The Hidden Mechanics of Self-Sabotage

Brett: What makes people, when they get so close to success, self-sabotage? Right when they're on the verge of having everything they want, they pull away. 

Joe: How many times have I seen this happen? Back in the day when record labels were still really important for musicians, one of the times that they've said that they'd have the most breakups for bands is right after they got signed.

So it's not only I'm gonna sabotage it right before everything goes right, it often happens right after everything goes right, too. And I don't know how many people, like, when we work with people and it's like, "Oh, here's the goal," and they start making the goal, that's when they get all anxious. And so this is a cool thing to talk about.

Brett: Yeah. And this reminds me of a time. I was... Maybe 10 years ago, I went to this thing called the World Championship of Base Jumping. It was in Alicante, Spain, and the thing that's being measured is can you land on this little dinner-plate-sized target or in the center of that target? And I'm just jumping, having fun during this event, and one day, it's like a four-day event, one day I'm walking by the scoreboard and I glance over and I just see my name at the top.

I'm in, like, first or second place, and I'm just like, "Oh, shit. I'm winning this thing that I didn't care about." And from then on, for the rest of the competition, I couldn't hit the target once. 

Joe: Yeah, right. Exactly. 

Brett: Which is funny, 'cause I'm landing at the center of the target because accuracy matters when you're jumping in rocks and trees and whatever. So this is something that I was used to doing to save my life. 

Joe: Right. 

Brett: But the moment I was trying to do it to save my spot at the top of a list, I couldn't do it. 

Joe: Yeah. Exactly. And it's so common. It's so common for folks. 

Brett: Okay, so let's dive into how this works on a head, heart, and gut level.

Joe: Yeah. So the head is, I have to think about myself differently if I win. 

Brett: Mm. 

Joe: Right? So, an example of your jumping competition, it's, "Oh, I might have to see myself as one of the best people in the world at this thing, which means, oh, there's some pressure on me. There's something, some way that I have to now be in the world. I have to move through the world. I'm gonna be seen in different ways, and I don't particularly know if I want that, even though part of me wants it, but I don't know if all of me wants it. So the identity, 

Brett: Yep, familiar.

Joe: The identity piece is what gets messed around with in the head. Emotionally, it's, there's usually an emotion that goes with the feeling that is a little scary.

And so the just great question to be asking there is, what would I have to feel if I do win, if I do succeed? And you think, "Oh, I'd have to feel great," but great isn't always a feeling that you're used to or want. Most people, if you say, "Okay, like, let's feel pleasure and play for a little bit," they, they can only do it for five or six minutes.

And part of that is related to the gut. And what's happening in the gut is that, uh, winning is an aroused state, just like losing is an aroused state or being threatened by a bear is an aroused state. And so as you get closer to winning, oftentimes it's ahhh. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And the way to avoid this experience is to lose. 

Brett: You take yourself out of the experience, yeah, it's sort of like a metabolic thing on some level. It's just metabolically expensive to be aroused, so you might as well just chill. And you can easily chill the moment you're no longer on top of the leaderboard.

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

Brett: And you're like, "Oh, yeah, no problem. I'm just, I'm just here to have fun." 

Joe: And so there's just like in general, there's this level of arousal that people are used to feeling. There's like a window of tolerance for it, and if you get outside of that level of arousal, then you start freaking out, whether that's too anxious or too happy or too exuberant or any of those, like too much of it.

And so there is a way of just expanding that window of tolerance. That's like often something that happens. But it's the same thing with emotions, is there's a window of tolerance in emotions. And like most of what we're teaching often is how do people allow themselves to expand that window of tolerance to the emotions 'cause emotions are just sensation in the body.

And so we wanna manage them, we want them to be a certain way, we don't want them to be a certain way. But if you're gonna win, you don't get to choose how they are. And so how much can you actually enjoy the emotional experience of it? 

Brett: In my case, I'd have to feel excited. 

Joe: Super excited. 

Brett: Which is great, I love feeling excited, but there's a nuance there where if I'm feeling excited in front of a bunch of people and my peers, and I'm excited about winning a competition, that would sort of fly in the face of my identity of, "Fuck competition. We're just here to be having fun together," and also safe. 

Joe: Yes. 

Brett: You know? Like, let's not introduce variables that, you know, make us put ourselves at risk for silly rewards. And so in that thought process, in that belief system, which has its benefits- 

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: Also, it would feel discordant for me to be seen feeling excitement about winning that particular competition at that particular time.

Joe: Yeah, that's exactly it. So all of those things are what's happening in that fear. And it's really similar to the fear of failure, which is interesting. 

Brett: Yeah. So how is it similar to the fear of failure? 

Joe: Well, both have that nervous system arousal. Yeah. Both have a set of emotions that you don't want to feel, which is interesting.

Mentally, you wanna feel one, right? I wanna make this distinction really clear. You think, "I wanna feel good. I don't wanna feel bad." Like that makes sense to the mind. To the body, however, there's a level of feeling good that is scary, and there is a level of feeling bad that is scary and they are just the level that you are not used to.

And so the bigger the win, the, bigger the possibility of that sabotage moment. The bigger the lose, the bigger the possibility of the avoidance, of whatever avoidance to not have that emotional experience. But they're still just experiences that are on the outer edge of our emotional capacity to enjoy, handle, love, hang out in.

Brett: Well, that's such a fascinating double bind there too, because depending on the size of your window of tolerance individually, this can show up in a lot of different ways. 'Cause if it's a really wide window of tolerance, super success, ultra success might feel like too much for you, but, you know, just general everyday winning can feel great and no problem.

Joe: Yep. 

Brett: But if the window of tolerance is really small, you could feel really stuck between them, where I don't wanna succeed, but if I don't succeed, I also feel like I'm failing, and I don't wanna fail. But if I fail just less than this amount, I'll feel like I'm succeeding. So like, no matter what I'm doing, I'm stuck between both poles.

Joe: That's right. And I think a lot of people are stuck between both poles. And the other weird thing is that's just the emotional level. So one of the things you'll notice with folks who are, who have become super wealthy, who have gone from zero to billion

is that they have, not all of them, but a lot of them have a mental model that they're smarter, better than most people.

And so they somehow, that billion dollars is easy for them to handle because it's just evidence that they're winning the game, and they should win the game because they're smarter/better than most folks. But that doesn't mean that the emotional thing is palpable for them, or the nervous system situation is palpable for them.

And so oftentimes after they become a billionaire, they burn out, they can't get out of their pajamas for a couple of years. They're beating themselves up, saying, "Why am I not doing the next thing?" Because they've gotten the money, but that level of success was like, it was too overwhelming to be with it emotionally or on a nervous system level for a prolonged period of time.

And so they extract themselves from the company, or they extracted themselves from doing things in the world so that they don't have to feel it. They become more anonymous. So that's another way. So it's actually all three of them have to be pretty well-regulated if you're going to get and maintain success, which is why those three reasons are often the reasons why somebody who's won the lottery is poor two years later.

Brett: Yeah. So that brings up the question, how do you allow yourself to experience the success, go into that higher out of your range of tolerance, be with that without the success accruing to your identity, making a new cage for you to be stuck in? Like, "Oh, I must be better than everyone because I have the success, and now I have to be better than everyone, or I will feel some," and then feel stuck in that. 

Joe: So the cool thing about success is it can be an identity obliterator. Which is, like I never would've thought it. So the answer that I wanted to give you to that question was in the exact opposite way that you would've ever conceived of, right? Which is, like what we're taught is, "Oh, don't let success go to your head. Don't start thinking like you're so great because you've won." And that actually creates friction in feeling good, right? Oh, because if I feel really good about winning, and I don't even feel great. I don't feel like I'm special. I don't feel like I'm wonderful. I don't feel like I'm better than everybody. I just feel great about winning.

How do you differentiate that in your body between don't let it go to your head? And so the trick is to actually allow yourself to feel great about the success. It's like, how do I allow the full feeling of success in? And by the way, it doesn't have to happen after you've had success.

It can happen before you have success. You can imagine your success and imagine feeling great about it. And as you do, your identity starts to unravel just as it does, right? There was this great little meme I saw recently, and it was on, what was it? It was, like, Instagram or something. And it was a woman just on the floor and crying, just, like, bawling. And then the little theme said, what transforming your life looks like at the beginning." 

Brett: Ah. 

Joe: And I loved it. I was like, "Oh, that's brilliant." So that breakdown is traditionally what we think about, like, we're obliterating our identity, but it's not the only way to obliterate your identity.

Really allowing in a compliment, which is something we do all the time in some of our courses. You can just see people change the way they think about themselves. They have to allow themselves to feel bigger, more expansive. They see themselves differently. And allowing yourself to really feel great about your success stops the way that you think about yourself.

It changes the way you think about yourself, as weird as that sounds. And it took me so long to, like, really understand that. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: To really understand, oh, I get to just go, "Oh- Right now, I am talking on this podcast. Nothing is happening in the world, but I know I'm changing lives because of all the other podcasts that some of you are listening to right now, or the YouTube videos, or somebody doing one of our courses right now."

And if I don't allow that in, if I don't allow myself to feel, oh, wow, like the work that we're doing is changing lives even when I'm sleeping? Holy crap. I will start to feel so burdened by the organization, by what I'm doing, by all the emails, by all the DMs, by all the people asking for my time, and the 20, 30, 40 people asking me to coach this week, and all that.

It's just like, ah, it's overwhelming. Get away from me. Like, ah. But if I start just, oh, this feels... I'm allowing myself to feel really good about this, all that stuff isn't very overwhelming at all. 

Brett: Yeah. It's as though you're letting in the whole reinforcement loop of the reason you're doing the thing.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: If you don't let yourself actually receive it, then you have to use what some people call dirty fuel to like grind at it, rather than what you're doing is allowing in the thing that charges you as some would say, clean fuel. And I'm also curious, though, how does that work in the reverse?

If we allow in our failure, does that do the same? 'Cause we've talked about how failure is, you know, some way you've decided to, to define something. And there's a way to define it so that it's all just learning and experimentation. So you've actually succeeded when you've failed, which can feel a little bit like a, like a intellectual sleight of hand.

But also, there's a way that like really just... I've had times where, you know what, like I really fucked up, and this did not go the way I anticipated and that obliterates a certain identity of perfectionist or of knowing it all. And it's a really good thing to have happen as long as it doesn't become a new failure identity.

Joe: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. 

Brett: So how do you see that in play? 

Joe: Well, actually, the interesting thing is that the... like one of the mechanisms, and we'll go into more later, but one of the mechanisms that works for not sabotaging success is the same mechanism that works for, like not creating your own failure.

Brett: Mm. 

Joe: Right?

Brett: Don't let your failure go to your head also. 

Joe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So in both cases, it's visualizing everything that is happening and and feeling all the emotions of a massive success and a massive failure. And so I'll do this often with entrepreneurs, where the entrepreneurs are starting to have fear because things are going well or not going well, and I'll be like, "Okay, I want you to imagine a complete failure of your company."

Like the worst-case scenario, and then feel the emotion all the way through it until, like, the company's gone for two years and you've got a new job or whatever. Same thing, success, feel the the feeling of success and, like, fully let it in, the whole thing. People are, like, looking at you on the street, and they know who you are, and people want your attention, and they're kissing your ass, and they're telling you things that they think that you want.

Feel the whole thing. What's amazing is if they feel both, their identity basically just changes in advance . You know? The identity already starts to not all the way, but it starts to, like, crack and change. 

Brett: Yeah, there's somebody in the decisions course that I was working with facilitating in our circle forum and they had a decision that was, the fear was, well, there's, like, on this side, there's success, on this side, there's failure. And in exploring both of those options, they recognized that it was the same series of emotions that they were avoiding in both cases. In each of the decisions, in each of the success or failure modes, it was, "Oh, everywhere I look, I will have to feel these same feelings that I'm avoiding."

And if I can just welcome those feelings, all of this falls away. The decision, the fear of, oh, if I get it right, if I get it wrong- it's just incredibly freeing. 

Joe: Yeah, exactly. And to, like, allow yourself to feel the arousal of all of them as well on the nervous system level works great for the same reason.

Because essentially, on the nervous system level, it is the same thing. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Right? And so that's why so many of the stories that we tell ourselves of success are stories of threat. Right? So we can tell ourselves, "Oh, if I'm successful," tall poppy thing, "I'm the, gonna be the tall poppy, and people are gonna attack me."

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: That sounds like threat. Or, I won't be like my friends anymore, and they'll leave me." That sounds like threat. "Oh if I'm super successful, nobody will want me anymore. They'll just want my money." That feels like threat. And so the reason that our brain creates all these stories about what's gonna happen to us if we're successful, or, "I'm gonna feel guilty that, oh, none of my friends have made it," that's a threat. That's like, oh, I'm under attack by myself. That we tell stories of, "Oh, I will be attacked," because the nervous system is like, you're, this is threat because it's arousal. 

Brett: So we've talked about how this shows up in the head, heart, and gut, and now it looks like we're talking about the mechanism of action in the head, heart, gut. On the gut level, whether it's success or failure, there's a sense of threat, it seems. 

Joe: The mechanism to work on that is to extend your window of tolerance on that arousal, and the way to do that is to take pleasure in it. Because arousal, by its name it can indicate something incredibly pleasurable.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: But our level of resistance to it is going to determine whether arousal is good or arousal is bad. And so when I say, just to be clear about it, when I say take pleasure in it, that doesn't mean this because oftentimes that is, "I wanna push that sensation down." 

Brett: Right. I'm gonna take a breath to regulate myself. 

Joe: Right, exactly.

Brett: Not to really- 

Joe: Enjoy myself. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And it's weird. So if you feel aroused and you're like, "Oh, how am I gonna breathe to actually enjoy that arousal?" 

Brett: Mm-hmm. 

Joe: It's gonna be more like right?

There's gonna be an enjoyment with it. It's not gonna be, "I'm breathing to settle myself." 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Right? 

Brett: Yeah, it's like, "Oh, there's a sensation going on. I'm curious about it. Let's let it amplify. Let's let there be more of it. Let's let it show up and, like, sink into the nitty-gritty, like, subtle textures of it."

Joe: That's exactly right. And the same can be done for the failure state, right? "Oh, I'm... like, my whole world is falling apart." 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: You can do the same thing. You can take that breath and actually enjoy that state of arousal. And the more you can enjoy that state of arousal, the more you are capable of not making decisions, that golden algorithm failure, and making decisions that allow you the success.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And that's the weird piece, is that there is a golden algorithm happening, right? "Oh, I don't wanna feel like a failure," invites. So you don't feel it, which means you invite that failure in a failure state by sabotaging your success. 

Brett: Mm-hmm. 

Joe: Right? Because that arousal that you're trying not to feel by pushing it down creates the failure state.

Brett: Yeah, and it's almost as though the fear of success is a fear of failure. It's just that you're afraid of success because you predict that immediately after your success, failure will happen. If I succeed in such a way that my friends feel less than around me and pull away and I lose a connection with them, then I have actually failed in getting what I want. So the success seems like it's about to precede some form of failure. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: So feeling the consequences of that failure to expand our perception and see there's actually also ways that I'm letting my friends down by not being successful. 

Joe: Correct.

Brett: By not being the person who could show up for them as fully as the person I possibly can be.

Joe: Yep. "I'll dim my light to make you happy" is definitely a form of not showing up for your friends. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: There's a couple things there that are really important. I don't really see the difference in the fear of success and the fear of failure. I've never heard it described as to why, and I think the way you described it is just beautiful.

And it reminds me of this thing that I realized, was that oftentimes when things go well, your fear is that the other foot's gonna fall, the other shoe's gonna drop, whatever that is. And it turns out that the other shoe always drops.

Like, uh, from this moment, no matter what, something bad will happen you know, at some point. And, like, maybe, like, the only time that that's not true is, like, the moment of death. But, like- 

Brett: Yeah ... 

Joe: but then it's death is gonna happen. So there's always just something that is going to happen, and so there's always evidence that the other foot is gonna fall. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And so it's an interesting thing because you can always prove it. There's always evidence for it. 

Brett: It's interesting. I'm seeing this, my own story that I described earlier in a new light now, where if I were to be excited about being successful at a base jumping competition, I'd be afraid that I'm actually propagating a culture of toxic competition and a heightened risk in a sport where my friends are risking their lives with me and that people will die as a result. So it's, like, literally the the threat of, like, causing death of my friends by being excited about a competition, and I can see how that was quite visceral. And it turns out a lot of my friends died anyway. Nothing I was doing was stopping competition from being prevalent. And I could have, with the self-recognition of what was going on there- I could have actually gone ahead and just slayed it in that competition, and used the platform at the top to say something important about my recognition of how competition moves in me, shared it with my friends, and shown up for them in ways that I wasn't capable of without that recognition.

Joe: And as the winner, talking about safety means more. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And you can't do that unless you actually let the feelings in and allow yourself to feel good about the success. Right? That's the interesting thing, is if you feel bad about the success because somebody else deserved it more, or because why do you deserve it, or because it's guilt, or because, you had the opportunities that other people didn't have the opportunities for, then you never feel good about success, and then it's very hard for you to actually use that success in a way that's good for other people.

Guilt typically makes it so you do not do things that are good for other people. Even when you're, like giving out of guilt. 

Brett: Yeah, which feeds the guilt. You end up then not getting the experience of showing up for your world the way you want to and getting to feel the impact on it, which feeds the guilt and the stories and the belief systems and all the mechanisms of this pattern.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. And so the other way I like to think about this pattern, fear of failure, fear of success, is that it's really just a fear of life. If you really allow yourself to feel life, it's really fucking big. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: It's huge. It, like, makes you feel permeable, it's, like, super expansive. It's a lot to really allow yourself to feel fully alive. We don't feel fully alive if we're not having success and failure. Think about who feels the most dead inside and, like, somebody working at the DMV or some big-ass bureaucracy, you know? Like, where, where the most likely-- Obviously, there's people who feel fully alive in those places. But if you look at where the most likely people are that just feel, "Ugh, I don't know why I'm here. Ugh." Those people are in a place where they do not have big successes and big failures. And the people who feel most alive, where you're like, "Whoa, wow, that person feels really alive," they're living life where big successes and big failures happen, can happen. 

Brett: Some of the times I've felt most alive was in the midst of my biggest failures.

Joe: Correct.

Brett: According to whatever I was defining as a failure at the time. For sure. 

Joe: And that same thing can be found in your successes. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And it's such a weird thing to go, "Oh, I'm gonna savor. I'm gonna actually receive this success," is the way that it hits my system. It's like, "Oh, I'm gonna actually receive this as support for the work that I'm doing in the world." 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And it's so nice to do that because it becomes bigger than you. There's a difference between saying, "Oh, I'm gonna fully allow this feeling of success and enjoy the success," and, "I am going to fully allow this feeling of I am the one who made myself successful." And I think one of them is making it identity, and one of them is not making it identity. It's recognizing that it's happening through you, to you, rather than you are the creator of it. And I mean, you know this business, you know any business, it's never just one person. They can believe it, but it is never true.

Brett: I mean, this is making me think of award shows, where somebody steps up and it's a really fascinating thing just to watch somebody step up and accept an award. 

Joe: Yeah, yeah. 

Brett: Because the way that they might deflect the success or the way they might give it to other people to avoid receiving it.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: The way they might run a script of thanking all the hundreds of people who worked on the project before them. 

Joe: Yeah, yeah. 

Brett: But also the way that they might do that from a place of deep gratitude and humility. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And the differences that you can see in the receiving, it's really fascinating, and that's- would be an interesting study given its kind of place in the center of much of our culture. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: The mega awards show. 

Joe: One of my favorite award ones was it was this singer, and he was just like, "I wanna thank drugs. I wanna thank my neuroses for always feeling like nobody loves me, so I have to prove myself. I have to thank..." Like he went through all the things that everybody's trying to get rid of which propelled him into success. Right? Like body dysmorphia, my soul dysmorphia, like, he literally is like, "All these things are what drove me to having this." And it was this beautiful moment of seeing that, what we think of as success is not success if we're not receiving it.

If we're doing it to prove something, it's like there's no success in it. And so that's weird because that's another way that people actually sabotage the success in a more subtle way, right? There's the obvious way is I just signed the record label and the band just broke up.

But there's the more subtle way of I just had this amazing thing happen to me. I just IPO'd my company, and I still have to prove myself, and I'm still not good enough, and I still don't, right? That's a more subtle way to also prevent yourself from having the success. 'Cause what's the success if it's not feeling the success? Like, oh, I was totally successful, but I felt like shit the whole time. Was it success? 

Brett: Or the fear of if I actually let in the success, I'll lose everything that gave me the success, that I attribute the success to, which was the, like, beating myself up and pushing myself and grinding hardcore. I think my favorite award-winning speech that comes to mind right now is Jim Carrey.

Joe: Oh, I love this one.

Brett: When he steps up and he's like, "I'm Jim Carrey." 

Joe: Two-time Globe, Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. "

Brett: And you know what I dream of at night? Becoming a three-time Golden Globe winner. He's doing exactly the thing that I could have done if I'd, like, won the thing. I could do it without winning it to be sure. But there's something beautiful about playing the game, but not by playing the game. By just being yourself, showing up, and then transforming the game, playing a weird Uno reverse card like Jim Carrey did, and propagating that back into your culture. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: It's a fascinating moment. 

Joe: It was. I loved his moment. It reminded me, I had a girlfriend in college. I don't know what was going on with her at this moment, but she had all As. I don't think she had even an A-minus. She was just like was gonna be valedictorian and she went and purposely got a B in her last class. And I asked, " What, why? Why would you do that?" And she said, "Only God is perfect." Which is, like, if you know the Persian rugs and stuff like that, they always make one mistake in the rug because only God is perfect. And it's so interesting. If you're doing that as a form of prayer, if you're actually doing that because it's like, the perfect sand mandala that gets knocked over by the Buddhists to show that, like, "Oh, this isn't who I am," it's such, like, a wonderful identity.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: But if you're doing it to maintain your identity, you know? To, like, not be the person, not be the tall poppy, then it's like, it's the exact opposite. And it's so interesting how the intention behind it is what's important, not the winning or the losing. And if you grok that. 

Brett: It's the humility behind it, too.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: If you're doing this, making it not perfect from a place of like a deep bow, a prayer versus- 

Joe: Keeping yourself small. 

Brett: Yeah. That's a very different approach. 

Joe: Yeah. It's interesting because a lot of us think humility is a way of keeping ourselves small, but it's actually just...

I think it was Ted Lasso's quote. But it's like, "Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." 

Brett: Mm. 

Joe: And there's a way in which allowing that feeling of success in your system actually makes you think of yourself less, 'cause you're less compulsive. You're less trying to get there or trying to avoid getting there. It's just like, "Oh, I can allow that feeling of success." And the weird part is the more, in my experience, the more these things are happening where I'm really allowing myself to feel success, the more success I feel in everything. That's the weird piece, is just like, oh the, like, success that I feel in taking care of my daughter when she went to the hospital for her broken wrist from snowboarding, that way I never would've felt that as a success until I've really allowed myself to feel the success of the business and the YouTube channel and all that stuff. Like, allowing myself to feel that success allows me to feel success in, like, so much stuff. And that's the really weird piece to all of this. 

Brett: Yeah. Feel the success in brushing your teeth, feel the success in filling your gas tank. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: Yeah, it's like that, it's like when you have one of those days where you're just on a roll. Like, there might've been one thing that went extraordinarily well and then everything else has just got the halo, the red carpet rolled out of this feels great, that feels great, that feels like success.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. 

Brett: Yeah. So I wanna leave people with something concrete that they can do to work with this pattern in themselves today. 

Joe: Yeah. Obviously the first one is the one that we talked about, which is visualizing very slowly whatever issue you're having, the complete failure of it, and the complete success of it, feeling all the emotions along the way.

Oftentimes you have to do that like two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times. So visualizing that, especially if you have something big like a company or a marriage or something that's, it's really, you feel like is on the precipice of one or the other. And I really suggest doing both.

The equanimity that comes out of doing both is amazing, and the decision-making that comes out of both, even if you think, "I'm just scared of failure," or, "I'm just scared of success." So that's one thing that's very easy to do. The other one that you can do is do the golden algorithm work that we have, which is identify the emotion that you're trying to avoid and learn how to feel it through emotional inquiry.

And another one is expanding your window of tolerance for your nervous system. So how do you bring pleasure to your nervous system? And the easiest way to do that is to bring pleasure to everyday life, brushing your teeth, but the other way to do that is, how do you bring pleasure to arousal? Right? So oftentimes, even in masturbation, which is high arousal, you'll see a lot of people just try to get through it as quickly as possible instead of prolong it for as long as possible.

And so one way is to, like, in any moment of arousal, whether it's sexual or otherwise, how do you actually hang out in and expand that moment of arousal? So you can expand your window for it so that you don't have that nervous system reaction. And then the last one is to really deconstruct who you think you are.

Oh, who would I be? Like, w- am I really essentially any different? Essentially, am I really any different if I'm a billionaire, if I'm not, or if I'm a movie star, if I'm not? You know, like, we all know that on some level, that's not fucking true. "Oh, they're a movie star. They're happy now."

Right? Like, that's clearly not true. "I'm a billionaire, but I'm happy now." And so what is it to actually deconstruct that in your head, to realize that none of the things that you think that are gonna make you a success are going to actually change the essence of the human situation you're in?

Brett: Yeah. And I think a good, like, version of that deconstruction is if you think you're playing it small for other people's benefit, to really question, like, "What am I actually taking away from the world? Taking away from my community, from my family, from my friends?" 

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: By playing it small? If what I think I'm doing is actually making myself more palatable or more team-oriented or something.

Joe: Yeah. Likable. 

Brett: Just really exploring those stories and those beliefs. 

Joe: Absolutely. Yeah, great. 

Brett: Great. 

Joe: What a pleasure. 

Brett: Thank you everybody for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. We'd love for you to subscribe, rate us on your podcast app, share us around.

This podcast is hosted by myself, Brett Kistler, and Joe Hudson. This episode is produced by Heather Falensky and edited by Charlie Garcia. 

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