I Found the Secret to a Great Life

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Automatic transcript, lightly corrected for names, with profanity masked. Some passages may contain transcription errors.

Welcome to Inner Circle. I'm joined here with Kevin D'Alls from

. Maybe my single biggest pet peeve in life is

to be honest or not be honest with. And for me, the process I find a place where I'm out of alignment. What am I going to do about it? I think I came out of the womb with just this rigor and inability to tolerate I just wrote down the word rigor while you were talking, because when I think about the . So rigorous and that's what I love about you, you're so rigorous about seeking truth and to me that's

when I know the, ability. But that's not what you're talking about. Because you are the one who planted the idea, which

truth. But the truth is there are multiple truths. Now I'm I'm not one of those people who's believes like everybody chooses their family of origin and that has proven to be uncomfortable for the my parents my siblings, you know they would much rather I not talk about that. And it is

where these two truths come like I am dedicated to sharing my story but I feel a moral obligation almost to put this I'm not totally on board with that. I can't quit my work. It's a non-negotiable for me. I'm deeply dedicated to the craft and I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing and I don't want to hurt my

that's not a solvable thing. There's no black or white. They have merit to what they're saying. We wish you wouldn't talk about this. ait that. We have to figure out how to walk that line. but when I talk about dissonance, I could go into it and be self-righteous and be like what I'm doing is more important than your feelings. what I'm doing is not more important than their feelings. Both have to coexist and I have to a man, that hits home for me, dude, because what comes to mind, and I think a lot of people who are listening to this this will connect with this is one of the central

struggles of my life's has been my relationship with my father., and for years and years and years I� just chose to ignore it because I couldn't reconcile the fact that. on one hand my father was this amazing, incredibly intelligent person who gave me these incredible gifts, some of which I inherited some of which I observed, but at the same time in many ways he was an absolutely awful father, he made some terrible decisions, he spent a big chunk of his life, which is something something written about before and this idea for me of holding two trues at once is a game changer for that because I think we can honor both of them. It is just true that in

that in many many ways my dad was a terrible father, he made a lot of terrible decisions that had consequences for our family that continue to this this day and at the same time in a certain way he, he was an amazing one-of-a-kind individual. And both are true. It really helps me to recognize I think this idea that truth is nuanced and people are complicated, situations are complicated and you can hold two trues at or at the same time. Yeah, on my side I actually had an objectively great childhood. I always knew I was safe, I always knew I was loved, my parents were amazing, hardworking people. And you don't get out of childhood, you don't get out of reason kids alive.

There's things that are imprinted on your kids and a lot of that shaped my relationship to money. And I think what's hard is that doesn't take away from the fact that I had a really great childhood.

You reached out. You got help. You've had coaches. You've had shamans You've had all this stuff. You've read the books. And yet you came to some of the same conclusion. So because you You've actually done the research. I want you to go first like what What are some practical things people can do back to your original point about the whole point point of this podcast is to help you live a great life. truth seeking is foundational to that. What is Mike Brown recommend in terms of how to be a truth seeker. Yeah. Okay. So I think there are two places where we experienced dissonance. Number one is dissonance within the the self right internal dissonance and then number two is external dissonance dissonance between what I believe about myself and how I show up in the world. Right. So the first one I'll tackle is internal dissonance meaning I know something to be true

and I'm not going to act on it or I'm not going to do anything about it. So a great example is this relationship or this job is no longer serving me and I'm in an untenable situation. I was 15 years in a marriage that wasn't working. I just said yeah this isn't really working for me but I'm okay. Like I'm good. Well that was a huge gap of dissonance and really maybe the foundational place where where I truly stepped into this process and and said okay we've got to do something different here. Right. So number one is admitting to yourself and then taking a step to close that gap. And by the way you know I've talked about that before that step could

be terminating the relationship it could have been taking steps to what's not taking steps to heal it. What's not okay is leaving the gap. Right. Correct. And that's it. So it's this process of closing gaps. I actually came to the table with my ex wife with both solutions I said hey let's either burn. This down and start over and build something meaningful and go to therapy and do the work or let. Let's high five and be great co-parents. Like you know whichever one of those you are up for but we can't do this anymore. Right. And then who I who I believe myself to be be on the inside and then how I'm showing up in the world. And so many of us have a view or have an opinion or even have truth internally that we don't necessarily communicate to others or we don't show up in congruence.

Right. The process for me becoming a true seeker is first of all where am I lying to myself. And then number two where am I lying to the world. Wow. You know what I love about your answer is it starts as all things do with the man in the mirror. And because it's funny is because like you know you see people like you know you and I spend a lot of time on X and people always have a hot take on the political topic. And yet their own lives have incredible dissonance you know they're criticizing the government or the Democrats or the Republicans or whatever and their own that there's so much dissonance in their life. And I find like in everything. Step one is always to go into the bathroom look yourself in the mirror and say am I being honest

with myself. That's the place to start. Totally like where am I out of of alignment. And you. You know I also think and this might sound like I'm speaking out both sides of my mouth but I think one reason people are afraid to be honest with themselves is that they're afraid that then they're going to have to take the action the next day. Right. And the example I often give is like if I don't like where I live if I admit that to myself now I gotta go to put it for sale sign in in my front yard. That's not what it means at all. What I'm hearing from you is disconnect the truth from the decision making and the reason

that's powerful is because the fear of the decision keeps us from recognizing the truth. Wow that's that's the banger from this show that's really powerful because the reason I kind of glommed onto that is because I do that all the time. The fear I fear the consequence of recognizing the truth. I'm practically honest about not about what's not working here. You know, as entrepreneurs we're often so biased toward action and problem solving quickly. Like if I don't like where I live I don't have to necessarily solve that today. But I can be honest about okay I don't like this situation. Cool. I'm going to change it someday and now I can go through the cost benefit of when and how that takes shape.

It's a lot of money because the example of like where you live there's a good one because I live that one for so long. It's like I lived in Dallas and I hated it. But I in a way wasn't willing to talk about it because I was afraid that then I would have to call my own bluff and so you end up painting yourself in a corner and like you say things like no it's actually great here like so family oriented and great dining scene and b*******. No admit the truth which is like it's not a fit for you and move to Boulder which is eventually what I did. Unfortunately I was 47 years old when I did it but better late than never. Yeah totally and you know the other thing is when you start becoming a true seeker when you when you start recognizing dissonance and eliminating that dissonance in your life the quality of your relationships gets so much better

right. You know again we suffer in our relationships because we're not willing to name the thing that needs to be named. And so what do we do we you know we grow resentment right we put distance between people we slowly fade away you know which is one of the one of the terrible way to end a relationship the thing that's creating a dissonance between us and then we can work on solving and by the way may not be solvable like like some of the situations we talked about before but we're not living in the dark. Let's bring it into the light. I'm going to highlight that one too because that one also rings you know true and close to home for me a big turning point in my marriage when we were struggling a few years ago was this idea that like I couldn't be my true self in my marriage at least I felt that way

and that's a recipe for disaster I think you know in a relationship you know putting those truths on the table about who you are what you literal that's the only chance you have to sustain because otherwise resentment just builds and builds and builds and so I love this idea of like get the truth on the table get the truth about yourself and for your own issues get the truth about your relationship on the table and then the decisions come after that right is like there's lots of things there's lots of things that can be done but I think you know don't let your fear for example of what if this blows up my marriage don't let that keep you from getting your truth about your the relationship on the table.

Yeah and this is it is that you know building a great life is the process of putting things in alignment. This process of alignment is this radical truth seeking this radical self-honesty that that we're talking about and it in so liberating to start going to start going through this process and for me once I started this like I couldn't unsee it then I just saw all of these areas that were out of alignment in my life and I went through and systematically eliminated the dissonance it took almost a decade. Yeah it is liberating and the metaphor that comes to mind is pulling a thread on a sweater and you know once you start speaking truth the more you pull that thread the more truth comes out and then you can't stop and I think that's maybe that's a good place to stop here is this idea that it just starts with like looking yourself in the mirror and being truthful about all things especially yourself

and identifying that dissonance and doing that as a step before feeling compelled to even take action on it. That'll come, but a start, start with just you know telling the truth like searching your soul telling the truth about yourself your relationships, your work your the place you live you know everything and go from there. the quote that comes to mind is from Greg Lamont one of my favorite quotes was it never gets easier you just get faster and that's the reality the truth seeking path is not an easy one but for me at this point in my life it's almost a reflexive almost like it's just like an automatic thing well it's didn start off that way I had to go through a 16 year marriage that wasn

which you figured everything out and you've arrived. You know it sounds silly to even say it but we all implicitly kind of believe that that part of the gold in the rainbow exists and it just doesn't the struggle never ends. Therefore, how do you embrace the struggle starting with truth is a heck of a way to embrace the struggle. Yeah, absolutely. This is a great one we could we could jam endlessly on this one but I think it's a good place to leave it, which is you know recognized it's just like a workout right your first day in the gym is going to be a lot harder than you know six months from now, but you got to start somewhere and and then you can start collapsing those gaps in a much quicker way.