Curious Humans with Jonny Miller

Jonny Miller [00:00:01]:

Welcome to the Curious Humans podcast. Jim, it's an absolute pleasure to have you here.

Jim Dethmer [00:00:06]:

Good to be here. Delighted.

Jonny Miller [00:00:09]:

Besides delighted, how are you feeling? In three words?

Jim Dethmer [00:00:13]:

In three words?

Jonny Miller [00:00:15]:

Yes.

Jim Dethmer [00:00:18]:

Spacious, anxious. It grateful.

Jonny Miller [00:00:36]:

I love that those can coexist.

Jim Dethmer [00:00:38]:

Beautiful.

Jonny Miller [00:00:40]:

Well, the question that I love to begin these conversations with is, do you consider yourself as an exceptionally curious child? And if so, could you tell me a story about something that you were curious about, if anything comes to mind?

Jim Dethmer [00:00:57]:

What a wonderful question. So the simple answer is no, I wouldn't consider myself an exceptionally curious child now that I'm around. I have eight grandchildren, and as I'm around them, I think a number of them are far more curious than I was. The story I would make up is that I was wounded early or I found my wound early. And I think those of us who are wounded early or find our wound early, often it blocks curiosity. In my experience, curiosity, the kind that I'm interested in now, presupposes some sense of safety, and I don't think I had that as a child, so I don't think I was particularly curious. Yeah. So trying to find a story of my unique curiosity would be a waste of time, because I wasn't.

Jonny Miller [00:02:18]:

And do you consider yourself a curious adult now, and perhaps, how did you find that embodied safety, which I also believe integral to curiosity.

Jim Dethmer [00:02:31]:

Okay. I do consider myself curious with a caveat or an asterisk. I'm deeply curious in a couple of very narrow fields. Again, I'm around some adults and children who are curious about everything. They are naturally curious people. I'm not that way. But the couple of things that interest me, they go way beyond interesting. Me, I'm deeply curious about those. So not generally curious, but deeply curious in a few fields.

Jonny Miller [00:03:26]:

Beautiful. I actually interviewed a curiosity researcher on this podcast a while ago, and she told me about the distinction between epistemic curiosity and diversive curiosity. And it sounds like you're deeply epistemically.

Jim Dethmer [00:03:39]:

Curious, as opposed to, that makes sense to me.

Jonny Miller [00:03:42]:

Who get curious about anything.

Jim Dethmer [00:03:44]:

Yeah.

Jonny Miller [00:03:49]:

There's so many things that I want to talk to you about, and I was relistening to your book in the Bath yesterday, yesterday evening, actually. The 15 commitments of conscious leadership. And I'd love to begin by just hearing about where did these ideas and teachings come to you from? Like, how did you learn them for yourself? And what was the inception for this book that you wrote, I believe nine or more years ago.

Jim Dethmer [00:04:16]:

Great. I also realized that you asked a second part of that last question, which was about safety, and how did I develop safety if not now? At some point, we really ought to return to that, because it's central to my story. I think it's central to most of the people's story that I work with, and it's not necessarily a centerpiece of the book so they're two different things. So I'll go either way. Do you want to go back and deal with the book or would you like to deal with safety? Because we're now at a fork in the road.

Jonny Miller [00:04:53]:

Let's start with the book for context, for listeners and I have a sense we are going to go deep into the safety piece.

Jim Dethmer [00:05:00]:

Okay, great. Yeah. So you asked basically where did the book come from? Well, we say in the book, and I say all the time that the content of the book is not original to me. And Diana Chapman and Kaylee Warner Clamp, my two co authors, we actually got all of the content from our mentors and those include Gay and Katie Hendrix of the Hendrix Institute and Byron, Katie and Hale Dwaskin and a few other key influencers in our life. Lynn twist on what it means to have enough a chapter that we wrote Living from. So we apprenticed with Gay and Kendi, Gay and Katie, Diane and I did for a number of years and my wife Debbie as well. And we're deeply moved and transformed by a lot of their work and then, you know, tracking Hale Duaskin and the Sedona Method and Byron Katie and her work many, many years ago. And so they are really the essence of a couple of the 15. The book is about 15 commitments. So one of the commitments is basically all grounded in Byron Katie and one of them is grounded in Hale Dwaskin and the Sedona Method and then a handful of the others come directly from Dan Katie Hendrix. So that's where the content came from. What we offer ourselves as, and this is true, we offer ourselves as authentic practitioners who can report from the field what it's like to practice. And then second, we represent ourselves as communicators or almost more translators or interpreters of these principles and practices to hard edged organizational leaders. So most of the people I've worked with over the years wouldn't have any inclination to read the Sedona Method or Loving What Is or A Thousand Names for Joy or even some of Gay Hendrix's books or many of the other things that you and I have read and many of your listeners have listened to. So then I go into a place like Goldman Sachs and I talk to them about transformational principles of consciousness. We call it smuggling. We smuggle these principles and practices in and one of our gifts is the ability to do that, to show up in such an embodied way that we have credibility with leaders, whether they be startups or VCs or private equity people or large organizational leaders. So that's where we got the content, we're practitioners of it. We're also alchemists, we take some of this and some of that and make this. So we didn't invent salt and we didn't invent parsley, but maybe we came up with a recipe that might taste a little fresh that'd be the best I could do around originality. And I don't think I'm very original. I don't think most people are very original. And then we're really good communicators to our target audience. So that's how the book came about. And the genesis of it was that the three of us were friends and we wanted to co create together. So we got together and said, let's do a creative project. And the creative project that emerged was the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. That's how it came about.

Jonny Miller [00:08:56]:

That's beautiful. Yeah. I love the sense of smuggling these ideas in. And it's honestly how I view my own work as well. With the nervous system. Just before this, I was doing a workshop with 20 VCs and founders, and we were talking about nervous system mastery. And it's this energy of, like I think of it as like the righteous trickster where it's like you kind of frame it in a way that it lands with people or a Trojan horse, and then over time, things like seeds get planted. And I think there's a real art to that. And I definitely receive that from your work as well.

Jim Dethmer [00:09:31]:

Yeah.

Jonny Miller [00:09:35]:

Since we kind of started off with this piece, I'd love to hear from you to what is the role of embodied safety and maybe what is the role of nervous system resilience and capacity in this work of conscious leadership? And maybe it wasn't in the book. What are some things that are worth speaking to or worth sharing in that domain and in your journey as well?

Jim Dethmer [00:10:02]:

Yeah, we mention it in the book, but it's not a centerpiece, and there's a reason for that in the book. One of the models that we introduce early on is a model that we got from Michael Bernard Beckwith. And it's a model that I love of states of consciousness. And he talks about to me, by me, through me, as me, to me, by me, through me as me. And like all models, it's just a model, and it breaks down a pot if you put it under much pressure, but it's very useful as a pointer. So to me, consciousness is basically a victim consciousness. I'm at the effect of my experience. I'm at the effect of people circumstances and conditions. And we say that's where the vast majority of people walking around on the planet live. They live in a to me consciousness. And I'll correlate all this to safety in a minute, the next state of consciousness. And these are not developmental. So it's not like you move from being an infant to a toddler to a teenager to an adult. They're not developmental. They're more states of consciousness, though there is a developmental component to them. The next state of consciousness is the buy me state of consciousness. So now I've moved from being at the effect of to being a creator of my experience. So I'm self authoring so that I am living in a state of empowerment, and the shift from to me to by me is huge. And we say that the gateway to move from the first to the second is through taking radical responsibility for your life. Now, I say all that to say that our book is written to help leaders and their teams move from to me to by me. So we go deep into what is to me consciousness, really. Like, how does it show up? Because a lot of people would say they don't relate to victim consciousness at all. And victim consciousness victimhood is different than being an authentic victim. There are authentic victims in the world. We're talking about victim consciousness, and they wouldn't relate to that. But then when we begin to explain what it means to be at the effective most people live that way all the time. So if you ask them, how are you? And they say, I'm great. And then you say great. Tell me more. And they say, well, like in my case, I'm in northern Michigan. It's a stunningly beautiful day. It's 72 degrees. It's a crisp sky. I'm gazing out the window at a beautiful lake. My grandchildren are running around out there in all kinds of mischief and mayhem. So I'm great. Well, embedded in that, in those words is that the cause of my happiness, my well being or my joy is the circumstance of the weather, my family structure, so on and so forth. So in that statement, I'm actually in too me consciousness. Now, I happen to be happy. Just because I'm in to me consciousness doesn't mean that I'm unhappy. It just means that causation or the locus of control is outside of me. Now, if you ask me, how am I? And I'm in by me. I say, well, right now what I'm sourcing is happiness. Okay, how are you creating yourself happy? That's a very different thing. So I'm happy, but I'm creating myself happy, or I'm peaceful, and I'm creating myself peaceful. And you could say, what's going on? And I could say, well, it's a torrential downpour, and one of my grandchildren just fell and broke their leg, and my wife, their grandmother's at the emergency room with them circumstances. But I'm being in a state of peacefulness, by the way, that doesn't mean that I'm not scared. It's like in the beginning when you asked me what three words are here? And I said, there's some spaciousness and some anxiety and some gratitude. They often go together. It's just I'm not at the effect of my anxiety, and I don't believe that my anxiety is caused by anything external. It's in my consciousness. So our book is all about moving leaders from to me to by me huge. But then in Beckwith's model, there's also through me, which is all of a sudden, I'm not making myself the center of my experience. I'm choosing to play with the possibility that there's something going on in the world other than different than bigger than me. I'm in some sort of relationship with it, whether it's the quantum field or the universe or God or whatever you want to call it. And it is doing something through me. So this is a surrendered experience in life. So that's a whole different category. And I say all the time you have to have a self before you can surrender a self. And you have to have a differentiated self authored self before you can surrender a self. So that's through me. And then as me is a state of nonduality, a state of objectless awareness. It's the place where the subject object barrier breaks down. Okay? Now, most people who live in too me live in to me because they are in a threatened state. They do not feel safe. They actually are not safe. They are experiencing a threat to the core, wants of approval, control, security. And that threat could be the external circumstance or it could be just their thoughts, but they are not safe. And so therefore they are in a reactive posture. By the way, they're not curious if they're not safe. All they're interested in is surviving. And this is where most people live most of the time, no problem, it's just the human experience. And so safety for them is at threat and it's external. So when I move to buy me, and this is a radical notion, I start to play with the idea that safety is internal. No one and nothing out there can make me safe. I learn to safe myself. And that's a whole category. We could double click on that and go deep into what that means. But it's hugely important because once I start to learn how to safe myself and that there are no safe or unsafe people, there are no safe or unsafe circumstances, that's where most safety literature wants to go. And I totally understand it in a to me mindset. So you need things like boundaries and you need to be around safe people. I totally understand all that. And there's a wonderful way to be in the world like that. It's just that as long as you're there, you're always at the effect of people's circumstances and conditions. So now you move safety to the inside and you learn how to safe yourself in any environment. Okay? Then you start to discover if you keep moving into this deeper into threw me and asthma, you discover that actually you're not safe ing yourself at all, that safety is the natural state and you just forgot about it. You've just forgot forgotten. And so you don't have to safe yourself. Now you just simply and you here needs to actually be in italics. Now you simply just rest back into the safety that is always here. You don't have to create it and it can never be threatened. So safety in block one, it's an external thing. You're always trying to create safe spaces, safe people, safe relationship. I totally get it. I endorse that at one stage of development. Then you start to realize, wait a minute, no matter how hard I work at that, there's still a sense of threat on the inside. So what does it mean to source safety from the inside? To source approval, control, security, and oneness from the inside, not from the outside. Okay. Then my safety becomes imperturbable. And then when I start to realize through deep practice, I don't have to source it, it's always, always here. We could talk for days about those notions of safety, and I found them to be incredibly useful. So if you asked me about my journey to safety, it is that it started with safety was out there and I wasn't safe because I had a rageaholic brother, an alcoholic mother, and a father who sexually abused my sister. I was raised in a fairly dysfunctional family, just like most of us. Most of us are raised in meaningfully dysfunctional systems with meaningfully neurotic people. Most of us weren't raised by the Virgin Mary and Buddha. So great. So you're injured, you have trauma. No problem. No problem. So then I spent years learning how to architect a life that felt safer, great. Those are wonderful skills to learn. And then as I kept going on the deeper journey, then I started to realize that there was a different kind of safety that came from the inside that had nothing to do with my biography or my psychology or any of those things. And then as I started to explore nonduality, I found that that which is is already safe and can't be other. So that's quite a journey, right? You know about that. Most of the stuff that's written about safety now, I still think is written from that first category. A lot of the neuroscience and things like that around safety. It's wonderful, but it's really written from just the animal instinct of what we are being in reactivity to, being a separate human. We ought to be scared. We ought to be. But the spiritual path offers whole other things that aren't being dealt with largely from the great research that's being done. So I'll pause you're more of an expert on all that than I am. So what comes up for you when I say all that? Or what do you want to add to that or differentiate or question about any of that?

Jonny Miller [00:21:04]:

Yeah, well, I love that we've ended up going in this direction, and I've never heard anyone use the word like safe yourself before, almost like a verb. And that really unlocked something for me in my mind. And when I track back to my own journey, I remember someone shared a David Stenol Rest quote with me that it was, joy is the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens. And I sat with that for so I was like, what? It broke my brain in a very productive way. And even things like I used to do a gratitude practice where there's even a gratitude journal where you write down, here are three things that I am grateful for today, and they're external. Like you just said, it's like the world is doing something, therefore I am grateful. And so that there has been this contemplative exploration into finding the joy or the safety that doesn't depend on what happens. Some of the biggest breakthroughs for me, I remember one specific, it was called a breath translation. In this training I was doing where the teacher was guiding someone through a breath work journey and commenting on what he was noticing. And at one point, the lady being breathed took like a deep breath into her lower belly and her pelvic floor, and there was this deep sigh afterwards and her share afterwards. She was like, I realized I've spent 45 years of my life never actually feeling safe. And today I felt safe for the first time. And I was like, whoa. So there clearly is this embodied safe thing that we're able to do. And I think what I'm curious about is, was there a kind of a turning point or like a pivotal moment for you when you experienced, like, when was the first time that you saved yourself? What was that? Was it through meditation? Do you remember the experience?

Jim Dethmer [00:23:00]:

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, the motivation was that, again, I spent years doing what I would call the normal work. I went to ACOA adult children of alcoholics and al anon normal tracks that I am a big believer in. I think they serve a wonderful purpose in the world and years becoming a person who could set boundaries and so on and so forth and populate my life with safe people. So I did all that and I endorsed that for people. But then I noticed, even having done all that, the peace that I was experiencing was not stable. It was dependent. I spent years in the Christian tradition, was actually a minister for a number of years. So the Bible matters to me. I think it's filled with wonderful little phrases. And one of the things the Bible says, most people, whether they know the Bible or not, have heard this, that there's a peace that passes understanding or comprehension. This seems to be what the New Testament is offering. And it is this imperturbable peace.

Jonny Miller [00:24:17]:

I love that word. Great word.

Jim Dethmer [00:24:19]:

It's a beautiful word, isn't it? Or what you just pointed at, it's uncaused joy. It's not circumstantially derived. So anyway, I did all this external work and I was a hell of a lot better off, and relationships were a hell of a lot better, but I could tell the foundation still wasn't stable. So then I started exploring and probably the first gateway for me was the went to I read the book and then I went to like a nine day retreat with hale Dwaskin, and he was the first one who said, what all human beings seek is approval, control, security, and oneness. And we seek them because we don't realize that we already have them or that we already are them or that they already are. Now, that was the first time I heard that. And I think the Sedona method, it's a method, it's an incredibly simple one was a gateway experience for me because all of a sudden, it wasn't about what was happening in the now moment. People, circumstances, conditions, even my thoughts. It wasn't about know. The Sedona method, in its latest form called the Triple Welcoming, is just, can you just welcome what's here now? So could I just welcome the anxiety that was here when we started our call? Nothing to do about it. Could I just welcome it? And then you drop back underneath that, and you see what's it coming from? Is it coming from a wanting, a grasping for approval, control, security, or oneness? And then when you discover what that is, you don't try to get rid of that. You just welcome the wanting. And then the third welcome is, can you welcome wanting to make it all so personal identification. So it's just, can you welcome what's here now? Can you welcome the deep wanting, craving? Can you welcome identifying? Notice you're not trying to get rid of all. You're just relaxing back. Relaxing back, relaxing back. And the Sedona method was probably the first time that, as I did that, I thought, oh, my God, nothing has changed in the external environment. All I've done is let the natural uncaused joy, the natural peace that passes understanding, the natural imperturbability become more obvious to itself. And I did that practice devotedly for many, many years. And then, of course, when I discovered Byron Katie, what I found was somebody who said, okay, now if you want to go in a slightly different direction, all of this unsafety that you're feeling in life is because you're believing something. And if you question your beliefs the way that Katie teaches to do that through inquiry, you'll discover that the things that you think are so troubling are not troubling at all. Because in the inquiry, you'll discover that your beliefs you are not your beliefs. What you are is something deeper. So, again, that was in my mid so I'm 70 years old now. That was in my mid 40s or so that I began to explore those, and then those two, along with some particular kinds of meditation, became kind of the bedrock of this realization of what we're pointing at here. Yeah. And then someplace along that line, I moved my meditation from what I would call, like, a concentrated meditation, whether it be on the breath or on a mantra or anything like that, even beyond awareness meditation to more of a yokeshen kind of Mahamudra kind of thing. Locke Kelly, Sam, Harris are modern teachers of this who are very accessible. I think they're easy to understand. And so for now, many, many years, that's been my meditation. Although I really have found what they say to be true. I sit less informal meditation, and I practice more with many glimpses all day long to see the reality of what is. So does that help with those kind of the paths? And in the Eastern tradition, they do talk about the three stages of recognition. Realization, stabilization. That's good. The momentary recognition that, whoa, there's something here that is always here. And I taste it, so I recognize it. Then I realize that that actually is my state. And then progressively through practice or suddenly through enlightenment, I guess it happens to some people. It's never happened to me that way. There is a permanent stabilization. And then the last thing, I was kind of late to the party. A lot of my friends have been doing this for years, but probably in the last six or seven years, I started doing guided medicine journeys. I've probably done, I don't know, 15 MDMA, psilocybin ayahuasca kinds of experiences. And those have been fabulous because for me, many people use them, I would say, to deal with trauma. Yeah. So you're using them to heal. Some of that biography, some of that psychology. That's beautiful. That wasn't the primary thing. They were for me, they were primarily an instantaneous realization of the imperturbable, uncaused joy that I had always been playing with. And now I had a new set point. So those were useful for a period like they have been for so many in the spiritual path. So is that helpful? That's kind of how I have wandered my way into safeing myself and then realizing that there is no self to safe in the first place. It's actually the belief that there's a self that causes the great unsafety in the first. Yeah.

Jonny Miller [00:31:02]:

Oh, man. Yeah. That was so mean. You've touched on so many aspects that I was curious about, like the Sedona method I hadn't heard of until our mutual friend Steve Slaff mentioned it. She said, you should ask Jim about the Sedona method. And that's beautifully simple. I think one area that I'm very interested in, and I've been researching and writing about emotions a lot recently, and I'm wondering how do emotions fit into this? And are there certain times where I've had experiences, for example, where some huge feelings, let's say grief or shame or anger are kind of moving through, but there's not actually a conscious belief or story that's that's present for me. It's just my body's doing something. It seems to be completing some kind of memory, something that happened, and I'm just witnessing it. What's the way to ask this question? Has this been a conscious part of your practice? Or have you just noticed that big things have shifted as you've been asking yourself these questions or going through this triple welcoming kind of process? For yourself. Perhaps the question is, how has your relationship to emotions been a part of this journey?

Jim Dethmer [00:32:17]:

It's been central to it. So I love the topic. So let's continue to work with this frame of to me, by me, through me, as me, because it's useful here.

Jonny Miller [00:32:31]:

Great. Yeah.

Jim Dethmer [00:32:33]:

When I'm in to me, when I'm in that at the effect of consciousness, then I am at the effect of my emotions. So my emotions sad, angry, scared, joy, sexual, creative emotions, they come on me and they have me. So you know you're there because of a couple of things. One, you speak with a predicate. Nominative, I am angry.

Jonny Miller [00:33:04]:

Anger is coming through me, or I'm noticing anger.

Jim Dethmer [00:33:06]:

What a difference. Yeah, totally. So that's true linguistically, but it actually feels that way. There is no differentiation between me and my anger. They are one and the same. Second I feel controlled by my anger. It just came upon me, and now it's got me. So that's a to me experience again through deep practice. When I move to buy me, then, like we said, you safe yourself. Then you can start to play with I am angering myself. How are you doing? I'm scaring myself.

Jonny Miller [00:33:49]:

I like that.

Jim Dethmer [00:33:50]:

How are you doing? I'm sexing myself. Sexual feelings are here. The cause of them are not something outside of me. They're in here. And then it's so fun because then I can ask myself, how am I angering myself? Well, what you discover is you're angering yourself because you're believing something about reality. I'm angering myself because I'm believing that driver shouldn't have cut in front of me in traffic. So now you're taking radical responsibility. So how are you? I'm angering myself. How are you angering myself? I'm believing they shouldn't have cut me off in traffic. Okay, great. I could teach you how to anger yourself the same way. Or how are you doing? I'm scaring myself. How are you scaring yourself? Well, we didn't get our next round of funding, or the markets are down, or we didn't pass some test. We're doing great. I'm believing something about reality, and I'm using my belief to scare myself. Well, that's a hell of a lot different than just being taken over by it. Now you realize you are the source of it, so now you can start to deal with it. And we talk about the cognitive emotive loop when it comes to feelings. So emotive is the emotion. Emotions are energy in the body. They're just sensations. I'll get to your experience in a minute because yours is a different experience. They're just energy in the body. So then we teach people. Well, when anger's here, what does it feel like? Well, it feels like tightness in the jaw, heat in the front of the face, tension in the neck radiating down to clenching of the fists. Great. So it's that energy. All it is, is a set of sensations in the body. Can you learn to just be with the sensations, not try to get rid of them, just be with them. Because if you let the body do what the body already knows how to do, it will feel the energy and release it in a very short period of time. It comes in waves. It might come back. Yeah. So that's the emotive side. Then. The cognitive side is deal with the belief that you're believing that is causing the feeling. He shouldn't have cut me off. So that's why you do inquiry with Byron Katie. So you feel the feeling in the body, it releases. Then you do inquiry around the belief, and all of a sudden you discover that you're not at the effect of your feelings. All right, now we go one step further. So do people who rest in uncaused joy feel anger, sadness, and fear? In my experience, the answer is yes. Absolutely. The difference is well, there are two differences here. One, they're still humans with Amygdalas, and they're still bouncing through the world.

Jonny Miller [00:36:52]:

Yeah.

Jim Dethmer [00:36:53]:

And so stuff emerges. So the last maybe month or two, when I do my sitting, I'm noticing a meaningful amount of what I would call angst. It's a combination of yearning and aching and anger and fear. It's a whole thing in there, and it's pretty damn intense, okay? And I'm not holding myself out as an enlightened person. I'm just a pilgrim on the journey. But I don't start asking the question, why am I feeling this way? To me, that is a complete waste of time. I just give my full presence to my body and let it have the experience while feeling the spaciousness that's in and around the angst, while resting as that which allows everything and is yet unaffected by anything. This is what you're talking about. So you're just moving through life, and periodically a wave just comes through. No problem. You just ride the wave. And what I say to people is when you start to play in this realm, you wouldn't want feelings to go away because they are so damn delicious. I love it when my heart breaks, when tears roll out of my face, when my chest quivers. It's like the fullness of life, and I don't make it mean anything. It's just heartbreak. I don't know whether I'm feeling my heartbreak or your heartbreak or our heartbreak. I don't care. Heartbreak is part of aliveness. Well, then, if you said to people who are like that, if you could take a pill and just live in total humming peace all the time, would you? I'd say, Hell, no. I want all of the technicolor of life. I just don't make it mean anything. And there is some wisdom in a feeling. So let's say a wave of what you would call anger comes through your body, okay? You just delight in it. It's hot, it's heat, moves through in 10 seconds or 30 seconds or 90 seconds. Then you could ask yourself, is this anger here to show me anything? If you're not real attached to being righteous about your beliefs, still anger is the energy that says stop. Something here isn't of service to the collective, to me, to you. So anger is often just intended to say, hey, let's stop for a second. Fear is inviting us to pay attention to the unfamiliar. Sadness is inviting us to grieve loss. Joy is inviting us to celebrate. Sexual energy is inviting us to create. So they do bring a beautiful wisdom. So again, long answer to what feelings are like when I am angry to I feel angry to I'm aware that anger is here. Anger and awareness are not separate. Anger is just a vibration. I delight in the vibration and I open to its wisdom. Something like that is the journey. Does that map to your journey?

Jonny Miller [00:40:48]:

I noticed myself actually feeling like tender. I think for me, the gateway drug, let's say, was grief. Actually, I experienced very intense, tragic loss in my twenty s and six months in somewhere around that I noticed myself feeling this raw aliveness and beauty and connection. And I was confused because I was like, I'm supposed to be miserable, I'm supposed to be listening.

Jim Dethmer [00:41:22]:

Shit.

Jonny Miller [00:41:22]:

And it was actually this incredibly invigorating enlivening experience. And that I think sparked my own curiosity about the full spectrum of other emotions. And one word that really stood out to me as you were speaking was the word aliveness. And that's been something that I think is actually underpinning what it is that I'm teaching and what it is that I'm attempting to become a student of myself. And what I'm trying to learn is actually cultivating, not even cultivating aliveness. It's like exploring the barriers to the intrinsic aliveness. Like you were saying, maybe that's a direction I'd love to take. This is what are some of the most common barriers to aliveness that people might not even realize are there?

Jim Dethmer [00:42:16]:

What a good question. By the way, I want to double click on something you just said. You're in the midst of this deep grief, this tremendous loss, and there's heartbreak. And then you said in the midst of it, not separate from it. As that was going on, you also felt a sense of tremendous connection and tremendous aliveness. One of the things that's going on in our world today, and we see it, especially with leaders, is they're avoiding grief, they're avoiding heartbreak. And here's the shorthand that you just illustrated with what you're experiencing in your own life. There is no depth of connection apart from grief. Now, we can have some amount of connection, but the great depth of connection that we're yearning for, whether it be connection with the oneness or connection with the creation or connection with another, the gateway to that always includes broken heartedness and grief. I say to leaders all the time, if you don't allow your broken heartedness, your people will never feel your heart. And yet leaders are trained not to feel fear or not to feel brokenheartedness, and as a result, people never fully trust them. So I love what you just said about that. Okay. The whole subject of just before we.

Jonny Miller [00:43:52]:

Move, it reminds me of I did a walking tour with David White, and something he shared with me was this idea that even the most average human existence includes everyday heartbreaks. And I think that really opened me up to this. I'd also say that it felt like it, at least in my experience, was that it increased my capacity to love on the other side as well. And it's been remarkably liberating, I think, in my experience.

Jim Dethmer [00:44:22]:

So beautiful, heartbreak, grief, if you will, carves your heart deeper and deeper and deeper. So there's more and more capacity to love, because there's more and more heartbreak. Again, if I go back to my you know, one of the great descriptions of Jesus was that Jesus was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. There are lots of words you could have used to describe this. Probably an enlightened being. How about that? A person of sorrows acquainted with grief. Well, that's what gave him the capacity to love so profoundly. And if I piggyback on what you and David were exploring, the more you allow yourself to experience everyday grief, everyday loss, if nothing else. When you sit and you watch a beautiful sunset, there's so many things that are occurring, but one of the things that is occurring is an ending with no promise of a beginning. This is what people no guarantee of a beginning. If you really get present to a sunset and you allow yourself to imagine, this could be the last sunset I will ever see, because there's no guarantee that I will have breath tomorrow when the sun rises again, then there's a combination of incredible gratitude and incredible heartbreak. This could be the last time I ever look my wife in her eyes. This morning, we do our morning practice. We were together, then she took off on her day off with the grandkids. That could be the last time I ever look her in her eyes. That could be it. Well, if I don't allow myself at some level to feel that, then I can never fully feel the love that I have for her. So this is what it means to live an undefended life. I don't know David White personally, but long ago, god, I don't know many. Probably when the heart aroused first came out, I went and listened to him at Northwestern in Chicago, where I was living at the time, and I thought, this guy just understands the soul. He just understands the you know, as I've read him and listened to him over the years, he just is my judgment. I don't know that he could be a fraud, as far as I know, but at least what I experience of him is he just chooses to live an undefended life.

Jonny Miller [00:47:25]:

Yeah.

Jim Dethmer [00:47:26]:

He just chooses to let his heart break over and over again. And then you talk about full aliveness again. At least what he writes about is what full aliveness is. And so that subject is deeply interesting to me. I say to people all the time, what are you willing to risk for full aliveness?

Jonny Miller [00:47:53]:

It does feel like a risk, doesn't it?

Jim Dethmer [00:47:55]:

Oh, my God. Isn't it?

Jonny Miller [00:47:58]:

Yeah.

Jim Dethmer [00:48:00]:

So you said, what are the blockages? Well, there are many, but here's one. Here's a real simple blockage to Full Aliveness. Just don't live a candid life. Don't reveal, don't risk being fully revealed, and it will dampen your aliveness. A gateway to aliveness is tell the truth, all the truth, nothing but the truth. Don't hide, don't manipulate, don't spin. Tell the truth and you will be fully alive. Now, it'll be as chaotic as hell because we've all made kind of a contract of bullshitting and not telling the truth, of being societally nice, right? Of pretending there are so many others. But one of the key gateways to full Aliveness is risk revealing yourself, authentically all of your judgments, all of your thoughts, all of your feelings, all of your wants and desires. Most of us withhold a million things, and then we wonder why we're not fully alive and why we don't have alive relationships. So there you go. Just practice radical candor and see what happens to your aliveness.

Jonny Miller [00:49:28]:

Firstly, I really feel the aliveness in your voice and as you're describing this, and it's almost like you're kind of communicating exactly what it is that you're speaking about, which I love. And there was like a skeptical part of me, and I'm kind of imagining the listeners as well who are like, I'm not going to reveal everything to the strangers on the street. Why would I do that? And also, it's maybe not clear what is the connection between revealing things that are uncomfortable to I'm fine, I'm fine. Going around not revealing everything and just keeping to myself. I feel good for people who don't see that connection. What's the mechanism there?

Jim Dethmer [00:50:11]:

Okay. God, I love it that you're bringing the skeptics voice in here because it needs to be in this conversation. Otherwise we run dangerously close to some sort of woo woo fest or spiritual bypass or a lot of other things. Okay, so before we go to the extreme of revealing everything to the stranger on the street and how's that connected to aliveness, by the way, I love it that you said that, because that's where most people go, what are you talking about? I'm supposed to walk down the street revealing everything to the stranger? I say, don't start there, start at the other end of it. So it's not hard for people to do this. I say, just think of someone in your life that matters to you. Okay? So now we're not talking about the stranger. Now we're talking about somebody in your life that matters to you. Now, think about and you can start at this level. You can think about think about lying to them or think about somebody in your life that matters to you, that you lied to. So start with a lie. And by the way, I like the research that says 97% of all people lie. And it's very possible that the 3% are just unaware because lying is simply a way that we try to safe ourselves.

Jonny Miller [00:51:32]:

Right?

Jim Dethmer [00:51:33]:

Interesting, isn't it? In other words, if we believed that we could be safe revealing everything, we might consider it. But we lie because we don't feel safe. The proverbial one that I use all the time is your significant other says to you, how do I look in this outfit?

Jonny Miller [00:52:00]:

Right?

Jim Dethmer [00:52:04]:

And let's say you have a judgment about how they look, which you would because you're a human with a mind that judges. Now you're at the choice point. Most people who don't reveal authentically at that. You look great when their real judgment is that's not flattering, actually, the way it's cut. It accentuates part of your body that aren't the most attractive part of your body or that color doesn't make you light up. You can look kind of washed out in that color. They don't say that. Why don't they say that?

Jonny Miller [00:52:44]:

Because they're afraid of potential disappointment, conflict, short term discomfort on the other side.

Jim Dethmer [00:52:51]:

Yes. They don't feel safe. So lying withholding spinning is designed to control other people so that we can feel safe. What we're trying to do is we're trying to control our partner. When they ask us how do they look, we're trying to control their reaction because we don't want them to get upset. Partially because we care about them, but meaningfully because when they get upset, they get upset at us. So we don't reveal authentically in order to manage and control another person so that we can feel safe and stable. That's just kind of the human condition. No problem. It's just what we do. But what you want to look at is go to where I was before. Imagine you actually lied. You come home and your partner says, how was your day? And you say, My day was okay. What'd you do? Well, I went to two meetings with these people, and then I played pickleball with these guys, and then I came home. And what you didn't tell your partner is that you had coffee with an old friend. So it's a lie of concealing. Or they say, what did you do this afternoon? You just bold face lie. Think about what it does to your feeling of aliveness. This is what I want people to track. Does lying increase your aliveness or decrease it? Now, again, this is pretty simple, Johnny, because unless you're a sociopath, you know that lying decreases your aliveness. It increases your adrenaline because you're scared to get found out. Most people can't tell the difference between a surge of adrenaline and being truly alive. That's why we're so hooked on adrenaline and dopamine and stuff like that, because we don't know what authentic aliveness is, but it decreases my aliveness. And what does it do to the aliveness of the relationship? It destroys it in the moment.

Jonny Miller [00:55:08]:

Do you think that's because it's bringing up shame is shame?

Jim Dethmer [00:55:12]:

Absolutely. So, again, unless you're a sociopath and you lie by either a lie of omission or commission, you're going to feel healthy guilt, and you're going to feel healthy shame. Healthy shame. The sense that you are finite, that's the healthy shame. You're not infinite and healthy guilt that you have violated your own internal standard. Okay, no problem. But then you double click on shame and guilt, and you don't know how to move it through you, and that starts a cascading effect that blunts your aliveness and blunts your connection with your partner. It blunts your intimacy. Okay, so I'm illustrating the extreme because everybody wants to start with, well, am I supposed to walk down the street talking to strangers? No, don't start there. Just stop lying to people close to you in your life. A great teacher on this is Brad Blanton and his wonderful book Radical Honesty. I spent some time studying with Brad and his team. He's just a wild cat man. He is a wild cat because he does speak honestly to strangers, and I've been with him when he does, and it's actually kind of a beautiful thing to see, but all he'd start out with is just stop lying. Like you asked me at the beginning of this, how am I? Well, how does that work with most people? How are you? I'm good. Fine. Most people don't take a breath and check, so they're not aware, so they can't be candid and real. Okay. So I say if you just start telling the truth again, your significant other says, how do I look in this outfit? And you say, okay. First thing I notice is I feel scared. I'm having the thought that if I tell you what I really think, you're going to get upset and you're going to close up and go away, or you're going to get angry and you're going to criticize me. So the first thing I want you to know is I'm scared. Now, having said that, I want to have an authentic relationship with you, and I want to tell you about me, so I'm going to tell you about me. My judgment is you don't look good. It's not a good outfit for you for the following reasons, and I'm well aware that that's not a statement of reality. It's a statement of my perception. You asked me about my perception. I'm not giving you an absolute dictum on how you look in that outfit. I'm just telling you the way I see reality on Planet Jim, and you said you wanted to know, so here you go, and imagine that your significant other goes, I am so turned on right now. I just want to make love with you right here, because what I crave most deeply in life is an intimate, authentic, revealed connection. And you reliably give it to me. Thank you. Or they say, God, thank you so much. And I notice I feel scared because we're going out to this party and I really wanted to impress people, or what you're saying about it doesn't accentuate the parts of me that are best. That's really good, because I noticed I've been in a lot of shame and self judgment about the fact that my waist is starting to expand, and I don't have compassion and acceptance for that. So that's what's true about me. Now. Your authentic reveal becomes the gateway to a buddy breathing deepening of our intimacy by authentically revealing. How does that work for Full aliveness? What does it look like if you stop hiding from your manager at work and you say, hey, I want to tell you that I'm not feeling deeply engaged at work. And what's happening now is people don't have these difficult and hard conversations. They just ghost people. They just literally quit. And because it's an employee centric world right now, you can probably find a pretty good job, but they don't know how to be candid and say, you know, at our last review, I was deeply hurt because I didn't feel like you saw the work that I was really putting in and you actually gave credit for some of the work that I was doing to my coworker. And so I noticed I was hurt, and I got pissed off, and I started having fantasies of resigning, and I don't want to do that. I want to tell you the truth about where I'm really at, and I want to be fully engaged here, and I'm going to start by being fully engaged with you again. If all we're measuring is aliveness, aliveness goes up. But there is no aliveness without risk. There is no aliveness without fear. They go together. This is why aliveness junkies, adrenaline junkies, they put themselves at the edge all the time because that's where they feel alive. It's a shame, because they can't feel alive just looking at a flower. They have to maximize the risk in order to finally feel alive. These are often people who have massive trauma in their life, and the only way they can feel alive is to do something that is certifiably life threatening, but it still is illustrating the same point that we're making. You got to get to the edge. Well, one way to get to the edge is tell the truth. Another one is sit silently. Just the opposite. You want to feel fully alive. I say to people that I coach sometime, take 25ft of rope, go out into the forest. Put the 25ft of rope in a circle. Take a gallon of water, some bug spray if you're allergic to mosquitoes. No journal, no phone, nothing. And sit by yourself in the circle for 24 hours. Remove all numbing devices. You can't journal, so you can't mentally masturbate into your journal. You just have to be in total isolation. Again, you will feel alive. There are all kinds of ways that we numb ourselves from our Full Aliveness. You feeling your heartbreak. When you went through your grief in your 20s, you could have numbed that.

Jonny Miller [01:01:32]:

Johnny almost did.

Jim Dethmer [01:01:34]:

Yeah, you could have couldn't. You could have numbed it by working. You could have numbed it by drugs or alcohol. You could have numbed it by looking at screens all day. You could have gone into all kinds of denial, but it would have killed your aliveness.

Jonny Miller [01:01:47]:

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. The reason that I ended up doing a Vipassana and plant medicine journey pretty soon afterwards, and it was specifically because I'd seen adults, people often, I think late 40s, who had experienced loss, and they were like this husk of a human. There was no life force. And I saw that, and I was actually terrified because I knew I had this capacity to basically numb. That's what I've been doing for the last and it's funny you mentioned the adrenaline. I surfed big waves. That was my fix. I got the kicks from wipeouts on like 15 foot waves, and that was where my aliveness came online. So it's really interesting what you share. So something's coming up for me, and again, it's interesting you mentioned Brad from Radical Honesty, the guy that's living with us right now, he was the CEO of their company for a few weeks. So we've been talking about them and their practices, and something he's been sharing with me has been this kind of practice of clearing withholds. And I know that this is a big part of what you teach, at least that's what I've read. And it also strikes me something that's kind of practical. So for people who are listening and being like, okay, this sounds maybe they're bought in. Maybe they're like, okay, I'm willing to kind of take a risk. How do you actually go about it, practically? And do you schedule clearing sessions once a week? Because it's one thing to say, I'm going to be radically honest, and like you said, it also requires that embodied safety. And I think that can kind of take deliberate containers at times. What would you recommend for someone kind of to create that space and begin exploring this in a way that was like not way outside their window of tolerance, not just going to kind of shut them down right away.

Jim Dethmer [01:03:43]:

Got it. Beautiful. The first thing I recommend, if people are interested, like they listen to this conversation, they go, I really am interested in full aliveness. I can see that there are places in my life where I'm not revealed, and I can see how that's affecting my aliveness. They're interested. The first thing I say is, see if you can find one or two other people who are willing to play the same game with you of revealing. So you create a co committed relationship where you're going to practice together. This is incredibly important because back in the day when Este was around and landmark, I think, has wonderful technology. I've never been, but a lot of times what I think people experience there is they go to a workshop and they learn about getting into integrity. And so they pick up their phone and they call somebody and they get into integrity. In many cases, that was incredibly useful and powerful and great. But here's the deal. The person you're calling hasn't made the decision to play the same game, right? Like, let's say you're in a relationship with somebody and you're playing ping pong. So you play ping pong. You have a ping pong table. You got ping pong paddles, you got a ping pong ball. There are certain rules that govern ping pong. DA DA, DA DA. You go away to a conference, a workshop, you go away to a radical honesty workshop, and now you come back and you decide that you're going to be radically honest. Well, what you're saying is, I want to play lacrosse. Lacrosse has a ball. Lacrosse has a field. Lacrosse has an instrument, not a paddle. And all of a sudden the person goes, what the fuck is going on here? Now, they don't know how to say this. They don't know how to say, we agreed, often unconsciously, to play ping pong. You go away to your highfalutin workshop or you read a book or you listen to Johnny's podcast, and all of a sudden you're wanting to play lacrosse. You know what I mean? And then the person goes, if they were honest, they'd say, that's not actually very fair for you to unilaterally change the rules of our relationship, right? I think you're better off to come back to the person and say something like this, hey, I read a book, I listened to a podcast, I went to a workshop, and I heard about lacrosse. We're playing ping pong, and I love ping pong, and I've been playing ping pong. I was co committed to playing ping pong with you. And then I heard about lacrosse, where you actually share withholds and I want to know if you would be willing to consider playing lacrosse with me. Now, this is real important because I've walked hundreds and hundreds of people through this. If you're willing to consider it, here's a book you can read. Here's a podcast you can listen to. Here's a workshop you can go to, because I think when you come back from a workshop and then you try to play lacrosse and the person's playing ping pong, it often turns into a mess. If you say to them, Would you play lacrosse? And they go, yes. And then you try to teach them how to play lacrosse, that often doesn't work because they haven't enrolled you to be their teacher.

Jonny Miller [01:07:20]:

Right? Yeah, totally.

Jim Dethmer [01:07:22]:

So give them radical honesty. Give them Brad's book and say, read this, or go to radical or whatever. There are a million of these things out there. And then if you decide that you want to play this game, then we'll play the game together and we'll toddle at it like we'll be toddlers. Neither of us are experts. We'll give it a try and we'll fall and we'll mess up and we'll have fun and we'll learn together. But we are co committed. This is what happens. Let's just stay with radical honesty since we brought Brad and his gang into the thing here. When you go to a radical honesty workshop, first of all, you were motivated because you signed up. Something intrigued you. Once you get there, you are in a co committed environment. Everybody has signed up to play the same game. Now, that's actually not true. There are always some outliers at those things who usually get identified as outliers, and sometimes they get asked to leave, but they're identified as outliers. That's okay. But the majority of the people there are playing the same game. So you get to practice together. You're not weird. That's really important because in order to learn the value of sharing your withholds, it's good that you have a good experience. Good meaning you did it and it was okay. You did it and you felt safe. You did it and you saw that it increased your aliveness and your connectivity. Then you're motivated to try it again. So this is long winded, but it's really important to me. First, if first practical thing is create a small group. It doesn't have to be hundreds. It can just be one other learning partner that you're going to practice with, and you're going to meet for ten minutes a week, and you're going to practice revealing to each other. And all of these places have very simple tools like I'm having the thought that and you just say that to each other. I'm having the body sensation of I'm having the feeling of so you could reveal a thought, a body sensation and a feeling, and you just go back and forth. Like if I did it with you, I look at you and I go, I'm having the thought you're handsome. Wait. I'm having the body sensation of a dry mouth. And I'm having the feeling of excitement. Your turn. Thought body sensation feeling.

Jonny Miller [01:09:53]:

I'm having the thought of the time I'm having the body sensation of sweaty armpits. And I'm having the feeling of enjoyment.

Jim Dethmer [01:10:05]:

So we could just go back and forth practicing, and that's a safe, friendly way to do it. Then if you have some people who want to play the game. With you, then how to reveal on our website, actually, we have a three minute video on how to do a clearing by revealing. It's a little cartoon. It's real simple. It's from the nonviolent communication people. They've got a really good, simple way to reveal with people who want to do this. So that's what I'd say about simple practices. And it's real simple. It's just, hey, I notice I have something that I thought about that I want to tell you, but I'm scared. Would you be open to me telling you?

Jonny Miller [01:10:58]:

Yeah.

Jim Dethmer [01:10:59]:

Great. Then if you're open, here's what I want to tell you.

Jonny Miller [01:11:03]:

There's one more thing that comes to mind here in the sense of and I think this almost feels like a risk or a pitfall in that someone might come back from even this podcast, let's say. And there is a part of them that almost wants to change their partner and is almost like, it's not going to be okay. You can read this book and you'd better agree to it. Otherwise, how do you avoid that? Almost like attempt to manipulate the outcome.

Jim Dethmer [01:11:35]:

Great. So there's not going to be somebody who's going to listen to this podcast. They're going to be lots of people, hopefully, because they've sourced their happiness outside of themselves, right. And they believe that if their partner was different, they'd be happier. So they're still trying to change people in their life so they can be okay. And now their latest way they're going to try to change them is through candor. The thing before that was, let's go do an MDMA journey together. And the thing before that was, let's do Kundalini yoga. But it's all about trying to change their partner. Yeah, well, it doesn't matter what modality you're using. If you're trying to change, fix, improve, help your partner, most partners are going to get reactive to that. They're not really interested in you trying to change them, so you're better off to be self aware enough to go. I went to this cool workshop on candor, and I'd like to practice candor so that you will be different, because I believe that my happiness is dependent upon you being different. I haven't learned how to source happiness from the inside. I still think that you're the key to my happiness. So I'm just going to continue for the next years trying to change you so I can finally be happy. Would you be willing to let me do that? Because that's what's really going on. And if the person were honest, they'd say two things. First, they'd say, Go fuck yourself. And then the second thing they'd say is, thank you for saying that because I've been trying to do the exact same thing. I've been trying to change you.

Jonny Miller [01:13:27]:

Oh, man, that's so good. That's so good. It's like painfully on point, isn't it true?

Jim Dethmer [01:13:35]:

One of my mentors, I forget who used to call that the two ticks on a dog view of a relationship. So we're both ticks, we're bloodsuckers, and the relationship is the dog, and we're trying to suck out of the relationship a sustenance that we don't have on the inside.

Jonny Miller [01:13:58]:

It's like a brutal analogy for what's going on.

Jim Dethmer [01:14:03]:

It is. And again, we don't need to feel bad about that. That's just what humans do.

Jonny Miller [01:14:10]:

It's just like welcoming that. Like this, too. This is arising. This is here.

Jim Dethmer [01:14:14]:

Bingo.

Jonny Miller [01:14:15]:

Yeah. Wow. So I have a few rapid fire questions that I would love to run past you, and I have literally pages of notes of other things I was going to talk to you about, but this direction has been totally perfect. So five rapid fire questions, and then we will and then we will close.

Jim Dethmer [01:14:35]:

Okay.

Jonny Miller [01:14:37]:

Question number one. What has been the most transformative practice or principle in your own lived experience?

Jim Dethmer [01:14:46]:

Well, now, when I look back over the arc of these 70 years, the most transformative principle would be, I am not my next thought, and neither are you. You are not your thoughts. Which begs the question, well, what are you? Which starts the great inquiry. So that would be the most transformative principle, and then the practice would be various practices that help me experience that I'm not my next thought or I am not my next feeling. I am not my thoughts and feelings. Then what am I? So then a whole set of practices that allow me to actually test that every day. So, again, if you want to get very practical, I just recommend to people that they sign up for Sam Harris's Waking Up app.

Jonny Miller [01:15:42]:

It's fantastic.

Jim Dethmer [01:15:43]:

Do it ten minutes a day, every day for 30 days. I mean, I love headspace and I love calm and all those, but I actually think that what Sam is up to is a different thing. And if you do that for 30 days, for ten minutes, that would be a practice that helps you experience the truth that you are not your next thought and you are not your next feeling. And then you're free. Then you're free.

Jonny Miller [01:16:08]:

I'd almost like to see a meditation rebrand. It feels like two very different I agree.

Jim Dethmer [01:16:14]:

I totally agree with you. There's a different way to think about this and a different way to rebrand it.

Jonny Miller [01:16:19]:

Okay, so question number two. If you were to add a 16th commitment to an updated version of your book, does anything come to mind?

Jim Dethmer [01:16:28]:

Yeah, it's great. You can imagine. Most people don't ask if you could add a 16th. Most people go, okay, so you wrote a book called 15 Commitments. Who the hell needs 15 Commitments? What are the three that really matter? They want to take out twelve, not add one. I don't know that I have a 16th. I think it's not because, like, they're the Ten Commandments or something like that. It's not something ridiculous like that. They just say everything that I know how to say, especially if you go deeper into them in practicing the through me and as me stuff that we're talking about. Because the book is largely written to move people from to me to by me. And my work now is mostly helping people experience through me and as me. So there's probably another book to come out around what is through Me and asthma leadership.

Jonny Miller [01:17:21]:

Right. So maybe it's like repeat one to 15.

Jim Dethmer [01:17:24]:

Yeah. And do it deeper.

Jonny Miller [01:17:27]:

Yeah. Okay. What is one experiment that a listener can explore to create more aliveness in their relationships?

Jim Dethmer [01:17:38]:

In their relationships? Okay, well, need I say try revealing? If you don't like that one, try deeply listening. Most people don't deeply listen to the other. And if you deeply listen and by deeply, I mean listen with your head for their content, listen with your heart to feel them and listen with your gut to sense their deepest want or longing. If you listen to somebody from those three centers with deep intentionality to get them for two minutes, say to your significant other, how was your day? But then when they start talking, listen to them differently, you will experience aliveness in you because of the way you're being with them. Meaning you'll be more alive because you're totally present. And by the way, they often respond with much more aliveness because most of us never get listened to. So that would be a practice I would have people do. A real simple other one would be you want more aliveness? Do shared breathing practices, do eye gazing. I don't recommend doing eye gazing with your manager at work unless you do. Some cultures could do that. So I don't know who we're talking about here in terms of partners, but revealing and listening you can do professionally or personally.

Jonny Miller [01:19:19]:

Yeah, love that. And then last question. What is your greatest aspirational hope for your coaching and the conscious leadership group in the years and decades to come?

Jim Dethmer [01:19:32]:

Well, I really believe we can be free. Like really free and alive and aligned with our creative brilliance. And so many of us spend so much of our time trapped in drama, in our own minds and in our relationships professionally and personally. So my greatest hope is that some of the tools that we have taken from others and offered to the world would be of service to as many people as possible so more people can be fully alive. That's my greatest hope. That's what we're up to. We just want to give it away. Give it away. Give it away. Give it away so more people can be alive. Or if you want to say it the other way, to end the suffering of suffering. Suffering is part of being human, but the suffering of suffering, that can end. So it's something like that is my greatest hope and dream. And that's what I do. I don't coach much anymore, but I always have three or four people that I'm coaching. And all we do is explore aliveness and what's getting in the way of their aliveness. That's all we do.

Jonny Miller [01:20:52]:

Well, thank you so much, Jim. This has truly been a real pleasure. I actually feel a lot of aliveness in my body just having listened to you in the last hour. For listeners who would love to learn more, what would be some of the links, some of the resources, some of the places that we can direct them to? And I'll include them all in the in the show notes as well.

Jim Dethmer [01:21:14]:

Yeah, just go to the Conscious Leadership Group. The website is conscious. C-O-N-S-C-I-O-U-S is. Conscious is and it's filled with resources. That's part of what we want to do. We open source most of our stuff, so you can click on any of the 15 commitments. It'll give you a meditation to do, it'll give you handouts, it'll give you practices to do. So there's so much there for them to go get. And then if they want more than that, come to one of our events, get coached by one of our people to help you really explore this stuff. Join one of our forums, bring us into your company. You can do all that stuff, but start by just going to the website and see if it lights you up.

Jonny Miller [01:21:55]:

Yeah, and I really recommend people do this and also the book as well, which is read by you, which I really appreciate, the audiobook version, and I'll include that in the show notes as well. So I.

Jim Dethmer [01:22:33]:

Favorite questions because I think it's such a great gateway for people to ask is what is actually here now? The mind hardly ever wants to explore what's actually here now, and what's here now is always okay. So I'm disciplined around that. What is actually here now? There are very few things that are ever actually here now, and they're always okay. So that's a wonderful question to explore.

Jonny Miller [01:23:06]:

Yeah.

Jim Dethmer [01:23:07]:

You you're welcome. Johnny, great hanging out with you, man.