71. Jord Cuiper - The Leadership Coach Helping Men Overcome Fear & the 'Wrong Mountain' Syndrome

In this engaging episode of the Unhooked podcast, host Jeremy Lipkowitz and self-leadership coach Jord Cuiper explore personal growth, self-trust, and the courage to embrace change.

They examine the 'first mountain syndrome' as a metaphor for a life path lacking joy and fulfilment. The speakers highlight the role of environment on behaviours and goals and the need to align actions with core values. They discuss the significance of setting boundaries and tackling addictions as signals of dissatisfaction.

A focal point is the importance of recognizing when one's on the 'wrong mountain' and the bravery required to change paths despite significant investments in the current one.

 The discussion underscores embracing the unknown and giving one’s all to reach one's potential as integral to personal development and an authentic and satisfying life.

01:08 The Discomfort in Pursuit of Personal Growth
02:22 Exploring the Importance of Environment in Personal Growth
04:39 The Impact of Environment on Personal and Business Growth
09:02 The Fear of the Unknown and the Courage to Change
10:36 The Importance of Courageous Action in Personal Growth
20:36 The Impact of Protective Mechanisms on Personal Growth
34:33 The Challenge of Setting Boundaries and Speaking Your Truth
42:59 Exploring Masculinity: What Does It Mean to Be a Man?
46:07 The Importance of Embodiment in Self-Leadership
47:06 The Dangers of Spiritual Materialism
47:36 The Importance of Ethical Practice in Personal Growth
50:05 The Gap Between Knowing and Living Your Values
52:00 Redefining Success: Living by Your Highest Values
52:29 The Dangers of Pursuing the Wrong Goals
01:14:11 The Importance of Personal Growth in Achieving Success

Connect with Jord:
https://www.instagram.com/jordcuiper/
https://www.jordcuiper.com/

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ABOUT JEREMY LIPKOWTZ

JEREMY IS A MEDITATION TEACHER, LIFE COACH, AND DIGITAL HABITS EXPERT WHO WORKS WITH ENTREPRENEURS, EXECUTIVES, AND LEADERS.

Jeremy overcame addiction, shame, self-judgement, and depression in his early twenties with the help of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness not only helped him let go of destructive behaviors, it also allowed him to connect with deeper meaning and purpose in his life.

For the past 10 years Jeremy has been teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices at universities, recovery centers, and companies throughout Asia and the US. He holds a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Genetics and Genomics, and spent several years at Duke University working towards a PhD in Genetics & Systems Biology before he turned full-time to teaching mindfulness.

Jeremy is also an ICF certified Executive Coach. As a former scientist and academic, Jeremy has a great passion for bringing his EI based coaching skills into the corporate and professional world. He realizes how powerful & transformative these practices can be for skeptics and senior-level managers. He is known for his calm and grounded demeanor, his expertise in habits and high-performance, and his compassionate approach to transformation.

Transcript

Welcome to the unhooked podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Lipkowitz. And today I'm thrilled to bring you a special episode featuring Jord Cuiper, a distinguished self-leadership coach. With over a decade of experience in entrepreneurship and coaching.  George expertise extends globally serving clientele across 20 countries, including prominent figures from companies such as Facebook, Google, McKinsey, and Microsoft.  This barks round two of our conversation with Jord. A return engagement necessitated by the depth and resonance of our first discussion.  Together. 

We dive into some profound themes, including the fear surrounding the unknown. The courage required for navigating significant life transitions. Drawing from personal experiences, Jord illustrates the importance of self-trust and radical responsibility. Particularly amidst moments of uncertainty or change.  We also explore the intricacies of shedding outdated behavior patterns and protective mechanisms. As well as the nuances of vulnerability authenticity. And the inherent discomfort that comes in the pursuit of personal growth.  Without further ado, please enjoy this enriching exchange between myself and Jord Calper. 



All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Unhooked. I'm back here with George Kalper. George, welcome back to the show. 

Thank you for having me again. 

Yeah. And this is a special one because it's, first of all, it's, you are the first repeat guest I've ever had.

So I'm excited to kind of. Um, dive back in. And there's a good reason for that. You know,  your first podcast that we did together is one of the most  commented on in terms of just people finding it so powerful, some of the stuff that we went into. So ever since we did that first one, I've been excited to kind of get back in the studio with you and dive into some of that stuff.

Um, but this time is the Cape Town edition. Last time was Amsterdam. Uh, you've moved to Cape Town recently. So just tell me a little bit about that.  

Before I speak about that, it's like, it kind of makes me excited where the next one is going to be.  Can't be Cape Town. 

No, no, no. We'll, we'll go somewhere magical, like Antarctica or 

something.

Yeah. Um, yeah, good question, dude. Like it's, it's been six months here in Cape Town now.  And yeah, through my work, through everything I do, I know how important your environment is. Um, but for me, it just has felt like coming home and this environment has just. Yeah. I love me to become more of me. Um, and I feel it, the people that are close, that are close to me around me, they just see me growing more into me and, uh, yeah, so far it has been an incredible process.

Really enjoying the environment and during the people and during the normality, uh, after living in body for, for a long time and just being back to normal life, um, we're down to earth and yeah, just really enjoying it. 



Yeah, and it's something we might dive into on this podcast the the normality of you know Living in a place like Cape Town and the kind of abnormality of some places that can be a little hyper spiritual.

Yeah  But I also I mean I see it in your the stories you're posting on Instagram. I mean just the way that you're really Living and thriving and in large part due to the environment the people that you're around the nature that's around you  What has been the most surprising thing about Cape Town? 



Yeah, I just keep coming back to the story that I've told a lot of people that how it has felt for me. Like, I think on our last podcast, we spoke about my time in the Amazon.  And one thing that I was so amazed about in the Amazon, if I looked around me at the trees at the plants, at the animals, at the insects, everything was thriving because they were where they belong. 

And if you would take one of those trees out of the Amazon and you would place it in Greece or Italy,  it would have a hard time to survive. It will not thrive anymore. It will do its best to survive and  it will probably die because it's not in the right environment. And for me, it's just been the biggest surprise in terms of the way I feel, my healing, the healing of my body, which is a continuous process for me.

me. Um, from back pains to whatever. And my growth has just skyrocketed by taking myself out of an environment where no longer belong  at least  and placing in an environment where I do belong. And just the flow of things like you just said, like that, did you see that things are changing for me even in my content? 

My business is skyrocketing was I started doing less.  I'm attracting way more clients because I am more me because I'm in the right environment and that environment is just empowering me to become who I am and to bring out the best of whatever it is, my potential.  I 

love you kind of mentioned that you're no longer in an environment that kind of no longer fits you.

And it's, it's interesting because there's probably, you know, Bali served a purpose for you at that time in your life. Yeah. And it's like you just outgrew it. You evolved as we all continue to evolve. Yeah. Is that kind of how it feels? Like 

it very much. I've, I've, I've always considered Bali as a stepping stone, and, and it's also interesting now I really decided that I'm going to move here.

I've always felt this pool towards Escapee town since day one that I visited, like years and years and years ago. I feel a strange sense of home here. So it's a decision that I've moved here and I'm, I'm, my intention is to stay here for the rest of my life. Um, with Bali, which is now seven years ago that I decided to go there, not to move there because my intention was to spend four to six months there.

Well, those six months became six, seven years.  Um, but I always knew it was a stepping stone. So in all my decisions, there was, there was no full commitment and yeah, for a reason because I think it's a wonderful place. I have learned so much. I've learned so much. I've met so many incredible people from all over the world that have expanded my worldview, uh, the least to say, and, and just had such a great time.

Um, but yeah, it was truly time for me to move on and literally everything in my body was just rejecting my, my environment. 

Yeah. And this is something we looked at on the last episode, like tuning into what, what's going on in your body for signs that something might be wrong, something needs fixing.  So you really saw that your body 

was asking you.

I think it's just, for the listeners, it's just so important to include that visual response of the body. So what is the body doing? We can do that on a daily level because it's doing two things.  It's either contracting  or it's opening.  And if it's contracting, it doesn't necessarily mean directly that you're in the wrong environment or with the wrong people because you can also.

See something or misinterpreted something in the present moment for something that you experienced in the past, and that's the reason why you contract. So we need. It's not that it's a conclusion, and that's that's definite.  No, it's it's a sign to get curious about it and first to just become aware of like, Okay, I'm contracting. 

I'm opening and can teach you a lot, especially when you can can discern whether it's contracting because you actually are in an environment.  And an environment doesn't have to be a country, it can also be a restaurant, or Or the people you're around. The people you're around, or even like the gym that you're at, or whatever, the music that they play.

It's just like, how does your body respond to your environment, wherever you are? And I think it's one of the most beautiful and powerful practices to learn about yourself. To just get that whole mind game out of it, because there's so many layers that tell us something about our environment. But the real thing, the real intelligence is in the body. 

And for me, I started to experience more and more and more contraction and yeah, I started to inquire that, like, why is this happening? And  I just came to the conclusion that it's no longer for me. I've had an incredible time. I'm full of, of, of gratitude for, for these years, for the people I've met, for the way the local community, everything that they've, that they've given to me. 

So I don't have any bad words  or negative feelings towards it. It was just that chapter was over. Yeah, time to move on. And time to move on. And listen to that calling and have faith. Because I didn't know the answers. I knew I liked Cape Town because I had been here before on holiday.  Um,  but just have faith to trust that calling of like, Okay, I feel that pull. 

And just go.  

I think that's, you know, this is a whole topic we could get into as well. Just the.  I think there's the fear of the unknown, you know, like right now we're talking about you moving to a new place But this could be an analogy for someone giving up, you know A lifestyle like giving up a habit giving up porn addiction giving up whatever and there's this fear of the unknown And yes, I think it's hard for a lot of people to to kind of let their old self die so that a new self Can be born  What gave you that confidence that faith? 

I? Think what has given me the confidence is Having gone through that process quite a few times in my life. Um, and I don't even think confidence is the right word. Because every time it happens,  there is maybe 0. 1 confidence. Because I've done it  before, so I know I can do it again. But again, it's just like, it's leaving your entire life.

Leaving your entire support network.  Just all the logistics of life, just leaving it behind and moving to a new country. And this can also be the case, ending a relationship and starting a new chapter. It can be applied to so many things in our lives, but just moving to a new country where you don't know anyone,  where it's just going to be day one, it's going to be a blank sheet. 

And that's just it. And you just got to trust. And I often say in order to get to that trust, because trust. You, you gotta learn to trust yourself and I think that's the topic that we are going to address today if we speak about like that, that masculinity and then the development of it. I think it's one of the most important things that we can develop for ourselves,  but the things with trust and confidence is a lot of people wait until they have it, but you don't get it by just sitting and thinking and reading about all these specific activities that they are the result of something and they are the result of.

Courageous action. Mm. So the only thing that you ha need to have, and we all have it in us,  but we're not all tapped into it,  is to have the courage  to just take that leap, because that's the only way to figure out  that things always have a tendency  to work out 

in life. It sounds like almost kind of the, the faith you talked about, the trust is actually less important than, than actually tapping into. 

Doing something courageously and kind of like even if you don't have the confidence even if you don't have the faith Do it with 

zero confidence. Yeah. Yeah  You're never gonna be ready. You're gonna be ready like you're gonna experience the readiness  After you've started After you've made the leap because that's where the momentum comes and I was even speaking to one of my clients last week And he made that like one of those first big decisions in his life to break the cycle and he felt very excited And he was so afraid that he was now losing  that energy, that feeling. 

And I was like, that's where momentum comes in, dude.  It's not just one, making one decision and then feeling full of trust or full of confidence. No, make that decision, make another one and another one until you can rely on yourself. Until you just know, okay, I've got this. I can step into the unknown. And I can, I can A, regulate all those feelings that come up with me.

Uncertainty. I can ride that wave, but I can also rely on myself. I know whatever comes up, whether it's starting a new relationship, whether it's,  uh, engaging with new communities, whether it's moving to a different country, whether it's changing your job, your industry, your career, whatever it is. I know that when I take myself out of my comfort zone and step into a new environment,  I can rely on myself.

I can overcome the challenges that, that, that, that are in front of me on my path.  Um, and I think that is the piece. The more you do that, the more you learn to trust yourself. And the more you learn to trust yourself, the easier it becomes to step into the unknown.  How do you 

know,  because it sounds like when you're doing this thing, and we can talk about, you know, as you say, anyone can be.

Um, breaking free from a relationship, changing a habit, letting go of a career, um, making some big change. It sounds like there's some part of you, even if there's not necessarily the confidence that it's going to work out, like you kind of have to take that leap, there's some part of you that knows that it's the right decision. 

What is that? Like, what is it that you tune into to Hmm.  

Super good question.  The more you do these things, the more you tap into what's right and wrong. So you, you actually, it's a learning by doing. So, um, well, you're, you're on, you're very much on the side of mindfulness, of course, and being one with self. 

And I think that is one of the core elements that required, that is required to, to be able to listen to your intuition. To have that voice within you that tells you. Or that's. to be noticed that visceral response,  which is like, Hey, I'm in the wrong environment.  And  I often say to people, go where you're celebrated, go where you're loved, go where you feel most alive, go bloody, blah, all these positive things. 

And then people look at me and they say, I don't know where that is.  And then I say to them, then the first thing is leave the place where you're not love leave where you're not respected. Leave where you don't feel alive  Because sometimes that is the first decision is to leave that  And then to make a decision and that is issue.

You don't know if it's right or wrong  But the win you're always winning Because even if it's the wrong decision you get feedback And because of that feedback you can make a better decision and that's what for me what life what personal development what leadership is about  Is making the best possible decision And you become a better decision maker by making decisions. 

I like this that you don't necessarily have to know where the destination is. You don't have to know what the next thing is. It's just that once you're clear that where you are now is not kind of your ideal life, that where you are now is not the right thing, that's the right moment, then you just say That's the 

courage.

Like that's, that's where it starts. Like it's a luxury once you are out on the journey and you have made a couple of those big leaps. It's just like, The people that have gone through big things in life and emerged stronger out of it and made those big leaps or big changes and transformations in their life.

Yeah, they've made a lot of decisions and so they know a lot more. They might not know exactly where they're going, but they at least know, like if they entered a roundabout and they have four options, it's either to, to drive back, to go right, to go straight ahead or to go left. They feel inside of them, because they have that, they have developed that internal compass.

You know, okay, for me, it's  probably, because we, certainty doesn't exist. There's only such thing as high probability.  Probably right is gonna, if I go right, that's gonna be the right decision for me, or left. Because they have that internal compass. But if we haven't  even touched that, if we haven't even started developing it, because we stayed.

In the wrong environment, because we've been stuck, we've been indecisive, we've been blaming other people and society and whatsoever.  Then we don't know. Then we just enter that roundabout and it's just Russian roulette. It's just like,  I'm just gonna try.  

What are some of the ways that,  because I imagine taking a big leap might be too scary for someone.

What are some of the  smaller ways that people can start tuning into their inner compass? 

 I think the big leap is different for everyone. Um, so my big leap may look very different to someone who's just starting out on a journey and making a big leap. And so there's this whole like, the whole term big is just like, it's, it's all relative. It's all relative. Yeah. And that big leap for the person that's just starting out, it can look like exploring what it would mean to set certain boundaries in their lives. 

That big leap could look like if they haven't been taking care of their health is to take the first step to reclaiming their health. Which again, for everyone, looks different. So,  if I work with people that have experienced high levels of stress, that have abandoned their health,  I don't come up mindfulness in the morning, do breath work, do cold therapy, and do blah, blah, blah.

I actually say to them, is get curious. And it comes back to the principle of what does your body open up to and what, where does it contract? So go to the gym, do a class, go to yoga, explore different types of yoga,  explore some breath work, do meditation in the morning. Go, go for a walk outside, because for one person, meditation works great.

For most people. The, the first few weeks are just terrible, but for some people it works. For other people, it works much better to just go for a walk outside in nature.  So it's again, finding what works for them. And 

there's a big topic there, we talked about this last time, but knowing the difference between the discomfort of growth versus the contraction of something being wrong for you.

Because I think a lot of people might experience, let's say they start a meditation routine, and it's uncomfortable. And they might confuse that for contraction. They might think, oh, this is wrong because it's difficult. But I think there's a big difference between something being difficult and something actually Yeah Kind of like contracting 

who you are.

It's one of the patterns that keeps people stuck. People want soft and comfortable lives  and that is exactly the reason why they experience what they experience. Yeah Because life is not soft and comfortable. Life is not always easy, simple and fun. And if you want to have A different results. You gotta go through a certain kind of process.

If you start learning something new and I always use the analogy of a baby that learns how to walk like if you witness that process from how they start to explore how to crawl and eventually how to stand up a little bit and then the walk. It's not that it's just from one day to another is that they just  Good at walking.

They fall down many times and they get up again. It's uncomfortable. It's painful. They're crying  But somehow they just get up and do it and it's the same with these process We gotta be willing to embrace the discomfort of change and one of the things is just uncertainty One of the things is inadequacy.

One of the things is embarrassment Like there's so much there. Well, another thing is just repeating the same thing over and over again, which is just can be extremely boring But if you don't want to do that, if you want to live a soft and comfortable life,  like every time you enter that roundabout, you're probably just going to return back to where you come 

from. 

You mentioned uncertainty, embarrassment. I know rejection is a big one for a lot of people, but all of these  uncomfortable emotions that people don't want to feel that prevent them from growing.  You, you have a quote on Instagram. This is not a quote. This is something you said, but you said the strategies we develop to keep ourselves from being hurt tend to be the exact things that end up hurting us the most. 

Tell me a little bit about that.  

Well, we all grew up and, um, even when we grew up in a family where our parents were together, we were loved. There have been certain forms of love. neglect and abandonment.  Um,  I let's not go too deep in it here, but like we've all developed strategies in order to win love, to win the attention of our parents, to win the respect. 

Um, and, and based on that very foundation, we went into the world and we started to reenact those strategies. And those strategies often work for a very long time when we're younger, especially within our family dynamics,  Especially when our lives are still relatively, um,  simple,  because when we're young the dynamics are quite simple.

But as we grow older, as we become adults, our environments and the things that we engage in become more complex and those strategies start to fill.  Um, but because those strategies are so important to us and to uphold the identity that we've crafted.  We hold on to them, even though they no longer work for us,  and oftentimes even sabotage us.

What are some examples?  An example is, is, uh, let's take an example of people pleasing. Take an example of the nice guy, the good guy kind of thing. So, at a young age, or even at a later age, this, this,  this child, this dude, um, learned that if he is a Good boy or a good man, then daddy will like him, or then mommy will give him attention or then he fits in, uh, in, in the group or then girls like him.

So if he's been focusing more on, on  masculine dominant women, um, that look for the softer kind of man, the good, the good guy guy kind of personality.  But that works for a long time and.  And this person also, like, it starts to confuse, because like, I think it's Jordan Peterson that says, it's like, if you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes your actual truth.

You start to believe it, and even more so, you become it.  And so, that good guy, it's no longer, hey, I'm just pretending to be a good guy. This person actually believes, like, hey, I am this good guy. And so, people pleasing is his nature, which is a lie. It's not true, but that's what the person believes.  And  over time, what this person starts to notice is, is that, that self fulfilling prophecy is like every time he gives more than that, than that he can take, he's constantly overextending in forms of, of  yeah, not creating waves of being overly kind of saying yes, where he actually means no of, of tolerating things that are intolerable. 

And somehow at some point in his life, and this often happens, of course, around 30, 35, 40, things crumble. Relationships crumble, can't break through at work because people overrule them and yeah, they just, they, they hit that wall and when they hit the wall, the, the, the first response is often to, to even hold on more to the strategy until they realize that  this no longer works and that's hopefully where they start to do the work and oftentimes like those moments of discomfort or even strategy become.

Our greatest opportunity to return back to self and to let go of the strategies that that hurt us because in in that people pleasing Every time we do it. We reinforce the belief that we're not good enough  And the more we compound that the more hurt we accumulate in our hearts and The more disbelief in ourselves, so we just become these disempowered human beings disconnected from our masculine core Disconnected from our, from our own purpose because we're so focused on other people.

Yeah. Um, disconnected from our potential and power. Um, so I think that is a great example of how that happens. Yeah. And it's the same for overachieving. It's the same for any other kind of mechanism that we use. Yeah. 

Seeking validation. Yeah. And as you're talking about it, you know, it's, you're basically coming from that place.

You're embodying that place of lack or of not being good enough. Because you're seeking it externally, saying, I need this person to like me, I need this person to approve of me, I need these women to think I'm a nice guy.  As opposed to just kind of standing in your power, standing in your, your sense of self worth. 

How does somebody get out of that? Let's say they've been living in the nice guy syndrome for most of their life.  What's the pathway out of it? My first 

response is just getting so sick and tired. Yeah.  Of being sick and tired, like there comes a moment where you start to realize that what you do is isn't working anymore. 

And one of my favorite quotes from Martha Beck, the author of The Way of Integrity, my favorite book called My Bible.  Um,  she said, if what you're doing isn't working, don't do it harder. Hmm. Simple, but there's so much truth in that. Yeah. Um.  At least to me, because that's what I'm seeing all the time around me, not just with my clients.

It's just for people when those strategies that they have developed  in order to,  because it's always about winning,  earning love, acceptance, belonging, respect, status,  when those strategies start to fill,  It's not that we're willing to give up because they have been so important to us. We don't know who we are without their strategies.

We don't know who we are when that identity starts to collapse.  So what do these people do?  They hold on stronger.  And that's where the real suffering starts to happen. And um,  yeah, I,  I haven't really seen people going through  the radical change of, of like of these deep rooted mechanisms.  first experiencing some form of suffering.

Some kind of rock bottom moment where you just realized the strategy hasn't worked. 

Yeah. And, and, and rock bottom doesn't have to mean a burnout because that's a lot of people associate rock bottom with burnout, but it can just also just feeling so extremely so stuck. Yeah. So sick of repeating the same cycle. 

I'm so sick of  giving so much, but feeling so empty. And. And that's when the turning point comes in, because like, I only believe that people change is when, is the moment they realize that they actually have to change.  I 

think it's, you know, I myself resonate a lot with kind of the whole story of the nice guy syndrome.

You know, my whole life I've been a quote unquote nice guy, um, you know, wanting to people please wanting people to think I'm a  compassionate, mindful, you know, I'm an ally to women and all these kinds of things. Of course, those are all good things, but, you know, as you say, when you identify with it, and when you seek that validation, you end up getting sucked into these traps where you're losing yourself. 

And, I think one of the scary things, I know for myself and for a lot of people, has been this journey of, it feels really scary to, to let go of people pleasing, because you know you're gonna, you're gonna start offending people. You're gonna start having people around you that don't like you.  And that's just an uncomfortable, 

it's scary  because if they stop doing it,  they might experience that what they believe at their core  is actually true.

That if they present their authentic self, whatever that means, if they speak their truth, if they follow their passion, if they set their boundaries, if they  Is there actually loud and explosive if that's or if they're creative or if the joy is whatever that authentic part is that that comes out  that they will be humiliated, punished, rejected or abandoned for it.

That's that's that's the that's the core belief. That's the deepest fear.  And that's why it's scary to let go of it. Because if you let go of that protective mechanism.  And in an IFS, it's like that protective part. If you take that away, you come to the exiled part, the wounded part,  and the protective part has just been there  to make sure that you never again experience what you experienced when you were younger, whether it was a real experience or a perceived experience. 

And so that's why it's so scary to let go of those, I call them those core destructive mechanisms, those protective mechanisms, and we have a few of them in our lifetimes.  That's why I say it's like  people need to reach a certain level  of being sick and tired of their own behavior to change those things because up until that moment, what they consider as personal development  is just the exploration of all sorts of modalities and ideas and methodologies that allow them to distract themselves.

from those things.  

All the spiritual bypassing 

that people do. Yeah, and just all the protocols. Like if I'm just gonna spend 90 minutes in the morning doing all the breathing and all the ice baths and do this and do that and if I follow exactly what that person is doing.  It's another protective mechanism.

It's another protective mechanism. You're still like, I'm often saying like all those things are super helpful. However, as long as you're avoiding the one thing. That, that core destructive pattern,  you're not doing the work, you're actually, you're being of disservice to yourself, you're, you're, you're avoiding  through positive things, but you're still avoiding.

Yeah.  

How can somebody get the courage to, to do, to let go of those protections? I mean, I guess you just said it, it's just, you kind of get to the point where you realize that  the pain of, of being vulnerable, of, of being raw, of letting go of that.  Pain 

of staying the same needs to exceed the discomfort of changing growth.

Yeah. So you just got to really get clear that I can't stay stuck in 

this shit forever. And it's like, when you actually hit that moment,  it's tough to be in it. Like I have, I have so much compassion for people who hit that moment because it's,  it's brutal. It's life shattering. It's 

life shattering. It's like an earthquake on your whole foundation.

Yeah, it really, it shakes you at the core of your being, you're facing your deepest fear, your deepest insecurities, and you gotta let, you gotta let go of something that  you have been holding on to so tightly, to that identity that you've created and that you've presented to the outside world, and you get this realization, this is not who I am. 

However, it is an opportunity, and I'm At the same time, like I'm saying, I'm, I've so much compassion for these people and I had this actually with one of my clients yesterday on the phone.  And, um,  I had to hold space for like big time because of, of this moment, like this peak moment that she's experienced that is just going to crumble that identity.

It's enough. She reached that point. And at the same time in me.  As someone's celebrating, I'm standing on my chair with my arms like, yeah, because I know  she's hitting that moment. There's no way back anymore, right? So now it's entering the roundabout. There are no four options anymore. They're just three options.

Option of going back no longer exist because the pain of staying the same has exceeded the pain of discomfort, discomfort of changing growth.  And so she's going to change, choose something new.  Yeah. Change is coming, but a lot of people never reach that moment because they live an average life because everything is good enough.

Yeah. It's okay. The pain is never going to reach that point  that gets them into the change. Yeah.  

You know, one of the things I do with my clients is because this thing of living in an okay life, it's such a, such a poison, right? It's. It's just good enough so people never have to actually examine their life and say, well, it's not that bad Yeah, and so for me one of the things that really it helped in my own recovery journey and helps a lot of my clients is Envisioning where your life is gonna head if you don't make a change because sometimes it's not bad enough right now But when you start to see like if I don't change this The trajectory I'm on, I do not want to get there, like, and to not wait until it gets so bad.

But to really see that and envision that for yourself, like, if I'm still this way 10 years from now, if I'm, you know, 45 and it's,  and it's like this, my life is going to be miserable. And that can also be an impetus for change.  100%. 

Yes. Um, and yet  when the pain is not there.  When the felt experience is not there,  most of them won't start the journey. 

They just don't because it's still good enough.  Yeah.  

So we've been talking a little bit about some of the,  You know, like, where are we coming from of, of having the courage to, to make a change?  Then once we make a change, I want to get into some of that, like you talked about setting boundaries earlier.

We talked about the nice guy syndrome and the other side of that. It's not like it's just green pastures and, you know, like, you know, sun filled meadows. The work continues and it's actually challenging work that a lot of people don't have experience with. So, for example. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Learning how to set boundaries and speak your truth.

Um, and I know this is something we've chatted about recently. Tell me a little bit about  what it means to set boundaries and how to do that.  

Yeah, it's such a hot topic.  First of all, I believe that,  um,  Well, let's first define what boundaries are because people often think that it's just about saying no to things and I think it's really boundaries.

It's, it's, it's like it's a bigger container for, for being able to express your, your wants, your needs and your limitations. Um, and it's a very hot topic these days and it's also very necessary. Like it's one of the key things I work on with people, um, first of all, to have boundaries with themselves because if you want to become self led is to know what you say yes and no to, and to have the capacity to follow through upon it and to hold that boundary.

When it's being challenged and tested by external forces.  Um, and obviously then to have boundaries with other people. Uh, but yeah, setting boundaries is extremely hard. Because  it gets us in touch with that core, with that deepest fear, that deepest insecurity that we have, that if we speak our truth,  if we don't do what people expect from us, if we disappoint them.

And by saying that we can't show up the way that they want to or that we can't make time for them right now,  that I'm not going to do what they expect from me, 

then they might reject me. Then I might not be good enough. And so for a lot of people, it's just easier to continue  in that people pleasing  mechanism. But even if we speak about boundaries for self, like the overachievers,  they often need boundaries for themselves. Okay. And what I work on with a lot of overachievers is actually when they start planning their day, is to  plan based on, based on 70% of their capacity, and then just stop working.

Mm. Because their 70% is still someone else, 130%.  And I want to get them to their,  to their 80% because they need another 20% to, to deal with the twists and turns of life.  But why I do it is it, it's like it's this. this cell boundary, because if they're only allowed to use 70 percent of their capacity, there comes a moment in the day that they have completed their tasks,  and they need to sit with themselves.

There's this open space, and in this open space, something is going to come up.  I should do more, I should have done this, I should have done that, and because I haven't done it, I'm not good enough. So again, the  deepest insecurity comes up, and it learns them then to get in touch with the emotions that come up, and once they can regulate those emotions, then it, they can actually start to plan their days in a different way and lead their lives and work in a different way.

What are some boundaries that you've set for yourself  in that kind of internal self dialogue? What are some examples of, of kind of boundaries that you have for yourself?  

I,  where are we gonna start  , like how far do we go back?  

What comes to mind? Like, what are some of the, the kind of the big ones that you think about on a, on a 

regular basis?

I set a boundary yesterday. One of, uh, one of my friends from the Netherlands is here for, for, uh, a few months. And he was like, uh, when are we going to play tennis?  And my, my body, speaking of contraction, was doing this. Because I'm, I'm in the midst of my training for, for the ultra, uh, trail marathon in, in Addo.

Um, I'm already playing tennis once a week, but my, my week is already filled with sports. Like, it's,  And my weeks are already difficult to manage and my body is just at its edge of what it's capable of physically.  And so it's just like, Hey, I appreciate it. I would have loved to play tennis, but currently I can't add another sport to my weekly schedule, but I would love to go out for dinner with you.

So also I give something else that we, that we can do.  That is a boundary. I have boundaries around, around my work.  I don't work over the weekend. I don't work after a certain time. I have very, very clear and firm boundaries with my clients. I'm available to them, but to a certain extent,  within certain hours, uh, just to protect myself and my energy.

The work that I do is extremely consuming, uh, if I'm constantly just open and available  to the people. Um, same like we're here in Cape Town, um, they're like during this time of the year, there's this Dutch invasion of people that come over.  I don't even have boundaries. I have walls, man. Like, I, I'm just super clear.

Like, um, I'm focused on work. I'm focused on my close friends around me and I'm focused on my, my, uh, sports career now. Um,  I just don't have time for it. So when you reached out and said, I'm not going to be an asshole, but I'm just going to tell you that I, that I don't have time to meet you. Yeah. 

And we talked about this.

We were hanging out the other day and you were talking about how, how important it is for you to really carve out time. For what's most important, almost like you're protecting that 

space. That's like when we speak about boundaries, like we need to know ourselves and we need to live with intentions to have these boundaries.

So when we're just going on autopilot and constantly reacting, we don't know, we don't even know what matters to us. We don't even have priorities. So it starts with like, if we have, if we speak about boundaries for self, every three months, we got to decide which areas of our lives are the most important.

important. Every year we have to decide that  because  the wheel of life that I work with, you probably as well, and many other coaches like I've 12 areas in that 12 areas of life  in it. And not all areas can have the same priority.  And this is constantly shifting. So if you are setting  or if you're pursuing a really big goal in your business, it means that can only give very little to other areas of your life.

For me, this means like  with my with my ultra  challenges, the ultra trail running this year, like I'm training so much. It's taking so much for me. It would be very unrealistic to say that I'm going to launch all sorts of other business models, and then I'm going to make myself more available within my business.

I need to have a cap there. I need to have very clear boundaries for myself, my clients,  because I only have so much capacity to give. And that's where it all starts. If we don't know our priorities, if we don't know our goals, if we don't have clear intentions for the day. And even when it comes to social life, I decide on a Sunday  how much I want to expose myself socially.

So I just feel into like, okay,  what do I feel like? Do you feel like engaging with more groups? Do I want to meet up with close friends over dinner?  I could either just enter the week and be like, okay, I'm just going to respond to whatever happens.  And then probably by the end of the week I'll complain that I haven't seen certain people or that, uh, dinner that I went to was, was quite consuming and, and energy draining or whatsoever.

Or I can sit down on a Sunday and check in, what is it, what, what do I want? And based on what I want, who do I want to do that with?  Easy, I plan it in. And because I've already planned it, I've already decided, I, because that's the word of course, I have decided.  What I want,  what I say yes to, and it becomes really easy to say no to the other things.

It might, it might be hard to, to say to someone, no, no, I don't want to do this.  But that's just the following through on it. The decision, like the, the clarity on what you're going to say no to, that's the easy part.  

Let's, there's a big overlap in this topic with another topic I want to dive into, which is talking about masculinity. 

And  What does it mean to be a man? What are some of the qualities that we want to cultivate as men? Um, and it, it strikes me that one of the most important is, is something along the lines of this, having the clarity of knowing what's important to you. Like that self awareness of, this is my truth, these are my priorities, and that's what I'm focused on right now.

Tell me a little bit about, kind of,  you know, what does it mean to be a man? What are these priorities? A 

man without clarity and direction is a boy. 

Mmm.  

Wow. It's that easy. So, like, if, if, if I speak to you and,  and ask you a few questions and you don't have any clarity on your priorities in your life, you don't have any, any, any goals, um, you don't have any clear boundaries, you just go, you got, you're kind of like a feather in the wind and you're just reacting to life. 

You still have a teenage mindset, sorry.  And there's nothing to be ashamed of. That's just like.  almost effect. Mm-Hmm.  . So you, you can be 32, you can be 42,  but you're not sitting in the driver's seat of life.  And to be masculine, that means that you're in the driver's seat. You have clarity, you have direction, and you have, you have the capacity to lead in other, in other words, to steer the wheel.

Mm-Hmm.  based on the clarity of like, what is important to you,  knowing where you go,  knowing how you're doing it.  Yeah. And actually executing that. Yeah. And whether that's in business, in your relationships, in, in life in general,  um, yeah, that's, I think the easiest 

answer to it.  It's beautiful. I mean, I almost got goosebumps when you said that because it's so powerful.

It's just, you know, do you know your values and priorities? Yeah. And if not, you know, that you're still living in that kind of boyhood mindset. Yeah. But what really makes.  You know, we could get into this talk of masculinity. 

The next chapter of it becomes, like, do you know them?  Because this is another thing.

Like,  I know a shit ton of people that know a lot.  Like, they're intellectualizing everything. I know a lot of people, especially in the industry that we're in, that know so much more than I do.  Like, if I would get into a conversation about certain topics, The way they would speak about it, the way they teach, the way, whatever, they just know more.

They, they're probably  have a greater ability to express it, and,  but it's so here. Yeah. It's just in their heads, but when you look at their lives, and it's interesting because I have a lot of clients that are in this industry, and actually struggle with that gap of  who they claim to be based on what they know, based on what they teach and preach.

And how they actually live and that gap in between that's causing a lot of damage, a lot of suffering.  And so it's not just about knowing those values. It's not just about reading the books and the podcast and, and, and whatsoever. All these passive activities is actually about the embodiment of it. And that's where the real,  real game comes into play, right?

Because that is about self leadership.  Can you guide yourself to watch your highest aims, to watch your highest potential, to watch your purpose? Towards your joy in life.  That is what it means to be self led. And that's the tricky part. Because that means that you gotta act upon your values. Upon your goals, upon your priorities.

When they are challenged. By whatever it is. Maybe because your parents don't agree. Maybe because it's the most unpopular thing to do. Maybe because the, the, the group of people that you're a part of have an opinion of it. Whatever it is.  But you gotta have the ability.  to charge your own path, to act based upon your highest values.

And again, if you can't do that,  you may know your value is good for you,  but you're still circling around in boyhood. 

Yeah. And it, you know, there's  this topic of kind of, uh,  spiritual materialism or spiritual bypassing or all these ways that people can do all the workshops, all the journaling, all the retreats, they can find out their values.

They can. Read a book. They can go on an ayahuasca journey, but it really is about the embodiment and you meet a lot of people who  Know how to say the right things, but then there's no embodiment on those values even create an identity 

out of it. Yeah  It's 

even worse  One of my favorite Quotes it comes more from Buddhism and more from it's kind of talking about ethical precepts and kind of the ethical aspect of  of Buddhist practice because a lot of people take Buddhism and they think, Oh, okay, it's just meditate, you know, like concentrate the mind.

Um, but there's really, you know, there's multiple key parts and one of the big parts is the ethical training.  Um, and there's this great quote by one of my favorite teachers. He said, trying  to gain kind of meditative insights or improve your life through meditation  without a grounding in ethical practice.

It's like trying to row a boat across a river without untying it from the dock.  And it's like people can put in all this effort of rowing and rowing and gaining the, you know, insights of trying to be spiritual, but if you don't ground it in embodied practice and living a good life, living an ethical life, a value driven life, it's not going to go anywhere.

I think one of the most beautiful examples that we see now in this whole  new paradigm of, of, Conscious living and spirituality is, uh,  it's this trend around breath work. I am a huge fan of it. I think it's, it's so beneficial. I still practice it myself, like at home and facilitated by other people. It has helped me tremendously.

So there's, again,  I truly believe that people should do it. However, if you go to breath work circle or a practitioner, do one on one every week. And at the same time you repeat the pattern that caused the dysregulation of your nervous system.  And that fire of all these protective mechanisms again,  it just becomes an addiction.

Because every time you need to go back to that circle,  or to that practitioner, in order to regulate yourself to some sort of baseline to then dysregulate yourself again, and you're just going to need it more and more. 

And I think that's like coming back to your quote, it's like, it's you putting in all that effort. You're starting to do all these things, but you forget to,  to get the rope off so you can actually go down the river. Yeah. 

You know, it's, it's so interesting cause we see it in, in every, it's not just breathwork.

It's, you know, it's, we talk about it in yoga, like, you know, don't leave your practice on the mat. And it's like, you see so many people who are amazing yogis, you know, they can do the most acrobatic. Yoga stuff. Yeah, but then they go out to the restaurant and then they're a dick to the waiter and they're egotistical and and all these things I think there's no actual integration of the lessons of how to be a better person.

There's no 

integrity Yeah  So they have to discipline to show up like that person for a very short amount of time on the yoga mats in a breathwork circle in a men's group However, whenever they leave those environments  That kind of crumbles, because there is no integrity, there is no alignment yet between the thoughts, between the, like, the actions.

It's still like, who they claim to be  doesn't align with who they actually are.  Or how they actually behave, let's say, that who they actually are is something different, so how they behave.  There's still that gap, and because that gap is there, it leads to more frustration, why they also believe they need to do more work on themselves.

They need to do more breath work, or they need to do more yoga. But often they need to look more at a behavioral level where they are out of alignment, where they're not acting in alignment with who they claim to be. And I recently saw this  quote, statement kind of things, which said, instead of thinking that the universe is testing you,  try to look at it as the universe showing you where you are not who you claim to be. 

I was like, wow, that's fucking deep.  That's fucking deep because, um, yeah, there's, for a lot of people actually, there's a huge gap between who they claim to be, like the image that they present to the world. How they want, how, how they want to see themselves and how they want to be seen by others. But how when nobody is looking, they act in a very different way.

Yeah.   So you once said I see so many people, especially young people, desperately trying to be successful.  But success is not a place you arrive at, it's a by product of living by your highest values.  Decide what matters to you, live each day with a backbone of integrity, and watch how success unfolds as a natural part of your journey. 

Tell me about that. 

Comes back to certainty and uncertainty, hey?  It's um,  I often speak about like metaphors about the mountain and the first mountain syndrome and I think  What the statement starts with is just like we look, we look at the top of the first mountain and it's very clear if we reach that top, then we are successful.

And that is very much based on, yeah, what society deems to successful. So it's often regard your title, the amount of money status, the car you drive in the restaurants, you go to all these kinds of things. And, um,  sadly, a lot of people who, Start that pursuit and like don't get me wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with with having a beautiful title behind your name having earning money Having a beautiful house having an incredible lifestyle.

I think those things are great. I pursue them as well. It's just Gets a little bit dangerous that when in the pursuit  You start to abandon your values and your health  so your authenticity your very core and  For a lot of people, when they actually reach that success, they become the most empty and often unhealthy people with very unhealthy relationships or no relationships at all.

So they feel very isolated and lonely. So there's, there's no success in that at all. There's just money. There's just, not even wealth. There's just money or there's just status. But there's also a lot of emptiness and loneliness. However, it gives them a certain ID to run after.  Because the scary thing is, if they let go of that idea,  and that's what happens for a lot of people, when they actually need to reconsider what success is. 

It's the same thing that we discussed already.  When you have to let go of that idea of success, because you have come to the realization, whether, because you've reached it, or through some other realization,  that that is not success to you,  then what is success?  And holy shit, it gets scary because you don't know,  you just don't know. 

And that's where this is like, that's where, like, that's where I start with my clients. It's like, it's, it's not about shaping a new vision and asking all sorts of questions about success because you don't know yet. What you got to develop is that internal compass, your value system, the very foundation that you base your decisions on.

And in the beginning, that's the only thing you can trust upon.  And what you start seeing, and that's the beautiful thing of the journey, because then we don't need the vision so much anymore. Then we need to hold on to the future anymore, because we know if we live by our highest  values, when we truly lead our lives, when we no longer just react, when we truly step back and sit in the driver's seat, and we lead based on our highest values, we start to experience that. 

Every outcome just becomes better and better. Our relationships become better. They become deeper. They become more meaningful. It becomes better at work. But we do need a set of values that deeply resonate with who we are at the core of our beings as a person and as a human being.  Because most people that I know  and these are high educated people and some of them that come to me, they already know their values and I can tell you they don't. 

They have come up with a few words that sound very interesting  and that often  are connected  with who they, how they like themselves, how they like to see themselves. So to that persona, the nice guy. So a nice guy, a good guy comes in with loyalty, with kindness, with all these things, but it misses vitality, it misses integrity, it misses excellence.

And these kind of things, and for the overachiever, it's, it's, it's like, uh, dedication, commitment and all these things, but it misses other things that are maybe more interpersonal or focused on health. And so, yeah, the first task is just to create a foundation that actually represents who you are and what you believe is important from the core of your being, both as a person and as a human being, because we can't bypass that.

In the end, we're all very much the same. We can't bypass our humanness.  So there are a lot of people that say that, that,  a good guy would claim that things as kindness and stuff and, and connection is far more important than their health.  But from, from a human, just from a fundamental perspective, we need our health.

Like, if we live, for example, in a state of survival, We don't really connect with other people. We're very much focused on ourselves. So all those things of kindness and loyalty and generosity. Like, when there's a bear in your room, you don't care about generosity. And like, yeah, but I don't have a bear in your room.

Well, there are a lot of people with a psychological bear in their room.  And so it becomes impossible to be that person. So it needs to resonate with both the core of, of who you are as a person, your character and you as a human 

being.  It seems like a lot of these values that people might bring to the table, the kind of the,  what their ostensible values are, what they say, okay, these are my values, are based on some maybe outdated views of what it means to be a good man or what it means to be a good person.

parent or father or partner. Um,  knowing that this show is 90 percent men, most people listening to this are men. Um, we do have some awesome female listeners. So shout out to the female listeners on this show. Um, but for the men,  just talk a little bit about kind of the outdated views of masculinity. Cause I know that's something that we've chatted about briefly before. 

Yeah. Well,  I don't think it's as simple as just Just one particular set of outdated views on masculinity because I think there are many perspectives on masculinity. One of course is, is the very, the very toxic one. So where it's all about, uh, power, uh, being loud, being extremely big and strong and then where it's, where it's, it's constantly about one upping and overpowering other people and kind of sitting in that throne and then being able to just like, yeah, demand things of other people and expect.

Yeah,  just, well, we see it a lot in this world and I think Donald Trump, for example, is an example of that. And I don't want to get too political, but it's like, it's like building your own tower and sitting in the top. That kind of type of 

masculinity. Or the Andrew 

Tate kind of masculinity. Andrew Tate, yeah. 

To my opinion, that's just, that's very toxic and it's disconnecting men from their authentic selves and their beautiful hearts. However, I also don't think that the trend that we see now is where, uh, we see a lot of men  turning into very, yeah,  soft boys. Like we're all starting to connect with our hearts.

We're all going to sit with our hands on our hearts and, and it's great,  but you got, you need a backbone of integrity. Life is fucking tough  and you gotta be in like, You got to be have the capacity to sit in the driver's seat and to make decisions and you got to have the capacity to navigate the storms and you got to get past the capacity to lead like in the end, like, how are you going to lead your family if you have a family or in the future, like, how are you going to protect them?

How are you going to provide for them? Great that you're also soft and loving, but there also need to be a side. Like there also needs that backbone that supports you. There needs to be this foundation and the strength to act upon it.  And so that is, uh, yeah, to my opinion, a very dangerous trend that I'm seeing at the moment where a lot of, let's say, men that have tried to become a good man through, uh, yeah, through performance, through working hard  and that haven't succeeded at it.

And I'm not saying not succeeded financially, but that haven't accomplished that feeling of, I feel whole, fulfilled and accomplished as a man. No, I feel miserable. What we just basically said about, like, they reach the top of the mountain and they feel empty, they feel lonely, they feel extremely stressed, whatever it is.

Then they go to the other side of the spectrum.  And I think the goal is to somewhere end up in the middle, to walk that middle road. And  there's not just, there's, there's not one definition of what it means to be a good man. I think there are many. And I think for many men, for all men, it's the result. of becoming self led of your ability to guide yourself towards your highest aims, towards your highest potential, towards your highest purpose, towards your highest joy.

And that is different for everyone. And even in your own lifetime that can change like for myself, it's changing at the moment. I'm developing an entire new part of my potential by the challenges I'm currently pursuing with ultra triple running, which is not just about becoming fit. There's so much more in there. 

But I've just given myself this challenge to explore more of my potential. And, for, yeah, for people that are listening, but also with my clients, I just, don't do what I do, I would say. Don't do it. Be inspired, but don't copy.  First, get curious before you get obsessed about something.  But as a man, you gotta get obsessed about things. 

So get curious, like, what is it that you feel drawn to?  And then learn to give yourself fully to it so that you can actually see what you're capable of.  

This is a, it's  really interesting to me because just last night I was on a call with a client, CEO, big company has a wife and two kids, maybe three kids. 

Does a lot. Like he's a very high performer living a great life. You know, he's  It's one of my favorite clients because it's just an inspiration for me to get to work with him. Like, I love these kind of clients. But what was really interesting is on the call yesterday, he was talking about  how there's some part of him that knows that he hasn't given it a hundred percent yet.

And he was talking more about kind of fitness at this moment. He's fit, but he knows that there's more to give. He knows that there's another level  and he's kind of not sure.  If he's ready for that commitment or, or what it looks like. And  he, he thinks he wants to kind of tap into that, but just not sure where to get started or, or whether or not it's kinda worth pushing for when there's all this other stuff on his plate.

You know, like being a good father, a good, uh, husband, a good CEOI love that 

you bring this up is because again, it connects back to something we already discussed.  We can't know  if the thing that we're looking at. Is the thing,  until we start, until we give it our self, until we give it our all. And it's like, we just want to play safe. 

Like, all these people are just, are just waiting  for this, this, this like realization. This is it, and then I'm gonna give it my all.  Fucking risk your life for three months, give it your all, and after three months you'll figure out if it's for you or not.  I think that's the theme of this entire conversation that we're having is  decide, try, risk, grow and allow yourself to experience the experiences to get an understanding what is for you and what isn't because only until we give ourselves fully  we can win and we can understand what is for us and what isn't and what is three months of your life. 

Let me 

play devil's advocate for a minute, because it's, this is a really, a question that I struggle with a lot, and  this, for example, this client of mine is living an amazing life, beautiful life, he's, he's so happy, I mean he's, he's really killing it, in my opinion, and in his opinion too. And so when do you know, because there's, There's kind of the, the beautiful side of that pushing yourself of like, I want to really give this thing my all,  but there can also be the dark underbelly of the coming from a place of, I'm not good enough, I haven't done enough, like I need to have a six pack or I need to, I need to be better in the gym, as opposed to kind of recognizing, fuck, I'm doing great, I am, I am a great father, I'm a great, you know, leader in my work,  how do you know when to say, you know, No, I actually do want to notch it up and just give every ounce of gas in my tank versus when to say, I'm actually giving 98, 99 percent and actually that's good enough.

And if I want to watch a football game on a Sunday,  that's 

okay. So here,  if what you're doing isn't working, don't do it harder.  So with these type of people, when I coach them, I look for them to pursue something new.  Because if they just give more to the things that they're already doing, they're going to get more of what they already have, which is unfulfillment. 

So it's, they don't get the enough feeling out of that. So obviously when we choose a new  type of activity, whatever that may mean, or a new role within the family, because what is often happening for these people is that there is an untapped feeling. Part of their potential. And I don't mean when I speak about potential, it's not just the potential to perform at work.

It can be the potential to be a great friend to the people that you care about. It can be the potential to be, to be a present and grounded and engaged father or a partner.  But he knows at his core  that he is not fully showing up somewhere. He just, he can't connect the dots yet.  And the problem is that these people usually go to the area of their lives where they're already giving their all, because that's where the strategies, like, that's where we get that quote again. 

That's where they think, like, if I do more of that, then I will feel good enough. Then I will be seen, then I'll be accepted, whatever the story, whatever the underlying belief and story is.  So it's moving away from that and starting to explore.  I think there are, and this is, this ties in with the discussion that we have, what does it mean to be a good man, is like, we've been told what it means to be a good man, and based on that, we've  created and built the lives that we have, and then we reach a certain point where we've done and achieved and accumulated all the things that would make us a good man, and we still don't feel that way. 

And it's because that definition of a good man  is broken.  So you gotta then start to become curious.  What is it that you need  to grow into the man that you were created to be?  To grow into the man that you're capable of being.  

So I guess what I'm hearing from you, correct me if this isn't quite it, it's like, if you know that you have some left in the tank, if there's,  if there's some way that you're not giving it everything you've got, to figure out. 

What is the avenue? What is the thing you actually should give your 100 percent on and then to go for you get 

obsessed, get curious.  Like I repeat that over and over again because most people just dive straight into obsession.  Um, but to get curious, am I curious? I mean,  do that self inquiry. And if you can't do the self inquiry by yourself, join a men's group, start working with a coach, with a therapist or whatsoever to explore those avenues. 

And then, after the curiosity, what I'm saying is,  start giving it your all,  with zero confidence and zero certainty, because you don't know. You only know if it's for you,  if you give it your all.  That's the only way to figure it out, because if, whether it's, it's a certain routine in the gym, whether it's running, whether it's kite surfing, whether it's  It's more into art, whether it's writing, whether it's playing an instrument. 

When you do it half, when you're just half assing it,  you never figure out what it's like.  Because you're just doing it because you gotta do it. It's again that, that okay ish kind of thing. Yeah. When you give it your all,  that's actually when you start to develop the competence for it. And that's actually when you get to experience the fullness of it. 

And then look back after three, four, five months, what you get out of it.  

Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that,  you know, speaking like for men, it's one of the most fulfilling and rewarding things is that feeling of having given something your all, having given it a hundred percent. It's, there's something kind of primal about that, that is deeply fulfilling to know you've given every ounce of what you have. 

I think one of the biggest regrets and the biggest pain men carry  is, is the knowing that they're not giving it their all, is the disconnection from their potential. Yeah.  

There's something to that, huh? Like just being disconnected from what you know is your potential. 

Yeah.  Yeah. And it's again, it's, um,  it's being stuck in that  soft and comfortable mindset. 

I want to achieve my full potential. I want to know what I'm  capable of. I want to know who I am created to be.  I want to live my purpose.  But I don't want to give up my comfort. Yeah.  Success. Good luck, man. Yeah. Give up on your wants. Because you gotta be hungry. You gotta be hungry.  And, uh, Brandon Bouchard always, always says like no clarity, no change, no goals, no growth.

And I added to that no meaning, no hunger.  So if you don't know your why,  if it's not important to you, if, if softness and comfort  is more important to you, if you're, if you're avoiding struggle and responsibility.  Then good luck. Then just get rid of your wants. Then just accept the life that you're living.

Yeah. 

It's interesting. The concept of hunger can be both  a very negative thing, but it can also be a beautiful thing. You know, like there's the hungry ghost, you know, like Healthy hunger.  Well, the hungry ghost is the unhealthy one, which is just like, you know, there's always something that you want you can't have.

But there's like the healthy hunger of, and it's such a deeply beautiful experience. To hunger for when it's connected to an aspiration, when it's connected to a life, to embodiment, to how you're showing up in the world. To have that hunger of, you know, so many of the clients I work with, I imagine it's the same for you.

It's like people want to feel that deep passion about something in their life. 

I, I come back to the word aliveness.  It's  in struggle, in, in the, in the struggle and the pain we experience.  To get to something  in those moments, that's actually where we experience our aliveness. And I like, uh, in, in the ultra running at the moment, I've never found a, a more,  more relevant metaphor for the, for this experience than the ultra running, because you gotta go through the pain, you gotta go through the suffering.

There's, there's this thing called the Pink Ave.  But dude, when you reach the top. When you're, when you're running on top of a mountain and you're in that, in that flow and you've, you've overcome, like I often said, it's not the mountain you conquer.  It's you. That mountain is just the same. And every day it's going to be different.

Some days it's going to be hard, but the more consistent you are, that mountain that was impossibly to climb,  becomes just another mountain that you run up.  And so it's not the mountain you conquer, it's yourself.  And you become stronger and that feeling that you know that you've overcome those all those obstacles and that's again It's being able to trust yourself  That feeling of aliveness is is what at least what I live for and what I believe is Is that a lot of people are missing in their lives?

Yeah, and just just that personal growth the personal development  You know, it's the most rewarding journey to go on is Conquering, you know the mountain within yeah 

Yeah.  Yeah. The mountain is you. 

Yeah. It's a book 

by Brianna West or something. Yeah.  

Let's finish with one final quote from you.  You said, there is no greater trap than thinking that reaching a particular goal will change your life.

The one thing that impacts your life is who you become in the pursuit of it.  Yeah. What does that mean to you? Going back to 

that first mountain syndrome, it's um, and that definition of success, a lot of people  believe that when they reach that top of the mountain, or two third of it, um,  that things are going to be different, and when they arrive there, things are actually not different, and often they are the opposite, because in the pursuit of that definition of success, of the goal,  they lost touch with their authenticity, they abandoned their values, their health and so we could actually became very miserable people. 

And so that is no, that's no success. That's just reaching a goal.  And the way I look at it, like when is a goal worthwhile of pursuing?  If when you pursue it, you become a better, a more kind, a more resilient, a more generous, a more compassionate, a more uh, autonomous. 

If it, if it, if it allows you to move closer to the person you were created to be, to the person you are capable of being.  And so that's, that's what I mean with that. It's, um, your goals are just a tool for you to become who you are meant to be. And if your goals don't do that, they are not your goals  and you're striving for, for something else,  someone else 

goals.

Yeah.  I love the, you know, we talk about kind of the mountain, like the first mountain or the mountain outside, like these, these mountains that we chase up, but then there's that recognition that, okay, the mountain is you, the mountain is within, but then adding on top of that, it's, it's not even about getting to the top of the, of that mountain, even the mountain within, it's about kind of who you're becoming on that journey and it doesn't matter if you never get to the top.

It's like, can you keep Becoming a better version of yourself. Yeah,  

absolutely. And um,  and the best thing that you can do is like is, is when you're on that mountain  and you still have a long way to go.  So whether you're one fifth or two third or whatever it is,  and you notice that who you become  is not who you are and not who you wish to become  because you are constantly feeling stressed because. 

Because you can't be present in life, because it's hard to experience joy,  whatever it is. And get off that mountain. And it's really hard to get off a mountain that you've invested so much time, effort, and maybe even money in. But get off the mountain, because you're on the wrong mountain. So it doesn't matter if you reach the top, nothing is going to change.

You're just going to become more miserable.  That end, the finish line is not going to change you.  And that's like, as soon as you notice that, you have the feedback, you have the answer  to go off that mountain.  And again, go on a new mountain, and then we like, we can add that roundabout concept again in.

Instead of four choices, you only have three choices. You don't know which mountain is the right mountain, but at least you know that the mountain that you  were on,  and that you just descended right back into the valley, that's no longer your mountain. And that's my Bali chapter.  I really enjoyed it there, but it's not  my mountain.

I had to get off that mountain to climb a new one.  And before that, I've also lived in London, I've lived in Barcelona, I've obviously lived in Amsterdam. So I've been on many mountains  and I was now lucky to find this mountain and at least for now and for the foreseeable future,  I have a deep feeling 

that I'm on the right mountain.

I mean, I resonate with this so much as well. My own journey, you know, a big mountain that I was on was my academic career.  Studying genetics, working my way up to be a professor. And I remember seeing where that was headed. I remember looking at the top of that mountain and seeing my professors, the PIs, the post docs, and thinking,  if this is the future that I'm headed towards, I don't want their future.

They were all miserable. You know, they were all at the top of the mountain.  And none of them had a life that I wanted to live.  And so, you know, I think for those people out there listening, it's like the mountain Sometimes it's an obvious mountain, you look at it and you're like, Oh, this is clearly, you know, porn addiction.

I don't want to get to the top of this mountain because it's miserable. But some of them are socially acceptable mountains. I 

want to interrupt you there. Yeah.  Because the porn addiction is not your mountain. Nobody has a mountain The top of the mountain is not just more porn addiction.  I think porn addiction is a way to cope with being on the wrong mountain.

Hmm. Yeah. So you are on a mountain and because it's not your mountain, you are experiencing distress or deep unfulfillment or lack of connection, isolation, frustration, whatever it is. And you're using porn addiction or whatever addiction, social media, alcohol. Or  work, food, whatever, to distract yourself because you don't want to get off the mountain.

You don't want to listen. You don't want to acknowledge that you're on the wrong mountain. But that is the conclusion, you're on the wrong mountain. And actually that porn addiction, yeah, we don't want to do it, but for some people it's at that moment the best resource that they have available to cope with the distress and pain and suffering that they experience from being on the wrong mountain. 

Yeah, the importance of,  uh, are you familiar with the rat park experiment? No. Uh, so, I'll tell you the, the listeners of the show, uh, I'll fuckin tell this story to death, but it's such a good, uh, story. I mean, it's, they were studying the effects of addiction back in the 70s and 80s. They were looking at morphine addiction in rats.

And they found out if you give a rat water laced with morphine, they'll sit and drink that water basically until they die. They just get so addicted to it. Yeah. It's such an addictive thing.  Uh, and it was kind of alarming, you know, how powerful addictions are. But this one researcher had this really interesting kind of observation.

He said, well, these rats are in these miserable environments. They're living in steel cages. There's no other rats to play with. It's not a natural environment for them. What if we give them a natural environment? We give them running wheels and plants to play with and other rats to, to enjoy.  And what they found out, they forced the rats to become addicted to the morphine water first, and then they put them in these things called the rat parks, where they could live in a natural environment, and the rats barely touched the morphine water.

But it's the same with the soldiers that went to Vietnam, that were, a large percentage was using heroin  to get 

through the  

strategy of war. And when they came back, they never touched heroin again. Not all of them, of course, some still did, but it's, it's that same example. And, and I think it goes back all the way to where we started this podcast,  the impact of your environment.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So get off the mountain that isn't working for you. Yeah. Like 

I think two things that come together is environment and goals here and how important they are. And that being in the wrong environment often also makes you pursue the wrong goals.  And so get out of that environment, but also like maybe if you can't get out of the environment, at least get curious about the things that you pursue in your life. 

Um, because like  you can, you can still be successful and you can still change and you can still experience meaning and fulfillment and joy, even though you're might not be in the best possible environment for yourself.  However, that takes a lot more self leadership and discipline. Yeah. And curiosity because your environment will constantly try to pull you back into something that is not that gets you back on the mountain.

That's not for you. But from that environment, you can still choose 

a different mountain, and I think that's an important caveat because there's a lot of people who they might be on a mountain and due to, you know, whatever circumstances they're in, they might not be able to get off it. You know, if they have family responsibilities, they might be  In a partnership where for the sake of the family, they can't necessarily leave the partnership or I mean, there's, there's a lot of nuance there, like maybe it's better to leave anyway and deal with those consequences, but there are kind of some things that are outside of our control and when those 

are there, there are things that are outside of our control, but I still have to say that most icons are, I want,  and I fully agree is that when you have to pay the bills, you don't have the luxury of Just deciding today or tomorrow that you're going to change your job or your life. 

But you can at least acknowledge it and start making the changes that are within your control. Yeah. And slowly working towards that point. And for some people that may mean is like reducing their living expenses and just doing whatever is necessary to bring that down to bare minimum so you can make that change.

Yeah.  There's always 

something we can do. There's always something you can do. You just got to be willing. Any  

final words from you, any kind of words of advice you'd like to leave the listeners today? 

One life, live it.  I think not enough people are aware that life is tragically short. And, I've had the, every time it hits me, but, um, it is a privilege in a sense that I've faced death by losing my life. Three of my best friends and my own health crisis, and  I just know life is short  and  I at least myself try to be an inspiration to other people by honoring this gift of life and by fully living it.

And I think not enough people are aware that it's tragically short and therefore don't make the choices because they think I'll do it tomorrow. But that's one of the biggest lies people tell themselves, and they never do it. So, if you know that you're in the wrong environment, or you're on  the wrong mountain, and you do have that choice, make that choice. 

You never know if you have a tomorrow. You never know how long you have.  So make that choice, whether it's for yourself, for your family, for whoever. Just make that choice.  

Last question, where can people get in touch with you? Where should people reach out if they want to know 

more? Um, yeah, I'm on Instagram, so, at georgecuper, I'm sure you put it in the handle, but it's J O R D C U I P E R.

And same, my website, georgecuper. com.  

Alright man, it's been a pleasure. Likewise. See you on the next one. Yeah, hope so.