Joel Bein: Hugging the Cactus - The Path to Self-Acceptance and Growth

Hey everyone, thanks for listening. As you know, we're on the HubSpot Podcast Network, and we recently made the switch to go to their CRM platform as well. With this, I get some inside knowledge and some of the products and services that are rolling out, and I'm super excited to share that they're relaunching their sales hub with some really exciting new features. The new sales hub connects the dots with sales engagement, so prospecting, deal management, and analytics and coaching, and it aligns all of that so you can have a single view of your customer, and also with some of these new AI tools that they're integrating, you can actually automate all those annoying admin tasks that take you away from selling.

Trust me, you've got to check this out. We are just scratching the surface with this here at JV Sales, and I've already seen some massive improvements. So go to www.hubspot.com today to check out these new features. Let's make it happen. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect can I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And today's conversation is with Joel Bine. Now, Joel is the chief of content and coaching at Career Hacker. Now, Career Hackers is the relentless pursuit of discovering and doing what makes you come alive, and knowing you'll have to get creative along the way.

Now, y'all know that I use this podcast sometimes as an open therapy session, and that's exactly what this one was. I got introduced to Joel through a good friend of mine, Scott Lease, who had had him on his podcast and gone through his process of uncovering his limiting beliefs, and he thought it was so powerful that he should come on my podcast. So we got into it. We started with really limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome and a lot of things of what has made us all who we are and how that comes from childhood and a bunch of other stuff. Now we get creativity and curiosity beaten out of us, and we all conform to the system that we're all in right now and how we need to re-engineer and reverse-engineer that to become creative again.

So we dove into a lot of stuff, and he went through his process with me. So around minute 40 is when the conversation kind of back and forth stops, and we start going into a little bit of a therapy session here. And he breaks down this process to understand a certain limiting belief that I had about not being very smart. And so feel free to stop at 40 minutes, but if you really want to see how this goes, and he has an offer at the end of it too, where if you had something you wanted to work through to get what he calls pluck that dandelion, if you will, and pull it out so it's not driving who you are anymore, gave an offer at the end here where you can reach out to him, and he will do this for you as well.

Interesting what your feedback is on this one. We're about to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me with any questions you have about it. All right, let's make it happen. Joel Byn, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. I'm looking forward to this conversation. How are you doing today? Hi, pleasure. Doing great. How are you doing? Doing all right. This is going to be an interesting one. You know, I tell my audience all the time, I use my podcast as like an open therapy session, right? So I got shit that I deal with, and I try to kind of have an open book here about myself. Hopefully people will learn from it, and I think today is going to be an interesting one because we're going to be talking about limiting beliefs and posture syndrome and mental health issues and everything in between.

So before we get into that, though, Joel, why don't you give the audience a little background on where you're coming from and what you're up to these days? Yeah, totally. So I am chief of content and coaching at careerhackers.com, and our mission is to help people discover and do what makes them come alive. And so we're really, above all, outside of providing lots of content and resources for career growth, it's a mindset company, and really, I get lit up about supporting people and uncovering what I think is their natural, sort of creative, curious, entrepreneurial, empowered mindset. And yeah, I've been in this world the past three, four years in a sort of startup and entrepreneurship world.

And before that, I was actually, my first passion is classical music, and I was working in academia, on track to become a professor, and then really shifted gears in 2020 when I made this jump to working with Isaac Morehouse, who's the founder of our company. And all that stemmed from my sort of emerging passion and purpose to create new paradigms when it comes to sort of the integration between education and career launch. You know, we kind of get handed this narrative with go to school, check the boxes, follow the rules, pick the major, and then maybe you'll have a good job for 30 years. But we're like shattering all that and saying, hey, you don't need to rely on any credential, any degree, anyone's permission.

You can go build skills, build connections, build portfolios, pitch opportunities, and be your own credential and run your own business of sort of me incorporated. So that's kind of like the big picture of where I'm at and what fires me up. Love that, man. And actually, you know, I want to start with this because it was an interesting, a little while ago, well, a long time ago, I wrote a blog post called Stop Doing What You're Supposed to Do. Right? And you just outlined exactly what the blog post was about. It's like, we're all supposed to get a job. We're supposed to get married. We're supposed to have kids. We're supposed to do this. Right? And for me, I was fortunate in the sense that there was two points in my life that woke me up from that to stop doing that.

One was personal. One was professional. The personal one was I was engaged, like out of college. I was with this girl seven years and we were engaged and I knew it wasn't right. But what do you do after seven years and you're with somebody, right? You get married, then you buy a house, then you have a kid. And so in my soul, I knew it was wrong, but she was dependent upon me and I was kind of a coward for not calling it what it was. Thank God she broke it up with me. And at first I was like devastated, right? For two days, I was like, oh my God, that was the worst thing. And then I woke up and I was like, oh my God, I could breathe, right? And so that was the first personal one. And then the professional one was when we got acquired by Staples and I was going through the corporate thing and then they fired me, right?

And again, I knew the job was wrong. When they acquired us, I was not the right guy for the integration. But I fought it and I fought it and I fought it because that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to grind it out and work hard, right? And again, they fired me and it was devastating, but I woke up and it was the best thing that could ever happen. So that changed my mindset on like stop going through the motions. But what I'm getting to here is I was about to share that at a broader level. And then I saw this tweet from a millennial a couple of years back. This was actually before COVID. And it was against that because he was like, look, there was structure. Like, well, I'm 47, right?

So there was structure for me. There was like an expectation that you did these things, right? So there was a comfort level in fitting into that structure, if you will. Whereas now, the norms are completely broken. You can do whatever the fuck you want to do, right? But the tweet from the millennial was like, yeah, but now I don't know what to do. Like, you guys had the benefit of having a structure so there was like a, you could break the norm, but you still, there was a structure within it. There's no norms anymore. So I don't even know what to do at this point. So how do you balance that structure that is traditional, that does provide stability, that does provide like something of comfort, if you will, with this new world that we're in right now?

Because we're watching it fracture. I mean, I could go, we could go down all sorts of different paths with this, by the way, like religion, all these different things. It's like, I think religion, I'm spiritual, I'm not religious. Religion does have a, hey, okay, it's comfortable, but it also controls people and it, you know, all this other stuff. So how do you balance those two? I know that's a long-winded, uh, yeah, I mean, it's a really, really powerful point. And I would say we're in this period as a society that we're sort of, we're learning and figuring that out because it's, it is sort of new and these, these structures and these norms are sort of dissolving. And so that becomes an invitation for us to, to grow and to evolve and to, you know, build more, I would say, self, self-responsibility skills, self-empowerment skills and self-management skills.

Um, and so again, it goes back to that intersection between, between the school system and career, I think, because we go through 12 plus years and we're basically follow the rules and very little freedom choice and autonomy and opportunity to go say, hey, the day, the week, it's up to you how you're going to invest your time. That, that's not happening. So, we learn to kind of be dependent on the structure, right? But I think it's possible for humans to be given the opportunity to, to have that, that open and the openness and freedom to figure out what do you want? What makes you tick? Right? And that, that's a process of self-knowledge, self-discovery and I say, start with curiosity, you know.

Just kind of start with what are you curious about and get that little, get those sparks flying and when you start building that, that curiosity can grow into something even more powerful and then you can really have more of a sense of purpose and all these structures and, and you could say discipline or whatnot. I think you can start to build that in because you have your own self-directed aims and goals but it does, if you're, if you're, if you're starting from being completely dependent on basically following the, the given narrative and then all of a sudden you have freedom, it's going to take some time to kind of make that adjustment and build those skills, you know. I was going to say because that's what I see right now.

You know, a lot of the kids and I, and I have this whole talk track around, you know, Gen Xers and millennials in the sense that the Gen Xers, myself included, we were kind of the last generation to have to figure it out, right? We were the latchkey kids. We came home and our parents weren't around. Like when I was bored in my house, my mom would kick me the fuck out and say, just be home by dinner. Don't kill anybody, you know, and I would literally go and break things and whatever. I'd ride my bike all the way downtown. It didn't matter. Nobody was tracking me. I didn't have cell phones. Now though, and I see this with my daughter, right? She's 12. Every minute of every kid's life is structured, right?

They go from school to this hour to this hour and they have soccer practice from this hour to this hour and they have their iPad for 30 minutes and they do their homework for two hours, right? And we're all taught, the kids are taught to the test now. There's no more critical thinking. It's the MCAS. You have to pass the MCAS so that we can, as a school, get our grade and you can get your, you know, whatever. So you put these kids through this system that we're in right now that is structured to the nth degree and then they get out into the real world and some jackass manager like me looks at them and says, hey, figure it out. And they look at you sideways like, what do you mean figure it out?

Like, what am I supposed to do? And the reaction is, well, you don't know what you're supposed to do. Here, here's a script. Here's a template. Here's exactly what to do. And we, and we turn them into robots. And actually now, the scary thing is with AI coming out, we've actually conditioned this whole group, this whole generation to be robots effectively. Now they're getting replaced by robots. So how do we reverse engineer this? You say, start with curiosity. How do we give people, because I think without structure, they fall apart regardless. how do we give people some structure so they can start to be curious again about what those things are that do light them up so they can start to blossom out of this rigid structure with somebody else always telling them what to do?

Yeah. I mean, it can be maybe a stepping stone process if you're talking about, you know, if you're running a business, you're running a team. I think what comes to mind is, I'm not sure if they're still doing this, but some years ago, Google was talking about giving their employees 20% of their time to make a decision to do creative projects. Those types of strategies can sort of perhaps invite that waning off and allow people the time and space to figure out that curiosity and creativity. I say boredom is the predecessor to curiosity. So there's almost this what I call a de-schooling process that needs to take place when you want to kind of do that waning off. And I wrote this post about ways to de-school yourself so that you can come alive in your career because, again, we weren't given that independence.

And so there's a decompression period that if you really want to cultivate that aliveness from the inside out that it asks you maybe to pause and slow down and take some of that allow yourself to feel the discomfort of having some freedom. But, yeah, there's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all answer to that question, of course. It's an ongoing shift and I think some of these phenomena like quiet quitting that's come up the past couple years I think is also it's a sign of the culture and the workforce trying to get this pendulum balanced where there's a healthy sense of quiet quitting because people don't want to just follow the rules blindly in that robotic way or whatnot and so they shut down if they don't get the freedom or they don't get the purpose they don't get the meaning right but that that doesn't mean that they they have it all figured out and they're gonna they're gonna come alive in a new way right away.

I say I say go above and beyond at your job. I say create more value than anyone's expecting. Go go 110% and it's not something that you have to do. It's something that you get to do. But the key for all of that is to kind of do some of that self-introspection work as an individual I think to find and take responsibility to figure out what you're curious about and then find opportunities find companies find find opportunities that are going to be more in alignment with who you are and then you're then it's not so much just trying to fit into the mold but there's something where you have a sense of intrinsic motivation about. So that's those are some of the elements I see at play but you know again there's not necessarily one quick answer you know.

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Let's make this happen together. Yeah no it's tough and I think this is also the challenge here it's like I used to the whole advice that people used to give kids of like follow your passion I think that is dangerous advice quite frankly because especially when you're younger you have no idea what your passion actually is. You have to put in the work in my opinion you have to put in the work to try a bunch of things to see what you're ultimately passionate about. Like if I followed my passion when I was in college I'd be a stoner painting shitty paintings on the side of the fucking road you know what I mean and be dead broke doing it. And so I didn't really hit like what I was truly passionate about until I was in my 30s and I had experienced a bunch of things and I was like alright cool now I'm going to go all in on this.

So with this quiet quitting and these people looking for purpose and stuff like that my concern is is that there's a certain amount of work that you have to do in the system if you will right? In my opinion here and you can correct me if I'm wrong to try to figure out kind of how to how to fit into the overarching system I don't mean just work I mean this whole fucked up world that we're in right now and how to play the game I mean somebody asked me just recently you know John are you why aren't you like a multi-millionaire right? And because I got a good brand and I've been in business for a while and you know everybody has a perception of me being like this fucking filthy rich person and I'm just not and my answer to him was I don't know how to play the game like I just fundamentally don't know how to play the corporate game I don't know you know I can't kiss people's ass I have no filter and so but I've figured out how to work in the overarching system to get what I want and do what I'm passionate about so how do you guide people I mean let's talk about two sides of this equation one is the the rep or whoever coming into the workforce right?

And and trying to figure out where to start and then somebody who's maybe been in the workforce and needs to reverse engineer themselves here to figure out kind of I am just I have no spark I mean I had a conversation with a kid the other day who came on just to do some one-on-one coaching with me and he broke down he straight up broke down like he listened to a podcast that I had done on my keynote and the shit that I had been through and all this other stuff and he was like John I just lost my spark I've lost my passion for this and we talked it through going back to values and everything else but let's start with the kid coming into school right now or coming into the workforce right now what do you give how do you give guidance to somebody who is coming out of college still maybe not like that oh I know I want to be a doctor or oh I know I want to be a lawyer I'm still a little bit up in the air on this what should they be looking for within themselves and within opportunities to make sure that they're moving in the right direction at least and don't have to reverse engineer at a later date yep yeah if you're if you're just getting started then first thing I'd say is is take the pressure off yourself to figure the thing out that you're going to do for the rest of your life and I agree that typically follow your passion is advice that's not super helpful for a lot of people I say follow your curiosity or follow your passions you know you can explore multiple things at the same time but take the pressure off and maybe what you're going to be lit up about doing 5-10 years from now doesn't even exist yet so have have some some space for yourself and then you know to your point about working with the system I think there's a lot of value in just kind of building that fundamental fundamental character that comes from repetition of doing quality work that's and creating value for a company and contributing to a company and if that's sales maybe you're not necessarily 100% lit up about the product or the service that you're selling but there's a lot of skills soft skills and hard skills that you can build and just diving in head first going 100% in to a role and getting those reps in and that's going to serve you for your career especially sales it's such a key skill in almost every area of life honestly so just putting in those reps is going to be so powerful and then you can keep learning about yourself and maybe do a side project we say you know go go start a blog go start a podcast go go you know do some photography whatever you're kind of interested in and just start learning out loud start showing the world what you're up to and then let those kind of snowball over time and you know if you're later in your life it's not that much different really it's like kind of reconnecting with that curiosity and playing around testing experimenting then there's a lot that you can start to you can shift your trajectory but the biggest thing is to not be doing something that you absolutely hate that your values are against our founder Isaac as well as Mitchell Earl they co-authored this book called Don't Do Stuff You Hate talking about this idea just take the pressure off don't do stuff you hate start start playing around a little bit and build momentum yeah I think it's the curiosity factor here is and to you had talked I was doing as I was reading through some of the stuff that you sent me to prep for this you know we lost we get creativity beaten out of us at a very early age we get curiosity beaten out of us at a very early age you know that's why kids are so fun to hang out with when they're young because they are curious the why question like my daughter's 12 right there was definitely a stage of every question was why why why why right and but you talk about talk a little bit about hug the cactus here for a second as it relates to that because I was reading something about that and if you could unpack that a little bit I'd appreciate it okay hug the cactus yeah that's a that's a term I borrowed from the psychologist Nathaniel Brandon who wrote he wrote the book The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem among other books sort of the father of self-esteem in the 70s like true self-esteem before that term kind of got watered down in the 90s but he's talking about the real the real deal and hug the cactus is related to this idea of self-acceptance which is the second pillar of self-esteem and well the first pillar is living consciously the practice of living consciously to be aware of what actually is happening in in your life and the context around you as well as in your in your inner world so when we start looking inwards and this you know we're kind of shifting here into our mental health conversation as we start to look inwards and be honest about what could be happening inside that could feel uncomfortable so the art of hugging the cactus is giving yourself that sort of self-compassion self-acceptance self-empathy for the facts of whatever's in your consciousness so if you have a certain feeling you have you have shame or guilt you have fear well acceptance is just being honest that this is happening it doesn't mean you like it doesn't mean that you don't want it to change necessarily it just means you're you're not denying that it's true right now you're having this fear and then this sort of hugging that hugging the cactus is just allowing yourself to embrace that that fact and so yeah when you you know kind of tying this back to the school thing and I start inviting people to think about their experience in school and their strengths growing up and how that might have impacted them how that might be impacting their mental wellness now that those first two pillars of self-esteem in particular are really valuable to be able to look inside and say what actually happened oh yeah I didn't get much of a chance to follow my curiosity and creativity and this that's sad you know and embracing any of the feelings that might come up around that and then you know any of these childhood experiences that might be challenging to look at that hugging the cactus really is a valuable approach to be your own best friend in the process of looking I call it looking in the closet to see what actually is in there opening that closet door there might be all sorts of boxes and stuff you haven't looked at in years and it might be all disorganized and piled up and then if you open the door it might fall out and then it might actually life might get a little messier at the beginning if you want to open that closet door but if you have the courage and conviction to move through that pick up the pieces look at the truth sort things out then the other on the side of that is a lot of freedom so yeah that's kind of the big picture I invite people to have as they think about these types of things yeah it's interesting you bring that up because you know one of my mentors Jeff Hoffman we were talking a while back and he goes through a lot of therapy and stuff and one of the things he talked about was judgment right and I've always felt bad about judgment like in the sense like I judge people and I don't want to you know I know it's a bad thing but inherently you know us as human beings you see somebody the way they look the way they act and whatever it is you put a judgment on them right and I really try not to but I always feel guilty when I do and and he said that you know he calls it his judgment elephant basically so almost like the cactus where when he was talking to his therapist he's like look it's you can't get rid of it you just you just have to compartmentalize it so every once in a while he's like my judgment elephant comes out right and I let him sit there and do this thing but then I put him back right and so he actually characterized it as a thing so he understood and he was able to label it which made him feel more comfortable it's like this this isn't I can't get rid of this but I can compartmentalize it and effectively hug the cactus and admit that I do judge but I'm recognizing it now and I feel better about the fact that I'm working on this so it's I think it's his version of hugging the cactus it sounds yeah totally and not judging the judging right yeah exactly it's like now it goes in this perpetual cycle of like you're judging yourself or judging other people so shit so what's let's talk a little bit about limiting beliefs because I think there's something I've always talked about with one of my business partners is this limiting belief system and also imposter syndrome right I think they to a certain degree seem to go hand in hand but I've always I don't know whether it's the east coaster in me or what but from a business standpoint you know I always joked that me and my buddy Chris if we were in San Francisco we'd be multimillionaires because you fart in a box out there you get a hundred million dollars you throw it out the window and somebody gives you another hundred whereas east coast at least old school east coast mentality is earn it you know what I mean and everything that we've created we've we've created a bunch of apps and a bunch of things but we're always like it's not good enough you know whatever like we're not gonna go there and then all of a sudden we find out less than a year later somebody got 50 million for the same idea and it's worse so I've always said like I think anything else so talk to me about where those limiting beliefs come from or how you extract them if you will from people that you work with yeah totally yeah the beliefs are formed often times in those early years of life right of course the first seven years of life are probably the most formative but all these different experiences we have especially I would say the first two decades of our life again going through school and we're in these environments we don't have necessarily much choice as to our environment we kind of we don't get choose we don't choose to be born and we're just okay here you are in life and now we're trying to figure out how to adapt to this reality that we're trying to understand right so the beliefs are formed I always tell my clients they're there to serve you in the beginning everything we do is trying to serve us all of our thoughts all our actions all our emotions they're in an attempt to get our needs met the question is do they actually get those needs met in the short term and long term that's a different question but you know the beliefs going back to the hug the cactus like if you find yourself having a belief that I'm not good enough or I'm I'm not worthy of success or I can't do it I'm a failure these types of self worth beliefs we can we can hug that cactus and not be upset with ourselves or even having them in the first place because they were birthed for a reason and yeah I mean I've been super interested in in this question of where do where do these problems come from where do where do adult problems come from and there's a saying that adult problems are youth problems left unresolved so it invites us to go back and and it doesn't need to be our childhood necessarily there could be experiences in our 20s or 30s or any age that could create you know beliefs it's really when we have some sort of some sort of emotional experience I would say that it could be it could be an adverse experience it could be really heavy it could be really sort of light even in our childhoods but are relatively minor compared to some you know major acute trauma it could be any of the above and beliefs can be formed because our mind is trying to make sense of things and trying to keep us safe and trying to make sure our core needs for safety love acceptance in particular are getting met so if we have some sort of experience where say we're told you know to sit down and be quiet when you are feeling sad or angry or excitement even you're feeling something and we get that response from an adult then that's an example of when we might bottle up our feelings and in order to adapt to the environment we might create a belief around you know my feelings don't matter or my needs don't matter or it's not safe to express myself something along those lines and it's there for a reason but we have the ability now and we can talk more about this tool that I'm using with clients to actually go back and sort of deconstruct and uncouple the feelings that you had with a belief that was formed with your mind with your neurons and be free of that yeah I think that's you know one of the things that after actually having a conversation on the podcast one time I think it came to the imposter syndrome component of it I thought back and I'm like all right you know for instance I don't like to read right and I always kind of joke I'm not exactly the brightest bulb in the bunch you know I went to a state school drank my way through college now in reality I got a 3.75 I got actually a scholarship to go to Maryland even though Maryland's not exactly Harvard and it was academic one but I've always just like like people who are super smart I've always kind of been like yep I don't belong here you know what I mean like your brain works at a different level than mine I'm more EQ than IQ and that's kind of what I've the narrative that I've told myself over the years and looking back on it there was one memory where my dad I remember reading and my dad is the smartest person I've ever met in my life right he was a PhD electrical engineer you know just really really intelligent and I remember reading when I was a kid and he laughed at a word because I mispronounced it or something like that and you that to my daughter too it was kind of funny the way she said it but I vividly remember it had such an impact on me that I went in my bathroom and I cried about it because in my head my dad was laughing at the fact that I couldn't read you know what I mean and I think this is an excuse or not but I think that was the moment where I just said you know what I'm not great at reading I'm not the smartest kid out there you know what I mean and a lot of it comes from from my being intimidated a lot by my dad's intelligence so is that the type of work you do to kind of reverse engineer and look back at and find events or moments in people's life where it's like yep that was it or is there a different structure to deconstruct that yeah I start with identifying what the pattern is what is going on in your current life that's getting in the way maybe it's your every time you ask for the sale you feel some resistance or you feel some tension in your body some stress or if you get rejected then you have like all these feelings come up or you have stress about what your boss thinks about you you hesitate to go for that creative business project dream because you're afraid of failure and you notice these types of things and these blocks these hesitations these resistance and I say okay see if we can work with that and figure out what beliefs you might have in the subconscious mind not the conscious mind because you know we can have a conversation about at the conscious level like yeah you like say someone believes that you know failure is not safe we could talk all day about reframes but have failure failure failure and a learning opportunity you can do affirmations and you can think about things in a new way but we're interested in this method in going to the subconscious mind and seeing if we can connect to the part of you that has beliefs about fear of failure and so then I go okay what's what are we will explore that more and find particular beliefs and see which ones resonate see which ones are the strongest and there might be just that deep part of you in your subconscious that's just like I'm a failure or fear failure is not safe and when we connect to that and the truth of that right going back to being conscious right accepting okay this is what's happening this part of you believes this and then at that point we invite when we start the process to clear that belief that's when we ask about the memories and we work with the memories that might be associated with the belief and we can get into that more but yeah the biggest thing with this tool is that it's different because we're in a target mode of actually solving the root problem and so we're getting to the belief rather than just trying to reframe and change thoughts change emotions change habits right so there's so much personal development out there that's super valuable I've dived into a lot of it I know a lot of people in this audience are ambitious high performing types of people who are reading books and working on themselves and creating their routines and their workflows and all that stuff has tons of value and oftentimes I value in many therapies and I even integrate some of that into my work but what makes this different is that it gets to the belief level so we're not just trying to manage our thoughts and manage our emotions and manage our habits and try to willpower our way through resistance or if we can just override all those negative thoughts and create new thoughts then we'll have success if we can get down to the belief level then we can actually pluck things out at the root so let's take a mundane example if you had a belief that dogs are dangerous let's say then at the subconscious level you see a dog then you might have an automatic response because this program is running it's open it's on that operating system at all times dogs are dangerous because maybe you had some experience where a dog bit you when you're seven right so when you see a dog when you're 27 you might have this like stress response and we can we try to manage that and try to you know rationalize why dogs aren't dangerous just at the conscious level what we really want to do is connect to the part of you that believes that and then we can go through this method and actually realize that's not true and that part of you the subconscious level realizes it's not true and then we pluck it out and it's gone forever like Santa Claus isn't real really and then the thoughts and emotions they don't come up we're not trying to the thoughts and emotions just dissipate right you're not gonna if you don't if you're no longer at the belief level believe dogs are dangerous you won't have that automatic stress response every time you see a dog now you might you might if there's some random dog that happens to be vicious then you might have stress response but the point is we're letting go of the automatic program that absolute truth in all situations that dogs are dangerous and so that you can have discernment and you can have freedom and so yeah this method is really powerful that's just been so transformative for myself and my friends and people I've worked with and actually getting to the root rather than just trying to manage what was one of the ones that was for you like if you're talking about this you uncovered for yourself that was that aha holy shit I was able to let that go at the root level yeah I mean I I've been working this on myself really really deep past couple years so I've worked on myself with hundreds of beliefs in different buckets of life so I like to put things in different categories self worth money it's a big one work ethic and relationships you can do beliefs about specific people but one that comes to mind is one of the first ones that I experienced was this idea that I'm not enough and that that can resonate you know people listening want to like just check in with themselves and try saying that to themselves and see if it feels true it feels heavy at all in your body then that's a sign that it's there if not there but for me it was real heavy and I remember trying to work with that for years of doing affirmations and trying to say I'm enough I'm enough and and I remember recording a whole podcast with my friend and we were talking about ways to reframe this and then we found this method and I just remember when I finished this process the actual when we finished this method with this belief I'm not enough I remember this feeling in my gut all this heaviness and this energy just released and it was I just felt this ever since this freedom about that and the belief doesn't mean anything to me anymore similarly I had a belief it's not okay to relax and I had for years I had all this back pain sort of in my upper back and my left side of my back and I remember as soon as we cleared that belief that my shoulders just dropped immediately and ever since then it's been like 70% of my back pain's been gone so those are some of my subjective experiences and I and you know when people hear this stuff it might sound like wait really which is totally understandable I would be the same way I was the same way and that's why I invite people to give it a try and see it to believe it we also have a lot of beliefs about change and one thing I one thing I do with clients is work with beliefs about change like change has to be hard or I can't change or change can't can't be fast and these types of beliefs that are in the in the background so that's kind of a window into the method look you know we're on the hubspot podcast network and we love spreading the word about other podcasts that we think you should check out and you should definitely check out the side hustle pro podcast with nikayla matthews this podcast showcases diverse entrepreneurs who scaled from a side hustle to a profitable business and I absolutely love nikayla's real and authentic depiction of what it's like to do a side hustle while working full time and all the emotional rollercoaster that it takes to build a viable business on the side she tells all of this from her own personal perspective of doing this herself and brings on guests who share their own journey with practical advice that you can take action on immediately if you like stories of women of color who've started their own business and relatable advice from entrepreneurs who started just like you then you're definitely going to want to check out this podcast yeah it's interesting I mean there's I think I've been blessed with you know and I we can I mean this is all in the umbrella of mental health in a lot of ways but you know for whatever however my parents raised me I've been and and my dna also right like I don't I'm not I don't have an addictive personality I don't have depression at least I don't think I do you know what I mean so a lot of this stuff for me I've been selectively trying to find areas of like why is that why do I act that way right but haven't been able to dig to the root cause yet so maybe this this methodology I got to start to kind of maybe brainstorm about four or five different areas that we could go deep on this one uh but what is that framework like let's let's give the audience a little chime in on the on the actual method of the process that you go through so that they can get a sense of is this for them compared to therapy right which a lot of people are it and and quite frankly like for me I've tried therapy but my problem is I'm always looking for my Robert Williams you know what I mean and goodwill hunting like I want to skip all the people that don't get me and then find the person that actually does get me so that's why unfortunately a lot of my therapy sessions have kind of been like all right never mind like and so I've disregarded in a lot of ways for me but for for areas of known need or improvement what's walk us through kind of that what's the process yeah I can do that I mean you did you want to try it out because like the best thing about this process is to experience it because it's uh yeah once you experience it then you can actually get a feel for it and then the listeners perhaps can also get a feel for it by actually demonstrating it um but yeah like the biggest thing to to be listening for is the is the the step that I'm gonna show about realizing that this belief is not something that happened outside of you so that's something to keep in mind I mean there's a story that we created with our own mind and our own meaning making mechanism um but yeah like like it might take the rest of the hour to kind of do it do it properly but if we if you want we could we could dive in yeah sure why not fuck it yeah I mean so you mentioned kind of a little bit about your years your story and what you know your challenges might be around boom um you know maybe not thinking you're smart or stuff like that do you want to share more about like what what kind of blocks you might sense you have uh yeah I mean again I weigh heavy heavy on EQ EQ versus IQ um you know I did all right in school I worked my ass off in school I knew I had to just to get to where I was um but I've never I always I'm very surface oriented on a lot of stuff in the sense that I like I kind of believe in sales for instance you don't have to be the industry expert in whatever you sell you have to be the quarterback so you have to know a little bit about a lot right so I don't go deep on anything and anytime there's a depth conversation and there's other people in the room who know more about that topic than I do I tend to just kind of shy away from it right not shy away I just let them talk and I'm like yeah okay they're way smarter than I am on this one so I'm going to remove myself from this conversation but that that's always kind of been a belief of mine that uh there are other people that are far more intelligent than I am and it's frustrating to me that I don't want to learn in depth about certain topics like I'm more of like I get I take two or three data points I've always said like my one of my skills is the fact that I don't overthink like I usually tend to look at a situation and based on two or three data points I can usually make a decision and that decision is a lot of times the right one but it's not based on me crossing every t and dot and every i and and all that other stuff and so I think a lot of my probably if you were to say my biggest weakness would be accountability um where I don't like holding myself accountable I don't like holding other people accountable uh if we go to sales for instance like I'm the best person that you can ask to be in your forecast review because I will help you strategize and do all that other stuff but as soon as you miss your forecast and we have to talk about hip or micromanaging and shit like that like it makes my skin crawl like I just I don't like it and I also don't like holding myself accountable right it's like cool all right I got it and if I don't hit it it's like all right fuck it I'm gonna do something else so that's probably my biggest flaw is accountability okay so this is sort of trailhead around doubting your intelligence and then is there sort of like a lack of trust in in holding yourself accountable is that a piece I think it's a lack of I don't know about it well I don't know how it would be like like how would it be a lack of trust trust in myself or trust in the process or what trust that you're going to get the thing done that you're going to follow through on something so you know here's something really weird I never finish fully finish almost anything and I'll give you an example from super tactical like french fries I will eat 90 of the french fry but that little end I'll throw it away a burger I will eat the entire burger except for the last bite and I'll throw and I'll leave that I will consciously and subconsciously leave that last bite I never take it um when I do a project around the house I'll go all the way to the end and then I won't maybe paint the trim at the end because I'm just like all right with you know it's almost done so right so those are some areas where I don't know if that's accountability I don't know if that's follow through but it is like 90 I got it and then right at the end I'm like ah fuck it I don't need to finish that up you know what I mean so no idea where that one comes from but my dad by the way my dad was the same way my mom actually I remember this uh I went home because I remember there was like I'm looking around my house my dad really good like really intelligent but also built things as well but there was always like the why didn't you just paint that last piece of wood or why didn't you just and my mom complained after he passed she was like he never finished anything like he just he would always do something and then there would always be that thing that was left over that he would just leave that way right no idea where that comes from okay I'm definitely curious about that and by the way I'm just I'm asking to try to get more info and then I can figure out what the beliefs might be underneath that um you mentioned a little while back about like you know as an east coaster or whatever maybe not sure you you can succeed at that next level or um I'm curious if there's something there and maybe there's a relationship with the not finishing um so I think at this point I'd love to just kind of sort of sense test a few beliefs that I suggest and so at this point I would just I'll I'll suggest a belief and then your job is just to check in with yourself and your basically your gut your your feelings your initial reaction cool and just knowing that any belief that you do have perhaps it's not it's not you john it's just this part of you deep down um and just just just check in to see if it's there and just give me a yes or no to see if that's there all right sound good yeah go for it all right so I'm curious if there's any sense that I'm not worthy of success I don't think so I mean I I think I I look at it as I'm a what goes around comes around and uh and I do believe that I'm a decent person and so I think I am worthy whether it's super success you know whatever success means for everybody else but I don't think I think I I think I deserve it I wouldn't say a resounded yeah I absolutely deserve success fuck it give me my money type of thing but um success is something that I I earn mm-hmm and so when you hear that it just is it does it sound ridiculous I wouldn't say it sounds ridiculous okay but it's not necessarily like an absolute strong belief no okay so that's kind of like the the dichotomy I'm initially looking forward to see is is it even there at all there could be some party that has that that might not be too super strong um now is there a sense that what about I don't deserve success that's no does that feel different at all no okay I deserve it I know I mean I again what goes I believe in a uh karma yeah and I believe I'm a good person and I do things for the right reasons I'm not always right uh and I fuck over some people sometimes when I don't know it and sometimes I'm a douche but in general I think I I do deserve it okay let's test out a little bit on that that sort of intelligence idea yeah just checking in with yourself is there is there any part of you that has a sense that I'm not smart yeah there's no question about that yep so you felt that like that was a right-of-way reaction yeah yeah like I just I know that I get intimidated when I'm around I'll give you a quick example uh I worked for Jack Welsh uh G.E.

Jack Welsh and his wife Susie Welsh Jack is one of the coolest shits you've ever come across like I sat in front he's a Boston kid drops the f-bomb every other fucking word and I actually think he's just a very driven person it might not be the brightest I think he's very similar he was very similar to me I sat in the room with Susie Welsh and within two minutes I her intellect effectively punched me right in the face and I was like holy shit she is at a whole different level than I am from an from an intellect standpoint and I was a hundred percent intimidated I was just like gotcha I was more it's odd I was more intimidated by Susie Welsh than Jack Welsh and if you know you know big picture shit Jack Welsh was the CEO of the century according to Forbes magazine right so this is the guy and I was way more intimidated by Susie than I was him and it was because of her intellect hmm so I'd say let's do this one and our goal here is to let go of the automatic absolute program that I'm not smart is the truth about you and so that you can be free and that if you interact with somebody like that you won't have that automatic feeling at least to that degree there could be other beliefs that are also contributing to the feelings you had sure um but we're looking to pluck this particular dandelion out of the ground and it could be the case that there are some people that are smarter than you but that's not that's not we're not trying to say that you are smart or this um compared to x person we're just trying to let go here of the absolute program that I'm not smart is true so that you can be have more freedom here so you want to try this yeah sure all right so first just really check in with that feeling that you just had that gut feeling and really sort of take a note of that and then we'll check in at the end and compare it okay all right so now just dropping into this feeling the sense of I'm not smart and just trusting trusting your subconscious trusting your memories when did you first learn I'm not smart is true uh probably when I mean if fast forward probably college I think was where it would hit me right in the mouth that I wasn't nearly as smart because I started failing out my first semester uh because I took like engineering for engineering majors I took you know biology for bio majors because I figured oh I know engineering I know and you know I know bio fuck it let's skip a step and go up there and then when I hit like calculus holy shit I was like uh and I had to spend the entire my first uh uh spring break while all my friends were in Cancun and stuff I was home with my dad teaching me calculus and it was like the first real like whoa I this is that my brain doesn't work this way um whereas high school I kind of got by you know what I mean like a little bit of work here and that college experience was pretty impactful oh it was overwhelmed I mean I the first the when I was at by when I took the first bio test I honestly I might as well read in Chinese like when when I open up the thing I walked right up to the front of the room and I just gave the guy my book it was like apparently I'm not for bio major see you later I just walked out okay oh yeah makes sense makes sense okay so it's understandable that with that sort of I don't want to say necessarily severe but there was an impactful experience uh in relationship to learning something and it makes sense that you might have created this belief I'm not smart in that time now I'm just going to ask a few questions to try to sort of loosen this belief up and ask some new interpretations of the event so is it possible that it's not that I'm I'm not smart is the truth about you in all situations forever fundamentally but rather what explains your experience is that you weren't smart in this one course you didn't have the smart the smarts and the intelligence in this one particular domain this one field this one uh this one skill and that is it possible that you just it was an acute experience and you weren't smart compared to the other students in the class you weren't smart compared to what was needed for that particular course but it doesn't necessarily mean I'm not smart is the fundamental truth about you is that possible yeah that's absolutely possible I mean I was uh there was three or four examples that year uh that that did punch me in the face with that but they were uh they were events okay and similarly is it possible that sometimes in some domains I'm not smart is true you're not smart when it comes to maybe flying airplanes I'm guessing maybe you do no okay no absolutely not maybe you're not smart when it comes to uh certain advanced theories of physics um but maybe it's not true when it comes down to i don't know how to how to navigate the the t system in boston are you pretty good at that by now yep got that one down um so maybe it's just dependent in general on what it is we're talking about and there's like there's different types of smart right and there's there's of course smart in success and sales you can say that you have mastery in that domain and other domains but the question is is it maybe not the absolute truth about you i'm not smart it's contextual is that possible yes it's that's definitely possible yeah and again for everyone listening what i'm seeking to do here is communicate to the part of john that has the belief and see if this part of you can can start to to loosen up here um is it possible that the it's not that i'm not smart is the truth but what explains your sort of overwhelming experience was that maybe the professor or the the culture of the school or the class like wasn't ideal for for sort of supporting people who are struggling i can't say but like maybe just wasn't it wasn't what you really needed which is maybe just be to be fully accepted and supported and seen for the challenge of it and and maybe had no none of this external pressure to perform maybe it was the external pressure that really created a lot of that um and maybe the only reason that that pressure was there was there was because the teacher the professor that the whole culture was of this of this academic environment was trying to really well they had their own beliefs from what it means to do well and be educated that they had inherited and they had as daddy's assumptions at play and they had all these beliefs and from when they were growing up and stuff like that and maybe that created this environment that wasn't ideal for you and that's why it was overwhelming not that i'm not smart is the truth is that a possible interpretation yeah i mean i think the the teachers didn't obviously care all that that you know they weren't exactly hands-on uh with their attention to uh to my needs specifically i mean i didn't exactly make them overly uh obvious but yeah there was there was definitely the the situation itself okay so would you agree that i'm not smart was one of several or more interpretations of your experience yes great so now when you think back to this experience and you look at the memory and just look around with your sense of sight what you saw you saw the the chairs the desks you saw other students you saw professor maybe chalkboard you saw things you saw objects you saw people now did you ever literally see with your eyes i'm not smart and not i mean depending on how you depict it but no you didn't see it that sentence written on the wall no definitely not i didn't see the sentence i saw the f on the paper that i took okay okay perfect so let's get clear you saw the letter f where you saw this the score you got or whatever yeah the 40 on the 40 that i got on the first 40 on a piece of paper so and you really specifically you got you saw lines and circles or whatever on a piece of paper now i'm not smart this is an idea it's a concept you didn't actually see it did you you saw things objects people lines on a page yeah so if you didn't see i'm not smart then where exactly did i'm not smart first happen where exactly did this thought this belief first happen not sure it's been a i think a evolution of um a narrative that i've told myself for a while did it i don't know exactly when we and we're we're sensing it's coming from this memory and sensing that didn't you didn't see it so to be to kind of clarify the question did i'm not smart occur outside your head or inside your head when it first was born inside yeah i'm not smart was a story an interpretation a thought that you had and you added it on to the sense data the the sites that you saw is that fair yes so i'm not smart originated in your mind is that fair yes yeah you created it with your own neurons and trying to explain your experience and maybe you were feeling deflated maybe you're feeling bummed overwhelmed different feelings maybe it was too hard to try to process all that and this might have been a way to try to explain it away or it could have just been a way to try to just understand why it was hard why was hard that class and we have we have a need for clarity for understanding for stability and so we have these types of challenging moments it helps to create a belief in the short term as a sort of mechanism so that we're not completely like adding in the dark like why is this even happening so maybe it served you at the time but perhaps are you more open to the idea that it's not serving you now it's definitely not serving you now i think it's it's part of the limiting belief system right that uh that i've just kind of laughed it off right it's kind of like oh i got a bad memory and therefore it just gives me the excuse to have a bad memory as opposed to working yeah and trying to get a better memory so if you randomly saw a college kid and he was struggling with the class you randomly saw a random kid you didn't know and use you failed the class would you know i'm not smart is the truth about him in all situations no okay so now last portion of this process if you could tell me uh the name of a trusted friend you have right now john that you feel you can confide in um but who wasn't who wasn't in your life at that time uh mike mike okay so imagine that when you were in college and had this experience you had your regular life but then you had also uncle mike in your life and you did your regular life but then once or twice a week you went over uncle mike's place and you just hung out and you just talk and you just felt relaxed felt free you could say what what's on your mind what you're feeling what you're thinking and you just like you just hang out in the living room and he's just he's there and present for you and he just listens and you just you process a lot with them and you just feel so relaxed and you can be yourself there's no expectations on you and you always look forward to going to uncle mike's because you know you can kind of get some stuff off your chest and all that so imagine that after this experience with this class you went to my uncle mike's that that same night or the next day and you just like plop down on the couch and you say what what happened you just tell him tell him what's going on he's like what's up and you're like you just tell him the whole story from start to finish and you share all the details and he's just there he's present and he just listens and you get you get this chance to be heard to be seen tell him what you're thinking tell him what you're feeling that it was it was a little overwhelming and and kind of perplexed about it perhaps and just share all this and he's like yeah i hear you i hear john makes sense now makes sense to feel those feelings and to be kind of perplexed or frustrated or anything now i just want you to know that these feelings are feelings they're just in your body you can just let those feelings move through you and observe them just like clouds in the sky just let those feelings be with with you right now it's okay to have feelings now i don't want you to create a story on top of this experience just because you're having this experience doesn't need to mean anything you have the power to choose what the meaning is so i want you to be careful not to think that i'm not smart is the explanation about you fundamentally just because of this one thing happened maybe you're just not it's not a good fit for this particular course or this topic and that's that's okay because there's no human who's a good fit for every topic because we all have certain interests and we all have certain dispositions towards certain skill sets and all these all these things so maybe it's just the environment like a like a tomato the best tomato farmer in the world he's not going to grow a tomato in canada in january so maybe this environment okay so i want you to think that just because you're having a struggle here means that i'm not smart is the absolute truth about you in all situations because there's a lot of types of smart there's certain academics there's different types of academic courses then there's all sorts of non-academic things smart smart with relationships smart with money smart with sales and street smarts and musical smart like who knows there's all sorts of different types maybe you're just not smart at this particular thing or maybe you're just not smart compared to some people at this particular thing i'm not saying that you're the smartest person in the world and everything but her but just this idea just be careful not don't make any assumptions that i'm not smart is fundamentally the truth in all situations you can just let this these feelings pass through you without adding that adding the meaning so imagine that he he had been there and he said that that just sank in in this in this in his house when you feel comfortable and you feel relaxed and you had this empathy and if uncle mike had been there and explained all this to you would you have concluded it's the absolute truth about you i'm not smart no no what would you have thought instead that i shouldn't be a scientist uh yeah then maybe you're maybe not in my career yeah oh i don't like doing this thing really yeah yeah okay so we did some deep work yeah so let's let's let's test this out again i'll have you clear the palette and we're going to say a couple silly sentences um say all rainbows are gray all rainbows are great uh all uh birds never fly birds never fly is there any truth in that no two plus two equals three two plus two equals three ridiculous right depends on if we're living in the matrix or not but yes it was ridiculous okay i'm not smart i'm not smart how's that feel compared to the beginning definitely more situational based yeah definitely more in like uh scenario based i guess that's exactly our goal you feel do you feel the weight in your body that you felt when we first said it said it not as much nope is there a little something still there i'd have to go pick through each one of the scenarios you know what i mean i think yeah so yeah but i would say there could be there could be other beliefs that are similar that are kind of adjacent to this belief um it seems like you you you feel sense of discernment over this like it depends on the situation which is like that's what we were our goal like when i cleared the belief i cleared the belief i can't be rich as soon as i cleared that belief i didn't think oh i'm gonna be rich tomorrow it was just like oh it depends on what i'm gonna do about it you know but the the sense of like it's definitely the truth was gone you sense that like it's definitely the truth is gone yeah i mean i think there's you know a lot of uh generalizations that we all do uh and again we tell ourselves the narrative but when you stick back and you kind of take it piece by piece you can start to break it down and and again compartmentalize it so i think there's uh there's definitely areas where i still look at it and say holy shit you know i should be smarter in those areas that i'm gonna and i'm not versus i'm not smart mm-hmm cool cool thanks for being the guinea pig yeah i like it man i like it and i think that's the you know the key of of trying to unpack right yourself i mean there's there's therapy there's there's a lot of different things but i think it goes back to what we started here in the beginning which is you know it starts with curiosity right it starts with curiosity and being open to being curious about yourself and digging a little bit deeper and starting to try to find and unwind some of that stuff that we've been conditioned to believe whether it's about society or about ourselves so appreciate that my pleasure my pleasure cool man well look let's uh let's wrap it up uh because this is this one went a little bit longer i'll you know i think everybody will understand why but uh let's wrap it up here and talk um about for you know how people can get in touch with you and what are some of the things that you're working on these days that people uh can gain access to or get information about yeah thanks so much yeah this this method is is a wing of the career hackers platform that we're calling human liberation by career hackers and i'm beginning to connect with with clients and sales sales professionals in particular is is a type of person that i've been working with um and recognizing that that that often high pressure environment can can stimulate um some of some of these subconscious beliefs whether it's about self-worth or whether it's about money or sales or um work ethic any of these types of things if you're having if you're having patterns i would love to support you if if you'd like um with this with this service that we're rolling out so it's still in the earlier stages and as as we do that i'm i'm sharing just gifts with um with people with this work and so we're we've created a site careerhackers.com happen where anyone listening is is free to to book a a complimentary session with me just as a gift um and we can we can hop on for about an hour and we can figure out what those patterns and beliefs might be and i can show you this method so you can experience it and and clear one belief and then if that and if that feels like you know of value to get a value to you we can talk about continuing to work further but i'm really passionate about supporting people in in letting go of this stuff it's it's just getting in the way and i think there's a lot of this is a very new method and there's a few other people doing it and i'm really excited about sharing this more with with the world and the workforce in the workforce so again it's clearhackers.com happen love it yeah i love it i actually went to the site so it's uh it's just for podcast listeners to make it happen monday podcast here so make sure you take advantage of that and joel where can they find you other connected like what linkedin or any other areas you want to point people yeah i'm most active on linkedin and uh or joelbein.com is my website you can see see a lot of blog posts that i've done to learn more about how i think and um otherwise check out the blog posts and our newsletter at career hackers and we're building up that brand and want to serve people at all all stages of their career as we build this thing up so i really appreciate you having me on it's been it's been um really a pleasure and and great to connect yeah thanks for coming on hopefully uh everybody from the audience takes advantage of that offer and starts to unwind some of their uh limiting beliefs if you will so i appreciate the offer and appreciate the conversation man awesome thanks so much yeah and everybody hopefully you enjoyed this got to think a little bit like you like i always tell you kind of use these as open therapy sessions so you just experienced it and look like i say at the end of every one of these podcasts go out there make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or you think it went if you make somebody smile today you know you had a good day world needs a lot more of that right now so thank you all very much and i will see you on the other side i hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as i did with your support and our incredible guests we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and i can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network also check out my new website at www dot john m as michael barrows dot com where you'll find even more ways to engage there's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team look i'm out there selling every day just like you are and i'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends and technology so if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales let's connect and let's make this happen together We'll see you next time.