, but it does teach you that you know, the world is not going to collapse if you are out of touch for a week.

[B]

So what's the very first activity you did other than just saying hello to people? Like what was the first?

[A]

It was really identifying your specific patterns because the entire thesis in a group

[B]

setting, so everybody's sitting around this was individual.

[A]

Some of the work was individual, a lot of it was group. But you know, the basic fundamental thing that underlies all of it is we each develop these negative patterns in childhood. We adopt them from our parents or their reactions to our parents. And we can't even understand why we are the way we are or how to change the way we are if we don't know what those patterns are. And so it's identifying those patterns, identifying which parent it came from. And then actually the first part is just expressing your anger. Not to them directly, but at your parents. You write these letters to each parent that are long. Mine were like 15 pages each handwritten by the way. I've never written by hand in decades and all of a sudden I spent a week, my hand would literally hurt at the end of it, because it was so much harder.

[B]

I don't think I've ever even seen your handwriting.

[A]

It's totally legible. I can't even reread it when I see it. But basically, the letters are basically, fuck you, mom, fuck you, dad. And then all the. That's how it starts, pretty much. You do what you want, but. Yeah.

[B]

And did you read them to the other people? No. Okay.

[A]

No, it's not therapy in that way. Okay. So it's not like, about your problems. No. You're learning how to identify fundamentally. There's a thing called the cycle of transformation, and it has four parts awareness. So what are my patterns? Expression, basically. What is it meant? You know, how is this meant? Fucked up my life in various ways. And your anger at effectively your parents for giving you these patterns, even though obviously you're giving your. I try to parent my kids very intentionally in reaction to the challenges of my childhood. And I think I've avoided a lot of the mistakes that my parents made, but I've made new ones. And, you know, that just. It's going to happen every generation, no matter what. So it's, you know, but expressing your anger. Like you literally at one point write the patterns down that your parents gave you on index cards and they give you a pillow on it with football bat.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You mentioned the shit out of the patterns.

[B]

And so was that a meaningful thing? Because that seems goofy, right?

[A]

Yeah, but it was cathartic, actually. I was.

[B]

Did you do that by yourself? No.

[A]

You're in the group there.

[B]

So everybody's got a bat.

[A]

Everybody's got a.

[B]

They all have. Everyone gets a bat.

[A]

25 of all bats.

[B]

Do you get to keep it? No. No.

[A]

And so once you've kind of done all of the expression, then the next phase of cycle is called compassion and forgiveness. And the idea is to be able to learn how to have some level of empathy and compassion for your parents. So you write these, as I mentioned in the piece, these dialogues where they're 12 years old and you are as well, and you're asking them questions about their life to try to understand why they are the way they are. Now, obviously it's all in your head, but it did give me a greater measure of empathy for each of my parents and why they are the way they are doesn't change the past, but it. But it helps me better at least understand it. And then ultimately you have to be able to have forgiveness for yourself, for, you know, whatever you don't like about yourself. Mistakes that you've made. You know, every human being has. If you have zero regrets, then you're probably a sociopath or psychopath in some way, right? Because it's impossible to live without making mistakes.

[B]

Even though weirdly that's the thing people always say, like no regrets.

[A]

It's totally stupid because of course you have regrets. Because if you got every single thing right 100% of the time, you wouldn't be human. Right? Or at the very least you will have never taken any sort of risk whatsoever, including attempting friendships, relationships, work, anything, right? So that's basically also not being human. So it's learning to say, okay, I might have had these personality traits or have these personalities I don't like, it's manifested in these various ways. But I didn't develop them because I'm intrinsically flawed and bad. I developed them because I learned them in childhood from other people. And therefore I have to learn how to forgive myself for these things about myself I don't like. Now some people are more self critical than others. I tend to be be very, very self critical. So if you're less so, then perhaps that's less of an issue. But for me at least it was hard but critical. And some of it also is really just realizing that was the first thing I put in the piece. But you are not your negative patterns. I think part of the challenge is that over time you conflate your negative patterns with your intrinsic self. And so you believe that I am these things and therefore I am bad. Right? And the answer is you are not bad. Now there's like Some, I think 7% of the population has these sort of dark triad personality traits where they might actually, you know, be a sociopath or psychopath or something that is bad. But that's not true for 93% of us. And I don't think Hoffman would work for those people obviously, but, but I think once you start to realize it, you start to like see the distinction between your negative patterns and who you are. And then the final part of kind of they call ways of being, it's what are the techniques that you can use to sort of spot these patterns unfolding and then retrain your brain to, you know, think and approach it differently.

[B]

So it's 14 hours a day. You said it starts early. Watch me. Just through a day. Are the days pretty much the same or are they?

[A]

Well, I mean the activities are different, but the schedule was fairly similar, which was, you know, usually you got started like, I don't know, 7:15, you had some work to do. He had breakfast, but everything's together.

[B]

So you go down, have breakfast together. Yeah.

[A]

And then it could either be classes with all 25 of us or smaller groups of, like, roughly eight each. And then, yeah, lunch and then more of it. But you know what? They do.

[B]

But you don't share a lot of this stuff that you're talking.

[A]

You're not talking about your own individual most of the time.

[B]

You're talking about frameworks and strategies.

[A]

And part of why I think it's so many hours a day is, you know, we all have. We've talked this before in the podcast. Like, we have different learning styles. And so part of what they're doing is. Is teaching you or making the same point, but in different ways. From, like, long visualizations to writing exercises to going out in nature and reenacting things or whatever it might be.

[B]

Talk about reenacting.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, you actually have a funeral for each of your parents in which, you know, like, in your head, like, you go out in nature and just find a spot for each of them.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And in that process, you are basically kind of reliving their lives in a way through that to help you further kind of deepen that compassion and empathy for those. It's after you write the dialogues with their.

[B]

So you're actually thinking about their lives in a kind of total way.

[A]

Correct. Right. And then you have two for yourself, which is a little weird, but one is called your left path, and one is your right path. The left path is basically, I have these negative patterns if I don't do anything to change them, and they exacerbate and assume they kind of take their worst possible manifestations. What would people say about you at your funeral? And the point is to make it as sort of negative as possible. And then there's a right path, one which is, okay, you did all the things you need to do, and you're able to sort of break some of these patterns and change your own thinking, then what would people say about you? And so it's kind of two different funerals. So there's lots of different approaches that are probably not dissimilar in terms of the content, but they are different in terms of the approach. And so that whatever your learning style is, there's something that works for you. For me, a lot of it was the writing.

[B]

Were you ever. Were you ever bored?

[A]

No, I was never bored. You know, the visualizations were less my learning style, so I kind of sometimes would find myself tuning out, and then I'd have to kind of bring myself Back. I wasn't bored. I was tired. You know, it's just 14 hours a day is a lot.

[B]

So you would go to pretty. Get into your room at the end and go right to sleep, kind of.

[A]

Hey, you know, took me. It was very rustic, so there's no air conditioning, and so it was hot. And that was a little.

[B]

It was hot.

[A]

Yeah, it was, you know, summer.

[B]

Right, right. So, you know, Canadian, maybe, but it

[A]

was still pretty warm. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes took me longer to fall asleep than others, but. But there was literally, when you got, like, one night, I couldn't sleep there. They give you this, you know, binder when you get there. And I actually reread the binder cover to cover because I just had nothing to do.

[B]

Like, that was the point, probably. Right?

[A]

I guess.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I. I think the point is that you're supposed to be so tired that you fall right asleep. But. But yeah, and for me, you know,

[B]

and that urge to, like, check something on your phone. Well, you don't have to. No, obviously you don't have it, but

[A]

I mean, no, not amazingly. It went away really fast. Like, I was super happy to give up my phone and my iPad. And really, during the week, you weren't

[B]

desperate to get your hands back on it?

[A]

No, I really wasn't.

[B]

So we've talked a lot on the podcast about, you know, you're someone who pays a lot of attention to your mental health. You know, you've done other. Other things that. That are, I don't know, experimental. But, yeah, I guess they are experimental. And how did this. What did this do that you had not, like, really experienced before or that felt really novel and useful compared to other things you've tried.

[A]

Well, I mean, I think one is that it was a different thought process. Right. Which was not so much what do I do about my problems, but why do I have them? Why do I feel this way? And the biggest part wasn't even so much identifying my negative patterns. I mean, I was generally nothing I wrote down and mentioned was things that I weren't unaware of before. But the why, the how. I mean, that's the point of Hoffman. And I don't think I had approached it quite that way before. And then once you understand the why and the how, and then you can learn to separate those from your sort of who you are intrinsically. Then all of a sudden that's what starts to create the belief that, one, you're not bad. Where I'm not bad, because I believed deep down that that was just My negative patterns meant that I must be bad, and two, that you can change them.

[B]

Did anything sort of challenge something you thought was true or like some other tactic you'd learned or anything that was actually hard to give up?

[A]

That's a really good question. I think that I struggled a bit to let go of the narratives of my childhood because they were so entrenched in me. And I was so sort of convinced that from such a young age that basically I had this almost destiny of like, yes, I'll be really successful. And I'm glad that I kind of always just generally felt that success didn't mean just the accumulation of wealth or status or power, but using the success to impact the world in meaningful ways. So it was a good manifestation of it, but nonetheless it was the trade off of that, but kind of personal turmoil and lack of peace. You know, for me, I always felt like I was unlikable and unlovable and, you know, as a kid with your isolated and bullied and everything else, of course you feel that way. What I think this helped me do, though, is realize, okay, you have these specific examples that you are, and they're all from like, at the longest, at the shortest, like 30 something years ago, if not more. And then look at your actual life. Look at all the people who love you, look at all the people who consider you, you know, the kinds of friends where there's probably a couple dozen people that would call me at three in the morning if they really needed to, and vice versa, and, you know, family members and, you know, Issa and my kids and everyone else who, you know, genuinely truly love me and provide unconditional love and support and feel vice versa. And then there's probably another hundred people that you might. That will probably. You would call a friend, and they would call you a friend, even if it's not the 3am phone call. And then all the people that you've worked with over the years who probably you respect and they respect you. And then for us, you know, we've got this and the books and the columns and all the people who follow all that. And then for me, it was all the people that watch TED Talk and then all the people who like to see our work on tv, and then ultimately the most important, maybe not the most important, but were the probably tens of millions of people that if you take all the work from when I first started politics and everything else that have been impacted by it in some way and hopefully a positive way. And so when you put that all together and weigh it up against six or seven kids who are assholes to you when you were eight or whatever it was, then you're like, oh, okay, right. I can let go of this thing. The other thing was, I figured out on day two of Hoffman why I have ocd. I knew I'd had it, and I underwent tms. We've talked about the podcast before.

[B]

Why don't you say what TMS is?

[A]

TMS is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. And the idea is that there is. If you have ocd. And OCD is tricky because it's uncle. No one's quite totally sure exactly how it or why it starts, but it's not necessarily genetic. I think it starts because you have a childhood trauma of some kind, and the way that your brain solves for it is to develop the need for a certain measure of control in some way. And then that becomes so intrinsic and not intrinsic, but so much part of who you are that it's very hard to escape it. And that could be a specific, like, thing. People who knock three times or whatever it is. Or for me, it was like a real. I was triggered by little stickers and tags, but I think more pernicious, ultimately, these doom loops of just sort of repetitive and compulsive thinking where you just think about the same thing over and over again, and it's almost invariably something not good. And I think by being able to sort of trace all the different patterns and apply them together, I was able to understand why I developed ocd. Now, you know, the transcranial manic stimulation. Their thesis is that if you have ocd, and I think I mentioned this when I was reading it, the neurons in the dorsal medial section of your prefrontal cortex are dormant, and so therefore, they're not serving as inhibitors in the way they're supposed to. And the TMS literally is, you know, a nice way to say electroshock therapy.

[B]

Switches them on. Right?

[A]

It switches them on. So I don't think the Hoffman process can cure your ocd. I think it's a medical thing. But I think that for me, at least, you know, if you combine the TMS with the greater understanding of it and what causes the patterns, and then you can learn how to. Also not. Because oftentimes I'll find with my ocd, I don't necessarily get super anxious if I see a little sticker or something like that, but my first reaction is to feel that way, because I was trained myself to do so. So I have to kind of almost remind myself, like, it's okay. It can't hurt you. I think ideally, if I can incorporate the Hoffman stuff over a long period of time, that combined with the TMS will probably, you know, really help me. But you know, realizing on day two of this thing, why I've had this thing that for my entire life was incredible.

[B]

That's your breakthrough.

[A]

Yeah, it was so profound for me.

[B]

And how do you use the experience sort of going forward? You're not going to go back there, you'd have no relationship, you're not going to stay in touch with any of the people.

[A]

Well, no, no, you probably will.

[B]

Oh, you do? Okay.

[A]

Yeah. In fact, tomorrow we have like a group resume reunion or whatever.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah, they have coaching and so some of it is that you can do that if you want to. It's up to you. But a few things. So one is some of the practices. So there's a thing called the quadrant check ins. The notion is there is your emotional child, your intellect, which is kind of what we think it is, but also the. Where all those patterns sort of live in your brain, your body and then your spiritual self, which is kind of the best version of you. And if you can kind of check in with all four of them every day and see how each is doing, you can have an honest assessment of how you're feeling. Another is a practice called recycling, which means that, let's say that today, you know, I do something that I'm unhappy about, I'm not proud of, whatever, tomorrow I'll think about it, kind of really see where I feel it physically. And you literally just kind of almost take a deep breath and blow it out and you kind of sit up straight and summon your spiritual self and think about, okay, in a perfect world, how would my best self have handled that? And then you kind of think about it that way and take some breaths. And the idea is that if you keep doing that, eventually what you're saying you would like to be your best self or how your best self would like to handle it starts to become the way that you handle it. So I've incorporated both of those into my daily. For me, I got lucky in that because I already have this daily prayer practice that I do. I've incorporated those into that. And so that means it's easier habit to form. And then me being me. When it was over, I wrote myself a 42 page memo about it.

[B]

42 page memo?

[A]

Yeah. What I actually did this time, which was interesting was I.

[B]

Was that handwritten too or did you do that?

[A]

No, that was paper. I fed it at the Claude. Cause what I did was I took my sort of 16 patterns that I. It's not that there's 16, it's a magic number. It's just the ones that I identified and I wrote them, took them through that whole cycle transformation and a quadrantary check in and recycling and left path, right path and all that. And then I fed the whole thing into Claude and said, just tell me what I'm missing. And normally I hate if I give a column to Claude. If I'm like, hey, well, just pressure test this for me. I, I have to put in the prompts, do not rewrite anything, do not restructure anything. Because usually I find Claude's writing to be terrible. But in this case I didn't say that because I wasn't really. It wasn't an external document and it actually did rewrite it for me. And the ways that it condensed into some of its insights were really helpful. And then I kind of rewrote that. So it's now, I think it's about 18 pages or so. And I, you know, have read it every day since my plans just to, you know, if I can re read it every day.

[B]

Really Read it every day? Yeah, like first thing in the morning

[A]

or like I haven't read yet today, but you know, and, and then I've noticed that, you know, I add stuff, I delete stuff, I change stuff, I underline stuff. Living doc kind of living document. And so I feel like if I can do those three things daily and probably may take advantage of some of the coaching at some point.

[B]

What do you mean? The coach.

[A]

So you can, you can pay them for coaching, right? I don't know what I need or if I need, but you know, it's nice to know that it's an option.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I would imagine the coaching would be more along the lines of like, okay, I'm doing all these things, here's what's working, here's why I'm still struggling. Help me work through it. Right? That kind of thing. It's not therapy, right. It's different. And again, I don't even know that I will want or need it. But I think that, you know, as I said at the end of the essay, I feel really good right now. This is the first time in my life where I have actually really felt peace. Not I felt love, I felt happiness. It's not that I haven't had other really good feelings, but if you have all these negative patterns that you just believe are who you are and if you're Already prone to self criticism and hatred, which I was and am. Then you have a hard time liking yourself. And so you can have, you know, certainly love can exist separate from that. You know, you can certainly have your surges of dopamine and serotonin that produce happiness. You can also sort of see that your life is generally a well lived life. But if there's no inner peace, it still really makes it hard to feel truly good. And you know, right now I think an understanding of those negative patterns are not who I am. And separating the two out has brought me a measure of peace that I've never really had before. And so if I don't put the work in, that certainly won't continue. But the good news is I am a hard worker and so I just got to do it.

[B]

You mentioned that writing was sort of the lane that felt good for you in terms of working on these things. How do you think it'll affect your writing? And I mean that beyond just like the personal writing you're doing here, but like maybe fiction stuff you might want to do or.

[A]

Well, I'll tell you, when I wrote my novel, I think I mentioned this Fusco podcast. Some guy that I knew who was upset with me in his effort to sort of just say something hurtful, said, you know, the reason your novel didn't work is because you hated all the characters. And I think he was even in the moment when he said that, I took a step back and realized I think he was right in some way. Hopefully the novel still works, but. And I think it's because if you are writing fiction and everything is sort of autobiographical one way or another, and you fundamentally believe that you are bad or broken or unlovable or anything else, it's gonna shine through the work. Right. And I think it would be curious. Now, I don't know how much more fiction I'm gonna write. The experience, writing the novel was an interesting experience. And I wanted to see if I could write and publish a novel, and I did. But I do think that if I wrote fictional characters, the fundamental way that I perceive them might be very different.

[B]

Last question.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You have. You. Are there people in your life you would recommend this for?

[A]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, first of all, who

[B]

would it work for?

[A]

That, I mean, really the only people that it probably wouldn't help. Assuming that you have the ability to just disappear for a week and be off the grid, and assuming you have the. It's not wildly expensive, but the money to pay for it, I would say it's a grueling week physically and emotionally. So if you are really old or if you just don't have resilience, and there are some people that just don't have resilience, then I think they would give up potentially.

[B]

Or do they talk about people bailing other than that one guy?

[A]

No, they didn't. The cab driver told me. Gary, the driver, not the.

[B]

Yeah, not the place.

[A]

The place. And well, they did actually say a few times, not everyone, you know, to Fair's points like, hey, you guys all made it. But I don't know, you know, that doesn't always happen. But so I would say that if you just kind of can't handle the intensity of it, or perhaps there are people that are so well adjusted that they don't need it. And that's great if you don't need it. But it seems almost impossible to imagine going through life without having developed negative patterns in reaction to your parents one way or the other by adopted from your parents. In that case, it is highly likely, unless you've done something like this, that the patterns kind of work their way in to sort of make you feel like who you are and very hard to change them. It's just I am this negative thing. Right. Sort of a self compromise. That's why that quote that I read towards the very end was, was, you know, meaningful to me as opposed to, okay, it's a thing that I have, that I've developed, but I can undevelop it, I can unlearn it. So if somehow you just are so well adjusted that you just don't need it, great. But I would say the vast majority of people could benefit from it. And I think, I think 150,000 people have done it. The Cincinnati and it's continents all over the world. So it's not some new novel thing.

[B]

You mentioned that you'd done this on the recommendation of your girlfriend Issa. When you went back and talked to her about your experience, was it pretty close to hers?

[A]

I mean, it was from a process standpoint, you know, of course, working on different things, different realizations and insights and all of that. But, you know, I do think there's something to say for if you're in a relationship with someone and both people have done it and you wouldn't do it together at the same time, but there's probably a level of understanding about life and yourself and why you are the way you are, that if both people took it very seriously and if both people continued to put the work in afterwards, it probably Improves your chances of having a really strong relationship. Because there is sort of a shared understanding of things that are not. You know, it's not something that we otherwise would necessarily learn.

[B]

Yeah. So this will be up on Substack Tuesday. Tuesday day. This comes out good.

[A]

Yep. And it's funny, in that piece the other day about writing. And I was talking about how sometimes, you know, the way that I improve my writing is that I kind of talk about something. Here. I'll read or read from an essay. As I was reading this one and this one's, you know.

[B]

You found a couple edits.

[A]

I found some edits. And what's interesting is, look, I care deeply about everything that I write. Cause I just love to do it. But this one is so deeply personal that I really want it to be as perfect as it can absolutely be. So I'm gonna write as soon as we're done here. I'm just gonna sit in the studio and fix it a little bit. But, yeah, look, just to the audience, if what I said resonates with you. And if you feel like, hey, my inner life is not what I would like it to be, I would just say to you that there's a really good chance that the things about yourself that don't bring you peace or calm or contentment are things that you learned as a child. And that with the right amount of work, you can unlearn and feel better about yourself. Like, to me, I've talked about this as the most helpful thing I've ever done for myself. And the reason I believe that is, let's say I didn't go there and I spent a week on vacation or working or whatever it is. Not that those things aren't necessarily valuable or things I need to do. But fundamentally, I'm 52. Let's say I live another. Lucky enough to live another 40 years. They could be 40 really good years in terms of good things and helping people and love and everything else. But if they were accompanied by this sort of constant inner turmoil. And I now have the ability to spend one week. And then, you know, sometime afterwards every day to try to change that, Like, I just can't think of a more useful thing to do.

[B]

Thanks, Bradley.

[A]

All right. You, recommendations or no?

[B]

Sure. All right.

[A]

A couple.

[B]

I didn't think you had any. You've been away. Like, I.

[A]

This week, I kind of came back with a fury. This weekend, a few things. Eddie and I went to the Brooklyn Museum, and there is a show. It's a fashion designer named Iris Von Herdin. Herpin. Do you know her?

[B]

Nope.

[A]

And it was spectacular. I don't really care that much about fashion per se, but it was, you know, her work. But then all the other artists whose work either were inspired by her or that she's inspired her.

[B]

No, no.

[A]

She's a current. She's, like, younger than me. She's from Holland. And it was just incredible.

[B]

This is something Abby wanted to see.

[A]

No, no, Abby wants. Abby is interning the studio of an artist, and he has a piece up at the Brooklyn Museum. So I wanted to see that. Cause I haven't, you know, wanted to see what she's. The kind of stuff that she's working on. And so that's where we went. And then this was just a show at the Brooklyn. You have to get separate tickets for it. But I did, and it was absolutely spectacular. Okay, that's a good recommendation. I'm excited to see that. And the other thing was. Have you seen the Odyssey yet?

[B]

I have not.

[A]

I loved it.

[B]

You did?

[A]

I loved it. Loved it, loved it.

[B]

I thought you're the first person that. I mean, I know people generally have liked it, but you're the first person

[A]

I thought it just. To me one was so incredibly well done. The acting was so good across the board. The visuals were so amazing.

[B]

Did you see the imax?

[A]

No.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then. But also, I just felt like the parallels to the time that we live in today were so strong, you know? And if you think about it, you know, because a lot of what he talks about, and I haven't read the Odyssey in a long time, but Lyle had just read it, so he was able to kind of tell me more like, where it was faithful to it and where it wasn't. I don't think I'm giving anything away here. It's just that the. When something's a couple thousand years old, there's no spoiler alerts to worry about. Right. I don't know.

[B]

People get upset about everything, but whatever.

[A]

So it's sort of where the Greek civilization and, you know, this is his view, went wrong. And why, effectively, what they had built couldn't and wouldn't last. And they had their experience of that. Then the Romans kind of replicated it. And then humanity fell into about 1300 years of nothing. The Dark Ages, the Stone Ages, the Middle Ages. And it wasn't until the Industrial revolution in the 1650s that things started to change again. And we're now on roughly four centuries of real progress and growth in many ways. Not to say that there is still horrific Stuff throughout there is. But if you look at at least what Odysseus thinks the Greeks got turned into, that ultimately meant that they were gonna fall. The parallels to how we are today in the United States, especially to me, felt very strong. And you could see a world not to depress everyone now, but where we fall into, there's a nuclear war or because the proliferation keeps growing, or a pandemic, whether it's through a bioweapon or something else, or massive impact of climate change or maybe something AI, Whatever it is. Well, we fall into another long dark age period. Right. Even if we had a nuclear war, it probably wouldn't wipe out every single human on the planet, but it would wipe out a lot of them, and it would make it very, very hard to live for a long time. And that could lead to a centuries long period again of basically dissolution and nothing. And at the same time, though, we're not quite there yet, and the question is, can we save ourselves before we destroy ourselves? Can we recognize, in many ways, I've taught this before, I see Trump almost as a biblical allegory where God sent him down to be like, here's everything you guys are doing wrong and here's why you have to change your ways. And instead we're like, this is great, and elected this guy twice. And so that's what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. If you ignore all the warning signs, eventually you fall. And so I don't think we have fallen fully yet, but I don't think a lot of people would say, feel great about. There's a reason why the 250th anniversary of America was basically kind of came and went. Right. Trump's whole thing in D.C. was a disaster. And I don't know, do you hear a lot of people, like, super excitedly talking about the anniversary?

[B]

No, but I think that had a lot to do with the way Trump tried to. Tried to own it as a kind of it.

[A]

But I also just think, look, I was. It's funny, 1976 doesn't feel like it was a good time in America either.

[B]

And yet it was a huge thing.

[A]

And yet it seemed like a huge thing. I mean, I was too young. I was three, so I didn't really notice that. Or if you remember it or not, I remember it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But 250 was just not like that. Right. And I think the reason why is that people just don't feel good about our society right now, you know? And even if you like Trump, and obviously enough people did to Elect him twice. You did it on the basis of anger, Right? You didn't like society either. You were just saying patriotism. Yeah, I want it to change in these ways, or I want revenge, or. And you know, the far left and Bernie and Mondami and AOC same were all the same thing, Right? So, you know, I think there are things that still can save us. I think technology can, for example, potentially do things like remove carbon from the atmosphere and prevent, you know, further impacts of global warming over time. Or, you know, in the same way that Covid almost certainly leaked from a lab in China, you know, our system also allowed us to develop vaccines pretty quickly. Right. So those are all to the good, but if we can't find a way to kind of do the underlying. I'll just land the plane here now. Principles of Hoffman, where we're able to believe in a greater holder, ourselves and a universe that is best when we all are seeking peace and love and calm and happiness in the way that sort of makes it for the collective good. If we do that, we can save ourselves. Right. Like our political system is totally fucked up. I obviously strongly believe that mobile voting can help fix it. Even if I'm wrong, there are other people with other ideas that they think can fix it. So whether we have the will, we will see. And that will ultimately be the test of whether we survive or fail. But there are ideas out there and there are a lot of people working on them. And if you want to not live Odysseus prophecy, then those people have to persevere and hopefully they can win.

[B]

Thanks, Bradley. See you next week.

[A]

Bye. Firewall is recorded at my bookstore, PNT Netware, located at 180 Orchard street on the lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradleyirewall Media or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new [e-mail] thanks again for listening.