Joe Hudson on The Art of Transformation In The Modern World | Pathless Path Podcast

[00:59] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path. I'm Paul Millerd, and in this podcast, we examine the invisible scripts that run our lives and dare to imagine new stories for work and life. Today, I am incredibly excited to be talking with Joe Hudson. He is the founder of Art of Accomplishment, which is a collection of several courses My wife has taken a couple of them and we've talked about a lot of the ideas he's explored also in his podcast, which is one of my favorite podcasts to listen to right now. He also has an amazing life story and definitely want to explore that a little bit more today. He's lived all over the world.

He's worked as a banker, consultant, philanthropist, teacher, meditated for several years, and has a lot to offer people, I think has a really unique perspective on transformation and so much more. Welcome to the podcast, Joe.

[02:00] Joe Hudson: Hi, good to be here. Thanks for having me.

[02:05] Paul: So I always start out with what are the stories and scripts that you grew up with? And I'm excited to hear your response to this question because I I think a lot of what you do in your work, and maybe this is a way to introduce it as well, is helping people sort of figure out what those scripts and stories they grew up with and whether they're still serving them and how to integrate them or not integrate them and things like that. So excited to hear what it was like to grow up as Joe Hudson.

[02:40] Joe Hudson: Wow. Stories I grew up with. There's a There's a shit ton of them. But I would say that the dominant story, like from 0 to 7, was that I was loved. And then from 7 to like, I would say maybe not all, like maybe the two stories I grew up with when I was young was I was loved and there was something wrong with me. And then from like 7 or 8 until whatever, probably in my 20s, it continued that there was something wrong with me.

That was a message that I grew up with. And it's— and I say that with the knowledge that almost everybody is raised with that story. So there's different brands of that story. But definitely, you know, the things that— the way it was taught was like my emotions weren't okay. Some of the things I was thinking wasn't okay. I needed to be controlled.

I was hyperactive, I was naughty, whatever. All those stories that I was given. And rather than the story, you know, of you're lovable and you can be attuned to and all that stuff. So definitely that was the dominant story. And it was, I would say, in my case, a hardcore version of it. Not the most hardcore version of it by any stretch, but I had like an alcoholic father who yelled at me at the dinner table every night for, like, I don't know, a good hour and a half every night, to the point, like, in our upper middle class neighborhood, like, they would call the cops on my dad for yelling at me, you know, like it was, it was that kind of a thing.

[04:22] Paul: What was that like? I mean, what was— how did you deal with that? I mean, children don't really know how to integrate all this. And I'm sure you had many different coping strategies.

[04:34] Joe Hudson: Yeah, I didn't have much of a choice as to my coping strategies. Like, I remember this moment at the dinner table where I was like, fine, Dad, you're right. And he's like, see, I told you you were weak, right? That I was needed to fight. The way I see it now is that my mom and dad's marriage was in trouble and they needed a problem that they could coalesce over. I was the problem.

There's a— like, I was like the family crucible of that. And then also, like, the other thing that was happening was my mom was fighting through me, right? So my mom was scared of my dad, but she would use me as the surrogate for her fight. And so that's just how we did it, you know? So there wasn't a choice but to fight. And so because of that, I learned when I'm scared, I fight.

When I'm sad, I fight. When I'm like anything that, like, any emotion that I feel that is uncomfortable, that means it's time to fight.

[05:29] Paul: Yeah. And yeah, how did you take that into like early adulthood?

[05:34] Joe Hudson: Yeah, I got kicked out of college fighting, you know, like I was like, I— okay, so in college, for instance, my first year in college, it changed. But in my first year of college, I, you know, they write you up. I was at a UC school and the system was that they would write you up if you did something wrong. And there's people who had like 9 or 10 write-ups. I had 4, but I was just a dick, you know, like I would, I would come into the hall and there would be like all these posters people would hang over the windows. And I'd just walk in and I'd be like, yeah, and I'd take them down.

It was like, you know, whatever, like Christian Fellowship this or, you know, Jamboree this. And I would just like take them down and they'd be like, you can't do that. I'm like, someone just put them up. Like, this is my— this is where I live. If someone can put them up, I can put them down. Like, I was that guy.

And like, it was all justified in my head. Um, so I think I got like 4 write-ups, which was— but, but, and then one of them was, you know, I had this crazy roommate. And anyway, so by the end of it, it was just like, I went to the ombudsman of the campus, just to give you like a flavor of how much I fought. He said, look, you want to get out of this? All you need to do is just say you're sorry. I was like, yeah, that's not happening.

So I actually, like, had the longest trial in the history of the student body. And I had, like, all these professors come to speak for— and they just massacred me. They're just like, you're out. So, yeah. Yeah, I just, I just needed to fight. I had— I was like, the world is my dad and it's an authority that I can't— it can't be trusted.

So I will, I will fight that authority.

[07:26] Paul: Yeah. And with the lens of that survival instinct, it sort of makes sense. It's like, of course you're going to do this. I heard you talking about this with your podcast partner, Brett, and You're like, yeah, very clearly I should have just said I'm sorry and functionally stayed in college. But I mean, you were trying to survive though in that moment, just like you were as a kid.

[07:53] Joe Hudson: Yeah, I think my identity was like the sense of self which had not been fully formed needed to survive. And I have no regrets about it in the fact that like I ended up graduating valedictorian of my next school and You know, it was like a great— the whole thing was an amazing learning. It was like an incredible education. And it was like, you know, started to plant the seeds of my self-discovery. So, you know, that kind of that level of pain of getting kicked out of college was, was an amazing motivator to, to look at myself.

[08:29] Paul: So you also, you also have talked about living in many different countries. I think this was growing up. You lived in Iran, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia. Yeah. How did that influence you? I think you were talking about it in the lens of always being able to take many different perspectives.

But I'd be interested in what that's like because you're writing in the context of all these things and Connecticut. And I thought that was interesting because I only grew up for the first 22 years in Connecticut. And that is a very— so it's like I had the Connecticut perspective and you had like the rest of the world.

[09:09] Joe Hudson: What part of Connecticut were you?

[09:12] Paul: Eastern Connecticut, right near UConn.

[09:14] Joe Hudson: Okay.

[09:15] Paul: So, yeah, my mom taught in the middle of nowhere.

[09:18] Joe Hudson: My mom taught in UConn for a little bit.

[09:21] Paul: Oh, wow.

[09:22] Joe Hudson: Yeah. And Fairfield. Yeah. What was it like? It was awesome. I loved it.

It was really good for me on many levels. Mostly I was just socially awkward as hell. And so I got like a restart. I got like a reset button every, every, you know, less than a year typically. And I would have another set of people that I could learn how to interact with and learn how to connect with, which I was not good at, obviously, given that I was emotionally abused for a large part of my life. And so that, that part of it was really good.

The other part that was really good was seeing that there was lots of ways of living and that underneath that, people were generally very good people. So that was another thing that was really beneficial. And then also, you know, you grow up with certain contexts that you'd never question because why would you? You've never seen anybody act differently, right? Like, Yeah, I should wear my— like, if you were about the same age, I should wear my collar up and it should be pastels, right? Or I should go to— I should go to school that has flooring instead of like dirt on the floor.

Or like, there's just these things that you know to be true only because that's the only thing you know. And I got to know a whole bunch of different truths and realities. And so that was incredibly helpful. And it opened up my mind to allow, like, in later stages to allow all sorts of kinds of wisdom in and to learn, to learn basically how to translate. So even today, for instance, if I can speak to like an energy worker and I can translate that into like the emotional work or the somatic work or the intellectual work that they're often saying the exact same thing, but the language is such that somebody will reject it just because, you know, like, I feel my vibrations and it's like, you know, whatever the hell you're talking about, shut up. That's not rational.

You know, says the other person. Whereas I can say, I can like dig into that and say, what do you mean by vibrations? Like, what is that speaking to? And then translate it to another part of the, you know, somebody who's more head-oriented or emotionally oriented. And so it's in all of my life is that like I can translate really, really well because I just got to see a lot of truths.

[11:53] Paul: So talk to me a little bit more about your personal transformation. So you, you get kicked out of this school, you end up at the second school, become valedictorian. But it sounds like that leaving the first school sort of opened up a new perspective of maybe Okay, Joe, I should get my shit together now.

[12:14] Joe Hudson: No, I got kicked out of school with a 3.97 grade point average or something like that. Like, I like when I got kicked out of school, I was also doing really well academically because I just loved learning. So no, I didn't really. I'm not sure if I ever got my shit together. I stopped rebelling, you know, As I moved through college, I still rebelled.

[12:41] Paul: Yeah.

[12:41] Joe Hudson: You know, I remember taking a poetry class and it was like the only B— they gave me a B+ and I like totally fought it. I was like, like, no way. I did all the work. The other people didn't. And you just don't like my poetry like that. That doesn't work.

And like, I like brought it like— as a matter of fact, I remember the story was I needed money to like 'cause my dad's alcoholism had like destroyed the family wealth, whatever wealth we had. And then, and so I had to pay my last year of college and I didn't have any money and it was kind of last minute notification. And I went to the Dean of Students and I said, hey, I've got a 4.0, can I get a scholarship? Because you're too late. And so I sat with a cardboard sign in front of, in front of the president of the university that said, we'll get a 4.0 for an education. And like 30 minutes later, I had the scholarship that I needed to get through, you know.

And so, so at the end of the, like, as I'm giving my valedictorian speech, the Dean of Students introduces me and he reads from my essay. Like, this is, so I'm like nervous getting up in front of these folks. And he's like, let me read from Joe's essay, the entrance essay. And it said, the paradox of a rebel is that they either get stomped out by authority or they become an authority and start to stomp people out. And I'd say valedictorian is an authority. Joe, take it.

Like, he just kind of like— I was in that duel all the way until I think the end of my first job, my first real job, not like I did some fishing boat stuff. And but like when I did stock lending, I was still kind of rebelling against the man. And I think at some point what happened, the first crack of that was the pain. You know, like, there was just like a constant pain from the narcissism of that, right? Like, the pain of turning all of my emotions from sadness and fear and wanting to leave, whatever that was, all those emotions, and just turning them straight into fight. Like, there's a huge amount of pain, muscle constriction, you know, self-violence, negative self-talk that's required to do that.

And that pain just started building. And so I started looking for ways out of the pain. And, and partially I was a little bit lucky in the fact that because I was a rebel, I wasn't going to be like, you know, how do I do that? I was going to be like, that's the establishment. I'll look for non-establishment. And, and that's where I started to like go into all the religions of the world and, and all into the alternative psychologies and started doing all those experiments.

And it started very academically, like reading parables and doing religious studies. And then it turned into, you know, a meditation retreat that I did, which gave me the felt sense of, you know, gave me a moment of oneness, like 8 seconds of oneness that, that I just became addicted to. I was like, whatever the fuck that is, I'm, I'm going after that.

[15:51] Paul: And when was that? Was that after Graduating?

[15:55] Joe Hudson: Yeah, that happened. Like, so my wife, when I met Tara, she's like, if we're going to get married, I asked her to marry me and she had some conditions. And one of them was a 10-day meditation retreat. One of them was traveling, backpacking through Southeast Asia for 4 or 6 months. And, and so during that 10-day silent meditation retreat, which was the first time I meditated, I had that moment day— it was like a Vipassana and it was day 4, beginning of day 4. And it just like everything evaporated and I got a taste of who I am and I was just like, whatever that is, I'm addicted, which is its own crazy, like, not, not most productive way to go about doing it.

Very long, hard slog, but it was what it was. And that's, that's how it started really in earnest.

[16:50] Paul: Yeah, it sounds like you had a lot of this pain and challenge from childhood that you sort of drove into achievement. And it was— but you also still had like this creative sense of like holding a sign in front of the president. Looking for a scholarship. Yeah. Did you have trouble like untangling like what is the side I need to keep of this versus what is really driving this in a productive way?

[17:25] Joe Hudson: I feel like it— that I don't think I— I don't think I let go of any of it. Meaning like the creativity is there, the drive is still there. I think it's just integrated. That the way I would, I would say it is that that stuff is integrated into, you know, an undefended open heart. It's not, it's, you know, it's, it's integrated into a mind that doesn't fight with itself. But, you know, the ambition, for lack of a better word, is still is still there, it doesn't have a reason anymore.

Meaning like, like, like for a while when I was building the business or something, I had a reason of I'm doing this to help people. And then I had a reason I'm doing this to change society. And then like, I want to scale it. And now I'm just like, yeah, I just enjoy the hell out of what I do. I'm just doing what I enjoy. So there's, there's, there's not a need for a reason to justify myself for anything like that.

I'm not looking to please anybody, but Humans like doing shit. I like doing shit, you know, and, and I, and humans don't like being told what to do. And, you know, that's not entirely true. Humans sometimes very much like direction, very much like to, you know, but nobody wants to be forced or bullied into something like nobody likes that. And, and so it's just, you know, I just, it's just an integration of it. It's not like this part of me is bad and I have to go when I had that.

This part of me is bad and that has to go, that was like years of fighting. That was, that was fucking brutal. That's just another extension, right? That's, that's a part of me being my dad telling another part of me being my little kid that it's fucked up. So, so I like— it was the cessation of that fight. It was the cessation of trying to improve myself, and it was turning more towards You know, just who am I?

What am I? What's my authentic expression? And that's where the real, real healing began. Yeah.

[19:41] Paul: Yeah. I have a similar experience. I sort of— I confused myself for a while because I paired ambition with bad outcomes because I saw the people around me in the corporate world and they didn't inspire me. And I was starting to become a shittier version of myself. And so I quit and sort of tried to stop working and stop making money because, like, ambition bad.

[20:05] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[20:06] Paul: And it took me a few years to actually trust myself to, like, lean into actually doing things and just notice, oh, well, I actually like what I'm doing. Like, I'm okay. Yeah. And I sort of like reaccepted the word ambition about 2 years ago. It took me 5 years. Yeah, because I was sort of in this war against myself and I sort of think this is a necessary stage of when you leave a certain path, you sort of go again.

You like go against it almost in a way to protect yourself of not going back. But at some point you need to integrate that and move on. And now it's like, oh, I do want to be special. I do want to be loved. I do need to be praised, but I don't need to be praised by assholes in suits. It's like, it's actually pretty cool to be recognized by other writers who, like, love creative work, right?

And so trying to integrate that in healthy ways has been a big part of my journey. And actually something you wrote around this I think really ties in with this. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Don't waste effort on trying.

[21:33] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[21:34] Paul: And all the challenges I've had are when I'm like trying to be someone else.

[21:41] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[21:41] Paul: And it's so much easier to be ambitious when I'm not trying, which I think is confusing when people hear that, but I'd love to hear how you've thought about that.

[21:53] Joe Hudson: Yeah, I— so to speak on a couple of the things and then to answer your question, the— I do think that it's a very natural stage to like rebel against the thing and then like push back. For me, that wasn't ambition, but it was money. My ambition just transitioned to like, I am going to have this awakening experience, which was its own folly. But, but it, you know, like, but for me it was money. Money's bad. Money's good.

Like that whole transition back and forth into integration. So I, I really see that. The, the other thing that you said there was like this need for approval. My experience is that just on that part, I think this is important for my journey and which was there was the fuck your approval, though I was like getting straight A's to get my dad's approval, but fuck your approval, like that whole thing. At some point it became, how do I allow that approval in and let and feel it all the way? And as I did that, as I fully allowed appreciation and compliments in all the way, then the need for them died off.

but the enjoyment for them, like, just, I'm like, I love, I love, I love like compliments and, and gratitude and it feels so good to give and receive it. Um, but the need for it seems to have vanished. Uh, I, which relates to the question of trying. Um, like trying means that there's a goal in mind that you that you need to get to. Like, you can't try without that, like, oh, there's something that I have an idea of what's right and I need to try to occur to do that. Trying also, I heard this recently that like, linguistically, semantically, it comes from a word that means basically to not accomplish.

And so if you think about trying and you put your hands together and you try to move your fingers apart, like, and you move them apart, then you haven't tried. That, that's doing. Trying is like attempting to, but not doing it. Like moving your fingers apart. That's the sensation of trying. And that's just a, that's another version of a war with yourself as compared to, oh, I'm here doing this activity and let's see where it takes me.

[24:29] Paul: Right?

[24:30] Joe Hudson: So instead of trying to get the compliment, it's like, oh, I'm going to enjoy whatever is happening right now instead of like trying to get to the end, like whether it's computer programming or in meditation, especially in meditation, like trying to get somewhere is, is, is self-made. It's hell. It sucks. Enjoying being there. That's like, that's lovely. I like, I could meditate like that for a lifetime.

So, so to me, it's— that's, that's the main thing about the trying. And at the same time, what the mind then wants to do with it immediately is like, okay, now I'm going to try not to try. I'm going to tell myself I shouldn't try. I'm going to manage myself into not trying, which is all the more of the same crap. And so the only really thing you can do is just not fight with yourself. And so that's what I mean.

And it just takes, as far as like a business goes or as far as ambition goes, it just takes a shit ton of energy. Like to try requires a lot of energy. Just even just try to pull your hands apart, but you know, you're not pulling them apart. You're just trying. That takes a shit ton of energy. That's not efficient.

[25:45] Paul: Yeah. And not going to war with yourself, I think. I'm sort of lucky in that I don't have this. Like, I've sort of like always been fine with myself. I think I had abundant love. Like, I was almost like, you are very loved from a childhood.

And I feel incredibly blessed. And people are always asking me, how do you do that? And like, my wife is asking me, how do you do that? I'm not— I don't know. Which is why I find a lot of what you talk about in your podcast fascinating, because you have a different experience. And yeah, I know you've worked with a lot of people on this.

So for people that don't think they're good enough, like, yeah, what is this? What is the starting point for becoming more comfortable with that and not sitting there and thinking, I know I should stop saying that, I'm not good enough for all these things because I do hear a lot of people in that and I'm sort of dumbfounded because I don't know what to tell them.

[26:52] Joe Hudson: Yeah, it's a, it's a tough one.

[26:56] Paul: Take, take Joe's courses.

[26:58] Joe Hudson: Yeah, there's lots of, there's lots of methods. My courses are definitely part of that, but there's lots and lots of methods. I would say there's two things. The first one is there's an assumption that there's an end that is, I would say, not true. There's always a way that we can love ourselves better. There's always a way that we can love each other better.

Like, there's no end to our evolution, you know, like we just keep on evolving. And as far as I can tell, like, my capacity to love hasn't found a limit, myself or others. So Or the other way to say it, there, there's like the, there, there isn't like an, like an everlasting, all-encompassing peace where there is no war with yourself because life without tension is death. Like a cell without tension dies. So there's always a certain amount of tension required just to be alive. And so it's like, how do you hold that tension more and more gently becomes the question.

There's definitely these big moments where, like, what people would call awakenings and stuff or enlightenment, and it changes a whole shit ton of stuff, but it doesn't mean that the path is ever finished. So that's the first piece to it. And that's an important piece to grok because it allows you to be more gentle with yourself. Typically for people who are in war with themselves, you're looking for In the mind, you're looking to deconstruct your thought process so that you can find the gentleness. Your thought process, like, the thought process is abusive. It's bullshit.

It's not productive, but you can't see it. So the job is to, like, constantly deconstruct that thought process so that you can see it. And that doesn't mean someone telling you, oh, that doesn't make sense, because If someone says that to you, then you go, yeah, see, I'm a fuckup. Like, see, I didn't even see that. So you have to do that work yourself. You have to deconstruct like, oh, I'm an asshole.

I just call myself an asshole. Is that true? Or, oh, I just call myself an asshole. Like, yeah, who isn't? Everybody's kind of an asshole sometimes, right? Like, so, so what, what, like, why am I so hard on myself for being an asshole when like My wife was just an asshole and I'm trying to please her.

Like, how did that happen? So like that deconstruction on the intellectual level is, is the key. The other intellectual thing that's really important is that there's a conversation going on, but we usually only pay attention to one side of it. So typically the voice in the head, the negative voice in the head that repeats itself. And I think that, I think that research is like, I think 60,000 times a day we have thoughts. So And most of them are repetitive and negative for many people.

And some people don't notice them. And so, but that there's usually it's like it's talking and we're responding, but we're not noticing the response. You should do this. You should do what? Did you take this? Did you pay attention?

Stop smoking. Why aren't you working out more? Whatever that thing is doing. And our response is often like, okay. Like it's an endurance. It's like we're the little kid being yelled at, not saying anything back.

So a really cool trick intellectually is to respond. And I would say, don't take my response for it, but like literally experiment. Okay, today, every time it speaks to me, I'm going to sing Frozen to it. You know, or today, every time It says something, I'm going to yell at it today. Every time it says something, I'm going to say, I see that you're scared and it's okay. I'm with you.

Like, I'm going to just run experiments in response to the voice in my head. Because usually we're just— because you can't really control that. You can't like say, okay, stop thinking, and it stops. And if you're patterned and conditioned to think in a certain way, you can't particularly stop the automatic thought that arises. So, but what you do have choice in is how you respond to it. So intellectually, that's, that's one way to start letting go of the war.

And emotionally, which is, I find in our society, typically the most productive and quickest way is to have emotional fluidity. It's to fall in love with and learn to express all of your emotions in a safe way. In a way that doesn't hurt anybody, in a way that's not trying to manipulate anybody, and learning how to love them, to feel them, and to express them is really, really, really quick, really, really efficient. If somebody is depressed, not high-level depression, but dysthymia, low-level depression, and they get angry every day, not at anybody, but they move and express their anger every day, the first couple days, their anger is going to be more and more and more like upfront. But eventually, and not very long, couple months, that depression usually is gone.

Not for everybody, but like that emotional fluidity is this thing that's most missing in most people in our society, at least in Western American society, also Europe. Yeah, so that's the emotion, the nervous system level. What's happening in the nervous system is like, oh, it's constantly prepared for an attack. It's constantly tracking to see what it can do wrong or right to not get attacked. When the attack is about to come, it clenches. So learning how to receive pleasure and enjoyment is great for the nervous system.

So if you want to stop being at war with yourself, those are— that's the intellectual, the emotional, and the nervous system way to do it. Most schools will teach you one, and there's lots of versions. I'm giving you the stuff that I find really effective. There's a lot of other ways to do it. Meditation is great, and I highly recommend it as well. And an integrated approach is very efficient.

If you're really interested in it, doing all three instead of just working on one is very efficient.

[33:18] Paul: The anger part. And you've talked about this extensively. I recommend people check out the series on this on your podcast, but moving anger and just— I've been talking a lot with my wife about this and realizing how rarely we have space in our culture to express anger, especially like East Asian culture. With kids, especially the way she grew up, was like, don't do any emotions in public. Yeah.

[33:54] Joe Hudson: And so therefore a shit ton of guilt, shame, disappointment, and passive aggression. That's, that's the result of not getting the anger moving.

[34:02] Paul: Yeah.

[34:03] Joe Hudson: And definitely not the only society that has that issue. Yeah. Yeah.

[34:06] Paul: In the US we have— I mean, for men, it's— you're not really supposed to be angry or share strong emotions or I had no idea how to experience those in a safe way.

[34:19] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[34:20] Paul: Without just like the conflict. I could do conflict. We had some, we had some like healthy, playful conflict with the anger, but I never knew how to do anger on my own. And so I loved this story and maybe you can tell it. I think you were making pancakes with your daughter and you had to move some anger. Um, I thought this example was so good about like, oh, I've never thought about doing anger like this.

[34:48] Joe Hudson: That's right. Yeah. It's interesting, right? So that's, so just to, I will tell that story and just to see what happens is when an emotion gets attached to shame, like, oh, it's shameful to be angry. One thing that happens is it, it, it, it blocks the emotional movement. But the other thing that happens is we start thinking of it in a binary term, like for whatever reason, most human beings think if I'm going to get angry, it means at somebody, it means damage, it means pain for somebody else.

They don't think like, oh, I can just fucking go get angry and not hurt anybody, right? Like, just that, just that, that very simple logic is very hard to see because of the shame involved. And so I just want to point out that shame is part of the is part of the system. Yeah. So the story is, and this has happened a lot of times in my house, especially because I grew up with everything as a fight. But, you know, typical dad in the morning, my girls were like 8 and 5 or something.

And I'm, and I'm cooking pancakes. And, and it's like that moment when the eggs are done and the pancakes need to be flipped and the coffee's like, whatever, like the whole thing's happening at the same time. And And like, my daughter was like, like a homing pigeon. This is the moment to ask my dad the question. And, and so she said something, asked me something I can't remember that was, was just like overwhelmed me. And, and I just jumped up and down.

Oh, I'm so angry. I'm so angry. I'm so angry. I'm so angry. Breathe for a second. She looked at me and she's like, that was some good anger, Dad.

And then we laughed. I flipped the pancakes, whatever, you know. So that, that's like in, in my world and in my family and, but also in like the general community that, that has become the AOA community, that's like a, just a very standard operating procedure, both for us and for kids. And, and I'll say Hand in Hand Parenting, a book called Listen. If you have kids, especially young ones, unbelievable resource in this department. Just Patty Whiffler has done such a great job.

Her book is Listen, and it's just amazing.

[37:11] Paul: Yeah, it's called Hand in Hand Parenting.

[37:14] Joe Hudson: And in Hand Parenting is the, is the, is the organization. The book is called Listen, and the founder is named Patty Whiffler. She's a dear, dear friend.

[37:24] Paul: I will definitely be checking those out. I think it's been fascinating to— I mean, I have a 9-month-old and I am fully convinced that having a child is the greatest personal development thing you'll ever sign up for.

[37:42] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[37:43] Paul: And I think it's great because me and my wife, like, we love learning about ourselves and challenging ourselves and talking about it. And it has been delightful. And it's been great to hear about how you think about parenting. And I don't want to ask you, like, what is your advice for parents? I was thinking an interesting way to ask this might be like, what are the things you sort of rejected that a lot of people do, or like the things you decided not to do with your kids?

[38:16] Joe Hudson: Yeah, I mean, to be clear and to give credit where credit is due, I, you know, I was starting to repeat the patterns of my parents. My wife was, was like, yeah, we're not doing it that way. And so I resisted a little bit at the beginning. And I think here's something that I did that most people don't do, which was like at some point my first was like 2 years old. I was like, I resist. She has to fight.

I finally give in. She's right. Let's just stop this whole cycle. So I was like, babe, whatever you decide to do with parenting, I'm going to say yes to you for 3 months. If at the end of 3 months— and I'm going to be fully committed to it— and at the end of 3 months, if it doesn't feel right to me, then we'll have the conversation. So that was something where I really allowed her to be in charge of of the kids.

She was just better at it, especially at the young age. It's different as they're teenagers. We've, we've switched roles a little bit there. And then so that's one thing I'd say. Once that transition happened, things that I don't do that most folks do— I love their emotions, have loved their emotions, like happily sit and feel whatever temper tantrum they want to have. I don't let them destroy shit, but like, or hurt each other or did.

We don't use punishment. We don't use shame. At least we try our hardest not to try. But I would say it rarely happens and we catch ourselves quickly if it has happened. When it happens, we do not— we're very aware that our number one job is to have them listen to themselves. Not to have them listen to us.

And so there's a perpetual movement to not manage them, but to help them identify what's happening inside them. So we— the general idea is that what's inside them is inherently good if they can listen to it. And if we don't separate them from it, and that if things are not going well, then the, the problem is they're out of connection. The problem isn't them. The problem is that they're out of connection. Our job is to help them learn how to get back into connection with themselves.

And so, and it works. It works great. If you meet my girls, it's just— one's 18 now. They've done crazy, wonderful stuff. My just like, I don't know, 2 and a half years from now, I think it was like 8 months ago, my daughter was crying and I was like, starting to come in and, you know, talk to her about it. She looks at me, she's like, Dad, just let me have my feelings.

I'm like, sorry, babe. Like, like, so just— and, you know, they're just complete transparency, both well-accomplished for their ages and, and, and loving and open-hearted and non-defensive.

[41:22] Paul: And yeah, one thing you've said, which I thought was a pretty powerful way of putting it, is that Teenagers don't rebel against boundaries. They rebel against the removal of love. And it is pretty powerful combined with the fact that I think you're pointing out that a lot of parents get mad at their children for doing things they weren't allowed to do as children. Yeah.

[41:52] Joe Hudson: So, right. So I would say, for instance, if you were told anger wasn't okay, and you're ashamed and angry when the kid gets angry, you're going to stop that behavior. If you're in an airplane and a kid is crying, you can just like look up. Everybody who's annoyed, they weren't allowed to cry as kids. Like, that's just like— that's just like— it's just like so— like, it's a— it's a great algorithm. So, so— and every time you tell a kid not to cry, you're basically saying you're fucked up, you're wrong for crying.

You're wrong for having a temper tantrum. You're wrong for wanting to get your needs met. You're wrong for, you know, having a big personality. You're wrong for being too excited. You're wrong for— and a kid between 0 and 7 years old, they don't have an intellect online like an adult. So they're not, they're not saying there's no rationality there.

There's just like, this is who I am. This is the emotional expression. And the parent is saying, no, don't be that. Don't be you. And that's really what causes a tremendous amount of rebellion later in life. And it also, it's the same thing that happens when teenagers are teenagers.

You know, it's like, let me manage you. Let me tell you that, like, yeah, I cannot tell you, I have how many parents, breaks my heart every time, is like, yeah, my kid's kind of an asshole. I'm like, wow, man, that happens a lot. Like parents who were like really pretty damn good parents and then their kids become teenagers, the teenagers rebel and, and they're like, ah, and my teenagers, like when they rebel, I'm like, that's a good rebellion. That's like, this is great. Like your job, push off the edge of the pool.

And, and it's like, and there's like a really clear rule in our house. Like, it's like, if you are contributing to the house, if you're being a good person, if you're, if you're treating people with love and respect, and you're taking care, you're taking responsibility for yourself, you get freedom. There's nothing to rebel against. If you don't do those things, you don't get freedom. And it's just never been a thing. Like, the freedom that our kids want, they're always ready for it in that moment.

And so I've literally— I'm scared to do this in case my kids ever hear this. I've literally given them stuff to rebel against that, like, that's like manufactured. I'll literally say things like, because they need to rebel, and I'll say things like, oh my gosh, high-waisted jeans. I can't believe anybody would wear high-waisted jeans. And then they'll be like, oh, but yeah, so like there's some rebellion that's necessary. They need to individuate and But if they feel loved, that love and connection is so much more important than anything else to a kid.

And every adult that I know, they might hate their parents, but they still want somewhere that love and connection from their parents. And so, like, take that away from them and yeah, of course they're going to say, fuck you. Why would they not? You're not doing your fucking job as a parent. Fuck you. I can't trust you.

Yeah, I get it. It just makes every, every bit of sense from their perspective.

[45:12] Paul: Yeah. And from— I know you deal with a lot of people that are still dealing with issues with their parents, parents still trying to control them and things. And how do you open that kind of conversation? This sort of— I guess you can just say, I want, I want connection. And I'm, I'm not getting it.

[45:35] Joe Hudson: Oh, with the parents?

[45:36] Paul: Yeah.

[45:37] Joe Hudson: Oh, yeah, that's different. I'm different. That's different on different stages. Sometimes the first step has to be the boundary. Like, if a parent's abusive, the first step has got to be the boundary. Not so much for them, but for you, for you to realize that you can say no.

You can't— it's really, really hard to love something that dominates you. And that's why it's really hard for people to love the voice in their head, is because they haven't figured out that there's a way to not be dominated by the voice in the head. And so, like, it's really hard to do that. So sometimes boundary is the first thing that's required to get there. Grief sometimes is the first thing. But eventually, yeah, it's being able to be undefended and open-hearted no matter where your parents are at.

That's, that's where your freedom lies. But you can't just jump there. There's work to be done between the two.

[46:32] Paul: And with your kids, it sounds like you did a really good job, you and Tara, around building an intentional community around your family and your kids. How did you find those people? How did you think about that? Because I can, I can only imagine letting your child have a tantrum You're going to get criticized by other people.

[46:55] Joe Hudson: There's a great story. I was in a Whole Foods with one of my daughters and she was not having a good day. So she's full temper tantrum in the Whole Foods and I'm like containing her, you know, I can't let you hurt yourself. I'm right here, you know. Yeah, you can't have the cookies or whatever she wanted that was creating the temper tantrum. And there's like, I live in a somewhat hippie kind of area or new age kind of area.

And this like little old lady, purple hair, everything like comes up and she goes, are you okay? Like as if I'm hurting, you know, my daughter and my daughter. And she's like 3 at this point. Maybe she just like looks at her. She goes, I'm just having my emotions and just like goes, tears back into it. So there were some moments that were awkward like that, like where there was like the full temper tantrum.

In front of people. I was committed. Once I saw how well it worked, I was committed. I didn't— well, like, what other people think was not important. And community, yeah, we had an interesting ride with community. We had some friends who were raising their kids in a similar way.

And so, but we didn't all live together. We just had each other's backs. And Tara and I are in a couples gathering that, like, we have been meeting with that set of couples since pretty much Esme was— our oldest was born. So 18 years. And we meet 3 to 4 times a year and we discuss what it is to be parents and share vulnerably the crap that's going on in our lives and the good stuff that's going on. And that's been critical.

So good. Marriages go through a lot. And so That's been really nice. And then we did move to a town where that was very strong. I was lucky enough that when I, when we had, as I could live anywhere I wanted to live, probably a lot like you. And, and so I went around and I just looked for teenagers that were, that were well-adjusted.

And we went all over the United States looking and we found where we live now. And we found out that a lot of that had to do with a kind of a schooling thing called Waldorf, which I thought was horrific, but I couldn't argue with the results. I was like, this is lunacy. And again, I was like, I mean, the results are what the results are. So our kids did the first 5 years or so in Waldorf, which I think was great. And so we had that community as well.

But we, we did try a couple of times to like live in a like go into a place where we were living inside of community with other people who were like-minded. And that never, that never particularly panned out. I studied it a lot. I looked at like what would be healthy and just never, never panned out for us.

[49:50] Paul: Yeah, the starting to think about these things. I love the lens of where are the well-adjusted teenagers? Oh yeah. We're talking to people around like schools. Should we move abroad? Should we do something in the US?

And we're sort of like struggling to find the places like where we fit and sort of want to adopt some of these similar parenting strategies. And yeah, it's, it's a hard thing. I don't really have any great wisdom, but I love the, the frame of thinking about where the well-adjusted teenagers are, especially. I mean, I look at these charts of the US and the depression in young women. And I have a 9-month-old daughter and I'm like, okay, that is the goal to avoid. Like, I don't want to head in that direction.

[50:47] Joe Hudson: Avoiding is, is a hard way to make good decisions. I find like the difference of like, how do I avoid the depression is so much different than how do I go where there's like well-adjusted Just, I just, that's something I noticed in decision-making generally is like avoidance doesn't create the same decision, as good of decisions as like a vision and what you want to create.

[51:16] Paul: I like to invert it. So I say, how could I guarantee that my daughter will be depressed?

[51:22] Joe Hudson: That's a cool way to do it.

[51:23] Paul: Yeah. And then I say, okay, what are those things I might be leaning into now and how do I adjust for those. That's sort of how I think about my path is like, how could I guarantee that I become a miserable, cynical older man? And then if I'm like doing any of the behaviors that are leading to that, it's like, okay, that, that's probably where I should focus. That's going into— that's one way I like to think about it.

[51:54] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[51:55] Paul: You talked a bit at the beginning about translating. How do you translate this stuff to like investor, super rationalist type person? They're still reaching out to you, so there's some self-selection. But how do you think about your choice?

[52:11] Joe Hudson: No, no, no, no, no. There's definitely places I go where there's no self-select. Like if I'm working in an AI company with the executive team, the CEO brought me in, but the rest of the team is like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[52:25] Paul: I don't know if you read David Whyte, but he writes about like working— he writes about working in these organizations, and I imagine it's a similar thing.

[52:37] Joe Hudson: I haven't read his writing on that. I've read his poetry, which I love. You know, a good example is I walked into a company, you know, multibillion-dollar market cap, sitting with the C-suite. The CEO introduces me, speaks for about 7 minutes, and then stops and hands it over to me. And I look around and I say, okay, I noticed nobody was listening to the CEO. I want to go around the table and see what makes each of you not listen to the CEO.

And then I got around the table, looked at the CEO. I said, what made it okay for you to speak for 7 minutes and not be listened to? So people can think that it's all woo-woo, but Like, not after that, they can't, you know what I mean? So, so, so there's a, there's a way in which the, what I do and everything is so practical. It's so like tactical that it's really hard to like when someone does that, sees that and sees what happens from that, then they, they give me a lot of, they give me a wide berth. But there's definitely, you have to be fearless in calling out the dysfunction.

You, and, and you have to have a lot of facts about how neurology works and psychology and, and be able to translate that into practices that have been around for 2,000 years that are effective. As if, and I would say this in a course too, which as if, if a practice has lasted 2,000 years, pretty confident it's effective. Like, like that's, that's better proof than neurology, honestly. But so anyway, so that's, that's the, that's the way to do it. And, and I don't question it myself, right? Like there's, I'm not in a fight to be seen as rational or to be rejected by rationalists.

I like that none of that's in me. So if there's nothing for me to defend, I don't defend anything. So there's nothing for them to fight. It's like, taking a sword and hacking at water. You're just like, you keep on doing it. The ocean's not going to change, you know.

So, so that's also a big part of it is to energetically not, you know, not try to convince or be defended about their skepticism, to actually invite it and enjoy it. I find that the skepticism that gets brought is the best and quickest way to get to their truth, their truth, not mine, their truth. It's like they're telling you exactly, here's the thing that I am wrestling with. Why would, why would I not want people to be skeptical?

[55:15] Paul: Yeah, I love that story. What, what were, what was like the response? The CEO, do you remember?

[55:23] Joe Hudson: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember it was conflict avoidance. He didn't say it, but that's what came out. What came out was that this CEO's conflict avoidance So typically in a company, if a CEO is conflict avoidant, it's viewed by the people around that CEO like he is not trustworthy, maybe a charlatan, maybe like drank the Kool-Aid, maybe a liar. But it's because a CEO who's conflict avoidant is smart enough to know what people want to hear. Inaccurate in that, and at the same time is avoiding their truth. And so if like, if you're telling people what they want to hear and you're avoiding your truth, people can't trust you.

So people just stop listening. And, and, and when we got to that, when we got to like, oh, here's how we can have health. Here's, here's how this company can have healthy conflict and everybody can look forward to it because it can be productive. Whole company changed. It was amazing.

[56:27] Paul: That's incredible. What, what's the role of money in people's— it seems like money is one of the most interesting vessels for thinking about sort of personal transformation and values and principles. One exercise I've done myself and with other people is like, Why do you earn money? 10 reasons. People can do like 2. And then once they get to like reason 3, they're like, I've never thought about this.

[57:03] Joe Hudson: Oh, I've never done anything that— that's a great one. I've never done such a good one. Yeah, I— wow. I'm just— let me contemplate that for a second and what that would do inside of a consciousness. Oh, I love that. That's a great exercise.

What, I'm sorry, what was your question again? Your question was what, what?

[57:22] Paul: Well, what one thing I, I've heard from you before, I love this idea of the happy money game and sort of, it's your way of coming up with some sort of conditions that actually fits with somebody's relationship with money, whether they use money to buy things or use money to avoid things, or money doesn't mean anything to them. Yeah, playing with that and charging different amounts. I, I did a lot of experiments early on my path with the gift economy, and a lot of that was my own labeling money bad. So therefore gift, gift good.

[58:05] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[58:05] Paul: And basically all that enabled me to do is deal with the fact that I had all these weird feelings about money. Because as soon as somebody paid me a really low amount for something I thought was worth more, I was just like, this is ridiculous. And I'm like, oh, I'm not that generous of a person. I have all this money stuff I have to figure out. So yeah, maybe just the question is, how do you play with money with your clients and people around figuring out what it's what it's all about and what it's, what's behind it?

[58:42] Joe Hudson: Yeah, there's, yeah, so many ways. So typically what I notice is money is one of the main, the way people view money is one of the main ways in which they project their childhood onto the world. So they do this to authority figures. They do this in marriages. They do this with, in politics. They do this in with money.

And so typically people view money in, in the same way that they had a relationship. So for me, an example would be always trying to get my dad's love put me in a position of always trying to get money and, and never being able to get my dad's love made it so that I just couldn't really get the money even though I was totally capable of getting the money. As it turns out, I like— because my psychology was that way, every time it just like evaporated. And because my dad was bad, money was bad. And so I had like that whole relationship. So I do this exercise sometimes with people where it's where you like find these projections and show how it relates with your money and or your marriage or whatnot.

And so typically because it's so powerful that way, it's there's a lot of freedom because you— because that's where the projection lays and that's where— and you have to deal with it. No matter who you are, you have to deal with the money. Like, it's like this really potent way to, to really get into the deep psychology of a person. So that's part of how I do it. The other thing that's really interesting about money and just generally is that so if you think, if you, if you're familiar with the banking system, you would know that the banking system is like a it's like the best scheme ever. There's never enough money because the interest can never be paid off with the amount of money that there is.

Like, that's like, that's the game. And so there's always a shortage of money. And, and it's like, and then you can easily say, oh, the bankers have like the, like, devil bankers. And they understand that they can blah, blah, blah. But as soon as that cryptocurrency thing happened and someone tried to create a coin where there wasn't that, lack is worthless. And so the reality is, is that it's— the bankers just found something that worked because we as humans feel like it's not worthy, it's not worth, it doesn't have value unless there's scarcity.

That's, that's like our psychology. And so we are a part of it the same way. And, and that also ends up being something that just in society in general is like love and friendship. Is really not worth anything because unless you feel like there's a scarcity of it, right? And so there's this thing is like when you move, there's something that happens as you move into a feeling of an abundance of love where there's just like endless and it just regenerates itself. What I notice is people make that transition, typically money, resources become the same way, which is really absolutely fascinating.

And so Sometimes if somebody has like a big chunk with money, you can just work on the love part. And at some point that love turns to the money instead of like— and when you actually love something, then there's a— the healing process happens really, really quickly.

[01:02:04] Paul: This basically happened to me. I did the first, the first 3 years after quitting my job, like money was tight. I was in the scarcity mindset of conserving. And then as soon as I sort of released the tiller and said like, you know what, screw it, I'm not going to do the work I don't want to do. I'm just going to go all in on the creative work. Yeah, things just started showing up and it wasn't even money at first.

It was people. And you also talk about this. I, I, I released, especially in the early days, and that's literally when my wife showed up. And the answers showed up and deciding to write my book, it just sort of emerged. And it's really hard to convey to people because people will be like, well, what's your plan? What's it like?

I don't, I don't know yet. Like, we'll see when the answers come, right?

[01:03:01] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[01:03:02] Paul: But it's sort of this deeper trust and it really is this renewable resource and I feel so lucky. But yeah, it's weird. It's— I can't explain that I don't worry about money and I also don't know if I'm going to make money next year.

[01:03:20] Joe Hudson: Yeah, right. Exactly. That's— yeah. I mean, it's— money is such an interesting point in the fact that, like, right now, everywhere you look, literally, if you just move your gaze around, you can find at least 20 companies that are making money at anything you fucking look at. It's like, yeah, just the wall. Just look at the wall.

There's the paint, there's the drywall, there's the transportation of the paint and the drywall, there's the paintbrush, there's the drywall screws, there's the— like, it's just— there's such an abundance of money. It's endless. And so many ways to make it. And, you know, like, that perspective comes as you, like, learn to love yourself more, learn to love others more, because then the love for money just happens and the projections start to go away.

[01:04:10] Paul: How do you convince people to spend more money that they're scared to let go of?

[01:04:17] Joe Hudson: I don't ever try to convince anybody to do anything. So my whole thing is I, I— here's a set of experiments and then what do you learn? What do you call to? Because Nobody is more qualified to— nobody is more qualified to know what their next step is than them. Like, and I have a deep trust, just like my daughters. I have a deep trust in their goodness and wisdom.

I have a deep trust in everybody I work with's goodness and wisdom. So, so I never try to convince anybody of anything. If I notice somebody is— if I notice that somebody is conserving money, like, oh, I'm— I like— they have a rigidity and a fear that that money is going to go away. And that's usually most typical in people who have inherited money. I mean, most of the people I'm working with in a direct one-on-one relationship have quite a bit of money. And usually those folks are like inherited people who've inherited money.

And, and it usually comes from a deep fear that they don't know how to make it, that they, that they're not actually powerful, empowered, virile, creative people. And typically it's second generation or third generation, and they've been told, you know, had an incredibly critical parent. And so they believed in it and never had the flaming feel to go out and do something that proves otherwise. So it's really a work of empowerment. Typically with people, like allowing them to feel empowered and having that emotional experience, which typically comes after allowing yourself to have some negative experiences, because the positive, the positive emotional experiences are typically harder for people to allow than the negative ones. And they usually come after.

[01:06:14] Paul: Yeah, this resonates with my story, I struggled to spend money. I was self-employed and theoretically going to try and make it on my own, but I was like not spending any money on what I was actually doing.

[01:06:28] Joe Hudson: Yeah.

[01:06:30] Paul: And yeah, eventually I just decided, okay, I have to spend X dollars amount on the things I actually care about. If I want to record a video or something, I'm going to actually just buy the camera. Or pay for the subscription and things like that. And yeah, it's, it's very hard. And one of the other things I did was just try to make money in different ways. And I think over time that helped with the positive side of it.

Like I tell people, making $1,000 on your own feels like you made $1 million. Like, it's a great— I remember the first $1,000 I made on my own. It was like, this is worth more than the previous 10 years of all my salaries. So it was so cool.

[01:07:17] Joe Hudson: Yeah. What's even interesting about that is, you know, one of the things that I deal with typically is, is people who have like a boss, like in the courses, there's somebody who has a boss and they feel like the boss has some sort of power over them and and when they have this moment of recognition that actually they are an, they are a business and they have a problem that they only have one source of revenue that is their boss, right? And that the boss isn't actually a boss. The boss is a client. Like the empowerment of that switch, which is a way to do what you did externally inside of a job, is amazing. And typically what happens, unless the, Boss is a crazy narcissist, but typically the boss becomes very— starts having a lot of trust for somebody who's not scared to speak to them like a client rather than like a— like an authority figure.

[01:08:18] Paul: And so it's such a good reframing. Yeah.

[01:08:22] Joe Hudson: Yeah. I've seen— I've seen it just totally transform that little switch. I've seen totally transform people's careers.

[01:08:29] Paul: I'd love to hear a little bit more around your courses. I think you have a bunch of different things and you have this VIEW framework of vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder.

[01:08:47] Joe Hudson: Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

[01:08:50] Paul: And you also have, I think, decision-making course. I'd love to just share a little bit more because I think people will be interested to go a little deeper around like, how did you create those? How did you, How do you think about transformation?

[01:09:05] Joe Hudson: Yeah. So, yeah, we have, we have like a little free 4-hour thing that you can do just like a microdose, if you will, of, of the course. And then we have the kind of the most, the most foundational one is Connection Course, which is where Vue and it's, and then we have the Decision Making Course and we have Masterclass. I think that the, the thing that all the courses have in common, I know what all the courses have in common are that there's the emotional, the intellectual, and the nervous system all being addressed in those courses. And we also made them incredible. Like, this is not a course where you study or learn or in that way.

It's all experimental. It's all like, so our completion rates are crazy. It's like 97%, I think, on average completion rate. So it's very compelling. It's entertaining because you're like, doing it, you're not thinking about it. You're, you're, you're in, in the mix with it.

It's like a dance class rather than a, like a dance lecture. And so, so that's another thing that's about the courses. The, the first one's a taster. The second one's in communication, which is the connection course. It's also like how to have difficult conversations and how to have conflict. Well, decision-making is all about the emotional process of decision-making.

And which is the entire process of decision-making, whether like neurologically speaking, it all happens in the emotional center of the brain. And so we're really just using logic to try to figure out what the emotional response will be. And so that, that is— and so about that, that one's really intense. That one's coming up. We only do that once a year and that's intense and and that happens in January. And then, then the masterclass happens once a year.

That's 8 weeks. And that is basically from my coaching of executives. That's like, this is the 7 things that they wrestle with typically, and we spend a week on each one of them. And, and, and the podcasts are all free. So, you know, you can go and listen to them and, and feel feel if it's right for you. Yeah.

[01:11:26] Paul: Beautiful. Well, it was a pleasure talking today. Any— anything else you want to leave us with, Joe?

[01:11:34] Joe Hudson: No, no. It feels like that's complete. Feels good.

[01:11:38] Paul: Awesome. Well, appreciate the conversation today. I hope you continue to do what you're doing. I think the ideas you're sharing and the way you're sharing them are incredibly powerful and made my relationships better. So I really appreciate that.

[01:11:57] Joe Hudson: That's awesome.