Brett: Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. Today's episode is a session with a special guest, Ali Abdal. Ali is a doctor in one of the world's most followed productivity experts.
He runs a YouTube channel with over 5 million subscribers and wrote the New York Times bestselling book, Feel Good Productivity. In this session, Joe coaches Ali on what he wants to do now that he's reached his goal of releasing his book and getting on the bestsellers list. Enjoy.
Joe: Hi Ali. It's good to see you again, man.
Ali: Yeah, likewise. I'm looking forward to this.
Joe: Where are you? You have quite an interesting background. It seems like you're in a warehouse of some sort?
Ali: I'm in a WeWork in London right now. I flew in from New York this morning for, yeah, to spend some time in London with the family.
Joe: Awesome. I know you've been traveling a lot this year. How has that been for you?
Ali: It's been super fun. Yeah. It's been a few months of nonstop travel. It was meant to be a few months here and there of oh, let's do Austin for a few months, and then LA for a few months but because my book came out like last week, it's just ended up being a whole whirlwind of like book touring and podcasting and stuff. So now things are finally settling down a bit. So it's nice to be back in London for a little bit of stability.
Joe: That's great. Yeah. I know that feeling when I was a venture capitalist, I would think there was a one week where I was like on three continents in a week and it was just, it's quite brutal.
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: So do you wanna just tell everybody a little bit about you and give everybody some backstory and then we'll jump into a coaching session?
Ali: Sounds good. Yeah. So, backstory, hi everyone, my name is Ali. I am a doctor turned entrepreneur. I worked as a doctor in the UK's National Health Service for two years, and while I was doing that, I started a YouTube channel on the side, which grew to like a million subscribers in that time, which was insane. And then I decided to quit my job and become a sort of online course YouTuber, author-type person. And over the last six, seven years now, I've been making videos about productivity and personal development which is why I very much vibe with your stuff, Joe.
And my book Feel Good productivity came out like last week, and we found out yesterday that we actually hit the New York Times bestseller list, which had been a goal for a very long time and that was super nice. But now I'm feeling a bit of a sense of what now? It feels like I've been building up for the last three years with this big sneeze and now the sneeze is out, and now I'm thinking where does my life go?
So I feel like this session with you, Joe, might come at a good time. I was literally journaling about this yesterday being like what the hell do I wanna do with my life now?
Joe: Okay. So just to, is that how you wanna spend your time or is there anything else also that's present that you would wanna address in a coaching session? We might not get to any of them, but just outta curiosity.
Ali: Sure. One thing I'm very keen to talk to you about, I've listened to a bunch of your episodes around emotions and I think I really struggle to feel my own emotions and that when people ask me, how do you feel? I'm like that center, that phrase does not even vaguely compute.
Joe: Okay, great. So that leaves us with emotions and what do you want to do next?
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: Great. Okay, so let's start there. What strikes me about you is that you probably always know what to do next as far as like, I can't imagine that there hasn't, there's been like a month of you really trying to figure out what you're gonna do next instead of you're actually doing something next. So I'm wondering how right am I about that assumption? Or what might I be missing?
Ali: Yeah, that's pretty spot on. From like high school, I knew I wanted to get to med school. Med school itself is a conveyor belt. After that, it's like you become a doctor and it's a conveyor belt. And like literally the week that I took a break from medicine, I got an email from Penguin saying, do you wanna write a book? And then that took over my life. And now with three and a half years later where I have no clear next thing to do, and it now feels like the possibilities have opened up a little bit.
Joe: Okay, great. And then, so one of the things that has changed is the fact that there's no conveyor belt system here. It hasn't just been an opportunity that's dropped and that's what you do next. But what I also noticed is that you're also in a place in your life where I'll say it like you probably have most of what you thought you wanted when you were in your early twenties.
Ali: Yeah. I think for a long time I was chasing the goal of financial freedom and four hour work week and all that stuff and now I'm there. And so I'm like, what comes next?
Joe: What comes next? So no conveyor belt. So the rules of the game have changed and just to some degree it sounds like there is just no rules. It's what do you want?
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: So what do you want? If you don't think about it as this is what I have to do next and you just think about it in gross wants, what do you want?
Ali: I want to continue to live life on my own terms, to not go back to a day job. I really like teaching, like that's always been a thing that's lit me up inside when I can like, learn something cool and share it with someone else. The making of YouTube videos itself as that vehicle for teaching, less fun now I've had and another have been doing it for seven years.
But I really like the idea of teaching in real life. Yeah. I attended a Tony Robbins seminar, two of them, and I was like, whoa, that doing stuff like that seems like it would be fun. Yeah, so I think there's something around teaching and also living life on my own terms.
Joe: So what, if anything, would stop you from living life on your own terms at this point?
Ali: I have these weird fears around money, I think.
Joe: Okay. So Hold on. Stop right there. You stopped, you closed your eyes. You went inward. \ What happened there? Tell me, describe your internal process. Was that a, let me stop and think, and a whole bunch of thoughts move through your system? Was that like a, you feeling your somatic experience? What just happened there?
Ali: You asked what's stopping you from living there? And then I was like that's a good question.
Joe: I said, what would, what could stop you?
Ali: Oh. What could stop you? Yeah. I've not been asked that in that form before, so I was like, what could stop me? And then a, yeah, a bunch of like options seemed to present themselves. And I did some like quick calculations and pointed out like fear of running out of money or wanting desire to make more money as being like a thing that like ties a bunch of them together.
Joe: And was that a fully intellectual process? How somatic was it? How emotional was it?
Ali: Zero somatic, a hundred percent intellectual. Yeah.
Joe: Apparently zero somatic but your body took a very particular form. So like typically if I see you on doing YouTube or talking to you in real life. You can access thoughts very quickly.
You can speak very quickly. And I know by the way that you're doing it, that you might not even know what you're about to say, but you can say it and like it can all make sense and it can, and you haven't even said it before, and it's bam, without any of this, that happened without any of the stopping, contemplation. So what made that different? If it wasn't somatic, what made it different? It's happening again now, just so you can.
Ali: I think what made it different is that I wanted to give a real answer and not just whatever was coming outta my mouth in presenter mode. And treating this as if I've got Joe Hudson here on the phone. Let me make sure I'm like giving something that feels real, rather than, I think often in podcasts I'm in like performance mode or whatever. So I wanted to make sure I wasn't trying to, I wasn't bullshitting myself or I wasn't bullshitting you here.
Joe: Yeah. So he, just to say what I noticed you say, you said, I wanted to make sure it felt, it feels like something real, literally using the word feel. And to do that, you actually put yourself in, your body went into a very particular position that was unique from this other position. I just wanna mark that, we'll get to it later, but I just wanna mark it and then go back.
So the big thing is that I'm now going back to the conversation we were having before, which was that, that there's a money fear that you have. That maybe I won't be able to live life on my own terms if for whatever reason this money thing goes away. And so my question for you then is if that fear existed in your system before you knew what money was, what would that fear be called?
Ali: Some sort of fear of not being safe.
Joe: So I want you to take a moment and in, and that was the first way to ask that question. I'm gonna ask the same question in a slightly different way, which I want you to have the experience of lack of safety around money. Oh, all this money might go away, or, oh, I have to make sure I get, I keep enough money.
Just close your eyes and just tell me, don't even tell me, just feel what happens in your body when you think about it. And now, without a single thought whatsoever, trace that to the very first time you felt that sense, that particular set of sensations. And what's the story, if any, that comes up when you think about, not think about, feel this set of sensations in your early childhood.
So what's happening inside you right now? Is it that you came up with the idea and said that didn't make sense, or you're like, nope, it's not happening or what's going on?
Ali: I'm trying to vividly imagine the feeling of running out of money and I'm not like feeling anything. I'm just like I'm I feel like I'm come on imagine the feeling, imagine the feeling. Feel something, God dammit, feel something, and nothings happening. Yeah.
Joe: Okay. So do that again. Find the sensation of you looking for a feeling and not being able to get it like you're doing. What is that like in your body? Not the sensation of fear, but the sensation of trying to get there and not get there.
Ali: Yeah. It's a bit of a constriction in like my sort of belly button type area.
Joe: Great. And I just wanna teach you one more little itty bitty trick. Do the same thing again and go ahead and feel what's in your, and now I want you to lift your chin up, lift your chin little more. Yeah like that. Great. And now I want you to lower your chin. Tell me what happens in your ability to feel in your body.
Ali: I feel like the feeling is stronger when I'm like doing this.
Joe: Yeah. Yes, that is, that would be, most of the literature would say that, and what I noticed is when you talked about, I love that literature piqued you, you're like literature? When you did the first time when you were feeling into the loss of money in your system, your chin was doing this, your chin was raising, and when you were like, let me find the real answer, your chin went down. So if you watch back the video, you'll just notice.
And one of the main things that happens is that the, one of the two ways we stop emotions in our body is raise our chin, which is why a definition say of narcissism that some people have for narcissism is and narcissism's a very misunderstood word, but is basically not being able to feel your emotions. And you'll notice that like when someone's acting like a narcissist in a movie, they'll put their chin up.
It's kind of part of the deal. If you look at a famous narcissist, when you actually see them, their chin is up. So just say that. The other one is holding the jaw. It's like keeping the jaw tight. That's another one that people use to not feel emotions is to clamp the jaw. Just a somatic little trick for you. Okay, so it's this kind of you, what you said was, and I'll stop going meta for a second. We'll just actually deal with the thing itself. You're in this new transition. You've got what you wanted. So you have that experience and there's no automatic conveyor belt, next thing that's happening. And there is this money fear that drives some of what you want, which is to be able to maintain your life. And then the other part that you notice that you want is teaching, but online teaching is not as exciting as the idea of at least in person and then on a non-business level, what are other goals that are just apparent to you, if any?
Ali: I wanna get into the best shape of my life. Take my health more seriously. I wanna host six mini adventures with friends/family and connect people together. Those are the kind of big other ones.
Joe: What I noticed is everything that all of your goals are about connection. Connection to yourself or connection to others.
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: Including teaching in person is a far more connecting experience than teaching online.
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah.
Test: Hadn't thought of that way, yeah.
Joe: So if we assume that we, I'm not gonna say that's right by any stretch, but if we assume that for a second and you think about your career. Yeah. Give me five ways that you, that the experience of your career could feel far more connecting, connected.
Ali: More in-person stuff with my team. Like I really enjoyed it when I was in London, we were all in person and now we're remote and digital nomading, but I miss hanging out with the team in person.
Definitely more real-life teaching. I used to do a lot of that when I was in med school and then got away from it with the whole online world and I'd like to get back to that. I'd like the teaching to connect more with myself in terms of the things that are alive for me in a given moment, rather than the things that I think will drive clicks and views for the algorithm in a given moment. I like the idea of building a, some sort of online community type thing where toying with this idea that seems like it could be fun and quite connecting.
And I like the idea of doing like doing live coaching-type sessions with people, but helping them boost their productivity or overcome procrastination or things like that. That feels oh, that would be a fun way of doing content in a sort of connecting you type way. That also then is really helpful for people to see the behind-the-scenes of how I would coach someone to be more productive, for example.
Joe: Great. And out of curiosity how much of that actually excites you? You'd be like, oh, that'd be cool if that all happened or that was the brainstorm? How much of them excite you? If I could click my fingers and all those things happened, how many would you be like, yeah. Cool.
Ali: Basically all of them. Working with the team in person one less so because I'm like I also want to travel and do the digital nomad thing, so it's like there's a bit of logistical stuff around there, but it'd be really cool to have the community to do some in-person productivity seminars, to do this coaching e type stuff and to make videos that I feel like making rather than videos that I feel like I should make because the algorithm or whatever wants me to.
Joe: And just on that part about the team, if I could snap my fingers and there was like a 10 day period every quarter where you all sat down and were together, connected, working together how would that feel?
Ali: Oh, that's great. We're doing that already, so Yeah. It's so fun. I look forward to those. Yeah.
Joe: Okay, great. Yeah so it seems like what I notice is your natural progression is to move into something that's more connective. So here's my question for you. How do you connect more right now without changing anything that you're doing? Meaning you're not gonna get off the podcast and go and sit in yoga mudra and do breath work. Like how right now do you connect more?
Ali: Like right now, in this moment?
Joe: Correct. Yeah.
Ali: The thing that's coming to mind is a sense of connecting with my internal self or something, and like trying to speak from the heart rather than from the head while we're having this conversation.
Joe: Yeah. Sounds good. So I just want to note that means, again, putting attention into your body, not just the intellectual process.
Ali: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, as you ask that question, I'm like paying attention to like my feet on the floor and oh yeah, I've got my hands on the table and stuff.
That sort of, that thing that Eckhart Tolle talks about, it's just like feel what's happening in your body. And I'm like, oh yeah I don't do that by default. So that was a nice reminder. So yeah, I'm sitting here right now.
Joe: And I wanna note A, it took no energy. If anything, I saw it take less energy from you and you just said, feel my body. I just wanna keep on talking about the feeling as I see it come up.
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. So if I could click my fingers right now, and all of a sudden you were just 10% more connected in everything you did in the same way that you just became 10% more connected in sitting and talking with me. So no matter, nothing in your life changed as far as the practicalities and tactical what I do today, but when you got on YouTube, it felt 10% more connected, when you interacted with your team, is 10% more when you're writing your book, it was 10, when you're doing the next podcast interview how exciting would that be?
Ali: That would be pretty fricking cool. Yeah, it feels so easy. Why don't I just do that?
Joe: What do you think it would do for your career? Just to like to address the money fear. What do you think it would, we obviously have no idea, but if you were to guess?
Ali: If I were to put money on it, it would grow the business without me having to think too hard about it because I'd be operating from a place of connectedness or something.
Joe: Yeah. Typically, I notice that as a public figure, people want to be able to connect with you and so your connection with yourself is a big component in that recipe.
Ali: Yeah, I was, I did a live stream about an hour ago just on my second YouTube channel where I was just having a bit of a chat with whoever was there and people were like, we wanna see more of your life. And I was like, but I dunno what would be helpful for you guys and they're all like, no, just talk about anything we wanna hear about you. Come on man. So that's kinda speaks to this idea.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. So what if that's instead of the career goal being like the typical goals, write a book, make X amount of dollars, get enough clicks. What if the goal was be 10% more connected in everything I do?
Ali: That would be really cool. That would be very interesting to try out.
Joe: Yeah. So I'm gonna ask this really weird question. Give me just the thing about the business, like for some businesses it would be billing, I don't think you do a lot of billing, but one of those rote things that your business does that hopefully you've outsourced or delegated at this point. But either way is something that your business does is this kind of rote, mundane, non exciting thing,
Ali: Filming sponsorship segments for the videos and for the podcast.
Joe: Awesome. I want you to do two things. One is I want you to think about how to do that in the most connected way possible, meaning as a whole system, not just you being there doing the sponsorship, but like the whole organization being deeply connected in that process and I want you to do it while being connected with yourself.
Ali: Yeah. I can think of some ways to do that.
Joe: I love how quickly your mind, just, your mind works so fast. It's so cool to watch it. So gimme the ideas that just came. Just by doing that little experiment, what ideas just showed up?
Ali: Oh, the ideas were like working with sponsors and actively reaching out to sponsors that we really vibe with. Immediately Lululemon came to mind 'cause every piece of clothing I own is Lululemon and we just never bothered reaching out to them to be like, Hey, do you guys wanna work together and stuff?
'Cause something was holding us back and things that would be pretty connected. Actively reaching out to all of the tech companies whose stuff I actually use rather than just worrying about all the inbound from people who's trying to convince us to use their stuff and, all that.
Then at one point I had the weird thought that like I would love to do sponsored segments where I say a poem about the thing or it like rhymes in some kind of way, or I turn it into a song while playing on the guitar. And then a friend told me, no, that's bad for conversions. Don't do that. And I was like, okay, I guess I won't do that.
But actually that would be a way more fun and interesting way to do a sponsored segment. If I'm like composing a song plus ChatGPT really helps with rhyming stuff these days. Those things came to mind.
Joe: Yeah, great. And totally we're, as in this job, it's experiment after experiment is what you learn. So it all sounds like great experiments.
So look at just what happens, you could take even the thing that is most mundane, that you dislike the most, put it through this goal about how does this become, how do I do this in a more connected way? While being connected, thinking about it, and immediately it sparks this another level of creativity.
You're obviously very creative in everything you do to come up with that much content. There's just a huge creativity there, but all of a sudden it sparks this whole nother level of creativity. So that same lens could be put at everything you do. How do I buy camera equipment? Like everything you do there can be this question of like, how do I maximize the connection?
Ali: Sick. Okay, I need to remember this somehow.
Joe: It's recorded. You're fine.
Ali: 2024 goal, because even now I'm just like I've got my hands on the table and I'm just noticing my fingers on the table and I never notice my fingers on the table, but yeah, for the last five minutes I've been like this part of me that's keeping some percentage of my attention on that while also talking to you. And I'm finding that as that's happening, I was feeling a bit of oh shit, I hope this episode's good enough for Joe to put on the pod. I hope I don't embarrass myself. All of that's gone. I'm just like, we're just having a chat now.
Joe: Yeah.
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: So one technical hack. There's this great app called Yap. And it just reminds you I have a silent phone that does almost, it makes no sounds. The only sound it makes is Yap, which is really great because then I don't get bothered and it, like I would for you right now, I'd put on that Yap chat.
The question would just be how do I be 10% more connected right now? And that would just be this automatic reminder that happens. The other thing that I'll say is that as you move away from the brain and all the intellect stuff and you move into your body, you'll start to be able to trust that your body will catch stuff that you don't need to write on a list.
So like if you're all in the head, then there's a lot of oh, I have to capture this, but if you actually allow it to hit your body and resonate in your body, oftentimes that works better than a list. You read it on a list, but do you remember to read the list and whatever, happens next?
Ali: Yeah, and it's the whole thing of like, how do I make sure I remind myself to then go on that Google doc or whatever the thing was.
Joe: Exactly. That whole thing. Yeah. So I just say it is that as you're starting to learn about the feeling and the somatic world it's detracting to then immediately go and write it down if it prevents the integration of it in the body.
So let it integrate in the body and then go write it down. Meaning like right now you are feeling what it is to be 10% more connected in our conversation together. Keep the attention in the body and then you'll remember it more likely than if you write it on a list.
Ali: Nice. Thanks.
Joe: Yeah. Cool. So the only thing that I see is the open thread that we have left is, the feeling piece of it. So any other questions about what to do next in your career is like what, if anything is still open there?
Ali: No, honestly, I think even just running it through that filter of what does 10% more connected, I've got the answers. Yeah.
Joe: Okay. Rock and roll.
Ali: Yeah. Thank you.
Joe: Easy peasy. Okay, so then the, on the feeling of emotion stuff.
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: So the question I have for you is how much of it is conscious and how much of it is it that you're not feeling your body, and how much of it is that you're not aware, that you're feeling?
How much of it is that you're not feeling, and how much of it is that you're not aware that you're feeling?
Ali: I'm not sure, but sometimes I'll be with like my brother and they'll say hey, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, because you've got tears in your eyes right now and it looks like you're about to cry.
And I'm like, whoa. And I'm like, shit, you're right. That's weird. And then they'd be like, how are you feeling? And I'm like, I don't know. Like I've got tears in my eyes, so I'm clearly, and then I try and like reverse engineer, like what? There must have been something that's come up that sort of triggered me in some way, but I would just have no sense of feeling in the body any different to what I was like 10 seconds ago. But I can feel like my eyes like screwing up a little bit and stuff.
Joe: Okay, so the body is doing something, there is an awareness thing that's happening. There's a couple intellectual pieces on this. The first intellectual piece is if you take a kid who's physically abused and you put a quarter in one hand and a key in another hand, without them seeing it, as an adult, they won't be able to tell you which hand has the key and which hand has the quarter.
Because the human system is really smart. If something is too painful, it cuts off. And so most of us, me particularly in my journey, I couldn't have told you what emotion I was having at all. And I wasn't particularly expressive of them because emotions were way too painful. There was too much emotional abuse.
And emotional abuse is a word that I think I throw it around very easily. And what I mean by emotional abuse is that somebody held you responsible for their emotional state or somebody told you the emotions that you were having were not okay to have. Those are the two ways, so jealousy would be a form of emotional abuse.
Don't be so excited, Johnny, don't cry, Johnny, whatever. All those things would be forms, in my definition, those would be emotional abuse. And so the first step in overcoming that is just learning to be aware of the emotional experience. And for some people, like for me, the way I first started to learn that I was in fear is that I had binary thinking.
I was so aware of my thought process that I was like, oh, I noticed, I'm thinking black or white right now. I must be in fear. And then it was later that I learned, oh, this is the somatic experience of fear in my system. So I looked at the way my thought pattern showed fear before I actually learned how to feel it somatically.
My body was in fear either way. So I just give that as a background that, that hopefully may be helpful. And I noticed that there's a way that, being real, you put your chin down, you feel more, you allow yourself to be in the body. And last part, if you have a practice of just that idea of oh, some of my attention is in my body while we're sitting here talking together, everything else will take care of itself, like we don't need to have a session. If you just keep 10% of your awareness in your body as much as possible, everything else will take care of itself.
Ali: Really?
Joe: There's no need. Yeah. It's one of the most powerful practices, but most people can't pull it off. The transformation and change can happen so rapidly that they will leave their body because it's too much for them to feel. But anyways, just know that's the hack. And I know you're good at hacks, so if there's anyone, you'll be able to do it.
Okay, so now all the intellectual stuff is aside. If right now you start bawling, crying, just like weeping and crying over the fact that you weren't allowed to have the emotions as a child, because survival was such a bigger priority, and so your parents couldn't see your emotional life, and instead all they could see was preparing you to survive, for instance.
I'm not saying that's true, but how would you feel about you just cried on this podcast and everybody, and 2 million subscribers all knew that you cried about this pain in your life. What would be your reaction to that?
Ali: That would be cool. If I had such an emotional response to a thing, I'd be intrigued.
Joe: Okay. Great. So there's not like a I need to be seen not sad or what's the emotion that if it happened right now you would be like, if any, you would be like, oh I shouldn't have done that on a podcast. Anger? Fear? Sadness? Excitement? Exuberance? Joy? Peace?
Ali: I'm cool with all those.
Oh the only thing that comes to mind is I wouldn't want to say something bad about someone I love in public on a podcast or something. But there's not much risk of that happening. But any kind of emotion, I would love to express emotions openly on a podcast. That would be perfect.
Joe: Okay, great. Outside of the emotion that you just expressed, for instance?
Ali: What emotion did I just express?
Joe: Yeah what emotion did you just express? I'll do it for you right here. I would love to have a whole bunch of emotions on a podcast. That would be great.
Ali: Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah.
Joe: What emotion was that?
Ali: Yeah, I guess that was like joy.
Joe: Joy. Yeah.
Ali: Oh my goodness, emotions? Sign me up.
Joe: Yeah. Even some excitement in there I would say like it is like there is, right? And so how did you know that I was in excitement and joy when I did it?
Ali: Because you were smiling and your voice went like louder and you moved around a little bit and stuff.
Joe: Which, if you can't, if you're on the podcast just listening, you can't, you can see Ali doing this actually right now in his body. He's mimicking and you're literally, I don't know if you were aware of it, but you were literally like jolting and moving and smiling and so somehow or another, your body knows how to do it when you're even just talking about it.
Ali: Yeah. Okay. So like, I don't have an issue with, I think with experiencing positive emotions, but it's, Okay. No I'm gonna rephrase that. I don't think I have an issue with feeling excitement. I do often feel excitement, but emotions like love or anything around sadness or sorrow or like those are the ones where I'm not sure how I feel. Yeah.
Joe: If you had to tell me the difference between sorrow and love, what would it be?
Ali: I would say that love is like this subtle positive glow and sorrow is like a subtle negative antique glow or something.
Joe: Okay. So we're gonna do, one of the great things about doing any kind of emotional work is you can experiment like real time and it's really great.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna find a memory that brings up love for you, and then we're gonna find a memory that brings up sorrow for you. And you're gonna catch one in your body, then you're gonna catch the other one in your body and you're gonna go back and forth for a while and then I'll ask you a question or two.
So come up with a memory you can share or not share. It doesn't matter that immediately brings up the feeling of love in your system. Maybe it's a dog or a brother, younger sibling, cousin. Yeah? Okay. So go ahead and feel that have that memory and just notice what happens in your system.
Ali: Okay, yep.
Joe: Great. That's enough. Then I want you to think of a memory that sorrow, loss of something or, so I noticed that your chin just went up.
Ali: Oh, interesting. Memory of sorrow? I have this weird sensation of oh, I don't wanna go there but that's weird because I do wanna go there. Of course, I wanna go there.
Joe: Somebody taught you it wasn't safe at some point, or the world in general did. So there's a automatic reaction to it that is, yeah, great.
Ali: Experience of sorrow?
Okay. I've got an experience of sorrow.
Joe: Okay, so bring yourself totally into your body again. You're a little bit out. There you go. Okay. Now I want you to go back to love.
And now I want you to go back to sorrow.
One more time, back to love and back to the memory of sorrow.
And now I want you to hold both of them at the same time, both of those two sensations simultaneously. So what, if any, difference did you find between love and sorrow, and then what happened when you brought them together?
Ali: So for sorrow, I definitely felt some sort of thing around, like here, I think.
Joe: So you're just for everybody, what I'm hearing you say is like right around your, is it below your belly button or above?
Ali: Above my belly button, just like below, towards the bottom of my left kind of rib cage.
Joe: Great. Okay.
Ali: Like a sort of squeezy feeling there. I don't really know If I felt anything somatically for the love thing. It did feel like that feeling eased up a bit. And so when I was going in between the two as like when I was thinking sorrow is like the squeeziness happened a bit more. And when I was thinking love, it eased up. And when I think, so the squeeziness and then it eased up again and when you said hold both at the same time, I felt the squeeziness, but I took a sort of breath in and then it was like the squeeziness was still there, but like the breath in was like this, like almost this lightness at the same time.
Joe: Yeah. So how much would you say that the love created a sense of spaciousness around other stuff besides just the squeeziness? Or how much of the relief slash spaciousness was just around the squeezy part or how much of it was just general?
Ali: Oh, interesting. Now that you mention it, like when I think of the love thing, there's a bit of a sort of an expansion out from, I guess lower ribs outwards a little bit. But I'm not sure if that's just because I was taking a breath in. Maybe, I dunno.
Joe: Yeah. The thing about emotions is that they do affect your muscles.
Ali: Yeah.
Joe: So a breath in, if you're anxious, you stop breathing. Anxiety affects the breath. Love affects the breath. Joy affects the breath, it affects the body position and it affects, so any emotion that we might have, any emotion that we withhold requires us to constrict our muscles in a particular way.
So it's one of the things when people look at me coaching and they're like, how the hell did he just do that? I can do it because I can notice, oh, someone's head is up there, they're cutting off an emotion. Or they have this line right here and their forehead, which means they have repressed anger or blah, blah, blah. Hunched back, they had a highly critical parent. There's all sorts of tells that people have in their body. So anyways, the idea that you breath in and emotion are different, is not particularly the most effective way to look at it.
So the question I have for you is if you had to guess what made it that sorrow was something that you didn't wanna feel?
Ali: I'm not sure, but the sorrow experience I was thinking of was, I had this big crush on this girl in my first year of med school, and then she left the university for various reasons, and I was like, heartbroken. I genuinely felt pain in my body and I was like, whoa.
And she was like my best friend as well, and it's I'm never gonna have friends again. And then I talked myself out of that by bringing to mind dozens of counter examples of situations of that I actually did have friends and actually life was gonna be fine. And then just buried, I think maybe buried that feeling of sorrow and replaced it with, if I had to psycho therapize myself, replaced it with a drive to succeed, this was very much unrequited love. She wasn't interested in me. Okay. That's fine. Let's freaking dominate with my business and stuff.
And then she came back to university a year later and a female friend said, oh, the way you get a girl to be interested in you is to actively not be interested in her. So I was like, all right. At that point I didn't have any affection for her and then she seemed to like me and weird kind of dynamic.
Joe: Yeah.
Ali: But I dunno.
Joe: So I just want to tie in somewhere in your college experience, you've made the choice to have success over connection. And now here you are, you've got your success and you're like, oh wait, I also want the connection piece.
Ali: Yeah. That's interesting.
Joe: Yeah. And so here's the next question for you. Everything your mind told you is true. You had friends, you could continue to make friends. This woman wasn't required for your happiness. All this stuff. How would you have allowed all that truth to be there but not have it repress your sadness and your sorrow? Yeah. That's all true, but I'm fucking sad.
Ali: Yeah. I think at the time, and maybe still to this day, I thought of sadness as being not a good emotion to have. And I think all the stoicism Kool-Aid that I'd been drinking was like we can control our responses to things and it's just a story that you tell yourself. So you need to replace the story, blah, blah, blah. But I think if I were to have heartbreak or sorrow now I like the idea of sitting with it. And I had friends in school, in college who would like, have like sad songs playlists on Spotify, and I'd be like, what? You have a sad song playlist?
Yeah, the music's good, like chasing cars is a good song, but and they'd be like, yeah, sometimes I'm feeling sad and I just play the sad songs. And I'm like, that's doesn't make sense 'cause now you're just wallowing in the sadness. And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, what is wrong with you?
But I now like the idea of if I feel sad, it would be nice to actually experience that and like wallow in the sadness in air quotes.
Joe: What would be another word besides wallow?
Ali: Indulge or Revel or experience or surf or enjoy. Yeah,
Joe: I like savor.
Ali: Savor. Ooh, that's nice. Savor the sadness. Yeah. That's part of the human experience.
Joe: So just as clear, there's a distinction, it's true that if you make meaning of certain things, it'll create certain emotions in your body that's there's no doubt about it and you can change the meaning of something.
But you can also just have an emotion without a meaning, and it's not required. You don't have to have a meaning.
Ali: You can?
Joe: Yeah, of course. And mammals who don't think mammals, who don't have thought, have emotions.
Ali: Yeah. Fair enough.
Joe: Or at least, yeah, much lesser thoughts at least, yeah.
Ali: But isn't there that thing that I don't, I dunno where I was reading this, but like you you only experience an emotion for 45 seconds and then to experience it for longer requires you to reinforce the story you're telling yourself about said emotion.
Joe: I would say kind of thing, you've never experienced an emotion for more than a second, a single emotion for more than a second.
But there's never been a moment of waking in your life where you're not having an emotional experience is more of the way I would describe it. There's never a non-emotional experience that you're having. We're constantly in an emotion, like we have an emotional thing happening, like music in the background, it's constantly there as long as we're awake and it's never the exact same note or the exact same instrumentation and note and everything. Like I've experienced sadness thousands of times, but it always has a slightly different seasoning to it.
Ali: Okay.
Joe: Or it's a different combination. It's like a little more sadness and a little less anger or whatever.
Yeah. So I'd say that's more of the, as far as telling the story to indulge it, there is something really important about that, which is you can be stuck in a story and then stuck in an emotional loop for sure. So if I'm helping somebody learn how to express their emotions, which is not something you can do on a podcast.
I might use a story to get them into that emotional state, but I don't wanna reify the story as true. All the stories are false. The story that your sadness was gonna last forever and that she hurt you and that she didn't want you, and it was unrequited and that you had other friends, every single one of those stories had some falsehood to it, and there was no full truth in any of the stories.
And so if you believe in a story, it can also stagnate an emotional experience, they're very related that way. But just as easily, you can have a similar emotional experience as, for instance, for me I had the recurring emotional experience of I can't get my dad's love. Then I moved away from, which was a longing and with an unrequitedness in it, and then, I moved away. My dad wasn't there, it wasn't recurring, so I just went, I can't get money. And it was just the exact same emotional experience, but instead of not being able to get my dad's love, it became I can't get money. And so you can have that, you can have a rut of an emotional experience and then change your story around it to maintain the emotional experience.
The reason that the other side of it is told so well is because most people who are really good at describing shit can see how the thoughts affect their emotions, not so much how their emotions affect their thoughts because they're more intellectually based.
Ali: There was a thing that came to mind as you were saying that this sort of I can't get my dad's love, I can't get money, in that I feel like I have this constant sense of there is more that needs to be done. We got the call yesterday oh, congratulations, you're a New York Times bestseller. My brother was asking, how do you feel? And I was like, I feel a sense of relief that like the work that we put into this has paid off, but it wasn't a sense of oh, okay, I can chill out now.
It was like there's always more to be done. We don't have any recurring revenue products, so let's build this community thing and what are the goals? Let's get after it. There was this weird kind, like I, and I think I'm a pretty happy and content guy, but I have this kernel of like dissatisfaction of no, there's always more to be doing.
And I find it hard to take a break and give myself permission to simply read fiction or like just lie down and just do nothing. Because there is more to be done in terms of building up our monthly recurring revenue and all that crap.
Joe: To get where?
Ali: To get to a place of okayness, I think, to get to a place of safety.
Joe: Just to be clear, I have to be not okay to get to a place of okayness.
Ali: Yeah. By definition, somewhat, but yeah. Because if I was okay, then it's like the reason to do stuff would be for the connection, which would be quite a fun reason to do stuff, for the connection, for the fun of it rather than because there is a lack or a scarcity or a thing like, yeah.
Joe: Yeah. There I see the click. That's it. And you were mentioning, I was mentioning my dad, is that, was that relation, did you notice that too, that somehow that was part of, for you to be okay with your mother or father, that there was always something that needed to be done? Is that why that triggered that?
Ali: Ooh, now that you mention it, yeah.
Joe: Okay.
Ali: Yeah. I think the sense of, maybe I'm over therapising myself, but I remember when like growing up, we could never let our mom see us, like me and my brother, I could never let my mom see me playing video games 'cause if she did, there was always something else to do. There was always a chore in the house that needed doing or like some homework that needed doing or shouldn't you be studying for your exams type thing? And obviously that's now different, but it's still a sense of man, I can't continue playing Balgur's Gate three because there's like brainstorming to do about the next video or building a landing page for the next fricking course that we're doing or whatever, right?
Joe: Yeah. Exactly. That's a hell of a four-hour work week. Yeah.
Ali: Love, love the four-hour work week.
Joe: So how does that relate to I don't have time to feel because there's something that has to be done? I don't have time to be sad over this woman because I have to be successful. Like how much does that relate?
Ali: Yeah. It relates in the sense of, people often say, you should celebrate the wins. And there's part of me that says, screw celebrating the wins. There's more to be done. Yeah.
Joe: What would celebrating your win look like, having just hit the New York Times bestseller? If you were to celebrate the win in the most connected fashion possible, what would it look like?
Ali: It would look like, firstly, sending thank you messages and gifts to everyone who's helped along the way. And secondly, chilling out for a month and just like binging a great fantasy fiction series. That would be super fun.
Joe: That sounds really nice. Yeah.
Ali: Yeah, that would be nice.
Joe: What was the emotion you had during that experience when you were thinking about it? Your face changed color a little bit. Your eyes did something. What was that?
Ali: Yeah, I have a bit of like wateriness in my eyes.
Joe: Yeah.
Ali: So strange.
Joe: It's called gratitude. Yeah. The tears, that's gratitude.
Ali: Okay. Nice.
Joe: Yeah, just so you know, yeah.
Ali: Yeah. It was like a sense of ooh, I just didn't even remotely think that was an option 'cause there's more to be done. But now that I'm thinking, I guess that is an option.
Joe: Let's say you did it, let's say you did it for a second. Let's say you wrote all those notes. You spent the time in a deep gratitude for each of the people, and you showed them that gratitude and you like totally checked out with fiction for a certain period of time. At the end of two years, would you be further ahead or farther behind?
Ali: Definitely further ahead, yeah.
Joe: Yeah. That's how important the emotions are to your productivity, to actually like to stop and say, all we did was say, what's the most connected way to do that? You connected with yourself immediately. The emotional experience of gratitude showed up, which showed you a path at least of working with other people and gratitude of giving yourself rest.
Ali: Damn. This is some good stuff, man. I'd seen you do this on other people, and I was like, i'm like, yeah. Wow. That's so cool.
Joe: It's not just to be clear, it's not me doing it to you, but yeah it's me following you. My experience of it is far more me following you then.
Ali: Yeah. It's so cool to experience anyone watching or listening to this, this is pretty cool stuff.
Joe: You started, you what? The interesting thing is I always know where the thing end for anybody listening to this, just a, like a quick little thing. I don't even know if we captured it in the recording, but the very first thing you said was, I just finished the New York Times bestseller list. Now I'm thinking, what do I wanna do next? And so the very first thing you said was the kernel always, almost always is the kernel of what is being worked on. It's just a fascinating thing. It's like people, it and that's why I follow you. You bring that up and I'm like, oh, that's what we're here for. So that you know it. I don't know it.
Ali: Yeah. That's so cool. Love it.
Joe: Total pleasure.
Ali: Thank you so much.
Joe: Yeah.
Ali: It has been wonderful.
Brett: Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us on your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments.
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