The Architecture of Ease — Ani Manian on Achieving Without Force

Ani Manian | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ani.manian/

Ani Manian is a CEO coach, business architect, and founder of Scale With Psychology. He works with entrepreneurs who have achieved a lot — and have a sense there's a different way to go about success. He helps them scale by taking away what's holding them back instead of adding more complexity.

He opened this episode reading from a book he's writing. He closed it the same way. Everything in between was one of the most honest conversations I've had about what it actually means to stop forcing.

In this conversation:

• Why the language of modern success is the language of war — and what it costs us
• The internal Ponzi scheme — how chasing goals gives temporary relief from pain without ever resolving it
• Tight contact points — how the way we were held as children becomes the way we hold ourselves as adults
• Why trauma is a feature not a bug — we grow up to become the solution the younger version of us needed
• Our net worth will rarely exceed our self worth — and why worth is always a choice
• There is no catch — why we're always bracing for the shoe to drop and how to stop
• The architecture of ease is not a destination. It's an infinite game.

🎙️ Nothing Is Wrong is a podcast about trading self-improvement for self-discovery — so you can stop fixing your life and start living it. Not in the future. Right now.

Follow the show: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nothing-is-wrong/id1887103237 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4hudjKRYzS3oBqspMwpz2R 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nothingiswrongco/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

There's a way of operating in the world that most people have backwards. Ease is not a luxury. It's actually the most efficient operating system available to a human being. That material that someone's trying to get relief from to and avoid becomes the straitjacket that is getting tighter and tighter. And that's the internal Ponzi scheme. Our net worth will rarely exceed our self-worth, right? It's not a thing that was decided for us about us. It's a choice we make.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Today's guest is Ani Manion, CEO coach, business architect, and founder of Scale with Psychology. He worked with entrepreneurs and founders who have achieved a lot, but have a sense that there's a different way to go about their success. He helps them scale by taking away what's holding them back instead of adding more complexity to their life. He opened this episode reading from his new book about what becomes possible when you shift your operating system from tension, force, willpower, and white knuckling to more ease and enjoyment. So that your success comes from who you actually are, not from what you're pushing against. I'm Brooks Coleman. This is nothing is wrong. Here's my conversation with Ani Manion. Welcome to the show. Let's get right into it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

It's great to be here. So how about I hit you with uh the opening to this book that a lot of our conversations have kind of nudged me to to create. And you know, when we first had the chat about recording this, there was a a torrent of inspiration. So you're partly to blame for this. So I'll uh I'll I'll share it to you. It's called uh the architecture of ease. And here's just the the intro, which I think would be really good framing for this conversation. There's a way of operating in the world that most people have backwards. The dominant paradigm says push harder, grind more, tense up, fight for it, become a warrior. The language of modern success is the language of war, campaigns, targets, crushing it, killing it, battling the competition, dominating. And the humans who adopt this language, this geometry, this internal architecture, they build businesses and lives that reflect it perfectly. Constant crisis, perpetual exhaustion, and a vague sense that no matter how much is achieved and how much they do, it's never enough. The architecture of Ease proposes something radically different. Not laziness, not passivity, not collapse, but something far more radical and far more powerful. The systemic and systematic cultivation of deep internal relaxation as the foundation for everything: power, creativity, business, relationships, health, purpose, wealth. So while this may appear as one, this is not a soft philosophy, it's a structural one. And it draws from the same well as Taoist thought, the understanding that nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. That water, the softest substance, carves through the hardest rock. That wu wei, effortless action, is not the absence of effort, but effort aligned with the natural current reality rather than fighting against it. It's a unified theory, born from direct experience across martial arts, somatic practice, business building, psychedelic integration, and the hard-won wisdom of personal transformation that applies a complex system understanding to the oldest truth there is. What's inside creates what's outside. The thesis is simple. Ease is not a luxury. It's actually the most efficient operating system available to a human being. Tension and force is not strength. It's actually a self-imposed limitation. And just like that, power does not come from force, it actually comes from the absence of resistance. And the path to sustainable success in any domain is not to add more effort, but to remove the internal friction that makes effort necessary in the first place. Beautiful. So that's just the opening. If you like, I'll I'll read the last paragraph when we wrap. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah. Yeah, I love this. Oh my gosh. I feel like my mind could go a million different directions right now. And I think the well, the biggest thing that stuck out to me that resonates for where I've been. And this is why I'm super excited about this conversation, because I've been getting those glimpses and and feeling this lately. And my mind is kind of struggling to put it to and understand, which is I'm okay with.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Yeah, I mean it's hard to even think of it like that. And my relationship to this ideology, this philosophy has been emergent just from living in direct contact with reality and and being a student of reality and really observing reality very closely. And um honestly, like most things, having a very clear, direct experience into the exact opposite. Because I think we are presented, and I would say that we choose the exact circumstances and exact curriculum before we incarnate in physical form, that would be the curriculum we would need to learn to embody the exact opposite. So 100% of entrepreneurs, and I work with you know over a thousand at this point, when I ask them what their number one value is, they all say freedom. And then if I ask them, hey, did you like how did you feel as a kid? Did you feel restricted? Did you feel constrained? Did you feel, you know, like there was a level of rigidity and and and pressure and criticality to what you experienced? Nearly all of them, you know, say, yeah, that's exactly what it was like. So we grow up to be the solution, um, the hero that younger versions of us needed. And you know, in an in a very sort of interesting way, I don't think trauma is actually a problem. Like trauma is not a bug, it's actually a feature. And so we're given and we choose the exact curriculum that we need to embody the exact opposite. So for me to fully know ease, I had to deeply, deeply, deeply know the opposite of ease, the lack of ease. And, you know, the first time I tried to kill myself, I was six years old. So as a kid, I was not at ease inside of myself. I was not at ease inside the environment I was I was in. There was a lot of conflict. Um, I saw my parents grow up in, you know, really living and embodying the opposite of that ideal of ease. Um, many jobs, you know, watching them wake up at like 4 a.m., come back home at like 10 p.m. Um, lots of financial instability, lots of instability in general. And you know, I I had this deep curiosity about life, and I that hasn't gone away, it's only increased. And so it led me down this path of of inquiry of you know, what is the ideal relationship that we can operate in? Like, how do we make contact with reality? And I believe that the way we make contact with reality is kind of um a reflection of how we were made contact with when we were young. So I have this whole theory um around contact points, and so some people, like perhaps you and I, were made contact with in a more intense way. So there was a lot more the higher standards, um there were more demands in terms of performance, like how things needed to be. Um the the perfect sort of exemplar of this is the Asian tiger mom. My and my wife, she's half Chinese, she was born in Florida, but her mom's uh Chinese, and so her she grew up raised by um by an Asian tiger mom. And you know what that meant was school seven days a week, uh, and then after school, tons of activities and extra things. So she her whole childhood, she never had um, she there was no free space. There was no space where she's just like chilling on the couch, she was pretty much scheduled to the max. Um, and even an A was not good enough. And you know, so many of us we grew up in that. So I call that a tight contact point, right? It's when the way we were made contact with was a little tight. We were kind of grabbed and squeezed, and like, hey, you better operate like this, you better show up like this, you better perform like this, you better behave like this, you better become, you know, this. And it's a tight grip, right? And we at when we're young, we experience that in a very different way than when we're adults, because when we're young, we don't have the resources and the boundary systems and the ability to like regulate. And generally the person who is gripping us really tight is also the person who you know feeds us, takes care of us, gives us shelter. So um often kids don't have the ability to say no in those situations. Um and then the opposite also is also true, right? I I've had clients who the first uh six months of their life they were an incubator, right? Incubator babies. And when you think of the incubator, so babies need touch if they don't get touched. Let's just say that you know it's very bad for them. Um and they've done a ton of research on this, and an incubator is the exemplar of the absence of contact, right? And you can think of this on a physical level, but also on so there's three systems, right? There's the psychological system, there's the nervous system, and then there's the attachment system. So there's a profound absence that is experienced by the child or infant, you know, somatically, like they don't feel enough touch psychologically and emotionally, like they don't feel that connection and relationally, they don't feel that attachment system that is experiencing contact with another system. Um, and you know, something that they can co-regulate with. So the absence of contact is the other extreme, and you don't have to be, you know, in an incubator to have that. Like I know so many people who experienced a level of neglect and a level of absence, you know, in how they were raised when they were young. And what I realized, not just you know, working with entrepreneurs, but also a decade of you know clinical work in terms of psychedelic therapy, we the way we were held, the way we were made contact with, the way we were gripped, is the exact way we grip ourselves. Right? So if I was gripped really tight, and there were all of these expectations, there was all this pressure for performance put on me to be a certain way, to operate a certain way, to perform in a certain way. And if I didn't, there would be punishment, there would be, you know, a set of consequences, love, attention, approval, care, nurture was withdrawn. So relationship was used punitively, then that is how I will learn to relate to myself. So the template for how we relate to ourselves as adults is established in childhood based on how you know our caregivers are relating to us, because the number one purpose of a parent is obviously to keep the baby, the infant, the child safe, but it's also to model how they should grow up to relate to themselves. And the way they do that is by how the parent relates to the child. So ideally, we have the perfect sweet spot in terms of contact, right? The way we were made contact with ideally is there's enough touch, right? There's enough of a contact that we feel like, oh, there's someone there, there's someone here. I'm not alone, I'm not just you know, flying through space on a rock, that there's someone here. There's there's a ground underneath me, right? I can rest on this, I can trust this, and it's not so tight or so loose that then the system starts to compensate and you know overcorrect in a different direction. Because and I'm just gonna bring it full circle now, for us to be at ease, we need that sweet spot in terms of how we make contact with ourselves. And for me to understand all this, everything that I'm sharing with you, and you know, and all this stuff that's going into this book, I had to really understand and know the lackabies. I had to really um both experience and embody what it was like on both of those extremes. So the extreme, so what I experienced personally was extreme contact, a very, very tight grip, and also the exact opposite. So the polar extremes, but never the thing that was right in the middle, that perfect balance, the perfect sweet spot of just enough contact, but not too much or too little, because that also is the somatic and psychological template for what freedom looks like and choice and sovereignty looks like. And it's taken me a lifetime to really understand the architecture of the sweet spot, which I call the architecture of ease. Because I think that's really what everyone is searching for. It's what everyone's looking for, and everything is an attempt to get to this place. Like that's why people want to make, you know, millions of dollars, billions of dollars, so that they can finally feel at ease. That's why people are looking for their soulmate and you know, working through relational issues in their marriage. That's why you know, most people do what they do. Most people they just don't realize they're not solution aware in terms of the thing that they're actually looking for. And I think life becomes a lot more fun, a lot more interesting, a lot richer when we actually understand the real game that you know we can play. That actually leads us to because if someone's playing the wrong game, because no one actually sat them down and explained what the game is and how to play the game, then even if they perform at their absolute peak, even if they exceed every metric, every benchmark, they're actually never gonna win. It'll always feel empty. But you know, I've been there, done that, you have too. And so I have basically spent my life understanding the stuff so that I can articulate the stuff to people so that they can choose which game they want to play, right? Because if we can choose the game we're playing, instead of playing the game that we think we're supposed to play, that we just started playing so long ago before we could actually understand what the fuck we were doing or consent to it, right? Like taxes, like this idea of money, which we're kind of it's an agreement field, we can dig into that, that we're just kind of born into and we take on, and this is just how it is, right? Or time, like most people live inside the straitjacket of time, and they literally wear you know a watch on their wrist, and then this construct controls everything that they do, right? So for us to actually have full ease, we have to have the deepest level of sovereignty, and for us to have the deepest level of sovereignty, we have to be able to choose what game we're playing, and we have to be able to choose how we want to play that game. And that's kind of become you know one of the core sort of driving principles behind my life. And, you know, I really want to help as many people as I can understand what all of this looks like for them so that they can actually choose. Because when we have a world where you know, more the majority of people, let's say, are operating in this way, where that they're at a deep level of ease within themselves, and they're they're living choicefully, they're uh embodying and holding a certain level of sovereignty, then I think at a societal level, at a collective level, that is the most harmonic organization, you know, compared to almost any other um system, because all other systems have reached their failure points. You know, we can think of it from an economic perspective, like capitalism and communism, and you know, none of these socialism, none of these things actually work. Because when you you know extend that all the way, then you know it's pretty clear that the the cracks start to appear, and a lot of these systems go out of whack and they end up in the extremes because uh power is concentrated in a very small part of the system, and that's just not a stable configuration. So we have to distribute power throughout the system, and when we do The system is more stable, it's more integrated, it's it has more harmony, and you know the whole thing is a fractal. So that at a societal level is a mirror for what happens inside of us because we are also a cosmology of nodes and actors in the system. And so when we can create that harmony on the inside, then we experience that harmony on the outside, and that's the world that I want to live in. And I think that's the world you want to live in. And, you know, especially now that you're you're a father, like it opens a whole other conversation of you know, that's the world you want your kids to grow into.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Wow. Yes. And what comes to mind at the end of what you just said is like it unlocks this, everything then becomes how can I enjoy this moment in front of me? And that's it. And it's that simple, you know. But it's it's kind of like a long path to get there, but also not at all. There are three things in there, and I'm gonna just highlight three of them, and you go wherever you want with this. Number one, I love the how you said everyone wants ease, whether they realize it or not. Because especially like in my world and in some of the fitness businesses I see and people operating in that realm. This, you know, fuck your mood, stick to the plan, this scale at all costs. They you can just see how they're not asking what they actually want. There, it's this thing in front of them that they think will ultimately, because at first you might say, Well, you actually just want ease. And someone's like, No, I'm not after ease, I'm after greatness, or something like that, you know. Like, like I might you probably saw on X, uh, Mark Andreessen was was talking about how great men don't introspect, and people are roasting him for it. And he's like, the greatest men in history didn't sit around thinking about their feelings. And but when someone says that, it's like, okay, well, what do you think greatness is gonna get you? Because number one, if you want people to talk about you a hundred years after you die, you're not gonna be there to to uh hear about it. Uh, but when it really when you really start going down that path, it it very quickly comes back to, well, I think that's going to make me happy or give me ease or whatever. So I love that. And it that's one of those things that once you kind of see it, it's like, huh, okay, it's so relieving because it's like when we, you know, you talk about attachment being the attachment to outcomes being in your way of ease, all of a sudden it's like, oh, you mean I don't have to do this freaking list of things over the next 50 years and hope one day I feel that feeling? So that's I love that.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Can I can I speak to that? Go ahead, go ahead. Because I'm gonna lose my my real-time view of this. Yeah, the other the other question is what even is greatness? Like, how is that being defined? Right, right. So the the way to unpack this is that to me, this is the difference between have to and want to. Right? So the whole game is recursive in a way because everything comes back to being able to enjoy the present moment. Like everything, all motivation, all drive for all people in all the places, just comes down to being a proxy for I just want to be able to enjoy being in the present moment, often with the people I I love, right? Because the other thing is like you know, being alone in that present moment. I mean, is there's a certain amount of virtue in being able to cultivate the ability to you know be at ease with ourselves. Um, and there's a difference between being alone and being with oneself, but I think what you know most people are looking for is they just want to be able to relax in the present moment, be at ease, be able to enjoy it with the people that they love. And everything else is actually a way to engineer getting to that place, yeah, and staying in that place, right? That's why people are accumulating resources, right, and sacrificing all their life force to do so, right? Because they're trying to create this future outcome of being able to enjoy the present moment fully. And on the surface, this conversation could be someone who's like that can, and uh you know, I've worked with so many people in that mold, right? Where they're kind of allergic to ease and they see ease as dangerous. Like one um one of them, you know, he was running a multi-seven-figure business uh in the health space and became a really close personal friend. Uh, he he would call it his mistrust of sensuality, right? And he had a really hard time just relaxing and you know, being in that softer space with himself or with his wife, because his body was in a state of like, well, not at ease, but in that state of activation of arousal. There's good arousal, and then there's you know, maladaptive arousal when we're full on in fight or flight, and most people are operating in, and we can get into the nervous system states, most people are in operating in mild states of fight or flight all the time, especially you know, if you're running a business or you have a demanding job or career of some sort, and there is a fundamental mistrust of ease. There is a fundamental mistrust of slowing down, there's a fundamental rejection of this idea that anything less than you know, extreme drive, extreme motivation, and like burning all the boats, even if they don't think in such polar extremes, there is still this internal contract. And I'm I know I'm opening a lot of loops. The whole contract thing is a whole other rabbit hole that that's really interesting as well. And it's this idea that you know, if I fully embrace this or even fully enter or experience this conversation, I will be. Yes, there is an impact, and yes, there is a loss, and yes, there is a shift, right? But what it allows a window into, what it offers us an opportunity for, is to let go of the have to and all the performative pressure we feel, where we don't really have choice, where we're kind of operating inside of this program, following this contract, where we don't really have an off-switch, where we can't really switch to a different gear, and we have to keep pushing, running, grinding, and and moving forward towards this goal almost in a compulsive way, right? We have an opportunity to let go of this and step into a different space where it is not a compulsion, it's actually a choice. Where we're not driven by fear, we're actually driven by desire. Where we're not bracing and tensing that if we don't do this, then bad thing one, two, three will happen. It's that we're fully at ease, we're fully relaxed, and the arousal is coming from desire, and it's a positive tension, right? Because desire creates tension, tension creates movement, movement creates progress, and progress creates fulfillment. Like we do need to move forward towards something because we're we're fulfilled when we are moving towards something, right? I think for us to be genuinely fulfilled, like I tried it, you know, being blissed out in an awakened state on top of a mountain, like it's cute for a little while, but it gets old real quick. I think our greatest joy, fulfillment, purpose comes from creating. And for us to create, we need we need a vision, and we need to be moving towards a vision, and we we need to um we need to be giving something up for that vision. I don't think we need to give up the things that are really important, like our health and our relationships and you know, all those things, but we do need to sacrifice something, right, to be able to move towards that vision because that's where fulfillment comes from. But the difference here between the two places is that here, all like where we're trying to go, the values that we're choosing to hold, what we're choosing to give up, all of that is coming from choice, all of that is coming from desire, all of that is coming from expansion versus contraction, it's power versus force. It's a different fuel source. And because it's a different fuel source, the journey towards that vision, to realizing that vision, looks and feels very different than when we're doing it because we feel like we have to do it. And the ironic thing is, all the pretty much all the people, I don't think this is hyperbolic, but all the people who are in the former paradigm of have to, like Mark and Drees and that that example you shared, who who are rationalizing it in that way, they're doing it because on some level they don't have choice. Right? He can't actually not do it. And I bet his core value is actually freedom, and the reason why he's doing it is to one day eventually be free of the compulsion and not be a slave to this program, but you can't dismantle the program by you know operating the program harder than ever everyone else.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Right?

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Yeah, it actually does not make sense. The only way, and the reason why most people don't do it is because it elicits a huge fear response, right? And we have to stop or at least pause. We have to get into the present, and before we can enjoy the present, we have to actually experience and digest all the unexperienced material, unprocessed material that's sitting there. And this is also why people you know have a hard time with meditation because they sit down and meditate for the first time and they realize that their mind is a war zone. And we have to digest all of this undigested stuff, right, that was basically accruing while we were either absent, going back to how we were made contact with and how we learn to make contact with ourselves. That's how we end up with lots of things in our blind spot, right? And the things in our blind spot end up controlling us and driving us, even though we think we're making decisions, or when the grip is too tight, the person's, you know, not in the present. So they're either operating from the past or they're in a fantasy of a future. Either way, there's material accruing, so we have to actually digest that material. Because when we digest that material, the vectors of force that are pulling us into the future or into the past start to dissipate, right? Because only then can we structurally in a sustainable way be in the present moment and of course enjoy it. And that's what ease looks like in one dimension. It's like, can I fully just be here and be in this moment and be fully relaxed and fully enjoy this without going into the past or the future, right? Without the anxiety or the catastrophization. And if I can do that, then I actually can fully receive the present moment, but I can also be fully attuned to myself, which means I have full access to myself. And when I have full access to myself, I have full access to all of my internal resources, which means only then am I actually at full power because I have access to all of me, right? I can bring all of me, I can bring all of these different parts, and my relationship with desire is pure. It's not this covert contract that if I do this thing, then I'll get this thing. It's it's a pure act of creation. I'm doing it because, like, how awesome would it be? And I go from playing to not lose to not even playing to win, but playing to play. So my relationship with the present moment, my relationship with desire, my relationship with creation, my and that is true with money, it's true with business, it's true with relationships, it's true with health, it's true with every domain of life. My relationship becomes one of play. And when I'm fully at ease in the present moment and I'm relating to the whole thing as a fun game, I'm playing, then I can be fully at ease and fully turned on, fully aroused, fully alive. Right? And that's when, paradoxically, I hope Mark Andreessen listens to this.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Yeah, for sure. He's a subscriber.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

I'll happily gift him a session. Because that is actually when we start beginning to scratch the surface of our maximum potential and performance. So actually, if we want to play the biggest fucking game of our life, if we want to build incredible businesses, incredible marriages, incredible families, incredible bodies, incredible communities, incredible things in the world, then it's actually very convenient and very advantageous to have access to all of ourselves, to relate to reality from a place of play, to be in the state of enjoyment and ease. Because then and only then are we operating at full power. Then and only then do we have access to all of our resources, and then and only then are we able to play this game in an optimal way. Right? And so the funny thing is that I I mean, and I totally have a lot of compassion for what he's saying because I can feel the structure of his system that leads him to that conclusion or that rationalization. It's kind of a post hoc rationalization, but actually, our full capacity to create comes from all of these things, not by avoiding all of these things.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

I view it as the force paradigm. You're playing to not be in pain. And so it's like if you can, if if the worst condition of the human experience is negative one, and full bliss and ease and effortlessness and enjoyment of the present moment is one, the that paradigm is like how you were saying this it's a low-key search for ease. But I think the trick that gets played or the scam is that you achieve something. And so, but you think, oh, I'm enjoying this accomplishment, but really what's going on is you're getting a temporary lack of the negative pressure that you've been putting on yourself. And so you're associating it with like, oh, I did the thing, I put the work in, I did it. And all you're experiencing is zero. You're not even it, but it feels amazing because you're getting this break from from negative, you know, 0.5 that you've been operating from, and it feels great. So you just keep chasing that. But like we talked about earlier, all of a sudden when you see through the game, it's like, wait, I can achieve above zero, like it's it's so much better, and and that's like that shift.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

Um, but it's really hard, but it's really hard when someone, I mean, you're being generous with like the negative 0.5, right? Like if someone's operating at negative five, they're carrying a huge amount of baggage, right, and on processed material that they would have to contend with, then they'll settle for just a brief relief from feeling that, from holding that. And that's why they grab the goal and the fantasy of the future so tightly. Because the more I focus on that, the less I have to focus on the negative 0.5 or negative 5, whatever, you know, some where someone's at. So I'm getting a break from that negative, the negative thinking, the that pain. So the pain that I'm choosing is still less than the pain that I'm getting away from.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

But the the the thing about like the crazy thing is that there's no actually getting away from it because it's happening all the time within us. Right? The only thing that's changing is that I'm shifting my attention from one experience to another, right? And this is really important to unpack because all I'm doing, it's not going away. Right? I'm just shifting my the laser beam of my attention to something else temporarily. And that's why, by the way, a lot of those people at the end of the day, they can't really turn off, they can't be present with their family, with their little baby, they they have a hard time going to sleep, right? Because when it's Time to actually turn off and let go of control because sleep requires the relinquishing of control. All those, all that stuff, the negative 0.5 to negative 5 to negative 50 comes rushing back, right? Because there's no actual getting rid of it. And so what's happening is that that material that someone's trying to get relief from to and avoid becomes the straitjacket that is getting tighter and tighter and tighter. So A, it requires the hedonic adaptation, it requires a more intense goal or fantasy to chase, to distract enough from that.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

But that also is the primary function that takes someone out of ease. Right? The straitjacket starts getting tighter and tighter. And when we're in a straitjacket, if I'm being constricted, I'm not going to be at ease, right? Right. So that's that internal Ponzi scheme.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I a huge piece here is like yeah, Ponzi scheme, scam. Like that, like for me in my journey, there was a point of like anger of like, what the like I didn't, I was chasing this this whole time, you know. So whether for you or for the people you work with, like for me, I feel like the the the just slight tweaking of like, okay, maybe something else is possible here was just exhaustion of of running down this path eight different times across career, you know, relationships, personal development, my body. And eventually, like you just are so tired. But what do you think is because some people never make the switch? Like it's it's an unconscious program that's running, whether they grew up tightly constricted or not enough support at all. Uh, they never kind of take the step back. Have you observed a common catalyst there?

SPEAKER_02 46:22

Or yeah, some sort of breakdown hitting the wall in some way.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

You know, this is another interesting thing. So if we unpack this, as we're unpacking this architecture, like you can see the choicelessness and the powerlessness, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

Like when someone's stuck in this program, they're not fully conscious, right? They're not fully in choice, right? They're kind of compulsively running a program and going through you know what that program requires of them. So it is a kind of dissociation, and it's a kind of uh choicelessness. And so for us to pop out of such things, of course, someone can take the easier way out, which is they could listen to this episode, and this could really get their attention, and they could commit to you know, getting on the path towards ease and you know experiencing the life that they want in the present, you know, and and then on. But generally, the more unconscious the loop is, the more pain is required to get our attention. Because that's how deep the slumber is. It's like someone popped, you know, two Xanaxes, four ambions, and um whatever, a couple couple of Valiums and is is passed out, right? Like it's gonna take a lot more intensity, right? A taser, exactly. They're gonna need to be tased awake, yeah. Because the slumber is so deep, it's that sweet, sweet, narcotic sleep, right? And so the deeper the slumber, the greater the intensity of pain that is required to wake someone up. And at any point, we can choose an easier way out, right? And for me, it was watching my dad basically die because he he was so deep in his slumber that he operated with such deep levels of neglect for his own physical form and emotional body, but also um he was, you know, in many ways the the poster child of everything we're talking about, right? And he didn't have the resources to wake himself up from his slumber, right? And what happened to him was first it was a heart attack, and then um he there was, I think, another mini heart attack where he had a stent uh installed because some of his arteries were blocked. There was you know, cigarettes and alcohol galored before that, um and you know, not really taking very good care of himself, and then eventually, you know, developed liver cirrhosis, which could have been treated if he had actually taken it seriously, and he didn't, so it kept getting worse. And by the time he did and got on the transplant list, he was you know number two on the transplant list when um he had a massive brain hemorrhage and he he died. And I see this with a lot of entrepreneurs. There is a certain amount of pain that they have to experience, they don't have to, but they choose to. Um, whether so it's usually in the domain of health or relationships. There's another founder I was working with. Um we were pretty much doubling the business like every couple of years, and they're probably at like 50 or 60 million a year right now. Um and you know, when we started, they were doing like five or six, so huge rocket ship, right? The business has grown tremendously in terms of headcount, um, raising money, um, you know, going through the whole private equity uh process. And it's pretty stressful, right, as you can imagine. And the amount of stress that he was accumulating basically he ended up with um vertigo and tinnitus, and he lost hearing in one ear completely. And I have so many other examples, you know, like some sort of breakdown, and it's unfortunate, but it you know it kind of is how it is, like some some negative thing of sufficient enough intensity generally needs to happen for someone to wake up and pause and be like, wait, is this the only way? Right? So unless it it creates the surfacing of the deep values conflict, yeah, where different value that's high enough, like their marriage. I have I had one founder, the way he was growing his business, like dude had his phone on on the bedside table, you know, with sounds and vibration, and slack was going off all night. And you know, again, like businesses, you know, he's doing everything he can to grow the business. But like one day his wife is like, listen, if you keep operating like this, I'm gonna have to, you know, we're gonna have to get a divorce because I can't do this anymore. And it was that that finally got his attention, right? Even because sometimes even I can't, like I can say all these things to someone, but if they're not ready to, if if it's not their time, if they haven't internally created a level of receptivity, it's not gonna matter, right? Just like Mark Andreessen in that, you know, you you can see where he's at and you can see the structure of his consciousness, and you can see that he's not ready for that message. Right. And generally, I find that it takes something of sufficient intensity to give someone pause where they reevaluate how they're operating. Because often, look, I mean, I think people operate this way because they don't they don't know that there is another way to operate.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

Right? Yeah. That's kind of why, like I, you know, I'm trying to socialize these ideas because at least if someone hears a conversation like this, it opens up the map. It's like, you know, the video games where a huge part of the map was grayed out. Like when the map is grayed out and we can't go there, it's like there's no choice.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

Right. So stuff like this at least creates the conceptual model of what else could be possible, right? Which can sow the seeds in someone's mind, like next time they're in a situation, they're like, well, could could this be different? Is there a different way to approach this? So often for a lot of people, they don't even know that there's other options. So we have to first create the menu, right? And then it's like, how do we train ourselves to order, you know, a different kind of ice cream? Right? Because if someone keeps ordering chocolate because they only think that there's chocolate ice cream, right? First we want to expose, hey, there's 50 other flavors, and then slowly training the muscle of ordering some other flavor. No, this is actually pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Like, yeah, yeah, or just like seeing it on the menu, and like maybe you go another 50 times in a row and get chocolate, but it's like every time you're kind of like, oh, like interesting, and it's just that it's it's there at least it exists for them.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

Yeah, and I think that you know, I've come to the place where you know, I'll never tell someone that they shouldn't do this and they should do that. Like, don't order chocolate, get mint chip because mintship is the best. Because I think everyone's on their journey, everyone's on their timeline, and I don't think there is such a thing as like, hey, you're you're ordering the wrong flavor and you should order this flavor instead. It ice cream is actually a great analogy because if we see it as just different flavors of ice cream, right, what it does is it drops the judgment because judgment is actually the thing that keeps this whole structure in place. But if I see it as ice cream, it's like, yeah, I'm just I keep compulsively, repeatedly choosing this flavor of life, right? And it's not a bad thing, it's not a good thing either, but there's no judgment. I can always choose a different flavor if I want, but it it's a different kind of um, it puts a wrench in how the ego works because that's what keeps a lot of these things in place, because that sense of right and wrong. I should do this, I shouldn't do this, right? Like, remember when we were talking about have to versus want-to, you know, I think of that as the quintessential, the the whole uh David Goggins, Jocko Willink, like how they talk about discipline. Yeah, right. I prefer operating from devotion, right? I want to be devoted to something, I want to desire something. I I want to be in such a divine relationship with a vision that I'm pulled towards it. Right? That's the quintessential difference between the have to and want to, and that's really important to underscore here because we need the absence of judgment to make full contact with truth, because we're not going to be honest with ourselves when we're bracing for our own judgment or someone else's judgment, right? Because that again creates tension and takes ease away, right? And the other sort of principle here is that the way we approach it and what we do about it has to increase choice in the system. If we take choice away, it doesn't work. Because as soon as we take choice away from ourselves or from someone else, we're cre it's not a stable state of the system. Right? It's not the most harmonic or energetically efficient. So I'll give you an example. Like you and Mal have a really beautiful marriage where you're both whole sovereign individuals, and you're coming together to create a marriage, creating to create a beautiful baby Izzy, and to create a beautiful family, right? And that's a very stable system because each subsystem in that configuration is also stable, right? There is a beautiful interdependence. Like both of you would be took you were fine before each other, and you'll be fine after each other if that eventuality arises for whatever reason, right? So you don't need each other, but you make contact in a way that's additive, that's multiplicative, right? That's exponential in it's one plus one equals 11 kind of thing. Right? That's a stable configuration. Now imagine someone who's in a relationship where one person in the relationship is the one in control, yeah, and the other person is being controlled, as in they don't have choice. For that relational system to be stable, and in you know, stability is a moving target, right? There needs to be the expenditure of a lot of energy because choicelessness and powerlessness is not a meta-stable state. So I need to constantly be expending energy to artificially stabilize that system. So, for example, you take surfing a big wave, like from the outside, it looks like super smooth and super chill and effortless, especially when someone's you know a pro surfer, but actually they're making a thousand micro adjustments every second, right? It's actually taking an enormous amount of energy to create the illusion of stability because the underlying conditions are inherently unstable, they're in flux, right? So it's not possible to sustain that for very long. At some point, the wave's gonna collapse or they're gonna, you know, be tired and they're gonna have to like come back to ground.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

So not being fully empowered and sovereign and in choice is not a stable place for us to be. So since in this conversation what we're exploring is the architecture of ease, we need we need to always be moving in the direction of increasing choice.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

Right? Because if we're if we don't do that, if we try to discipline our way out of you know these places, if we try to bully ourselves, if we try to control ourselves, if we try to judge ourselves, if we try to criticize ourselves, if we don't make contact in a gentle way with unconditional positive regard, right, then we're not gonna be moving towards more choice. And if we're not moving towards more choice, we're not gonna actually truly move towards more ease. We're not gonna create more ease by taking choice away.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

So I'm uh I'm really cute. This is really uh fitting. What literally I wrote this down last night, it just popped into my head as I was thinking about this conversation. And I think it's perfect for this is this this shifting to choice. And the way I've been feeling experiencing ease lately, especially with the business, is there's two parts to this statement. Number one is I feel like I can do literally anything, I can achieve anything I want. That's part one to the statement. Like there is no doubt that I can achieve anything I want right now. Here's the second part of the statement. I don't get to choose what I want. So it's it's like this unfolding of like what's truly me and what I actually truly want. And this like owning of going after things I want, knowing that, you know, some of them it might be a trick my mind is playing on me, but over time getting closer to that true like internal me is where this ease just keeps coming out and shedding those wants that are like too really full, the wants that are just to get back to zero. And and part of it has been like making that happen and being like, oh, that wasn't it, like that that wasn't fulfilling. So, like this idea of kind of ironically letting go of of it all and allowing it to just unfold, it is like the best description I can give of experiencing this.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the it begs the question, right? Like, where do our desires come from? Yeah. Because this the the the whole freedom and choice piece is an interesting one because yeah, there's the illusion of it sometimes, yeah, where it appears like like, did I choose to be obsessed with all these things that we're talking about today? And spend my entire life like making like my entire existence about exploring this. Like, did I choose that? Did I really choose that? I don't know. I I think there's a yes and I mean I've definitely made you know choices that where I could have spent my time doing something else and you know, caring about something else, applying myself towards something else. So I did make choices, but if I if we go all the way up on that, as upstream as possible on that, I was impossible. Planted with this desire, with this obsession by something greater than me. Yeah. Right. I I've had this sense my whole life that I was created for a very specific reason. Right. I think all of us are. I think we we are impregnated by God with a specific mission, with a specific flavor of genius, with a certain potential, you know, literal potential energy that we come in with. And I think we chop into a contract where we choose our parents and we choose the upbringing we're about to receive and the exact conditions that create constraint that we can eventually break out of. And eventually, you know, that becomes the seed of our of our work in the world, of our, you know, what we get to create in the world and what we end up becoming obsessed with. And I think you're the same. I, you know, I think you are doing a lot of choosing. And I think the increase in ease that you've been experiencing, and the increase in success and everything is a direct reflection of, you know, you operating with more choice and you choosing different things than the version of you five years ago would be choosing. And I think there is this spark of divine potential inside you that I would argue it's what really happens for us is that we align more to that spark of divine potential, and we kind of allow ourselves to be led, and we learn to trust, and we feel pulled by this unseen force, this greater intelligence, this you know, this beautiful divine symphony that is leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that we we learn to you know pick up and trust and follow. And as that is in a way, I think of that as creating secure attachment with God, right? Because God leaves these this trail of breadcrumbs, and we like every time we pick one up and we trust it, and things work out, things feel better, like there's some serendipity, there is some, you know, good fortune, like we learn to trust that more and more. And you know, one of the most exhilarating and terrifying and electrifying ways that I've come to live and come to love and also hate at times is living in a permanent state of trust falling into the arms of God. Yeah. And that's an exquisite level of terrifying surrender, but electrifying turn-on because I'm I'm relinquishing the need to know, you know, what happens next and to control it and grip the steering wheel tight, right? Like if we're gripping the steering wheel tight on the road trip, my hand's gonna cramp and it's gonna make for a really uncomfortable road trip.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:41

But if I can grip it loose, again, the right contact point, like I'm gripping it tight enough that I can actually control the car, I can make turns, I can respond, right? I can course correct, I can adjust, but I'm not gripping it so tight that it's taking so much energy just to hold the steering wheel. My hands are cramping, it's that tension is traveling to the rest of me. You know, my aperture tightens, and I'm you know, kind of in a state of hypervigilance and anxiety because the mind follows the body and the body follows the mind. And the the ride, which could be fun and enjoyable, because I'm playing good music and you know, I'm with someone who I'm cracking jokes with, and I can feel the the wind in my hair, but instead I'm you know, I'm I'm death gripping the steering wheel. It's like a less, but that requires a level of trust, right? Because when when I'm driving, I don't know what's gonna happen, right? Someone at the next stoplight may be about to just you know race and speed right through that stoplight. Like I don't know, but if I spend the whole drive bracing for all the worst-case scenarios that may happen, and I'm using my creative potential to you know imagine all the negative possibilities and eventualities, and that causes me to grip the steering real tight, then the journey is lost on me. I don't really get to enjoy myself, I don't really get to, so I may still get there, I may still get to my destination, but my memory might be if you drive off. Exactly, exactly. It's like it's not as fun, yeah. Right? So, like for me to have the ease, I need to have trust and faith in some greater power, yeah. Right? Without that, I can't fully be at ease because ease requires trusting the container that we're in. So for this water in this bottle to be at ease, there needs to be a container around it of sufficient integrity that's holding that water, right? And if I had a glass of water made of glass and I dropped it and the glass shatters, the water is gonna go everywhere. Water is not gonna be at ease, but then it'll quickly find ease on the floor, right? So the same way as human beings, our container is God, right? And we can think of this in a literal way, but we can also think of this in a conceptual way. Like human beings need some sort of at least a conceptual relationship with the container that they're in, right? Which is the universe. So you can think of it as God, universe, divine intelligence, spirit, whatever. But we need a relationship with that on some level, right? And when we get older and maybe a little bit wiser, and we learn a thing or two about a thing or two, and we develop that relationship, and we are picking up those breadcrumbs, and we're experiencing our intuition and we're welcoming it, and we're noticing the serendipity, right? And then we start to learn to develop this more trusting relationship with this with the universe, with God, with the divine, and that allows us to not death grip the street steering wheel and have to control every outcome. And even when it feels like we took a turn, it's like, oh, this is a weird street to be on. Like, we can trust it. We can trust that there's a greater plan, that there's a greater design, there's a greater order. And that allows us to ride through parts of the journey that may not cause the ego to have a reaction, right? Which when we zoom out, we're like, oh yeah, that would be a very stupid, counterproductive thing to do. Because like when you zoom out, you can see, like, oh yeah, you're just going through this weird street. But as soon as you cross it, you're in this beautiful stretch where you're driving by the ocean and it's just palm trees and crystal clear blue water, and it's so gorgeous. Just like, just keep going, just keep going. But like when we're in the car, we're zoomed into the situation, and we're not in this state of dynamic trust, then our ego is screaming at us, like, no, make a U-turn, go faster, go slower, like stop, like whatever. Like, just and those things kind of take us out of the game. So I think the other ingredient for ease is to feel like we're divinely guided, to feel like we're held, to feel like whatever this thing is that we're in wants us here, and it's conspiring in our favor. Right. And that is a that is a frame that anyone can choose in any situation, no matter how dark or how challenging it is. If we can find the consciousness, if we can wake ourselves up enough to adopt that frame, right? And we can feel how wanted we are, we can feel how safe we are, we can feel um how how much you know there is a divine design for us, then we can hold the steering wheel just right, and we can we can enjoy the journey so much more.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:58

The road trip analogy is is beautiful. I mean, it's it's it's perfect. Like the the gripping, the obsession with the next stop, the let's get there, let's get there, let's get there, the and then sitting back and enjoying yourself. And uh, you know, and then I was picturing the the meme of like you're digging for gold and you turn around right before you got to the diamonds or the gold or whatever. And so yeah, I love it. And I think like as you, you know, as I share that that wanting or that choice piece, it's you know, maybe it's like a a shifting of where that's coming from in a way. Because, and I I think this will be a great next piece to to address here, is that fear and the if I stop forcing, I won't get results. Or, you know, earlier you mentioned this bet that it's not it's not the opposite of tightness. It's not just, oh, go do nothing all day every day and like completely stop. Uh because I think a lot of people that are in this pattern, myself included, I thought of that as, you know, you can't do you have to do everything differently, but it's more so the relationship to the doing and where you are internally while you're doing. So it doesn't even externally have to really change your actions, it's just changing the state of mind they're coming from, and then all of a sudden maybe the actions are gonna end up different than than they were before, but it's for the best, and that's where the trust comes in. Because, like I I'm curious your thoughts if you know, addressing that question, what what if I lose my drive and I don't achieve any more? I I will say from my experience lately, it's like it probably isn't gonna happen. And I would assume 99.9 times out of a hundred, results actually get way better. But the ironic part is you have to be okay with the 0.1% chance that literally it all goes to shit. Yeah. In order because because if you go in not being okay with that, you're still in the forcing and the fear and the oh, okay, I'm just going to play or I'm going to stop forcing, but really I'm doing this because I want to make my next X amount of dollars, or I want to get this result. So it's like this paradox, uh, which goes back into the trust. But yeah, I'm curious your thoughts there.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:36

We have to first be okay with everything falling apart, right? Because it's like the architecture of the house was built on a foundation that isn't designed to support the ultimate vision we have for the house. And that foundation got us to a certain level, right? Your foundation got you to a certain level, and compared to when you were death gripping, you've, you know, four or five X the business, and you're in I would say that you've truly embraced the things we're talking about more than most people, right? And you've embodied a level of ease that's impossible to fake, that's impossible to like it can only come from uh being a true student of life and confronting some you know very challenging layers to get to. Like you can't you can't buy this, right? Right? Like I've worked with billionaires who for whom everything we're talking about is very alien, right? No amount of money in the world can buy someone this, there's no shortcut to it, there's no there's no cheat code to it, there's no a backdoor to it, right? Like all the other things. So and that's why I think this is a worthy ideal, because this is a pure, it's a pure game, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:23

Um and you know, yeah, and like now you can see like, oh wow, I I'm on on a success level, like it is I'm exponentially more successful being deeply at ease than like I ever was when I was death gripping the steering wheel. But the for that phase change, we have to accept that we're gonna, you know, hit the lamppost or crash into a tree, or the car is gonna stop and we're gonna be stuck on the side of the road. Like we have to be okay with all the worst-case scenarios that the mind comes up with because the foundation you know is misaligned with the ultimate vision and the ultimate potential that we see for the house. Right? The mega mansion requires a different foundation, yeah. And that different foundation, so for us to switch out the foundation, we have to be okay, and it may not require coming to a full stop, right? What we have to be okay with it, right? And the reason why it's like this, it's because the deepest level of ease requires the deepest levels of what I think of as fundamental well-being. Right, where I'm so grounded in my well-being, my okainess, and that okayness is independent of the number, you know, it says on the bank account app when I when I open it. It, you know, it's different from how the business is doing, it's different from you know, all the other things, it's different from the headlines about the economy, about like what else is happening in the world. It is completely independent of all the things outside of me. And it's a function of my okayness with myself and within myself. And for me to find my fundamental okayness, my fundamental well-being, where nothing on the outside can change my internal state, my ground of being is rock solid. Yeah, right. It's it doesn't fluctuate, my opinion of myself and my sense of myself doesn't fluctuate with what happened today. Yeah, right. If I finished all the things on my to-do list or not, just to give some you know inane examples, then I'm actually free to start building on the right foundation, right? But to switch out the foundation, I have to first disconnect from all those external anchor points that I've been using to outsource my sense of self, to outsource my okayness. Right? The the big things we do this with is generally money and love. Right? It's like, and actually, like the it's this what I my theory is that it's the same neurocircuitry. Like our the circuitry we have neurologically for money is actually the same as love. Because when you think of child development, children don't have you know a concept of money. The only thing that they have is a concept of love. So love is a proxy for food, love is a proxy for you know closeness, connection, everything. So our template for love, like how we were related to when we're young, also influences our template with money. So, you know, if we were we grew anxious attachment tendencies with love, we'll end up being anxiously attached to money as well. Right? So the same patterns that show up in love, they show up with money because that's another relational geometry. So for me to truly be free of these external referencing anchors, I have to be willing to let like let them fall away, right? Because only then can I know myself standing on my solid ground of being and feeling totally at ease. Like, because most people, for most people, it's like they're standing on quicksand, their ground of being on the inside feels like standing on quicksand, and when we're standing on quicksand, can we be fully at ease? No, god no, right? Because the system is freaking out because it's like, oh, how do I find solid ground, right? And so most people are trying to build a their mega mansion while standing on quicksand, and that's why they reach a certain level of success and then they hit a wall, they hit a ceiling, they hit a plateau. Because that's as far as that's as much as they can hold in terms of a vision when they're standing on quicksand. And if they want the full realization of their vision, if they want the mega mansion, then it's gonna require them to strengthen the ground underneath them. Right? It needs to be rock solid. Because in comparison, now, if we're standing on solid ground, we can fully be at ease, we can hold more weight, right? I can front squat 200 pounds on solid ground, but I probably can't even front squat like 20 pounds if I'm on quicksand. So for me to build the highest realization of my vision, of my potential, of what I'm capable of in this life, I need to be on solid ground, and that is gonna require me to contend with the loss of all the attachments that that I had held on to, because we can't have both. We can't hold on to those things and find this new level of ease and grounding. So when we let go of that, we have this reckoning, this initiation. And I I know you know a thing or two about that. And when we can trust ourselves through that initiation, when we can lead ourselves through that initiation, when we can regulate ourselves through that initiation, we earn that fundamental okayness, that solid ground of being underneath us. And that floor underneath us, that that block of hard, rock, immovable rock, as rock solid as it gets, allows us to create, you know, all the things that we want to a level that was previously impossible, but now it also feels so much easier. It feels more effortless. like it's just happening spontaneously but the new level of creation the new level of success of wealth of joy of intimacy of love didn't come from effort it came from a different from a different currency right and and that's a kind of a complex combination of you know the emotional work the energetic stuff the identity stuff the nervous system stuff the attachment stuff but all like you going through that you leading yourself through the initiation when most people would just get freaked out and go back to what they know you continuing to you know trudge forward even when it got bleak and dark is what becomes the gate to this other level and then we you know keep initiating ourselves in this way because the whole thing is an is an upward spiral and the initiations change over time but every new level of material that we digest those become sandbags that we release and then the hot air balloon can rise to another level of altitude right and then we just keep going but we're not going and this is really important the orientation isn't that there is better than here that like if I get to a certain place in any form like monetarily or otherwise that that's gonna be better than this that fucks it up that sabotages the whole journey the the game is I'm not trying to get there because there is going to be better than here right I'm I'm trying to get there because you know how fun would it be? It's a game when I'm playing you know I want to find out what it's like right like I want to find out what I'm made of I'm I'm trying to find out like how cool it would be if I created this thing. Right? I want to I I I also believe that every goal is a forcing function for the person we need to become to accomplish it. So the purpose of a goal is to be a forcing function for us to self-actualize. And the game becomes about self-actualizing more and more and more and more and more and that just becomes a fun game we're playing which takes the stakes it brings the stakes down right and when the stakes are down then I can actually play to play we need some stakes for the game to be fun but when the stakes are too high then it kind of psyches us out right it takes us out of the game and so we need just enough tension in the system that we're on but not too much that we're tight just like a golfer when the golfer is swinging right they need that sweet spot of the hand needs to be relaxed enough but holding the the golf love you know tight enough that they can kind of gently guide the the swing.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:35

And again each level requires a higher level of resolution and awakeness and requires us to digest another level of the initiation when you were describing the quicksand like and how we kind of choose new quicksand and then release again and find a more solid ground of being each time and like every time you kind of remember it's still there but like you'll you'll purposefully get lost and kind of forget it's there. And then each time it gets more solid like I was picturing you know you're in the quicksand and like at first all you need you're not you're it's not that intense and you just need like a small branch or rope to grab onto but then each time it gets you need a heavier rope and it's taking more out of you and then fully letting go is the ground is actually only like a foot down but you just never allowed yourself to fall and find it. And so truly letting go of like not even wanting another branch and then it's like oh I didn't you know sink I uh there was a ground here this whole time I just didn't allow myself to to truly find it uh and the the hot air balloon one is awesome too because like as I've been really thinking about this podcast which ironically when I was in forcing mode I tried to do this like three times and it just was it was enjoyable and like now it's just come about and and I'm having a great time but the the hot air balloon analogy one very similar to me is the Golden Buddha analogy of essentially this Buddha statue is covered in clay but it's gold underneath and how essentially one chip at some point and this goes back to our conversation earlier of like what is it that kind of sparks the the pursuit of this and in the golden Buddha there's one chip in the in the Buddha statue and and someone's like holy shit there's gold under here because no one wanted it before that and they were passing it by over and over and they see some gold in there and they're like all of a sudden that's the start to instead of pursuing to become something different like you talked about pursuing to become something different than you are it's like oh wait a minute I'm gold under here and then the process you relate to it differently you the in all the like you said the attachment work the emotional regulation the self in quotes improvement becomes more self-discovery than anything and it gets so it's so amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:27

Uh it's beautiful yeah the the the beautiful thing about this is that you know if this journey doesn't make us more whole more integrated and connect us even more deeply to our own worth then we're not going in the right direction. Right? Because the whole the kind of the whole point of this whole construction like the reason why the universe is designed this way is because this is kind of what it takes to bring us into direct contact with our magic with the miracle that we are and so unless we realize what a miracle we are we can't actually realize our full potential and we can't do our you know have the most fun doing our greatest work and you know making an impact in the way that only we can so falling deeply in love with ourselves and truly recognizing our innate perfection is a precondition for all this because without that we can't it's like you have a there's a bank account in your name somewhere that's got a trillion dollars right and actually it's got an infinite amount of money but to access that money to make withdrawals you have to recognize your innate value and the more you recognize your innate value the more you can draw from that bank account that's kind of how the game is structured how it's rigged because all we're doing is when we realize our innate value then we cultivate the ability to create value for ourselves and for others and when we exchange value you know we figure out a few things for ourselves and then we offer that value to others and when people want that then they exchange value with us and that's how we make money right so theoretically our capacity for income and generating economic value is infinite when we recognize the infinite nature of our own value right and this is kind of the mathematical proof for um like we our net worth will rarely exceed our self-worth right our capacity to receive money our capacity to receive love the our capacity to receive goodness is rate limited by how much we believe we are worthy of those things right and the thing about worth is it's not um it's not a thing that was decided for us about us. It's a choice we make so at any at any point in any moment anyone can become more worthy by just deciding that they're more worthy. It's kind of like the placebo effect how worthy someone decides to perceive themselves as determines how worthy they feel and how worthy they are and we have the ability to change that at any point and there's no catch. Right? It's we can receive infinite worth in any moment and that becomes the gateway to pretty much every other currency that we want and you know it it kind of feels like God has a really great sense of humor because this whole game right is designed to bring us back to this place. And if there's a cheat code there's a glitch in the matrix it's that and I um I think we all have the ability to create this what I call a trillion dollar relationship with ourselves. Right? Like where it's absolutely priceless. And now you know Elon's about to be the first trillionaire so you can be a trillionaire in many ways right you can be a mon uh you know on paper you can be worth a trillion dollars but what's the point of that if you if you don't feel it on the inside right because I mean Elon's brilliant I have a lot of respect for him but he doesn't seem like a deeply happy joyous person. Right right and I don't know a lot of people who would trade places with him if it meant also taking on his internal experience which I'm sure is very tortured to some extent right and it begs the question like do we need to sacrifice happiness for success right it's like can you create crazy success without sacrificing yourself and all all the things you hold dear and I think the answer is to a certain extent yeah because you know we have to be a little unhinged to have ambition that big right maybe to that extent but I think we can be insanely successful by anyone's standards actually more successful. Like the average person has the potential to be far more successful than they would be otherwise if they embraced these things and if they fell deeply in love with themselves and if they came into this place of fundamental okeness within within themselves if they created this inner safety and security if they stepped into sovereignty and choice if they embraced you know being in the present moment and they gave themselves access to all parts of themselves and if they architected ease at a fundamental level in their system I can I think most people will be a lot more successful than they would otherwise be following the the the old program but you know having outlier level of success I think will always require an outlier level of sacrifice and then the question is like is that is the desire to do that is that really you know being created choicefully or is that you know inherited on some level or is that a program that he's running right or people in that category are running and they're basically compulsively following the program and not really choosing right you look at Steve Jobs yes amazing accomplishments but you know clearly very estranged and very not a very um happy person and with happy relationships you know with his wife and kids like how do you define success I think that's the that's the question. That's a question we we have to answer for ourselves because the most dangerous thing we can do is take on the world's definition for success or take on someone else's definition and not define it for ourselves because I think it's highly subjective and if we operate in a mimetic way then there's more chances to fail because we're playing someone else's game. Yeah and winning at someone else's game still means losing but if we define it for ourselves then we can at least and you're an example of this right like to you I think success is the amount of presence you can experience with your baby right with your wife like with your family and with your team and with your clients and like your definition of success is unique to you and the path you've been on and by that definition you're extremely successful and you're gonna keep creating more success right because it's an infinite game and it's very easy to think the the fish is retarded if we judge the fish by its ability to climb a tree. I think that's how the quote went right yeah word for word.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:56

Yeah I love that and it it's like a once again a paradox right like it's the sacrifice piece is interesting to me because in a way it's like yeah you have to sacrifice a lot but then in hindsight it's like well the only thing I sacrificed was this fear driven smaller version of myself that didn't know what it actually wanted and I would never go back anyway. So on paper it's like yeah there's some sacrifice but at the same time it's like undoubted yeah you might give up some like success on paper to external eyes but no matter what you're gonna like discover more of what success means to you and and that there's no catch. I think this is this will be great to kind of round this out and go into your outro which I'm dying to hear that you said there's no catch. That's been a huge one for me dude watching that old program come in and be like well just wait it's right around the corner to slap you in the like that type of a thing and allowing the good allowing the positive like I've been observing that thought come in a lot and the old one and and or a reason why it won't last or a re and just letting that go that practice um and really I think like the short circuit to my old pattern has been if you talked to me two years ago and you were like hey you just need to get more ease you just need to play it's it becomes the have to it becomes the try to it becomes the forcing which is just like you said it it's it's operating from the same level of consciousness and you will never you will never get you will never stop overthinking by thinking your way out of thinking type of a thing. And I think the the short circuit for me has been if I feel like I have to do something I'm not looking in the right place. So it's it's an undoing it's a stopping doing and a lot of the times for me like as far as smaller pieces has just been what am I like what's going on in my body right now like redirecting to my body from my head and the shoulders the the back the hips and just is this really a problem that needs to be solved or can I just let go of the problem in general and just relax and like it it's so funny. It's so that's so simple but like if you told me that five years ago I'd be like what the fuck are you talking about? It's like just relax. Um so like the idea that ease is our natural given state and there's nothing to do or become to be there it's letting go of what's blocking it.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:42

Yeah it's a birthright it's our natural state yeah and we don't need to earn it right that's a big one like the catch is really interesting because we operate like there's a catch like there's a penalty for the extra goodness we we're bracing for the shoe to drop right or waiting for something to go wrong because again when we were young there was a catch. Right like we're not crazy like at some point that was how it was right like love was conditional. It's normal because we're all raised by you know deeply beautiful and flawed human beings they were doing the best that they could right but we all imprinted love and goodness from a conditional place. So we're waiting for the you know the catch. We're waiting for someone to show up and be like hey okay we've had enough fun now you're gig is up gig is up right yeah and um that's the massaging right I'm I'm a big proponent of the direct path which is just choosing to be in that place and then there's but there's also a progressive path and there's a progressive because the nervous system requires a progressive massage progressively relaxing right pro progressively reassuring and just reattuning to ourselves and hey it's okay like it's okay it's safe to relax it's safe to be here because we have a much greater tolerance for pain than we do for pleasure and the the place to work on if there's anything to work on is our our capacity for goodness because we all have rate limiters there right because that that's the gateway to more of all the things we want and it takes a constant you know reminder that it's safe to be here. There is no catch. Right it it only gets better and it's okay if it doesn't it's okay if there's another loop of you know integration that needs to be completed right it's trusting that even when it doesn't the path doesn't follow our expectations that nothing's going wrong it's not bad right we I can just choose to not judge the journey and I can welcome all the different flavors. Black sesame ice cream is just as beautiful as chocolate and just as beautiful as mint chip and vanilla bean right and it's okay like the more I allow myself to embrace all the flavors the more I can actually sample you know all the richness of life. So I'll share the the closing paragraph which is The architecture of ease is not a destination. It's an infinite game. There's always a deeper level of ease available, a subtler layer of tension to release, a more complete integration of what you already know to be true. The frequency does the heavy lifting. You just have to keep showing up. Keep relaxing into it. Keep allowing, keep trusting your direct experience over your conditioning. The Taoists knew this. The martial artists knew this. The mystics across every tradition have all pointed to the same place. But knowing is not the same as embodying. And this game is about embodiment, about moving these truths from the mind into the nervous system, from concept to lived experience, from philosophy into the actual architecture of your daily life. Wealth is not out there in the future, it is here in this moment, available to anyone who can widen their aperture enough to receive it. The best way to grow wealth externally is from an internal state of wealth. Growing to wealth is Newtonian. It requires force, effort, contending with space and time. Growing from wealth requires only presence. So the invitation is this stop fighting. Not because the world doesn't require your engagement, but because your engagement becomes infinitely more powerful when it flows from ease rather than from tension, from sovereignty rather than from reactivity, from play rather than from force, and from inner security rather than inner scarcity. The architecture is always being built. The question is whether you're building it from pressure or from ease. Choose ease. Everything else follows.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:52

I am not adding anything to that because that couldn't have been a more perfect first episode here. Thank you for tuning into that epic conversation with Ani. If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. That is how this show will grow. You can find Ani on Instagram. I will link it below. And if today sparked something for you around how you're approaching your own success, that's exactly what this show is for. So I will see you next week.