← The Grounded Warrior Podcast
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- [00:00]
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Foreign. Welcome back, everyone. Today's guest we have Larry Kesslin, who is the co founder of Five Dots and an established author with his latest book, the Joy Molecule. Larry, it is fantastic to have you on today. Let's dive into it. I want to continue down this talk about walking down a path and finding a path and the latter and just being, you know, where you are. Because so many men I see feel like they have to be much.
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If I really think about where I am in my life right now, I'm at the most peaceful place I've ever been. I am two and a half years out of a divorce. I have two beautiful children that love me. My son at 24 asked me to officiate his wedding. My daughter went through a really traumatic episode at the end of last year that I was able to move to Denver to be with her for almost two months and still ran my business and still lived my life. Had a primary relationship that I'm planning to move in with this woman in the next 30 days. And during those two months of living in Denver, everybody's like, well, how is that affecting relationship with your girlfriend? And I said, I think it's actually helping because she knows that I'll show up when it's all when it matters because that's what I'm doing for my daughter. And my daughter asked me just recently because she's now six weeks outside of her episode, some challenges she had from it was beautiful but traumatic for her. And she said, weren't you traumatized or wasn't it scary? I'm like, no, actually there were most parts of it that were beautiful. And I watched it all unfold. And when you realize that you're a being that has access to a mind and a body, which is most of my work now, knowing what you are, who you are and why you are is the foundation of the Joy Molecule. And it's a book I published back in last summer in August. And I've been talking on shows about this idea of joy. And it's actually been fascinating because I get to talk about things. I'm a verbal learner, so it gets me the opportunity to talk to really smart people that ask really good questions and I get to revisit these topics. This topic of joy came to me because I wasn't raised with joy like my childhood was. I wouldn't say it was bad. Middle class, white kid from New Jersey, how bad can it be? But my dad did go broke when I was 10. There was a lot of stress in my household My parents were somewhat absent. They loved me. I wouldn't call it unconditional love, but they loved me. And they were never hostile, I never got beat. But I raised myself. And I can say right now, as a 62 year old, I did a pretty crappy job. So as a child, I'm sitting there, latchkey kid, waking up every morning, getting myself to school, coming home after school and eating whatever's in the refrigerator. Learn to emotionally eat, which I'm still dealing with to this day. And I'm on this path. So I start looking at my life over the last 20 years. 12 years. I went to Africa in 2012 as a 48 year old adult and spent almost a month in rural villages in northern and eastern Uganda and some safari camps in Kenya that were very similar. And I noticed all these people that I saw that had so much less than I had and they were so much happier than anybody I know, just deeply peaceful and filled with joy. And when I got back, I just had this real big question of what are we really doing here? And I'm successful, but I'm not nearly as happy as they are. So I'm done with success. I need to be significant. Then I went on the significance kick for a year and I go on all these journeys and they take me and it's like I feel like I've arrived somewhere like you were talking about before then arriving. And I felt, oh, I figured it out. And all I know is that every time I think I figured it out, I realize I'm an idiot because I haven't figured out anything. So I realized after coming back from Africa that I wanted to be significant. Two and a half years later, I wrote a book called Success redefined. Because at 28, I defined success as the ability to do what I want whenever I want to do it. And at 48, I realized that I was successful but not happy. So I figured significance would be better. And a couple years later I realized that success without significance isn't success. So I had to redefine success, not become significant. Becoming significant is nice. Or doing things that are philanthropic, which is my idea of significance. None of us are significant, but we can make an impact on others. That's the nuance that I've been playing with. But this idea that success now is the ability to do what I want, whenever I want to do it, while being part of something greater than myself. And if I don't include this significance part in success, it's an empty definition. And when I work with clients, I give them A list of words, and success is one of them, happiness is one of them, joy is one of them, family is one of them. Love, home, all these words that are very soft, they don't have clear definitions, and we use them in language today and we expect everybody to know the meaning that we give it. So I work with husbands and wives and I ask them both to define those words because those are the words they use in their home. So I've been dating this woman for about a year. Her name is Martha. And I worked with my friend Chat, and I went to Chat and I said, I really want to create a conscious relationship with this woman that I've been dating. And if I were to do that, what would I want it to look like? And it created a four page document that talks about all the aspects of a relationship. What a day looks like, what a week looks like, what a month looks like, what a year looks like, and how do we design that, how do we design our finances, how do we design our travel, how do we design where we want to live and what it looks like. She sends me videos all the time, and she was one with, I think it was Jay Shetty, where he talks about a relationship is that each person comes with a brick house. And the question is, which bricks from your house and which bricks from their house do you bring together and which bricks do you leave alone? And it's really a fascinating methodology, but it all comes back to this journey I've been on of trying to figure out what does joy look like? Because if it was never modeled for me as a child. And I think we're all seeking joy. I think at the end of the day, I think this is what I've been telling my daughter. She's like, what am I chasing? What should I go after next? I'm like, I'm chasing inner peace. I mean, if you find inner peace, everything else becomes meaningless. Yet you can do whatever you choose to do. So I tell all my clients, work as hard as you want, make as much money as you want, but that's an outcome of doing the things that you know you are. So if you're aligned with your work and you just show up every day as the person that you know you are, then the world will show up back to you. So this whole idea, I don't know if you've heard of be, do, have, be the person you want to be, do the actions that that person would do, and you'll have everything you want. So my life, most of my life up until my early 60s was have, do, be. I want to have the things so I can do the things that I want to do and I'll be the person that I want to be. It doesn't work that way because the things get in the way of being the chasing of the things in our society. I never liked men. I always found women to be much more enjoyable as friends. And it's only been the last eight to ten years of my life that I found a lot of men in my life that their ego has been shattered and they've. I guess later in life you start to get humbled some people and I'm finding those people. So if we talk about what I started with this whole idea of the Ascension Ladder, the Ascension Ladder is broken into three parts now that I'm playing with this concept. And the bottom part is survival. There's two types of survival. There's food, water, shelter and safety. Survival, which is my friends Trinity and Armstrong that are from Uganda, they lived with real survival. And then there's keeping up with the Joneses survival, building a lifestyle that you need to keep up with, that's a whole different type of survival. But in the United States we call that survival. I debate that maybe every once in a while. The second rung of the Ladder is all about me, love and belonging and self esteem. So we're talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I was saying before. Maslow never created a hierarchy of needs. It was created by some consultants to use in the business world. And if I were to imagine how Maslow might present it if he wanted a structure, I think this idea of a ladder is much more akin to what he was thinking than a hierarchy. And this idea of the ladder is in the middle is me. And when you're in me, which is where I think most humans get stuck and never get past is because most men that I meet and a lot of women humans are looking outside themselves to find the solution to their challenges. They're looking outside of them to find peace. And peace doesn't live outside of us. So to get to the third stage of the Ladder, which is ascension, which is self actualization and transcendence, you need to start looking inside and you need to start realizing how this being works. So what am I? And if you can answer that question, then the solution becomes a lot easier. So in my belief system today, and again, none of this I say is knowledge or wisdom. It's just this is what I believe today. And in five years I might believe something totally different because I'M going to keep evolving, but right now I believe I'm a being. So the way that I describe it to people, there's two analogies I'll use. One is sky, clouds, and weather. I am the sky. When I say I don't like myself. Myself is my mind. So I'm the sky, my thoughts are the clouds, and the weather is my feelings. So when the clouds get dark and meaty, you're still the sky. You're still the one viewing and observing the thoughts. But most humans, when they're stuck in self esteem and loving belonging, talking about me. We believe we are our thoughts. So we believe we're the clouds, but we're really the sky. My natural gifts, which anybody you know, you meet that knows me, my title in my business is Chief Connector. I am a human connector and maybe even a super connector. And I know people that are like me that are uber better at super connecting. So I don't know. I'm on some continuum. But when people get to know me, my natural instinct is to have names pop into my head of people that they should meet based on words and ways they've communicated to me. And I know who's going to have a great conversation. So I sent 10 emails out on behalf of this one person I'm working with and the guy who runs one of the largest chambers in San Diego. I just saw the email on my drive home, said to the person, he says, anybody that Larry introduced me to is worth meeting because I don't just introduce people to each other. I introduce people to each other that will connect at a level that they typically don't connect. That's one of my superpowers. It's not me. I don't take credit for it. It's something that comes through me. I've had a lot of learning around entrepreneurship. So if I put entrepreneurship together with connecting dots, I become a really good resource for business owners to figure out what they need in order to make their businesses better. I'm really good at that. Do I take credit for it? No. But my identity and my ego, which are healthy for me, they need to show up in a way that I can monetize it so I can pay my bills and live in this world. But in a previous iteration of my life, I went out every day seeking money so I could live the image that I wanted to be. And now I get to be the person that I am. And money is a byproduct of doing the work I was put here to do.
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Now I see the relationship Too with the ladder, there's some places too, I could see of where you're climbing parts of it and where you're on certain rungs to say, I'm making a living right now because I'm focused on having that resource. And then now, as I evolved my and learned from my experience and where I am in the world is actually more of a connecting person. So the more I push into that after already setting the foundation of like, okay, I do need a certain resource, but I don't have expectations anymore of it. I understand it because I was already on that rung where I was there, but now I'm on a different one and I'm understanding. I like supporting people, helping people, connecting people. And from that, yes, I do get the resource I need from everything else, but I get to stay more into when I loosely connect this to the sky model as well, to be viewing more from that. And that's actually a place I had a question or thought was. When you're talking about, you know, you have your thoughts and feelings and the dark clouds rolling and the experiences. A lot of people are stuck in the clouds or on the ground, but you're also the sky. How does one maintain themselves into the sky to allow what they see below them? Because they may feel stuck in a place. Maybe the different rung, maybe they're stuck a little bit. They're feeling like they have to survive. Or their mindset is, I have to make money. And that's the comparison mindset. I have to get ahead. I have to do that and exactly what you're asking for. But why ahead of what?
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There's no challenge with having goals and aspirations. The challenge we face in the culture that you and I live in is our attachment to achieving them or not. So happiness to me, my definition is getting my needs met. And I have seven plus one needs in life. I need food. I need water. I need shelter. I need safety. I need air. I need health. And me as a human, I actually need sex. So those are the eight things that I need. Everything else is a want and the challenge that we culturally have developed in the Western capitalistic structure. Now, there's nothing wrong with capitalism. The creation of free cash flow to me is the purest definition of capitalism. The problem is greed is just because you create cash flow. Who deserves that cash flow? And a lot of entrepreneurs believe it's theirs. Well, I would challenge you on it being yours. Money is just energy, and it's there to be used. I have a client that I'm working with that's done very well in life. He's young, late 30s, almost 40, married, two little kids and sold a business. And he came to me because he was a little lost, and he wants to do good in the world, and I'm trying to help him do that. And to me, money is energy. So how do I help them step back and use money with their children, which are now two and a half and five months old? How do I teach them to not live a consumeristic lifestyle and teach their children about money through philanthropy versus teaching them money through consumption? So how do I help them see the world through a different lens? That to me, the most selfish act we can ever do is to give everything to others. And money is just energy. So the act of philanthropy, which is giving of oneself, time, talent, and treasure, to me, the treasure is the last thing to be given because we give talent and time in order to find our tribe. Because at the end of the day, the Joy Molecule and everything I'm working on is about deep human connection, and that's what we seek. Yet our society teaches us to seek consumption and accumulation and being right and driving a certain destination. And you ask where it all comes from and where the challenge is. The challenge comes from attachment. Again, these are all my opinions. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not saying I have any answers. But based on where I'm seeing and sitting in the world today, having a goal and driving towards a goal is fine. Not being happy for not achieving the goal is ludicrous. It's like I'm going to set a goal, and when I reach it, I'm going to move the goalposts. So I'm never satisfied. Well, what if money was a byproduct of doing what you were put here to do, Understanding how the system works and doing your piece? And the client asked me, this guy that I'm working with, he says, why are you so passionate about what you're doing? And one of my key goals in life is to unlock as much capital as possible is to teach people that the money's not theirs. And I want to help young couples that have means to teach their kids through philanthropy versus consumption, because that'll help everybody around them. And it's the most selfish thing you can do because it's a thing that feels the best. I feel the best when I give to others, like truly give of myself. And the book, the Joy Molecule talks about knowing what you are, who you are, why you are. There's four atoms in the molecule. The Largest atom is the joy molecule. It's the joy atom in the middle. The other three atoms are what, who and why. What's the smallest? Because when you connect around your what, you're basically a walking resume. What I do, my favorite team, but that's how a lot of Americans connect. And that they stop there. To me, that's a very surface level connection. Not bad, not good, just not deep enough for me. For some people, that's all they can handle. And that's deep enough and that's good. And there's no judgment in it. It's just that doesn't work for me. The who is my values, how I show up in the world, and my being. So my who is my essence. And that's a bigger connection point than your what. So that's a little bit bigger than the what. The why is your reason for being. And the title of the book, the Joy Molecule, came from this idea from my last book of C2P. I wrote in the last book, Conscious connection plus purpose equals joy. And the writer that I was working with said, Larry, that's C2P like. And she said, well, if H2O is the water molecule, then C2Pmust be the joy molecule. Like, that is really cute. And it sat there for a decade until I wrote this next book. And it's really interesting because I think at the end of the day, we all want to deeply connect. The first person we need to connect to is ourselves. So let's go back to the Ladder. The Ladder stops when we get stuck on the Ladder. We get stuck in survival because we can't get food, water, shelter and safety. Once we get past that and we get into self esteem and love and belonging, those are all outward expressions. Those are us living in the world and taking from the world. In order to go into ascension, which is self actualization and self transcendence, we need to go inward and we need to realize what we are and what I am as a spiritual being having a human experience with access to a mind and a body. So that spiritual being is the sky, my mind is the clouds, and my feelings are the weather. So if I get to understand that, then I'm no longer seeking outward gratification. I'm going inward. And that's where most people get stuck, is they spend their entire life trained to look for answers outside themselves, blame others. So my mom is a clinical psychotherapist and she says all the time, nobody makes you feel anything. You feel because the other person did something and it triggered something inside of Me. So when I was looking for the relationship I'm in today, I was looking for two major things. One is I wanted someone who owned their own feelings. I needed someone to wake up in the morning and when something happened saying, I'm feeling this. And I could listen and not take responsibility for it, but understand what actions I did that caused it. So we have three choices in that situation. I totally change my behavior to not rub on that damaged part of them again. Two, they can work on healing themselves so that that damage is healed, so that they don't get rubbed by the actions I take or something in the middle, which I think is the healthiest. I understand that it's an issue for them. They work on themselves. I can adapt my behavior. That doesn't change who I am. And they can work on themselves to make sure that they know it's a real thing for them. So that's something I was looking for in a relationship because nobody makes me feel anything. I feel as my mom would say, Someone says, you made me angry. I don't have that much power. I don't make you angry. I do what I do. There are people out there that consciously mess with people and try and trigger them. But it's still your responsibility to let them trigger you. It's your pain inside of you. It's your unhealed childhood, inner child stuff. So how do we live in this world? And the other thing is, I needed someone that was very physical, someone who owned their own feelings and loved physical affection and attention. Those were the things I was looking for. So those were my major qualifications and someone I could look at for the rest of my life and not get tired of looking at them. So that's where we are. So how do we evolve as humans to be ourselves versus what society taught us to be? In the book, I have this thing I call the 20 something rule. And I say from birth to 20, the world tells you who it wants you to be. And from 20 to death, somewhere in that ballpark, it could be 25 for people like me that were not very smart, it could be 16, 17 for more wise people. But at the end of the day, you have a choice to be the person that the world taught you to be or figure out who you were born to be. And I think one in a thousand are taught to be the person they were born to be. And those are the people that walk on this planet without any pain because they know exactly what they are, who they are, why they are at a very young age. They have no Questions like, the woman I profile in the book that I use this with is Carrie Rich. And I went to a fundraiser just this past year, less than a year ago, and I'm sitting at a table with some people that she knew when she was a teenager. She's now close to 40. She's got three kids, pregnant with her fourth, runs a nonprofit organization that she was handed $2 million at 26 to go change the world. And she's amazing. And according to the people that knew her when she was 14, she was amazing then. She's the same person today as she was as a teenager. So Carrie is the one out of a thousand. That's exactly who she was taught to be, the person she was born to be. But the rest of us, 999 schmucks that aren't who we were born to be have to redefine ourselves and figure out who we really are. And that's the journey, is to strip away the learning that we've gotten from the world, from Madison Avenue, from Hollywood. I mean, think about it. Madison Avenue convinces you that you need a nicer car, you need better hair, you need no wrinkles, you need all this stuff. You need to walk with the right partner on your arm, you need to drive the right car, you need to live in the right house in order to be happy. And if you study happiness, none of that has anything to do with happiness. None of it. Zero. Happiness is about meditation and mindfulness and being kind to others. It's about journaling and understanding what's going on and being present. Happiness is about simple things in life. Happiness is not about consumption, but we promote that to the end of the earth. In the United States, I pulled my kids out of school. We went to Africa in 2012. Two and a half years later, I pulled my kids out of school for six months. We traveled around the world. We spent two solid months in Australia, a little bit of time in the Middle east, some time in Israel, some time in Dubai, and three and a half months in Europe. Do you know the question I never got asked? In six months of travel, 12 countries, 27 Airbnbs, trains, planes, automobiles, you name it. There was one question I never got asked that is asked. Nobody asked me what I did. People just asked me who I was and why I was doing what I was doing. And as soon as I got back to the United States and I get back to San Diego and I start redesigning my life, everybody said, look, what do you do? And I started talking about what I do, and I said, first and foremost, I'm a dad, I was a husband, and I'm an athlete. I love to play sports. I play pickleball, I play tennis, I play golf, I cycle, I play beach volleyball. That's what I do. But most people, when they say, what do you do? They want to figure out how you make a living. And the question is, why do you want to know that? What does that tell you about me that informs you about anything? Because in other parts of the world, they don't do that because they're more curious about who you are and why you exist. So I actually created this new product. It's a deck of cards. They're called Spark cards, and they're cards to spark conversations that are unique, natural for most. So there are zero questions about what you do, and they're all questions about why you are and who you are. Four different suits, four different themes. Hearts are love and connection. Spades are purpose and legacy and all different themes. And the two is the least vulnerable question. The ace is the most vulnerable questions. I use them at dinner parties, I use them at business meetings. I'm not going to use the jack, queen, king, ace at a business meeting because they're a little bit too much about why is the world not showing up the way you want it to, or when was your heart speaking to you and you didn't want to listen. I mean, you don't need to answer those questions in a business meeting, but there are good ones that you could use for business. And how do we get away from this? What do you do? And how do we ask better questions? Because our culture, the culture that you and I live in, which I would not trade for anything. Everybody told me when I got back from Africa, a lot of people would say, I bet you can't wait to go back to Africa. It's been 13, almost 14 years. I have not been back to Africa. I don't need to go to Africa to get what they have. I went there to learn what they have. And I've been trying to figure out how to get that here. That's what I want. How do I find the peace and the joy that they have living in our culture versus going there to feel more complete? And that's been my journey. That's been the last 14 years of my life, is trying to figure that out. And that's what the book's about. Five lessons, eight stories. People. I met Armstrong. You'll read it in the book. But I ended up donating some money to him to become A pilot. He was making a dollar to $2 a day working at an airport trying to figure out how to become a pilot. I gave him a thousand bucks to take his test. And that led to a whole different story that you'll read in the book. And the last story in the book is Trinity, who I met last about a year and a half ago at a conference in Mexico. And Trinity is a street kid from Kampala. Both of those people in the book teach me this lesson that circumstance does not define my joy. My joy is not defined by what I'm doing or where I am in my life. Joy is an internal knowing that I am enough and that I am who I am. The second lesson was Carrie Riches, the one who was given $2 million. My work needs to matter. Not everybody's work needs to matter. There are plenty of people that can go to work every day, have a wonderful life, and deal with jerks that I wouldn't deal with that just are not authentic. They're not genuine. They would steal from their brother. I just can't deal with that. I don't and I won't. And some people are fine with that, but I'm not. So my work needs to matter. The third one is the most critical for me, which is three stories about three challenged athletes. Jeff Mata, who I met in 2021. I started riding bikes when I was a kid. I joined the Challenged Athletes Foundation's biking club. And the first day of biking, I see this woman on a tandem, and I'm like, what's going on? Turns out she's blind. I find out a few months later, she's part of this group group called the Blind Stokers Club. And the Blind Stokers Club has sighted riders riding in the front of the bike and blind riders riding in the back of the bike as the stoker. Front of a tandem is the captain. Back of the tandem is a stoker. Hence Blind Stokers. So I start riding with Challenged Athletes Foundation. I hear about this thing called mdc. And MDC is a million dollar challenge. It's the ride from San Francisco to San Diego, 640 miles, seven days. And the objective was to raise a million dollars. The first time they did it, 19 years ago. And I did it in 2022. And before I did it, I talked to the guy who runs the Blind Stokers, and I said, do me a favor. I'll learn to become a captain, and I'll actually do the mat. The million dollar challenge on a tandem with a blind guy or woman. If you give me an athlete that happens to be blind versus just some blind person that wants to ride because there were a lot of blind people that just want to ride that don't have a lot of. So he gives me this 5 foot 8, 155 pound beast who happens to be a world champion jiu jitsu competitor, becomes a triathlete. Now he's on the US judo team for the Paralympics in 2028. So Jeff motto is my engine in the back that I ride with. I spent hundreds of hours on a bike with Jeff. Got to hear his whole life story on what happened and the fact that he went blind at 26 and by his 27th birthday he tried to commit suicide. He had gained, he was 5 foot 5, got up to 220 pounds and his fighting weight when he was A boxer was 156. So he gained 60 plus pounds eating, drinking, doing everything else to feel sorry for himself. Obviously the suicide attempt didn't work. It took him another four years to accept the fact he was blind. So he's been blind for 18 years. So it took him five years to, to come to grips with I'm blind, this is the rest of my life. And the last 13 years have been a transformation that have been amazing. Graduated college, owns a jiu jitsu studio on the US Judo team, has amazing relationships in his life. Just a great guy. I got to spend a lot of time with him and I rode from San Francisco to San Diego with him. His story's in the book Second Challenged Athlete story is Moon Tucker. And Moon lost her arm in a motorcycle accident at 42 and her life was a frigging mess. And she watched herself with her right, her left arm trapped inside the back wheel of the motorcycle because her, her cuff of her jacket got stuck in the drivetrain on the other side of the bike. So her arm is getting totally melted off of her body and she's just sitting there trying to figure out and she's watching her body flap down the street outside of her body, watching this thing that is her body and she's realizing that she's a spirit watching this experience happen. And she realized that her whole belief system, her entire life was all made up from things. I mean she just saw this like God got in her brain or whatever you want to call it and said, you're mine, you're mine. And for 30 seconds she was just floating above this body being dragged down the highway. And the body stopped, the bike stopped, she almost bled to death. But she didn't. Somebody came and saved her and she ended up getting lifted out. And her story, she became a world class archer. So she was on the Paralympic archery team where she used her right arm to hold the bow and her teeth to pull back the arrow. And she was world class. She was the first women ever to make the Paralympic compound archery team for the Olympics for the US Team. The third story is the Gentleman I'm writing the next book with, which is the title of this whole section of the book, which to me is the critical part and what we've been talking about, this ascension ladder. So Joe delagrave is the coach of the wheelchair rugby team for the US Paralympic Team. He was a participant and co captain for years. So Joe is 6 foot 6. Before he broke his neck at 19, he was 260 pounds. He was between freshman and sophomore year of college. Joe's become a great friend. And I've been blessed to all the people I'm talking about in this book I've gotten to meet and spend a lot of time with. So they're friends. And it's like somebody said to me, larry, most people never get to meet one person like these people in their life. And you've met so many. And there's more that I didn't include in the book. And I feel blessed. I mean, I'm this connector. So the world is putting these people in my path because my job, my opportunity, is to connect them to the people I need to connect to. So Joe Delagrave meets with me the first time in 2021 on Skype. I've never met him in person. We're meeting on Zoom and he says to me that he broke his neck at 19 and lost his identity. And then in 2016, he didn't make the Olympic team because as co captain of the team and two time world player of the year, he didn't make the US team in 2016 because the coach happened to be the co captain that he was co captain with and hated him. So he decided to make Joe's life miserable. So we cut him from the team. He didn't even cut him. He made him an alternate, which is worse, which means he has to go to all the practice, but he doesn't get to go to the Olympics. So here's this guy and he keeps telling me he's lost his identity twice now. And I said, joe, how do you make a living? He says, well, the team pays me a little bit and then I speak. And I've dealt with a lot of challenged athletes so far in my life. And I said, joe, what do you speak about? Before he opened his mouth, I knew he was going to say, I speak about overcoming adversity. And he says, I talk to people about overcoming adversity. And I said, joe, I'm an able bodied person. And no matter how much you talk about overcoming adversity, you sitting in a chair, I can never identify with you as an able bodied person. Now it's like me telling somebody what it's like to be a woman. I'll never know what it's like to be a woman and I'll never know what it's like for you to be in a wheelchair because I'm not in a wheelchair. But you just spent 20 minutes telling me about you lost your identity twice. If you use those same stories and talk about identity loss, I can identify with that because I understand what my identity is. So that's what Joe talks about now. And that whole section of the book is called the Identity Illusion. So from the time we're born until now, you've been creating this identity based on trying to feel safe and trying to feel comfortable. So when somebody smiles, you want to do more of that. And when somebody frowns, you want to do less of that. And when somebody tells you that this is good, you want to do more of that, this is bad, you want to do less of that. You start to create this identity of being safe, being comfortable and being accepted and being part of. And that becomes our identity. But what we don't realize is that identity is really helpful for a child to be safe and comfortable. But once you become an adult, you have so much more capacity to handle so much more than you ever thought that you no longer need your identity. You need an identity to live in our society. So an identity is not bad, but you don't need it to stop you from doing all the things you're capable of. So this identity thing is an illusion because it's not who we are, it's what we've created in our life. So that's the third lesson in the book. So circumstance doesn't define your joy. I need work that matters. My identity and my ego are keeping me from accessing joy. The fourth one is perseverance, persistence and patience. And the fifth lesson is a story about this gentleman. His name is Irving Levin and Irving and his wife Stephanie. Irving, I don't know. Interesting life through his teens, musician, traveled the world, decided to come back and go back to school, ended up in the banking world, ended up building a credit card bank for services company for Visa, when Visa was early on, and then was asked to create a private bank. So ended up going out and doing it on his own. And 10 years later, he sold it for half a billion dollars, a business that he started in his garage. So now he has all this money. And over the last 20 years, he's learned to be a really good philanthropist. So when he first started, he put a lot of money aside and he said, I'm just going to fund everything. And over time, he's found things that become more and more aligned with who he is and why he wants to do giving. And we have a very similar philosophy that it's the most selfish thing we can do, but we need results and we need to connect with the people we're working with, because that's the reason to give, is to connect more deeply. So I was taught earlier on my entrepreneurial journey that entrepreneurship is like a whittler. So you get a penknife and you got to chop down a tree. And as soon as the tree is chopped down now you start taking off all the branches, and then you take off all the bark, and then you start whittling on the tree. And he says the best business is when you get it down to a toothpick. So you keep whittling and whittling and whittling. And I've been whittling for 32 years. And Irving and his wife had been whittling for 20 years around philanthropy. And where they settled, they started probably a few years into their giving to give money to students that were going to a local state school, Portland State, and they started giving scholarships to first generation students, people who are part of families that never had anybody go to college. So that was two decades ago. They started doing that in 2025. They invested in 900 students. $5,000 scholarships per student. 250 people graduating every year. And this year it's up to a thousand. And that's where they're capping it. 250 new students every year. They have a three and a half person staff that they fund and they give out $5 million in cash every year. So they have an endowment that pays that every year. They built the infrastructure that can do more. So Irving's looking for other people that want to help scale this thing and put more money into the machine, because he's already built the machine. But they get so much joy from helping people get through college. And there are some crazy connections throughout. I told you, I'm a connector, right? So Irving was the chairman of the Board of ddd. So the reason I went to Africa in the first place was to bring computers to rural villages in eastern and northern Uganda. So I started studying all the third world country technology companies that were out there. And one of them was this company called DDD Digital Divide Data, started by Jeremy Hochstein. And one of the guys that worked for them is Karinda Karuthi. So Karinda Karuthi lived in Nairobi. He's the COO of ddd. Turns out later I find I meet Irving later after I met DDD and after I met Karunda and I met Irving and I found out he was the chairman of the board of this company. So I start connecting the dots. Karunda I met in 2012 or early 2013. Armstrong story is really long. But at the end of the day, I ended up moving Armstrong to the United States and I helped him. He now has a wife and two kids living in San Francisco, trying to build a life between eastern sub Saharan Africa and San Francisco and build a life where he sells and buys parts and helps fix planes. He's into maintenance, all that stuff. But I needed someone to look at Armstrong and say, is he worth the investment? And it turns out Karunda was the COO of ddd, but he also happened to be a commercial airline pilot. Long story, it doesn't matter how he got there. But I tell that story in the book and Karunda is amazing. And I said, Karunda, can you do me a favor? Can you interview this kid? I'm thinking of investing a lot in him. Is he worth the investment? So Karunda invests in him. Years later I find out that Karunda's brother, Karuthi, Karuthi, that's his name, went to college in Portland and his scholarship came from Irving and Stephanie. How does this stuff happen? How do these worlds collide in such magical ways? So those are the five lessons. That last lesson is called the Enough Academy. When we have enough, what is our responsibility? Back to the world. So there's three more books that are going to come from this. So it'll be a, by the time I'm done, it'll be a six book series. So Success Redefined as the first book, the Joy Molecule. I'm going to write a book called the Identity Illusion. Actually Joe's going to write his story. So I wrote the intro, the forward and he's writing his story about losing his identity. Carrie, Rich and I are going to write a book called Redirecting Capital which will be stories about all These people that are using business as a tool to do good and make money. So how do we stop teaching people to go to Goldman Sachs and Accenture and start redirecting them to projects that actually do good and make money at the same time? Capitalism is a beautiful thing. And then the last book I want to write is the Enough Academy. I want to profile 10 to 12 philanthropists and explain where the joy comes from in the giving. It's not about the money. It's not about the accolades you get from writing the check. It's about connecting deeply with the people that you're changing their lives. That's what it's all about. Or the other people that are in the organization that you're serving with, where you're finding connection there, it could be one or the other, but that's what philanthropy is about. So those are the five lessons. Circumstances not define your joy. I need to do work that matters. My identity and my ego kill my joy. I need to persevere no matter what. And when you have enough, what is your responsibility back to society. Those are my five lessons. Now the question is, what are your five lessons? My lessons are not yours. Mine are mine. Some people identity is not a big thing. They're very selfless. I've met many of them, but it is an issue for me. And some people persevere no matter what. Michael Singer is one of my favorite authors, and he wrote the Untethered Soul and Living Untethered and then Surrender Experiment. And I feel like I'm living some other Surrender Experiment and the Untethered Soul. And everything Michael talks about is the world is unfolding perfectly. The only problem is it's not meeting our expectations. It's a beautiful way to look at the world. To me, it's spectacular. The world is unfolding beautifully. And I said earlier that one of our challenges as humans in the society is that we're too attached to our expectations. And if we can let go of attachment, we have an opportunity to be more peaceful. Because just seeing what unfolds is beautiful. It's all beautiful. The only problem is our mind wants to give it meaning. That's not because we've been trained that pain and all this other stuff will produce the results we want. I'm not buying that anymore. I'm not saying I'm right. And I don't need anybody else to believe what I believe. All I can tell you is I wake up every day with a whole lot of peace. Now I got some work to do on my body. At 62 my body's starting to talk to me in different ways than it did. So I have work to do as a. As a creature on this planet. But as a soul, as a spirit, I feel so peaceful right now. That's all I seek so.
- [45:59]
A
Well, the desire to try to make money, to try to get ahead, to do all that. It's a form of control. Trying to control. What is control exactly? And it's trying to control. To say I want to control where my life goes and where, where I end up and what I assets I ascertain and kind of person I'm going to be with. And it's a. It's all forms of just trying to grasp onto things and control where I'm going that I'm so worried about the future that I forget where I'm at. And I forget I'm just a being right here.
- [46:38]
B
There's only one moment that exists.
- [46:41]
A
Exactly. Nothing certain about how we go in the future, where we go, but it's just a thing I see in a lot of men I work with. It's a lot of desire to try to get to a certain place because they aren't there yet.
- [46:59]
B
I'll be happy.
- [47:01]
A
Yeah. And as you said earlier, it's good to have goals, it's good to have ambitions, and it's good to have some idea of how to make a living and have all those different parts of the, you know, the needs that we have as human beings to survive and everything and also to help us thrive. But there's a certain level too of letting even some of that goes and knowing that that will be taken care of as well as we move in our life and as we are here in our open, I think is another part. And what I saw from the story that you have shared is because you were open to seeing what was around you and open to the people there. And also a bit of asking. You took some of the actions, you took some of the components that it was there, but that was because you were in that moment where with them
- [47:54]
B
I followed my higher being. Every time I've been living from highest self, which is my knowing. The world has been spectacular. And every time you talk about control, control lives in one place, lives in the mind. It lives in the clouds. So My being has five major attributes. My being is 100% love. My being is 1000% abundant. My being is totally present. My being is grateful. And my being is neutral. It has no meaning, attaches no meaning to anything. The gratitude part is something I played around with over Thanksgiving. And everybody was talking about their gratitude and creating gratitude lists. And I started thinking about it, and I've talked to a bunch of people since. And a gratitude list is convince your mind that you're grateful. And when you realize that you are a being that has a mind, then there's no need for a gratitude list anymore, because you are grateful every moment of every day. You live in gratitude. And you don't have to convince your mind of anything because you have agency over your mind. So for me, my word, last year, which was one of the most pivotal years of my life, 2025, I had the theme of quiet mind, skillful mind. How do I get my mind to be what it is, and how do I make it a skillful tool versus this runaway train that causes me wreaks havoc in my life. That's what it did for most of my life. And this year, it's about agency over that quiet, skillful mind. That quiet, skillful mind has gotten rid of 99.9% of any negative thought patterns because I told it they're no longer necessary. I don't need you. You don't serve me. So they don't come back anymore because they know they're just going to get beaten away. Beaten away. However you want to look at it, that they don't serve me anymore. And now I get to decide how I use that mind to be of service to this being. So agency is the word I'm using this year to say I have agency over my thoughts and my feelings. I listen to them as humans. I can tell you there's times when I thought I was scared, that I was truly excited. But based on our definition of society, that shows up as fear. So the difference between fear and excitement, I think, is very minimal. So are we mislabeling feelings? Do we even have labels for feelings beyond happy, sad, mad, angry, fearful, excited? That's it. There's so many other words of frustration and annoyance and so many things that live in nuances between these big words. Like the word I heard a lot in my life over the last few decades has been devastated. That was devastating. And I would listen to it and say, was that really devastating? That's a heavy word that attaches a lot of weight to it. Like, I could see being weighted down for a long time feeling like something was devastating. It just happened. It just was. And the label we give it gives us that energy. So why are we labeling it that when that's not what happened? And the crazy part is, if we look at different cultures around the world, I use the idea of death. Death in the United States is all about mourning the loss of. And death in India is all about celebrating the life that's passed. We're all human, right? Which one is right? I don't know. Maybe there is no right. Maybe it's just tradition. Maybe it's just what we've been taught. So that gets back to our belief system. Where does our belief system come from? I'm one of 8 billion humans on this planet. I'm experiencing 18 billionth of what humans are experiencing. I've been around the sun 62 and a quarter times, and everything I've experienced in those 62 and a quarter years is unfolded in front of me. And everything I've seen, heard, touched, felt, read, absorbed has created my belief system. But it's not even what I read and what I absorbed. It's my interpretation of all that stuff. So now I'm basing my entire belief system on an interpretation of 18 billionth of human interaction with the world. And I believe that to be truth. Why? I love working with smart people because I can talk to them about what is your belief system and why do you believe it? Just because you have it doesn't make it right. Well, I need to be, and I need control. Control of what exactly? I don't understand half of it. But what I do know is that peace is what I think we all seek. And peace and joy to me are synonymous. And a joy is us knowing, just knowing that I'm more than what I thought I was. I met somebody In December of 24, right before I had a huge breakthrough in January of 25. And she said, larry, it's just a decision. And I'm sitting there in my frustration, just getting out of a depression. And the depression was really heavy around my divorce and thinking that I wanted somebody to come save me. And I realized through that depression, the only one who can save me is me. So that was a huge breakthrough for me. The next thing she said is, life's a decision. I'm like, yeah, right. But when I went through my breakthrough, I'm like, it can't be this easy. And my friend said, yeah, it's this easy because it's a decision. It's a decision to let go of mind. It's a decision to trust that I am something more than what I think I am. And that there's a possibility that this skin sack and this being that I'm being put into is not what I think it is. Because thinking is an action that this being takes, it is not the being. So when I say I don't like myself, who is I and who is myself? So to me, I is the sky and myself are the clouds. So when I say I don't like myself, I don't like the cloud formation that's in me right now. But then I'm not the clouds, so how do I not like myself? That's an interesting conversation. So to me, that's where I live every day, is who am I? Not who I've been taught to be, but who am I? I am. I am oneness. I am connected to you. I'm connected to every human on this planet because we are beings having a human experience with access to a mind and a body.
- [55:23]
A
And it's also not to say I wanted to add to that because that was beautifully stated. It's not to say you shouldn't not be observing the clouds or ignore what's happening.
- [55:33]
B
No way. They're beautiful.
- [55:35]
A
Very valid component of being. And to say, oh, inner peace is just happiness. And all the time. No, no, no. Overall joy is a mixture of understanding that what the dark clouds are there for. And sometimes. Well, not sometimes. Let me backtrack half sentence. I have a nice view of the mountains from my place and I live in Colorado here. So when I see the afternoon storms during the summer roll in, it adds a certain element of beauty. Watching dark storm clouds form, it's like, oh, this could be interesting to see what this stirs up. What kind of rain will it bring? What is this going to be like at the end? Because a lot of times too in Colorado ends with beautiful sun. It's just a quick afternoon storm and it looks so much more greener. All the plants are a little bit more alive. World feels a bit more alive after this dark clouds have passed. So it's. I wanted to add that, that it's valid to see all these things that pass through us.
- [56:50]
B
It shouldn't determine our joy. It doesn't affect our peace. So my daughter and I used to sit on the balcony. We lived in Riverdale in the Bronx on the Hudson River. And the storms in New York either come down through the Long Island Sound or they come down the Hudson River. And I would go sit on the storms that came down and the thunder and the lightning and everything. We'd sit on the balcony and just watch these storms come through. And they were beautiful, absolutely spectacular. It's one of the things I miss about New York living in San Diego is that we don't have thunderstorms here. We don't see lightning, we don't see thunder. And it's a beautiful thing to see a storm in its heyday, as long as it doesn't destroy where you're living. But I just find nature to be spectacular, good or bad, and it's the same thing that happens inside of us. It just is. Our need to attach meaning to all this stuff is the place where the pain shows up. The pain doesn't show up in spite. The pain shows up because we give it meaning. It's not painful. It just is. Not good, not bad, none of it. And the crazy part is, my company's called Five Dots. And the reason it's called five Dots is Steve Jobs did a commencement speech at Stanford in 2005. And he said in that speech, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. And you have to trust in something. Your gut, karma, something that everything's going to connect down the line. And that's how I'm living my life, is that somehow these dots will connect. And you have to trust that they're all happening for a reason. And we're here to live on this ladder. We're here to climb. We're here to figure out where we are, no better, no worse, and just observe and be present to what's actually going on and reach up to people that see what we don't see and to reach down to those that don't see what we see. And we're here to help each other on this journey together because we are one. And I never believed that for 61 years and four months and six days. And then something snapped. And I saw something that I never thought I'd see, which is my spirit separating from my body and going off and saying, okay, this is who you truly are, and let me put you back in your body. And I'm like, holy crap. I am a being that's in a body. I am not this body and I'm not this mind that changed my life. And now I can process that. It took me almost a year to process it. Good. Six months to integrate it. And now I'm exercising, living from that place. And the more I do that, the better my life gets, the simpler my life.
- [59:36]
A
Yeah, Just don't press the eject button as James Bond might in the car.
- [59:44]
B
I have no desire to. Yeah. In. In my transformational experience, I saw life as being hard, challenging, and easy. For some people, life is easy, and my life has been pretty easy with some challenge Born a middle class white kid in the United States, I've met people that have challenge and life's been hard. And there's three levels of hard hard where life throws something at you and your spirit just says, this is too hard for me to handle. I'm going to age as a human, my brain's going to evolve, my feelings will develop, I'm spiritual, done too hard. The next level of hard is when you need to numb it. Alcohol, drugs, whatever. This experience is too hard. I need to numb it so I don't feel anything. The third level of hard is like this experience is too hard. I need to end it. I'm done. That's suicide. So when I went through my experience, I'm sitting here looking at this saying, okay, I used to judge people that drank too much and now I don't judge them. Maybe I judge, but I'm more curious as to what caused them to have that need to drink and numb versus you're an idiot for doing this. I still feel sad that this is the path that their soul has been put through because I know how beautiful it is to not have to deal with that. But I no longer have the judgment of its bad. I'm just more curious as to what they experience in their life to get to that point. And I've been in enough processes, met enough people to realize that some souls are just stuck where they are. That's it. They're not going to grow and some are going to launch and flourish and some are going to regress. It's fascinating since I've been playing with this new book that I'm. I don't know if I'll publish it, but I have to wait for the joy molecule to move where it's gotta go. But I came up with this construct for my daughter. So she asked me a week and a half ago, why are we all really here? And she's 25. And what an amazing question for my daughter to ask me. And I've been challenging Abraham Maslow for the last 12 years. I did a TED talk in 2014 that said that Maslow's hierarchy of needs is no longer accurate. And what I've learned is that Maslow never created a hierarchy of needs. He just talked about life's evolution. The hierarchy of needs was created by some consultants, do some research created by consultants to be used in the business world in order to give structure to the constructs that he was working with. And Maslow talked about survival. Food, water, shelter and safety. He talked about what I'm calling me, which is love and belonging and self esteem. And then he was talking about what I'm claiming I'm terming as ascension, which is self actualization and self transcendence. And I'm calling this the Ascension Ladder. And I really feel like I'm on a ladder. And my job is to reach down below to people below me and help them up and to reach up to people above me to ask them what they're seeing that I don't see. And that's why we're here. And the ladder metaphor works a lot better for me than a hierarchy because there's really no destination in life. There's just a journey. And I think it's about knowing where you are on the Ladder and just being accepting of there is no better or worse place.
- [63:13]
A
So many more questions I could ask because such a great amount of share today.
- [63:18]
B
We can go on for hours.
- [63:20]
A
We could. And I'm only just getting warmed up on some questions.
- [63:25]
B
Maybe we'll do another session. Yeah.
- [63:28]
A
Yeah. And I definitely want to take this and digest it too. I loved a lot of the analogies and the stories that you shared. Such incredible stories and incredible people that have been a part of your journey here.
- [63:43]
B
I'm blessed.
- [63:44]
A
Yeah.
- [63:45]
B
Truly.
- [63:46]
A
It's incredible. Before we fully wrap, if there's any last thing you want the audience to know that we haven't covered yet, minute or two, there's anything wrong there. Yeah.
- [63:59]
B
Well, if they want to get in touch with me, they can go to five-dotS com mail LarryEstelin.com, feel free to reach out. I'll respond to everybody. Somebody read my book a couple weeks ago and sent me an email and ended up having a phone conversation with them last week. And a wonderful Frenchman living here in San Diego, somebody gave him the book. And I love talking to people and finding out what their stories are. So I'd love to speak to anybody about it. But from a content perspective, I think we covered a lot. I appreciate the questions you've asked and how you are approaching this whole process of trying to educate your audience. And it's a beautiful thing to have a platform to help people improve their lives. And I think there's a lot of men. I've been in men's groups for a few years now, and there's a lot of men with a lot of ego. And I shy away from them less so today than I did before because I know that they're just coming from a place of loneliness and pain. And I have a lot more empathy than I did before. But I love people that are evolved and evolving. One of my friends, his name is Attila Tota. Attila lost his arm to cancer almost nine years ago, and he lost his wife to cancer three years ago. And I meet with him every Sunday for brunch. He said I wouldn't get. I wouldn't take my arm back. For the lessons I've learned and how I live my life today. It was worth every ounce of flesh, so I'll just leave with that. Everything happens exactly the way it needs to in order for us to learn the lessons we need to learn.
- [65:33]
A
Beautiful. Beautifully stated. And thank you.
- [65:36]
B
My pleasure. Thank you for having me as a guest.
- [65:39]
A
Of course. Yeah. Thank you for coming on and taking the time here to share your story. Story. And a lot of the valuable lessons that we gain.