← The Ronan Levy Podcast
The Ronan Levy Podcast
How To Connect To Self, The Planet, And The Great Mystery w/ Mike Brcic
01:09:05
Mike Brcic is an entrepreneur, adventurer, writer, and family man in Toronto with a penchant for world travel.After selling his company Sacred Rides in 2019 (the AirBNB of adventure mountain biking) He went into a deep existential search for meanin...
Loading summary
Transcript132 lines
- [00:00]
A
One of the questions he asked during that session was, where are you seeking validation and why? And I realized this whole. This whole thing, you know, that I'd been killing myself for all the time, all the money, all the people, and everything with this company was just in a quest to receive the validation that I never got, you know, from Mommy and Daddy. Essentially. It always comes back to Mommy and Daddy issues.
- [00:22]
B
It always comes back, usually to, like, hoping that somehow being successful in business will make us feel complete. This song is dedicated to you. Hey, everyone. Ronin here. For any Canadians listening to this episode who came of age in the mid-90s, the quote I'm about to read to you may sound familiar as it's from a great Canadian band from Halifax. But before we get to that, a quick shout out to our sponsor, a great Canadian company called Sizzle Brands, maker of Quench Hydration. Quench was formulated by another great east coast kid, Andy O'Brien, who will actually be a guest on this podcast soon. Andy is a great strength coach. He is, in fact, a legendary strength coach who works with some of the world's top athletes. And I can honestly say that I've never met anyone who takes his craft in the science of performance more seriously than Andy. That's why I'm confident when I say that Quench Hydration is the best hydration drink ever made. Quench is available across Canada at many retailers, including Sport Check, as well as most lifetime fitness locations in the US or you can go to quenchhidration.com to buy it and use Le Levy 20 for a 20% discount code. That's quench spelled C W E N C H. Okay, back to the quote. It's from the band sloan in their 2001 Pretty Together album. It goes, I can't invest my time I've tried it all and I'm tired of trying. You think you got it all figured out and everything you think it's about when you found yourself finally released, you hit the ground and kept running east and now it's all catching up to you all these things usually do saw it all and I can't deny it's a hard life living a lie if it feels good, do it. Why am I quoting some relatively, at least nowadays, obscure song? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but in thinking about today's episode, it just kind of felt right. Today's conversation is with a guy named Mike Burcheech. While it's not usually my style to refer to someone as a guy, it's just kind of fitting. For this conversation. Because as you'll hear, Mike's story is an archetypical story of an entrepreneur. Someone who attaches identity to his business, achieve some success, only to come to the realization that life is all about connection to more important things. I love his story, and I think you will too. Enjoy. Let's talk about how this all got started. So we started from the end with your business coaching program, which is somewhat contrary in nature and question scale. And I'd love to deep dive into that further. But before we go there, how did you get on this road to creating. Sorry, what is the name of the business coaching program?
- [03:19]
A
It's called the Entrepreneur's Compass.
- [03:21]
B
The Entrepreneur's Compass. And you have way Wayfinders is the name of your current business. And before that you had a business called Sacred Rides, Right?
- [03:30]
A
Correct.
- [03:30]
B
Yeah. Tell us how you started on that journey.
- [03:37]
A
The entrepreneurial journey or my current journey with wayfinders, or. Where. Where do you want me to start?
- [03:42]
B
Go Kindergarten. Start. Start with kindergarten? Yeah. And diapers and learning to, you know, wipe your own butt. No. Talk about Sacred Rides. You know, I don't know much about your background, but I was looking into it and looks like a very cool business. And from this brief conversation so far, it sounds like in many ways it was aligned with a lot of the things that you look at now. But I'm curious, where did the idea come from? It tell us that story?
- [04:10]
A
Well, it's funny, you know, I've told this story many times with other entrepreneurs and, and I thought my story was a little bit unique, but it actually turns out to be, I think, more the default than. Than. Than the opposite. And I got into entrepreneurship because I graduated university. I moved to a little ski town in the Rockies. I just wanted to be a ski bum for a year and then. And then figure out, quote, unquote, real life.
- [04:35]
B
Yep.
- [04:36]
A
And I got. I got fired from my first three jobs. And for what?
- [04:41]
B
I hope it's good.
- [04:44]
A
I mean, just generally not being that into it. Okay, let's just. Let's just say it that way. And you know, it's not like these were particularly rewarding jobs. They were service industry jobs in a, you know, in a tourist town. And I realized after that that a. My reputation was pretty crap in this town and it's going to be hard to find a fourth job. It's a small town of 6,000 people.
- [05:07]
B
Where was it, by the way?
- [05:09]
A
Fernie. Fernie. British Columbia. And I also realized that I probably wasn't cut out to work for Other people. And that my path probably involved creating something for myself. And it was a conversation. Walking along the river. There's this beautiful river that, that runs through town and you know, these sparkling, beautiful rocky mountain peaks all around you. It's a very inspiring place to walk around. And I was walking around with a friend and just kind of wondering, oh, what am I going to do now? You know, my name is mud and I don't really like working for other people. And he said, well, you, you, you seem to love mountain biking a lot and there's all these amazing trails here and more and more tourists coming here. Why don't you see if people will pay you to take them, Take them, you know, guide them around. And I sat on that for a few days and I thought, geez, I guess that does sound like a pretty cool way to make a. Make a living or make a few bucks at least. And a couple days later I roped a friend in to this idea and we wrote a business plan. I still have a copy of that business plan, I think, like the fonts I used for that business plan. And it was just so funny. And we took that to a place called Community Futures Development Corporation and they gave us a $10,000 loan. That was our first loan. And we were in business. And it was, you know, it was a, it was a tough start. We had no idea what we were doing.
- [06:30]
B
Yep.
- [06:30]
A
And our first year we had one customer and, and then, you know, we, and, and by customer I mean, you know, somebody who paid us to go mountain biking. We had a, we bought a fleet of mountain bikes and people, you know, people rented bikes from us. That was good, but that wasn't really meant to be the core of the business, but it was enough to keep us afloat. And then we had explosive growth in year two with 200, with two customers. So we had 100% growth.
- [06:54]
B
And, and you talk about not scaling. Come on now.
- [06:58]
A
Yeah, I mean, yeah, like who, who has 100% growth? Like that's pretty hard to sustain. In third year, third year, we started offering week long overnight trips. And that was when things really took off. We managed to convince a journalist from Outside magazine to participate in one of the trips. And we got a, we got a feature in Outside magazine. And then things really took off for us. And then my partner left, I think in year five, I think it was to become a chiropractor. But I kept, I kept growing that business in B.C. for 10 years. And then I moved back to Toronto after 10 years. And that's When I started expanding internationally, all around the world, first in Peru and then, you know, Europe and eventually, eventually all over the world.
- [07:43]
B
Cool. And that business was called Sacred Rides.
- [07:46]
A
It was, yeah. And I'll tell you the story of the name. And, and I still. And the business, I sold the business four or five years ago and it still continues to this day under the same name. And for many years I had an ambivalent relationship with the name because it, you know, it has religious overtones and people, people would sometimes be like, if these are like God related trips or what's going on with the name. But I'll tell you the story. For the first 10 years it was called Fernie Fat Tire Adventures and Fernie, the town where we based in Fat Tire to distinguish from road biking. And when I went to Peru, I think it was my second trip to Peru, I went once to go on a scouting trip to check it out. And that was when I decided, yeah, this is amazing. We need to add Peru and we need to expand internationally. And then the second time was our first client trip. And I think it was day seven of the trip and we sent all the clients off to Machu Picchu for the day. I'd already been there, didn't need to go back. And I was looking forward. We had, you know, at that point we had six hard days of mountain biking. My legs were kind of thrashed and I was just really looking forward to just a day in bed and hanging out and you know, drinking pisco sours on the, on, on a patio somewhere. And you know, 7:00am or 8:00am, my, my lead guide, local Peruvian fellow, starts banging on the door. He's like, get out of bed. I'm like, well, go away, go away. He's like, we're going biking. I'm like, there's no way I'm going biking. Finally convinces me and he takes me on this remote. He takes me up this remote valley out of this town called Auntie Tambo near Cusco. And we're just, we're climbing forever. And we're going through these like little remote villages and people are coming out to say hi. You know, they don't, they don't really see many tourists in the area, at least back then. That was 2006. And after, I don't know, about an hour and a half of climbing, we get to this plateau where kind of the top of this peak and we get to this ancient Inca ruin and we have the whole place to ourselves. And like, why? What is this place? And he says he Says these are, these are the remains of the first Inca king's palace. I'm like, what the hell are we doing here all by ourselves? How is this, like, not, you know, it's this beautiful place surrounded by these huge mountains and this, like, amazing, you know, amazing tingle up and down my, you know, chills up and down my spine and just how beautiful this place was. And then, and then we proceeded to bike down. It was just like this incredible, like, non stop descent across these, like, rice terraces and, and through these beautiful villages surrounded by the Andes. And that was, that was to me, you know, I, I, I grew up, I was raised a Catholic. I rejected that around grade nine. Wasn't really interested in the strict dogma of Catholicism. And so this, this idea of a relationship with God or with something sacred was, was quite foreign to me.
- [10:38]
B
Yeah.
- [10:39]
A
But then that, that entire experience of biking through that valley was like this incredible experience of experiencing, you know, just the beauty of the world, experiencing the divine, experiencing being in complete flow. And we happened to be in the sacred valley. And that's when I renamed the company Sacred Rides. And it was this idea of using mountain biking and using travel as a means of experiencing the sacred because you get to experience these different cultures, you get to experience being in complete flow. And yeah, I still remember that. I can close my eyes and easily go back to that place. And that ruthless.
- [11:17]
B
And ayahuasca didn't have anything to do with it at the time. I'm sure it didn't.
- [11:22]
A
Actually. None. That would be, yeah, that would be a tough feat to pull off mountain biking on ayahuasca.
- [11:30]
B
That would be impressive, that's for sure. Um, okay, so, so you run, it continues to grow. And then at one point do you decide that it's time to sell sacred rides and why?
- [11:42]
A
Well, there was a journey that predated that. Okay. And 2013, I was, this was, this was about six years into our, you know, after I moved back to Toronto and I was growing the business, you know, internationally. We're expanding all over the world. I was a little bit impatient with our growth because scaling in that industry is very difficult, you know, to set up a new destination, you got to scatter it out, you got to find guides, you got to find suppliers, you got to get all the gear. You know, it's not, it's not a software company.
- [12:15]
B
Yeah.
- [12:16]
A
And, but I wanted to expand more rapidly, and so I brought on investors, I brought on investors again in 2014. I did it again in 2016. In 2016, we launched this Whole software platform, which was, in a nutshell, it was like Airbnb for mountain bike guiding.
- [12:36]
B
Okay.
- [12:37]
A
And so we wanted. We wanted to. You know, we were. I was constantly getting emails. You know, hi, I'm. I'm Paolo from the Italian Alps. I've been mountain biking here my whole life. I know this area like the back of my hand. I'd love to put together a trip for you guys and partner with you guys. And. And so we. I wanted to put together something that I could empower those people, but it didn't require all the, you know, time and effort on our part, so created this whole software platform that allowed them to create their own one and two day trips, and they had to go through a training program and vetting and all that kind of stuff. But it was essentially. It was like a mini franchise model almost. And I put about a year into scaling that program, and our goal in 2016 was to be in 150 countries by 2021.
- [13:26]
B
Okay.
- [13:26]
A
And by late 2017, we were well on our way. We'd added about 45 countries in the span of a year. And I should have felt proud of myself. I should have felt amazing about where this was going. And instead, every day I woke up, and it was a struggle. It was a struggle to get out of bed. It was a struggle to get to work. I didn't enjoy it anymore. And a couple. A couple of things that were sort of a big slap in the face that changed the trajectory. One was reading a book, which was. With which you're probably familiar, the Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. And that book was like a big slap in the face of realizing just how much my ego was driving the bus. And the other was doing a session at MMT in Carmel. I know you. I know you were a part of MNT with Philip McKernan.
- [14:25]
B
Yep.
- [14:26]
A
And one of the questions he asked during that session was, where are you seeking validation and why? And I realized this whole thing, you know, that I've been killing myself for all the time, all the money, all the people, and everything with this company was just in a quest to receive the validation that I never got from mommy and Daddy, essentially.
- [14:49]
B
And I was waiting for us to get to that point of why you became an entrepreneur, but, yep, it always.
- [14:56]
A
Comes back to mommy and daddy issues.
- [14:59]
B
It always comes back usually to, like, hoping that somehow being successful in business will make us feel complete.
- [15:06]
A
Exactly. And, you know, I realized that no amount of scale, you know, whether we got to 150 countries or every country on earth, or 10 million or 100 million, whatever was actually going to fulfill that need. And that, that was actually something I needed to find on my own within myself. And that was, that was kind of the beginning of the end for that company because at least for me, the company continues to this day and it's going great. And I realized I'd gone way too far down this road. I couldn't backpedal. I mean, I guess I could have. It would have been very difficult to, you know, shut down and then continuing was just going to eat up so much more of me and my time. And I had three young kids at the time and it was compromising not only the time I could spend with them, but then the time that I spent with them was completely, I was completely distracted. I wasn't present because there was just so much going on in the business. And so I ended up selling the business. February 2019. On my birthday in 2019 was when nice. I signed the purchase agreement and, and I was out of that business, you know, within a couple of months.
- [16:20]
B
Right.
- [16:21]
A
Completely, completely out of it. And I'm, I'm, I'm very proud of everything I achieved with that company and everything we did. It was great. And then at a certain point I realized I was, I was approaching it all wrong. And all the mistakes that I made with that became part of my, part of my operating manual for things to avoid with my new business.
- [16:43]
B
Okay, you mentioned that at one point you realized you had gone down the wrong path. Right? And I think you were specifically in that context referring to the business model. But I'm curious to know when you realized you had gone down the wrong path kind of spiritually and emotionally, because I imagine there was probably a long beat up, long lead up, not beat up, but there's probably some beating up of yourself as well before you realized you couldn't get out of bed, you know, and you were so exhausted by everything. Do you remember if and when that happened?
- [17:19]
A
I can, I can trace that back to a few points or a few different ways. One period of my life I can trace back to when I was 34. I went through, went through a really deep depression for a couple, couple of years.
- [17:33]
B
Oh, wow.
- [17:34]
A
I call that my long dark night of the soul. And that was, that was an earth shattering experience. Completely, completely redefined me. And the person that emerged on the other end of that was very different than the person that went in. And I came out of that experience, you know, really kind of dedicated to my, you know, my personal growth. I was seeing A therapist. I was doing group therapy. I was doing a lot of yoga. I was taking my yoga teacher training. I was exercising, meditating a lot. And. And then shortly after that, I met my wife and we had. We had our first child. And then shortly after that, we had our second and third child concurrently twins. And then kind of life got. Life got pretty busy, as you can imagine. And. And I sort of felt. I kind of felt like, okay, I put in enough work. I've kind of, you know, I did the work, you know, all clean, all good, the laundry's been done, and, and kind of made the mistake of. Of feeling like that that was a journey that had been completed. Like, like I had done my inner work, I'd done my spiritual work.
- [18:46]
B
Yeah.
- [18:46]
A
And now. Now I could just coast and I can. I could enjoy life and what I've. What I've since discovered. And, and you're laughing because, you know, you know, the answer. The answer is it's yeah. And. And I made the mistake and the, and the hubris of thinking that it. That I'd done enough and I had really only just, you know, taken the first few steps on that journey. And, and had I continued on that journey, you know, and maybe just on a very, you know, very basic level, having a therapist that I could see on a regular basis, and I could say, well, you know, I'm thinking of, like, bringing on investor money, and I'm thinking of scaling the company and doing this and doing that. He was a very good therapist. He probably would have asked me why. And that simple question might have been enough to avoid those difficult years and all the people that I roped into my own personal crises and quest for validation and all that. And had I taken the time to really think about that and. Or maybe worked through it with him, I would have realized that, you know, what I was actually searching for was validation and self worth. And then he might have asked me the questions like, well, do you think you're going to get it through this path that you're about to go on? And I was aware enough that had I asked that question, I probably would have said, you know what? You're right. That's. I don't think that's going to get me there. And I had this goal that I wanted to be on the COVID of Entrepreneur magazine.
- [20:20]
B
Okay.
- [20:21]
A
And, you know, I had a printout and I had it, like, on my desk. Like, that was. That was my goal. And looking back, all these things are so funny to think about, but. But I didn't. I Didn't you know, I stopped my work, I stopped seeing the therapist. I focused on my family and I focused on my work. And there was very little time devoted to self awareness, to, you know, regular practices that might help me become more self aware. And I went down this path, and I went down this path that, you know, took seven years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions, lots of people went along on this. And we see this, you know, we see this writ large all over the world of entrepreneurship, all over the world of politics, you know, people. People dragging their, you know, bringing the rest of the world into their. Into their traumas.
- [21:07]
B
Yep.
- [21:07]
A
And. And being completely unaware of them. And so I now, I make it a regular part of my practice. There's a daily, ongoing practice of trying to be a little bit more self aware and recognizing that the journey never ends. And so I might as well embrace it.
- [21:25]
B
Yep. One of the things I experienced after we sold Canadian cannabis clinics was a brief sense of elation because it provided a little bit of financial security, but also the sense that I had finally become, you know, a real entrepreneur that, you know, I had, quote, unquote, made it, and then very quickly realized that all the problems you had before you, quote, unquote, make it still exist. Exactly. After you make it. But this time you don't have the nice little distraction of working on your business and trying to, quote, unquote, make it to distract you from all the things that you've got to deal with. And in some ways, it makes life worse than better. And I'm curious to know if you experienced that after selling Sacred Rides or what happened at that point.
- [22:14]
A
Yeah, I was extremely fortunate in that I had already started Wayfinders a couple of years before that.
- [22:21]
B
Okay.
- [22:22]
A
And so my first event was in September of 2017, and I sold the company in February of 2019. So there's about 18 months in between there where I was running both and I was concurrently working to remove myself from the day to day of Sacred Rides and, you know, putting in a lot of systems and processes and delegating and all that kind of stuff because I was getting so burnt out and then launching this new company, which was never meant to be a company. I just, you know, I wanted to put together a different sort of entrepreneur conference where the focus was on connection and fun and adventure. And so I just, you know, I ran one event in September of 2017. It was meant to be a one off. People loved it, they asked me to do more of them. And. And so when I sold Sacred Rides, by the time I sold it, it was a. It was very turnkey. I was only, I was only doing about four hours a week of meetings in the company. And so that in sidebar, if you're going to sell a company, try and do everything you can to make yourself completely redundant and not, not an important piece of the, of the, of the puzzle because that makes the business that much more easy to sell. It'll increase your multiples, all that kind of stuff. So the, you know, the fundamentals of the business were not very good because we'd been scaling for so long and we. This funny thing happens when you scale rapidly is often the expenses outpace the revenues, even though the revenues are scaling. And so the company was, it was still growing, but it was in financial trouble. But I'd made all these changes to address the business model. It was still a little bit too early to, you know, to show the evidence. But the new. The buyer could see that it had been restructured and he could also see that this business wasn't like completely sucking me in, that he could take it over without having it take him over. So I was out within a couple of months, as I mentioned earlier. And I was also fortunate enough to have my own forum. It was a. It was a bunch of guys who, some of whom had been in EO Entrepreneurs Organization, you know, from previous forum, but also some other guys. And we had our own thing going and we had our monthly meeting and I, and I happened to be lucky to. It was. It was my turn to present to the group. And I said to the group, I said, well, just sold my company. I've got, I've got some cash in the bank. I've got this other company that I'm doing, but I'm only running two events a year, so I got lots of bandwidth and I laid out the list of projects and little things that I'd been doing on the side. And I said, like, you know, here, here they are. Which of these should I turn into a business? And thankfully they were, you know, very wise group of guys. And every single one of them said to me, you just sold your company. Like, why do you need to. And you've got another company. Why do you need to add another thing to the pile? Like, it's, you know, spring is coming, summer's coming, you've got some young kids. Why don't you just enjoy your time with your family and not worry about starting something new? And thankfully I took that to heart. And actually I had enough to keep me busy with wayfinder so it wasn't just a completely blank slate. But then I also had a family that I wanted to spend time with. And then I just enjoyed just not having anything to do, which I don't want to understate how difficult that was for. When you've had your foot on the gas for so long, to be able to just sit back and lie down in a hammock and read a book or just play with your child or whatever is a very difficult thing to do. And there were several months of struggle, like really struggling with the discomfort. But I'd made a commitment to myself to just sit in the discomfort, allow it to be, you know, see what I can learn from it. And, and then on the other side of that was like, you know, something much more beautiful.
- [26:24]
B
Kudos to you for having the good sense to take that advice and take some time. What was on the other side of that?
- [26:32]
A
Well, I'll tell you, the discomfort was all sorts was, was having to sit with these messages of if you're not doing anything, then you're not product that you're useless, you're not worthy ever. And, and I had to sit with that because the message was so strong. It's like, you need to be doing something, you need to be productive, you need to be making things, you need to be building things. And, and, and I just, I honored that commitment and I, and I knew I could anticipate that, that mess, that voice and that message was going to come up, and so I was a little bit prepared for it, and it wasn't a surprise to me. And so when it came up, I would just say, okay, thank you. You know, I, I, I hear you, but I'm just going to go back to my book or I'm going to go back to playing with my kid or, or whatever that may be. And, and I just had to keep, I just, it was just a process. I had to keep going back to that. And what was on the other side of that, it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like I arrived at some mythical Shangri La and that voice went, that voice still persists this day. It's not nearly as loud. But what was on the other side of that was this realization that there is value in simply doing nothing and just slowing down, and that I am valuable even if I'm not doing anything, even if I'm not creating anything, even if I'm just watching Netflix or just doing something completely unproductive, you know, and so now, now when I feel the urge to Create. I create. And when I recognize that it's time to slow down and rest, I rest. And I also have that built into my schedule. You know, every morning there's breath work and there's meditation and there's reading and there's just doing stuff that on the surface, you know, isn't, isn't producing or creating something, but nourishes me and feeds me and, and makes me more connected to who I am, which feels good.
- [28:35]
B
How much time. I'm curious to know what your habit looks like. Uh, you know, there's a, there's a cult of habit building happening right now. And just like entrepreneurship, my, my instinct tells me it can become just as destructive as the cult of entrepreneurship, which is as soon as you replace intuition, feeling sense with rote dogma of no, my morning has to be this and then this and then this and this. You've kind of missed the point, but I'm curious to know what your morning routine looks like.
- [29:13]
A
Yeah, I resonate with that so much. Right. And I don't feel the need to post about my morning routine on Instagram every day and, you know, show my cold plunge or whatever.
- [29:25]
B
I thought that's what Instagram was for. I didn't know there's any other purpose to Instagram anymore. Sorry.
- [29:30]
A
Yeah, like if you don't post about it, did the cold plunge really happen?
- [29:34]
B
That is the philosophical question of our time.
- [29:37]
A
Yeah, I mean, my approach to that and it's funny because my coaching program, the Entrepreneur's Compass, part of it is helping people develop good, healthy, productive habits. A lot of, I talked about it in our first session last week. A lot of it is about your success as an entrepreneur, is managing energy, managing your own personal energy. And that is probably going to have the biggest impact on your success. Success. The other part of it is making sure you're in, you're in deep alignment because you can have a lot of energy and just build a bunch of, you know, you can do what I did with my previous company, but if you have that energy paired with alignment, then it's incredible. It becomes a self reinforcing feedback loop where you have more energy because you're doing the things that are in deep alignment and you're, you're able to just express more of yourself in the world as far as the habits go. You know, in, in terms of my program, there's like all, you know, there's a big list of things I ask people to choose from and ask them to start small. 115 minute habit. Just pick Whatever resonates with you. I'm not going to tell you what to do with your morning, but these are some of the things that are proven to increase your energy, increase your alignment. You know, the typical stuff. Meditation, journaling, breath work, you know, exercise, all that kind of stuff. You know, I don't, I don't have to quote anybody's statistics about the value of exercise. That would be. That'd be silly in this day and age.
- [31:00]
B
Can always go to Instagram to find that.
- [31:02]
A
Yeah, exactly. My, you know, my personal thought on it. If it doesn't feel good and it. And it feels like a struggle, don't. Don't do it. Right. I mean, to a point. Right. Like exercise. I've gotten to the point where exercise feels amazing. I love it.
- [31:18]
B
Yeah.
- [31:18]
A
I just, just before we started recording, I did half an hour on the spin bike and I got my sweat on and I felt great. It wasn't hard to do that at all. I had to push through some resistance to get there.
- [31:28]
B
Yeah.
- [31:29]
A
But, you know, the other day, like, I went to. Went to Front Row Dad's live event back in December. I know you're interviewing John Broman soon. Incredible event. Hal Elrod was one of the speakers. Yeah, I'm sure. You know, you know, I love Hal Alred. He's amazing. And he did a little presentation on your daily affirmations and how to do them the right way. So I kind of followed his prescription. I wrote down, you know, my daily affirmations. This is, you know, the affirmation. This is why it's important to me, and this is what I commit to doing. And I picked three different things and I wrote them out, put them on my phone. And then every morning for, you know, 30 days, I did these. And then at a certain point, this was maybe a week and a half ago, I realized that it didn't. It didn't really resonate. It felt hollow. It felt like an exercise. And I did. And I could notice my energy, like I didn't want to do it. And it was always the last thing. Sometimes I didn't even do it during my morning routine. I wouldn't get to it till the evening.
- [32:28]
B
Yeah.
- [32:29]
A
And I would do it out of obligation because I want to be consistent. And then I realized I'm not going to do this anymore because it just doesn't resonate with me. And so every aspect of my morning routine just feels great to me. And it's not a struggle. So I'll just tell you what it is. Some of these, you know, were brought to, like, the first thing I do is I get out of bed and I do 60 seconds of jump squats. And that. That was brought to me by my. My trainer, Nate Palmer. And that gets my. My heart rate up. It's such a great way to start the day. I drink two glasses of water, I have a coffee, and then I do 10 minutes of reading, usually more. I do 10 minutes of breath work, and then I do 10 minutes of quiet meditation. I used to do, like, guided meditations, whatever. And I. And we, you know, we go off on a tangent about guided meditations. I think for most people, it's just a distraction, and they're not really meditating. And so now I just do, you know, quiet meditation. And then I do 30 minutes, sometimes more, of exercise, and then I do 10 minutes of journaling.
- [33:28]
B
Cool.
- [33:29]
A
And that. And that sets me up for a great day. Um, and like I said, every aspect of it feels good. And if it doesn't feel good, I'm not gonna do it. You know, I'm. I'm not gonna abandon it on day two. I'm gonna give it a proper try. But if after two weeks, three weeks, usually. Usually anything that I'm doing that's positive and beneficial to my life, if I do it for three weeks or four weeks and it feels aligned, I'm gonna push through that initial resistance, and then it's gonna start to feel good. And if I don't feel that after, you know, three or four weeks, then I know it, then I know it's probably not in alignment with what I need.
- [34:04]
B
This question may be a little bit insider baseball for entrepreneurs who do this kind of stuff, but one of the things I struggle with is, you know, you have the people who say exactly what you just said, which is, like, if it feels good, if it feels in alignment, do it. You know, if it doesn't, don't. And then you have the other people who say, like, do the thing that scares you. It's like, when you hit that resistance, that's telling you something that you need to learn about yourself. And. And it's so hard to figure out, you know, where to land on that. Right. Being like, okay, like, I'm hitting resistance. I know, like, whatever, Yeah, I hate doing this thing, but why do I hate it? And is there something to keep doing? And how do you strike that balance?
- [34:46]
A
I think it involves getting good at listening to yourself.
- [34:50]
B
Yeah.
- [34:52]
A
And to me, that usually requires some sort of a practice of stillness. You know, most entrepreneurs are not very good at being still. We've already touched on this theme. The big thing, you know, one of the big things that's come up for me in the last couple years that's been of a tremendous value is this regular embodiment practice. And that word is a little bit esoteric, but it really, it's just a practice of listening to and paying attention to what's happening in my body. Not my, not, not. You know, most of us just live in our heads, in our thoughts all day. And then over the last couple years, through various practices, I've gotten better at actually paying attention to what's happening in my body. And there's so many signals coming from there and so much information and so much wisdom coming from there. And if I just. You can't do that. While you're, While you're, you know, constantly in motion, you're constantly doing whatever, you have to actually stop and you have to be still and literally still and metaphorically and metaphysically still. But usually for me, that can just be sitting down or it can be lying down. And so if I'm, you know, going back to the example of the daily affirmations, and again, that's like, that's not a knock on affirmations. For some people, they can be extremely valuable. They. Hal Elrod lays out a pretty compelling case for how affirmations saved his life. You know, saved him from dying from cancer. And I believe every word he says. I believe they did save his life. For me, it didn't. It didn't resonate. And so after, you know, however, three or four weeks of doing that, I kept encountering this resistance to doing it. And then I just kind of just stopped and paid attention. Like, what is go. What is going on? Is this resistance that I have to push through because there's something I don't want to confront in myself, or is this just. This doesn't feel in alignment. And the answer when I got quiet and still enough was that this doesn't feel in alignment. It's not, it's not, you know, serving what I need right now, so I'm going to ditch it.
- [36:46]
B
Right.
- [36:46]
A
But then there's also other things where I can encounter that resistance. And it's. And if I, if I'm quiet enough, I can bring up like, you know, old messages from childhood or whatever, like, you know, you're not good enough. You can't do this, or whatever. And then I recognize, well, no, that's, that's what, you know, I need to honor that voice and say thank you for trying to keep Me safe or whatever it is you're trying to do, but I'm gonna push through this. And, and so really the answer is just getting better at listening.
- [37:15]
B
Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. I've recently. So my, my call of New Year's resolutions, not really resolutions, but my, my decision for decisions for January to kick off the new year was I was gonna go clean shaven every day for a month. Not entirely clean shaven, but I've had a beard for a long time and I'm like, I want to get used to liking what it looked like without a beard, you know, um, just to try it. Um, I've been doing at least 50, trying to get to a hundred pushups every day, and I've been journaling every day. Uh, and I've always found journaling hard. And I love the concept of the five minute journal, but like you, even my wife Stephanie, we found it nice idea, but quickly becomes hollow, which is answering the same five or six questions every day. It's like, with one line, it, it doesn't get into it. And so one of the next episodes of this podcast, and by the time you're listening to us, it will be out, is an interview I did with Kyle Cease. I don't know if you've followed Kyle Cease at all, but he was an actor and a comedian and then he took off down the world of transformation and personal growth. And he wrote a book called How I Screw this Up. And the episode of the podcast is going to be called How I Screwed this up. Because the interview was fucking terrible. That's a sidebar. One of the things he does, though, in his book about how to screw this up was he just starts writing and anything that comes to top of mind, he just wrote into his book. And so I've started doing that with journaling as well. Just like, whatever comes, write it down. Don't censor it as dumb, incoherent, whatever, it doesn't matter. And you know, this is actually a little bit embarrassing to admit, and I'm usually pretty open to admitting stuff on this podcast, but one of the things that's been happening now that I've been doing that for two weeks or so is I often end my journaling by writing I love you to myself. And it feels sincere, right? Which is, which is really interesting because everyone says, oh, you gotta love yourself, you know, you gotta love yourself before you can love anybody else. And it's like, well, that's really nice to say, but how the fuck do you do that? Is really the problem and just seeing it kind of pop through in this journaling coming up organically, it's not like I have to feel like, you know, in an affirmation I have to write something nice about myself. It just kind of comes at the end. Like I would say to my wife or my kids, you know, I love you before you go to sleep. It just kind of comes up in my journaling and it's really interesting how that comes about. And I suppose that's all a long winded way of circling back to your point, which is like, you just gotta find what works for you. You know, when you're doing all this kind of stuff, it's like, stick with it for a while, she's gonna feel uncomfortable. But then eventually find what is working for you. And you'll know when those weird things like writing I love you to yourself and actually like meaning it sincerely starts to happen, you'll know that you've tapped into something that's working, I think 100%.
- [40:10]
A
100%? Yeah. I mean, you touched on it, right? It's just a process of experimentation.
- [40:15]
B
Yeah.
- [40:15]
A
And for me, I experimented with so many different types of meditation and from guided to music to silence to, you know, all sorts of different approaches. And ultimately I found, and this, this just might be, you know, might be me. For some people, they might get tremendous value from listening to a guided meditation. Yeah. But for me, the, I just have a, you know, I use insight timer and they have a timer function and then you can just, you know, choose any sound. And I just, there's like an all meditation which is just a repeating chant. And that to me is amazing. It just completely tunes my mind in and, and you know, for me, the practice of meditation, I think there's, there's like a real myth about meditation. But the goal of meditation is like to quiet the mind. It's not really, it's not really the point of meditation. And most meditation teachers will tell you the same. It's just to become more aware of what is happening with the mind. And so you're, you know, if you can quiet your mind for 10 minutes, amazing. But if your mind is scattered all over the place, that's amazing too. It's just the process of, hey, I just noticed it's, you know, I noticed it's wandering again. I'm going to bring it back to the Om. And then it wanders again. It's like, oh, there it is. And so the practice is just becoming aware of what's happening there. And that to me, you Know that simple meditation, daily meditation is so valuable. The other ones, I would do them and then afterwards I wouldn't feel like I got anything out of it. I'm just listening to somebody. It was like listening to a lecture.
- [41:49]
B
Yeah.
- [41:50]
A
And it didn't, it didn't really land. Then the other thing I'll say about my journaling, it was the same thing. I experimented with all, you know, with journaling prompts, with five minute journals, free form journaling. What I've really gotten so much value from over the last two months or so from a journaling is, is I, is I pick a different theme for each week.
- [42:11]
B
Yeah.
- [42:11]
A
And then each day I approach that, I approach that theme from a different, a different angle, a different perspective. So it could be work. And then that'll be my meta theme for the week. And then each day it'll just be. Pick a different way to explore that and engages so many different, you know, areas of my mind. And, and then, and then I just give my 10 myself 10 minutes to just free write about whatever that theme and sub theme are.
- [42:38]
B
Yeah.
- [42:38]
A
And then the other, the other thing that's been useful, it's, it's, it's useful as a practice in and of itself, but it's also useful in helping you bring more alignment to what you do because it surfaces what's going on in your subconscious. And that is often I call that the pathway to the soul to something deeper and more true. And then if something particularly good and resonant comes up, I just put a little asterisk beside it and circle it. And then I periodically go back like, oh, that's a great idea. I'm going to put that in my ideas parking lot.
- [43:12]
B
Right.
- [43:12]
A
And then I'll come back to that eventually. But it doesn't have to be about generating new things. It could just be a practice in and of itself.
- [43:18]
B
Yep. I'll just add this. And then I have a specific question again going back to Kyle Cease. Even though the interview was fucking terrible, one of the things he advocates for is just stopping and listening. So I'm the same way. I can't listen to guided meditations. And there's an asterisk on that. So I'll come back to it. So what I tried doing is just listening. And what I realized is that I should probably see like, I don't know what the specialist who focuses on your hearing is, but like here because like there's always a ringing sound in my ear, which I've noticed. But I've also noticed that with awareness And I don't, it's not concentration, but kind of a letting go. I can alter the ringing sensation in my ear and when I can feel the tone change, I can tell that like I'm losing the most direct grip on, you know, the ego and the consciousness and being in mind as opposed to body. And as, as I start to let go and start to play with that, then I find more and more thoughts and creative thoughts and get into the more meditative, open mind state. The one asterisk I put on that when I, when it comes to guided meditations, and this is circling back to a question I promise is I can do guided meditations if I'm already in a slightly altered state of consciousness. So if I do like a deep and transformative breath work and the ego is a little bit offline, then I find guided meditations can be helpful and productive, particularly ones the teacher I work with, Irwin, does guided meditations, but they're very symbolic in nature. You know, it's taking you down a path. But he's very intentional that whatever happens there's a sim. The symbolism behind it is intentional and designed and it really works. And part of the reason he does that works for me, let me say that is, you know, he says the language of the subconscious is, is not words, it's not logic, it's, it's symbolism. Right. It doesn't speak to us in the same way. We've kind of got the job of translating the symbols of the subconscious into the log, logic and words of the mind. All of that is to say, to accept that to be true, you kind of have to embark on a bit of a spiritual path. You kind of have to suspend your disbelief and accept that there's something going on. And so I'm curious to know that as someone who started this conversation being an avowed, I won't say an avowed atheist, but it kind of sounds that way. How have you reconciled the potential spiritual conversations around a lot of this stuff with that, you know, inner 15 year old who said, screw the church, screw Catholicism, this sucks.
- [46:15]
A
Well, part of that is recognizing that religion as it's practiced by most people is, is fairly disassociated from spirituality.
- [46:27]
B
Yeah.
- [46:28]
A
And you know, the Catholic Catholicism that I grew up with was, was very prescriptive and dogmatic. You know, the thing that took me out of Catholic school, I went to an all boys Catholic school in grade nine where, you know, I wore a suit every day and my teachers were primarily priests, was just one day. We had a daily 45 minute religion class, and one day the teacher just really trying to hammer into her head the idea that the only acceptable definition of a family is a man and a woman and their children. And I grew up in Cabbage Town in Toronto. You know, there's a. There's a high gay population in that neighborhood. And across the street from us, there was a gay male couple living there. And they, to me, appeared very loving and very in love with each other. They appeared to be very much a family in my mind. And, you know, that. That to me was when I realized that I didn't want to live a life where somebody was prescribing to me what I should believe about the world and that I wanted to. I wanted to form my own beliefs about the world based on what I observed. And over the last, you know, I want to say, maybe 10 years, this idea of spirituality has really, you know, continued to be that process of experimentation and curiosity. First, it was. It was, you know, a little. A bit of an intellectual understanding that this idea of God maybe was not. I'd been what I'd been sold. And, you know, I rejected the idea of a bearded guy in the sky, which is, to me, this. Still patently absurd. But this sense from reading in books and listening to podcasts or whatever, the sense that maybe this idea of God is just this idea of interconnectedness, that everything is interconnected, and that I am indivisible from a leaf on a tree or from the sun or from you or from whatever. And that, to me, seemed an intriguing idea at the time. And I believed that for several years, but I believed it on a very intellectual level. And it was more just like, that's an appealing idea, but I. You know, that's not my day to day. I don't experience that. And then various experiences over the last few years have confirmed that belief to me, some of which I'm sure you and I share, you know, through. Through medicine journeys. Yeah, where this. This notion of a. Of a separate self dissolves, and you feel that sense of merging. But it hasn't only been through medicine journeys. It's been through breath work. It's been through. I had an experience in the Amazon jungle, and when I was running one of my events, and I just. I took everybody. We were in the Peruvian, like, deep. Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, and I took on the. I think it was the. Either the last day or the penultimate day of the event, and it took everybody out into the jungle, and it gave everybody their own little patch of jungle. And this was on A trail. It'd be kind of patently ridiculous to just leave people somewhere in the jungle. It was on a trail, but they were spaced out enough that they couldn't see or hear anybody else there. And I just left them there for an unspecified amount of time. I said, I'll come back for you eventually, and I want you to just sit here and don't do anything. People didn't have their phones, they didn't have journals. Why don't you just sit here and see what happens? There's no right or wrong way to do this. Just try to just sit. And so I participated, as I do in most of the exercises that I do, and I found my little patch of jungle and I sat there and, you know, about an hour went by, and it was just a really lovely, quiet meditation full of all these beautiful jungle sounds. And then after about an hour, this message, these dual words of trust and surrender kept coming up.
- [50:26]
B
Yeah.
- [50:27]
A
And at first it was just kind of a little bit of like a mantra in my mind. And then. And then it. It. It removed itself from my mind and it became part. It was as if the jungle was speaking to me. It wasn't coming from my own mind anymore. It was coming from the jungle. Then I sat with that for a while and said, okay, well, what does that mean, trust and surrender? Like, whom am I supposed to trust? What am I supposed to trust? And then the jungle said, I want you to trust me. And then the question that I wrestled with for another five, ten minutes was like, what does that mean? What am I supposed to do? What does that mean when a jungle is telling you to trust it? And then the message finally came through. I want you to lie down. And I was in shorts and a T shirt. And when you're in that particular part of the Amazon, it's not a very good idea to lie down in shorts and a T shirt. There are some very potent creatures in that jungle, including the Include. This area is rife with bullet ants, which is the most painful bite of any creature on earth. And, like, it's, you know, two days of excruciating hell. And this place was lousy with bullet ants. And so there was another five, ten minutes of like, that's. That's ridiculous. I'm not lying down in the jungle and shorts and T shirt. And then. And then it was. The jungle kept responding back like, okay, well, if you. If you can't trust. If you can't trust me, who are you going to trust? How are you going to. How are you going to trust anyone. And finally I relented and I said, okay, I surrender. And I laid down and for, I don't know, about 40 minutes, I didn't have. I didn't have a watch. And I was. And I was okay. You know, I had some. Had some little bites from minor creatures, whatever, but I was. I emerged from that totally okay. And that. And that was just this beautiful experience of total surrender. And partway through that, I just felt that sense of dissolution where I just merged into the jungle. And there was no psychedelics involved. There's no ayahuasca. It was just me and becoming quiet enough to merge into that stillness. And, you know, and that's something. It wasn't just a momentary exercise. It was something that. I carry this to this day. And when I. When I'm. When I'm wanting to do something, when I want to put something out in the world or do an exercise at one of my events or whatever it may be, and I feel that resistance and I feel like, oh, people are going to judge me for this or this is going to fail. This is stupid. If I sense into it and I feel into it and I feel aligned, then I. Then I learned to trust. And I trust that, you know, the universe or whatever has. Has got me. And then I just surrender into it. And so it carries. It carries with me to this day. And that to me feels like a much better version of spirituality than what I was. What I was sold as a child.
- [53:12]
B
Yeah. One thing that came up when you were saying that was just a kind of reminder that when you take medicine, when you take psychedelics, when you take any drugs, you know, you think it's the drugs doing that to you. But the truth is, is the drugs are only engaging with your nervous system, with your cells, and your cells are doing exactly that. And. And you can actually induce that without drugs, right? Because your. Your cells know how to do it. And, you know, just the fact that we use chemistry to induce it doesn't mean we of it on our own. And so when you lay down in the jungle and had that medicine, like, experience, it's like, it's a good reminder that it's all within us. You know, even if we take something exogenous, it comes from within that experience. I think that's. That's super cool, super beautiful. And as you were telling that story, I was. I was pretty much there with you, and I think that's awesome. We started this conversation around connection. And so through Wayfinders and your coaching business, you know, we've touched on it a bit. Quite a bit, probably. But how were you helping people restore connection to themselves, to others, to the planet?
- [54:30]
A
Yeah, I mean, it start. It starts with me and I have to, I have to walk the walk and I, I don't see myself as, as, you know, any sort of leader or guru. I lead this community. But the word I, the word I use that resonates with me is guide.
- [54:51]
B
Yep.
- [54:52]
A
And, you know, for many years in my previous company, I was a, you know, mountain bike guide and I would take people on the trail. For me, it's important to walk the walk and it's not important. It's not important for me to have like achieved. It's not important for me to have achieved some end state. You know, like I've done the work and I'm at this point and now I can, now I can be your leader to say I just need to be committed to it. I don't even even need to be farther on the journey than people. I don't think I just need to be committed to it. And so it starts with me being committed to that process of restoring connection. And I touched on this in our, you know, at the very beginning when we started talking. For me, like, I have this 5C's model. So it's restoring connection to self, to others, to the natural world, to a sense of calling and to a sense of mystery, which is, you know, this big, this big grand universe that we're all a part of. And so I have regular practices that I do for those things, but then I try to, you know, encourage those in others, I try to create, I try to offer things to the world that help to restore those. So with my adventures, I took a group to Mongolia a couple of months ago and all of those things formed part of the programming. I would say the connection to others is particularly strong with my adventures because by virtue of going to these really remote places around the world and I push people and I challenge them. And when you take people to a remote place and you challenge them, they go on a shared journey together and that brings them together and it bonds them.
- [56:34]
B
Yep.
- [56:35]
A
But I also do that through my community events here in Toronto. Right. With that, with the Wayfinders community, we have monthly gatherings. We have, you know, this year we're launching Wellness when Wednesdays, where we're going to be doing, you know, breathwork and going to other ship and going to Jaybird Studio and doing yoga and stuff like that. And then, you know, when I'm leading a workshop, for instance, it's about helping people restore that connection to self. If I'm encouraging people to develop, you know, some beneficial morning habits, whether it's meditation or journaling, whatever, that's all going to help them restore a bit of sense of connection to self. And a lot of it is just, you know, I do it and then try to talk about how it works for me. Again, trying. I try not to be too prescriptive about it. This works for me. You know, I might tell you, you should have a meditation practice because it pretty much it works for everybody. But find what works for you. Just commit to it and experiment. Try different things. And so for me, one of my members, Maria, she said it to me. It's like she said, you know, it's really beautiful. You're just going on a journey and you're inviting people to go on it with you. And that's really what it is for me, you know, is. Is embracing, fully embracing the fact that I'm on a journey. And the journey is really just to more self awareness, to consciousness, to connection, and inviting others to go on that journey with me in whatever way they want to, whatever shape feels, you know, whether it's listening to something I say and like, oh, that resonates, I'm going to try that. Or whether it's attending one of my events or going to Western Mongolia with me, whatever. I'm just having fun. I'm experimenting, I'm playing. I'm enjoying getting to know myself along the way. And I want other people to embark on that same journey because it's a worthwhile journey and it's. And it's painful, but it's also fun. And, you know, we have to. I realized several years ago that my ability to experience joy was in absolute direct correlation to my, my willingness to experience pain and to actually allow it space in my life to go into those places. And if this, you know, this duality of life, if I want to expand that spectrum, I want to feel more joy, I have to expand it in the other direction and be willing to feel that pain. So I, I was just chatting with a friend last night, you know, kind of this sense, like over the last few months, I've really become committed to my work and my growth. But then sensing like, oh, I think I'm getting a little too earnest about that. You know, I'm putting too much time and it's, and it's, it's very easy to get, like, so serious about your growth. And I'm like, I also love to have fun and I believe life is meant to be enjoyed, and it's meant to be a play, and it's meant to be a playground, and you got to make spaces for all of it. So that's really it.
- [59:30]
B
That's awesome. I love where that ended. Right. Which is like, you know, life is too serious to take seriously is a quote I often throw about. And you can see people, life is.
- [59:39]
A
Too important to be taken seriously. Oscar Wilde. One of my favorite quotes.
- [59:42]
B
Yeah, yeah. The one I was referencing was Tom Robbins, who said, life is too serious to take seriously. But the same thing.
- [59:49]
A
Yeah.
- [59:49]
B
Love it. And you. You can see how some people, like, over index, Right. Like, I had Derek Barris on the guy who wrote Conspirituality, which I think is great. And, you know, in this podcast, I really try to see all perspectives, which is like, spirituality is great, but it can become construed, it can be manipulated and all that kind of stuff. So you need the balance of that person who's, like, talking about spirituality and how it's being misused and keeping the balance. And it's just like, you got to do the work and you got to commit to it, but don't commit too much. Right. And you start to see everything is just the flow. I hate to say the yin and yang, but it really does feel like you got to be doing all things. You got to commit, but not all the time. You gotta commit, but not too seriously, because it can always go. I guess it goes back to the great Buddha. Like, everything in moderation. Including moderation. Right?
- [60:40]
A
Yeah.
- [60:41]
B
And also, the point you made about your capacity to feel joy is directly correlated to your capacity or willingness to go into the unpleasant and painful side of things. And it reminded me that the other resolution I made for this year is to get messy, because I'm very good at sort of. I try. I put it out there quite a bit in this podcast about trying to show my emotions and all that kind of stuff. But I'm very good at keeping my emotions in a very tightly regulated box and staying in the narrow. And for me, I find breath, work, and psychedelics, like, they just pound you out of that. And I think that's great because that's what I need. And every time I kind of step out of my comfort zone and get messy in that sense, you know, it stretches me. And so my. My commitment this year is to get messy and encourage everybody to get messy. Right. We're way too uptight in our society, and let's get a little bit more comfortable with being uncomfortable and Messy. And one other thought, and I'm curious about this, but you listed your 5C's connection to self, connection to others. Sorry, what are their connection to self, connection to others, connection to the planet, connection to.
- [61:49]
A
Connection to the natural world, connection to calling and connection to mystery.
- [61:53]
B
Yeah, and the thing that came up for me is at least I think for me and what I saw through our work at field trip is that for a lot of people, connection to the mystery is the best way in. It's not for everybody, but I think connection to self, it's so hard to do sometimes. But I often reference this. We had a reporter from Popular Mechanics go through our ketamine assisted therapy session and she was interviewing me before and we had a conversation after and she did a story on her piece and she talked about how coming out of the ketamine, you know, her hands wowed her. She was just in awe of her hands. And I'm like that, that is the magic of psychedelics is that reconnection to the mystery, to the wonder of things. And when people reconnect to the wonder of things or the mystery of things, then it opens up all of those other things as well. So there's any. You can go through natural planet out, you can go through self, there's any way into it. But just, just remind people in our very Western, scientific, data driven world that the mystery is, is a hugely important part of whatever it is we're talking about right now. And to not deny that and keep yourself open to it.
- [63:06]
A
Well, and you know, we get so worked up about the whole mystery of it. All right. It's like we want certainty.
- [63:12]
B
Yeah.
- [63:13]
A
And, and I, we want, we want to know like, what is the purpose and what is the meaning of all of it? And frankly, you know, without the mystery it would be a little boring. And be. The mystery makes it so, so much more interesting because then it becomes our own journey, you know, to find out what the hell that mystery is all about. To find out what our personal mystery is all about. And none of that would exist without that, that search wouldn't exist without the backdrop of not knowing what the fuck any of it is about. And, and, and you know, what a crazy fucking journey to like be put in this, in this world, in this consciousness, in this little marble, in the midst of vast nothingness and not have any idea what the whole fucking thing is for. It's like getting this, like, you know, getting all the parts for a refrigerator and like put this together, but you've got no manual.
- [64:01]
B
Yeah.
- [64:02]
A
And and that's going to take you a lifetime to figure out that refrigerator. And you probably won't figure it out at the end, and who cares? It's, you know, it's fun along the way and it's frustrating as hell and it's messy, as you said, but if we embrace it, it, it becomes fun along the way.
- [64:17]
B
Yeah. I saw something recently too, that I thought was totally on point, which was that human beings of any species, except maybe tardigrades, we were built for chaos, right? Like we're on this planet naked, no fur, no natural defenses. You know, we were built for chaos. We were built for uncertainty, we were built for unpredictability. That's literally the advantage that humans have in this form is that we're super adaptable and we love it. Like, chaos works for us. And so embracing chaos, embracing the messiness, I think is something we should all be working towards a little bit more.
- [64:54]
A
Amen to that.
- [64:55]
B
Amen to that. Well, that's all I had for questions, but if there's anything you want to touch on that we haven't touched on, let's go there.
- [65:03]
A
I want to touch on that. What I touched on before about joy and pain and I had a bit of a, I had a bit of a tough day yesterday. It started with a difficult experience on Saturday night. And then yesterday I was in an all day breath work facilitator training, which was, you know, kept taking me deeper into that difficult experience and didn't particularly want to be doing that, going deeper into it. But there wasn't really much, much of a way to avoid it without, you know, without not participating in the training. And I was feeling kind of drained and sad at the end of it. But I also recognized that that was, it was necessary, that was something that was coming up in me that needed to be felt, it needed to be expressed. And years ago I would have done everything I could to distract myself from that, to ball it up. And I've learned that when I feel that, I just need to create space for it. And so I created tons of, you know, even after the, the training was over, I just went and laid down and put on some, you know, put on my headphones and put on some soothing instrumental music. And I just allowed myself to like completely feel whatever was happening there, all the sadness. You know, I had a bit of a cry and, and, and then I went to bed and I woke up this morning, did my routine, crushed my workout, and came here on this podcast and I feel amazing today. And, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Right. And if I had not allowed myself to feel that, I. It would have just narrowed my bandwidth for feeling the joy and the presence that I feel and the gratitude I have for having this conversation with you. And so you just got to. You got to create the space for. For the sadness, for the rage, for the. For the fear, all of that. Don't run away from it because, you know, just whenever you feel that, just remind yourself that you're allowing yourself to feel that in that moment is gonna. It's gonna increase your scale of happiness in the future.
- [67:05]
B
Amen to that. And I would add, too, which is certainly, for me, it's easy to judge myself when I'm in a shitty mood, being like, what the fuck is wrong with you, Ronan? Like, look around. Everything is great. And then I kind of doubled down on my feeling shitty because I'm feeling shitty about something, and then I'm feeling shitty about myself about feeling shitty about something. And just remind yourself, sometimes it's okay to be angry. It's okay to feel rage, it's okay to be pissed off. It's okay to be all of those things as long as you move it through and don't judge yourself for any of that. You know, just move it through and be okay with it. Because we all feel things and we're all going to get hurt or angry certain times. Just create the spaces. Mike has just suggested to work it through, and you'll come out the other side probably feeling a lot better for having experienced it and having worked through it.
- [67:55]
A
100%.
- [67:56]
B
Awesome. Well, Mike, thank you. This has been an awesome conversation. Thank you for doing the work that you do. I think it's amazing, and I'm excited to learn more about it. I mean, I've been peripherally through Mastermind talks, familiar with what you've been doing, but haven't really looked into it. So I love it. And. And we should. We should grab lunch or coffee sometime, meet somewhere in the middle of the cold and frigid city and have a. Yeah, I would love that conversation.
- [68:23]
A
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. And here's to instability and messiness.
- [68:27]
B
Here's to that. Indeed. Was going to ask, how do you pronounce your last name?
- [68:35]
A
Well, the proper Croatian pronunciation is Birch.
- [68:39]
B
Birch. Okay.
- [68:41]
A
Yeah. Most of my life, I've just gone by Bursin because it's easier for people to say.
- [68:45]
B
I was going to go with Bertie, so.
- [68:47]
A
And it's. I'm totally ambivalent about it, but I should probably be consistent, especially if I'm on podcasts and they're like, wait, is this the same guy? It's got a different last name.
- [68:57]
B
Fair enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should. May want to. I have the same problem. Everyone pronounces my last name Levy, even though it's Levy, and I've just never bothered to correct people.