Ashley Judd and Ted Klontz

[00:00:00] You know, that's really all that's required is people feel safe in my presence and that they feel encouraged to love themselves When people say what do you do is my job is to help you learn how to love yourself again

[00:00:15] I'm Courtney Martin and this is The Wise Unknown. I want you to bring to mind the most grounded person you know Who in your life keeps the main thing the main thing whose advice do you actually find useful?

[00:00:37] Chances are that person isn't making a living as a quote-unquote wisdom figure. They're your barber, your neighbor, a crossing guard They don't have a million followers on Instagram We live in a world that increasingly puts particular people up on a pedestal and pays them a lot of money

[00:00:54] To at least pretend they've got this thing called life figured out better than the rest of us But I wanted to talk to people with two feet firmly on the ground

[00:01:03] People that the folks in the pedestal actually consider the real sources. I wanted to meet The Wise Unknown So I asked seven famous people to introduce me to the wisest person

[00:01:15] They know that no one has ever heard of and then I kicked the famous person off the line and talked to the source Today we are lucky to have actor activist and perpetual scholar Ashley Judd Fueled by her Christian faith and her strong matrilineal lineage

[00:01:33] She has done so many very public very brave things in the last decade All along the way there has been a proverbial Man behind the curtain an advisor who has helped her find her courage today. She's pulling back the curtain for us

[00:01:49] Meet Ashley Judd and coach financial expert and Tennessean Dr. Ted Clontz Hello Ashley, it's so good to see you. It's good to see you too Courtney So introduce me to this wonderful man with you

[00:02:06] You guys have the pleasure of being in a studio together which is wonderful not all of our guests have that capacity So I'm excited. Yeah, so tell me about Ted. Dr. Ted Clontz is

[00:02:17] My wisdom teacher we've been walking together since 2002 or 2003 whichever year it was it was highly auspicious And I trust him with my life How did you all meet? Well, I have my version of it Ashley called me and she was Interested in proving the quality of a relationship

[00:02:36] She was in and if I could just get the person she was in their relationship with to change how they were Everything would be okay. And I said I suggested that perhaps since the partner wasn't calling me

[00:02:50] That we could take a look at her part in it and she was somewhat stunned by that like I'm not sure I have a part but if you're telling me that's the only way you're gonna work with me. Okay, you know, I'll

[00:03:03] Pretend or you know, let's go with that and their relationship developed from there And I recall my introduction to Ted was that there was someone in my life whom I loved very much but with whom I had a strange relationship and

[00:03:18] We had difficulty with boundaries and just all different kinds of those Traditional challenges that come from being in a family where there was a lot of love but also intergenerational dysfunction and I

[00:03:32] Experienced her as changing in ways that felt really good. And so I said to her, what are you doing? You know, I'm really appreciating the improvement in the quality of our interactions

[00:03:42] And she said well his name is dr. Ted Clontz and I said could I have his phone number? When I approached had I didn't know whether or not I needed a new chair for my desk or to leave my marriage And he said let's start with the desk

[00:03:54] Practical wisdom and very deep wisdom I've seen that he's been described as the people whisperer And Ashley, I wondered if you could say something about does that resonate with you as a description of Ted?

[00:04:05] And if so what do you see that as meaning? You know, I think that Ted over the years has metabolized So much education. I remember you telling me when you were writing your dissertation your advisor said stop

[00:04:16] You know, I'm not gonna pass you if you write one more page And that is indicative to me of your passion for Neuroscience for the latest information your evidence-based data informed have all the bells and whistles with your pedigree and Yet it has metabolized and distilled into gentleness

[00:04:36] Into gentleness. That's so beautiful I would comment on that by saying that I believe that everything that we all want is In our nature already and just like the horse whisperer takes the natural what it means to be a horse and

[00:04:53] Allows that horse to do things that never thought it could do or was capable of I think the same thing is true about people and Primarily that comes from helping people listen to themselves in a non-judgmental way that allows them to accept themselves

[00:05:10] I coined a little term. That's another thing I do. It's called a winter And it stands for war is not the answer either inside nor outside and the more we make peace with what it means to be a human being

[00:05:25] The more peace comes out of us into the world and to the other people too So that's really how I would perceive it in the Tool really is what I call exquisite listening. I just I love the phrase exquisite listening. That's so beautiful

[00:05:43] I want to shift in a way that I think some people would see as an opposite, but I actually know There is a congruent relationship between these two things you all are talking about gentleness

[00:05:55] One of the things I admire so much about you Ashley in addition to your brilliant brain is your deep profound courage You are a silence breaker You're one of the people that you know allowed the Harvey Weinstein case to blow wide open

[00:06:08] And I think people sometimes juxtapose gentleness and kind of the fierceness But I'm guessing they're very related for you And I just wondered if Ted if you could speak a little bit about has Ted played a role in that your ability to break silence

[00:06:22] Well, I'll let Ashley talk about the effect the one thing that I remember from the very beginning Ashley would say here's what I'm thinking about she would offer two or three different things and I said to her

[00:06:37] I'll listen and if there's anything I think that will kill you. I'll let you know But otherwise choose one and you're gonna learn something and that's that's pretty much been the quality of our relationship Yeah, I've heard Ted say so many times whatever you do you'll learn something

[00:06:53] I remember when I was preparing to run for the Senate from Kentucky against Mitch McConnell and Ted was with me you know chief advisor and all the meetings at DC all of it and I was staying at a hotel that overlooks the White House and I just kept

[00:07:11] Gazing out the window and I began to weep and I wept for three days leaking tears and of course Ted practices this in addition to exquisite listening just Presence embodied presence and was just with me and witnessing me and you know

[00:07:29] We all need a good listening too is one of Ted's colleagues and my other mentor Teni McCarty says and eventually I said to Ted. What are you hearing me say? What are you hearing me say?

[00:07:40] And Ted said I'm hearing you say from the deepest part of yourself. It's too much too soon And that was reflecting back to me the experience that I was having from the deepest part of myself

[00:07:57] You know and then more was revealed because a young person in my family about a week later Needed a safe place to stay in the county judge You know gave me custody of her and I ended up homing her for nine months

[00:08:09] And so it worked out for a variety of Unforeseen reasons and I believe that's the reason why I didn't run But Ted has given me the courage to I'm gonna cry Believe in myself in ways that require no external validation

[00:08:29] No external validation because you know think about it Some people just regard me as an actor Carl Roeve was already taking out attack ads and putting them on the YouTube and

[00:08:38] Saying I was an airhead and you know people might think it was just a dalliance right just a fling with the public where I was saying oh, I'm gonna run for office how you know She's trivializing public life and then she dropped out of course

[00:08:52] I was very serious about it and I'm still serious about public life and the welfare of our country And it wouldn't have been proper service to anyone had I done that if I wasn't ready in my soul

[00:09:04] And that's what Ted helped me recognize. That's beautiful. Oh, I'm so excited to hear more From you Ted even though I know your preferred mode is probably to be the listener not the talker So Ashley, I'm gonna kind of proverbially kick you off now

[00:09:20] I'm just so grateful to you for doing this and both of you for you know opening up this beautiful Connection that the two of you have great. Yeah so Ted It's so wonderful to meet you

[00:09:34] I've been spending time with you on the internet and reading your words and kind of soaking up Who you are through them, which has been really wonderful

[00:09:42] Tell me how you felt when Ashley said she'd chosen you for this interview when I said who's the wisest person you know Actually tears came to my eyes They're sort of coming to my eyes now I don't see myself as a wise person and that

[00:09:59] She would be able to see that part of me that I probably Discount a bit much. It was just that profound moment of Wow of recognition of a part of me that I'm not aware of or you know I don't operate in that world going well K

[00:10:17] I'll put my shirt on the wise guy, you know, it's gonna go out in the world and it's pure as wisdom kind of thing I think it's a I think it's a way of being really not something that anybody would do and to have that recognized

[00:10:30] You know, I had my granddaughter said to me not too long ago when I was just sitting Watching her read and I said well, I think I'll go and she said oh, please stay please stay

[00:10:42] I have to go to bed soon and I looked at her and I said Okay, so but I don't quite understand. She said it just feels so good when you are here and it's like okay That's all I okay end of life

[00:10:56] That's you know, that's really all that's required is that people feel safe in my presence and That they feel encouraged to love themselves One of my when people say what do you do is my job is to help you learn how to love yourself again

[00:11:13] Because until the age of two and a half or three in our culture We don't believe there's anything wrong with this because there's nothing actually wrong with this but then we start getting all kinds of messages from the outside world that we don't quite measure up and

[00:11:27] Within a very short period of time. We don't need people from the outside world to tell us We're not okay We've already internalized that message and I believe that's the core of the issues that are the biggest in our culture today

[00:11:41] People who love themselves do not hurt people People who love themselves do not hurt people. There's some wisdom right there. That's beautiful Another thing I think we start to do it at two and a half and as we keep moving along as we pin things down

[00:11:56] We name things We create stories around them and I was reading some of your writing about the danger of that I actually want to read it because it's quite beautiful You said naming anything or anyone has its advantages it also has its significant costs

[00:12:13] Can you teach me a little bit about that the advantages and the costs? Yeah, so imagine a color wheel those kinds of wheels that have Every shade of color a 363 wheel we take one of those segments and we say that's you or that's me and

[00:12:31] Suddenly the other 259 parts of who we are Lose sight we lose sight of that and we focus in on that and it's helpful Okay, I'm blue, but I'm also red and yellow and green and all those other things

[00:12:47] And it's very difficult to keep my mind open about that Sometimes people say oh you're such a kind person or I feel so safe with you or whatever and what I'm aware of

[00:12:58] Is I can create that I can also create an environment where a person feels terribly unsafe It's important for me to know Everything that I can be because people see that if my wife says to me you're being selfish

[00:13:12] It's like I'm sorry. You're able to see that part of me. I'm sorry You're on the receiving end of that rather than say I'm not being selfish. You're the one being selfish You know, it's that's the danger as we see ourselves and we see other people in

[00:13:25] Very small segments when we're actually at 360 degree color wheel So when you're working with people when you're doing that exquisite listening, how do you sense the difference between a narrative that is healing someone versus a narrative that's boxing them in I Wish it was hard

[00:13:49] But the situation they might approach me with tells me all I need to know They'll say things like I can't get rid of my anxiety or I'm battling in my depression or you know

[00:14:01] I'm working on this part of me or whatever and that's all I need to know about the quality of their relationship with that part of them So it's not hard to it's not hard to discern that it's whatever the complaints are really and

[00:14:15] So the work becomes help them begin to understand that this part of them is an ally. It's not an enemy It may be distorted because it's been ignored so long that it has to get so big like Shrek inside Shrek

[00:14:30] There's this little character that's so loving right but he's had to create this Largeness in himself just to get attention and that's how I perceive and that's how I see all of us human beings You have written a lot about money

[00:14:50] Which I think people who are listening to this and don't know anything about you up until this point in the conversation would not think oh We must be talking to a financial advisor, which I know is not your title

[00:15:00] But when you look at the books you've written, you know, you you have written a lot about money and I just love to hear more about that Why money? Yeah, well, I always say I haven't written the book that I want to write yet

[00:15:12] But the money stuff came in and it became a thing right and it all started when I was trying to Understand my own behavior around money and the only place I knew to start is I'm not doing what I want to do with this

[00:15:25] I am not crazy. I am not stupid There's not something wrong with me even though that's you know the common message there's something else going on and There's something below the behaviors that is driving my behaviors that makes logical sense

[00:15:40] You know like I grew up the very first money lesson I learned was if you're quiet and you're a good boy people will notice and then they'll give you money Hmm, and that I chose a career that did exactly that Do a good job be a good boy

[00:15:55] Don't make noise and people will notice and they'll give you money. That's called being a school teacher How'd that work out for you? Well, it's a little more complicated than just being good right and

[00:16:08] Really good. I mean there are really really really good teachers out there who like me Dedicated every inch and every moment of their life to being a teacher And I got paid as much as the person who came in and said you kids be quiet for 10 minutes

[00:16:24] I'll show you the movie for the next 40. So that's how it worked out. Yeah It also strikes me hearing you and Ashley talk about, you know intrinsic worth and Not needing external validation that money is sort of the D place in our current society

[00:16:42] Where all of that plays out so in some ways given that that's one of your magic powers with people It would make sense that Money would be you know the setting in which some of that would play out, right?

[00:16:54] I call that world of chasing the houses and the cars and Power and all that kind of stuff. I call that the authentically inauthentic world. Hmm, right I mean the roles we're playing we are playing them

[00:17:07] With our whole heart, but that's not all of who we are and we know that and that we've coined a term for that Called the imposter syndrome. I Know I am more than what I appear to be and I don't like big parts of that

[00:17:24] And that means the part of me that I'm at war with, you know And our secret fear is there's going to be a crack in the foundation

[00:17:31] And people are going to discover who I really am and then I know they won't like me or the fear is that they won't like me And our culture has this drive to maintain this

[00:17:42] So we have um, I think it's four billion dollars a year and making me look younger or slimmer or whatever Because that's a part of the message. We're not okay the way we are

[00:17:53] Have a friend 10 month old baby girl and I said has she seen the mirror and they laughed and I said She loves the mirror every time she sees herself in the mirror. She kisses herself, right?

[00:18:04] And uh, I just had that like when do we lose that? When do we start seeing that we're not okay? That little girl Knows that she's the perfect manifestation of the divine. She has no doubt about that

[00:18:17] And uh, we live in a culture that convinces us that that's not true Um, well the other thing money does that I have seen my own kids respond to so Dramatically and it makes so much sense

[00:18:30] Is it separates us from other people? Right, you know, we live in Oakland and we drive around and they see unhoused People and you know, my six-year-old says how does this make any sense that we can't share

[00:18:42] So that people are housed she said to me the other day I like everything about being alive except for the fact that some people don't have houses

[00:18:50] And the phrasing was so interesting to me because I felt like it was it was that indication that you speak to a young innate sense of Yeah, and that voice will never go away That question she asked herself will never go away

[00:19:04] And that will become a part of her fabric and because we don't have an answer that makes any sense She'll make up an answer to make that make sense. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. I've never thought about that before

[00:19:18] You said something so important which echoes my experience so distinctly of That a lot of adulthood is about coming up with answers to justify Various things that your little kid self was not okay with and actually, you know that it was right and true and

[00:19:33] Deep to not be okay with so do you think as we try to kind of think about what is wisdom because it's such a fuzzy word, right Is that maybe one clue as to what wisdom is that it's not telling yourself a big story?

[00:19:48] You know kind of adult rationalize these little kid questions that were actually wisdom You know, that's exactly it. I can't tell you exactly what the it is. I'm talking about but that's it

[00:20:00] The wisdom is we develop our own answers to that that makes sense to it for ourselves What we tend to do is we take in the rationalizations from the rest of the world like a your daughter would ask that question

[00:20:15] And you go well, here's why and she stopped thinking about it then if I were a great parent having a great day I might say that's a really interesting question And I would really encourage you to keep asking that question and hear what feels right to you

[00:20:31] I'd have to be having a great day But as a parent that's the kind of thing to encourage is you will come into your own wisdom about that Once we know something on the inside

[00:20:41] It doesn't really matter so much what the outside said it always matters a little bit But we've all had a moment in our life when we go I want to do that I want that and it makes no common sense

[00:20:53] And everybody says you can't do that like what do you think you are but there's something on the inside of us that just blows right through those Imaginary stop signs. There's an inherent wisdom and there is no external wisdom That can ever match that

[00:21:10] You know what is hard for me about what you said even though I know it's right is Telling her to keep asking the question or even telling myself my little girl self to keep asking the question

[00:21:21] Is that it feels painful. It's so hard to live in a world That's So Unequal and so violent and you know, I know this is part of what animates ashley too is her Deep conviction that it could be another way

[00:21:38] That's a great awareness that we quote dispense wisdom To ease our own discomfort Even when we have questions about it my grandson asked his father at the age of three talked to me about death What's death?

[00:21:51] And my son said I wasn't ready to answer that question. I was I was thinking maybe 13 He might ask that question and he said I found myself going right back into saying things that I don't even believe Okay, we're going to pause here for a quick break

[00:22:06] Back in a minute We want to hear from you the wise unknown listeners. What's your key takeaway from this week's episode? You know the thing that you'll share with your partner as you're falling asleep tonight

[00:22:23] Or maybe right on a sticky note and then probably lose somewhere in the growing chaos on your desk Is that just me? Anyway, record a little voice memo and send it to us at the wise unknown 7 at gmail.com

[00:22:39] Tell us your name and where you're from and what you think the lesson of this episode is We are going to talk through all the nominations from our awesome audience in the eighth and final episode We may even use your voice on air and even better

[00:22:53] We're going to pick seven of the most resonant lessons and make a poster with collaborator artist wendy mcnaughton Thanks for listening and learning alongside us. You're so awesome Hi, i'm adam grann and you may know me from the podcast work life as an organizational psychologist

[00:23:14] I know that sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to question the way we've always done On my new show with the ted audio collective Rethinking I talked to some of today's greatest minds about how they see the world

[00:23:25] From scientists to artists people from brunet brown to lin-menwell maranda to mark cuban And explore the assumptions they challenge and the mindsets that fuel their success find rethinking wherever you listen I noticed that you had a parker palmer book in your

[00:23:44] Books that you recommend folks read and he's a dear friend and mentor of mine And actually my youngest daughter the one we're talking about has a middle name parker named after him

[00:23:52] Awesome, and he has written this thing that I think really speaks to some of what we're talking about He says the insight at the heart of non-violence is that we live in a tragic gap

[00:24:02] A gap between the way things are and the way we know they might be It is a gap that never has been and never will be closed If we want to live non-violent lives, we must learn to stand in the tragic gap faithfully holding the tension between reality

[00:24:15] and possibility So I wondered if you could just speak to that what tragic gaps do you feel like you stand in and how do you relate to that concept? I had a lady that Died a little bit more than a year ago and her daughter said to me

[00:24:31] It's really too bad that She did not know how much she was loved And I said exactly exactly It's a tragedy that the world is constructed in such a way that we're taught that we're not okay And to me, that's a very powerfully painful situation

[00:24:55] That is not necessary. It's necessary to be in our world in You know the production and making money and all that kind of stuff I believe it's an essential part to make sure people do not listen to themselves

[00:25:09] Do not know themselves and I think it's left to the poets and the philosophers and people like parker To ask the questions that we all know are there And don't have the convenience or opportunity or the space to even ask those questions

[00:25:28] I remember um really transformational moment in my life was I was once again Like I created this thing. I loved it everybody loved it and I didn't want to do it anymore

[00:25:39] And I was listening to this man. She said Ted, you'll never be satisfied. What's wrong with you? And um, I was talking to my wife and I said that and she said, you know, Baby, I think it's called growth

[00:25:50] It's like oh my god, you know that changed my life that just that one statement Where I was doing all the criticizing on myself and I I think it's you know, I think it's all about that

[00:26:01] There's nothing wrong with what's going on. There's nothing wrong with the thought it may be distorted It may be covered up and you know the thread we need to take the mud off of it But you're an expression of the divine just as everything else is

[00:26:16] All other people are All the plants are all the animals are all the rocks I mean, it's just like everything is a manifestation of the universe You know, like why do we think we're the exception? One of the exercises I have people do is I

[00:26:34] Send them out in the wilderness and with a piece of paper and I say I want you to write down all the flaws that you find out there, right? And some people come back with this list and they go

[00:26:46] Uh, you know, I this tree was falling down and but actually I saw other life coming out of it, right? And um, the only flaws I saw were human beings have ripped things apart and some people get this They come back weeping and like why would we

[00:27:02] human beings be the only exception Why well, it serves a purpose if we hate ourselves then there's a whole bunch of things we can be easily controlled around I love that exercise makes me laugh. I think it would make me laugh and cry

[00:27:16] But it does make me laugh to hear about it I've read your beautiful piece about how invasive questions can be And I said to myself I'm going to try to do the whole first part of this conversation without asking even one direct question and I have failed at

[00:27:35] Mr. Blea, I think I maybe got one out without asking a direct question Which I just find so funny. I had this playful idea But I thought you know, I'll just talk to him and I will avoid asking questions

[00:27:46] And then I'll ask about this but I asked you a million questions So I have you know worshiped at like the altar of questions direct questions I mean open-ended questions but direct questions for you know, 20 years of my life

[00:27:57] So I really want to learn more from you about that. Tell me How you think about questions Well, I had a hunch Maybe about 30 years ago But now the research is really clear that when you request information we have a stress response

[00:28:13] We don't know it but we have a stress response and we begin to close down and you know We do things that we do when we are stressed Any question can be turned into a statement and I say should be

[00:28:26] Back in the day we had to learn in our English classes to diagram sentences And to diagram a question you have to turn the question into a statement before you can diagram it And just has a very powerful effect. And I think Some of the

[00:28:40] Things that are attributed to me is that's become habitual for me Like I have a sincere here. Please tell me more about that or You know, I need to know or I want to know or you know, whatever and i'm offering myself up

[00:28:54] And that makes the person i'm requesting information from to feel less Attacked or less anxious or whatever really quick story I had been preaching this for a long time And I was doing a conference and this guy interrupted because I was teaching people how to do this

[00:29:10] And he stood up and he raised his hand and he said I hate to interrupt But I got to tell the story and he talked about how the first time he heard this

[00:29:16] He thought it was BS. He thought he'd go home and try it with his 12 year old daughter And he said that was seven years ago and we have the most amazing relationship now ever And I attributed to never asking her another question

[00:29:28] Whatever I wanted to know I made it in a statement for him and then he sat down And uh, like like well okay. Yeah in my least wise parenting moments I'm saying what happened here who did what to who what are you feeling?

[00:29:42] You know and and with your lens on i'm thinking gosh, of course that's not effective It's like the inquisition. I really need a master class in this or there's a story here Yeah, tell me tell me the story. Tell me tell me what happened here

[00:29:56] I fear i'm really gonna need to work on this but that'll be a fun adventure Hopefully to get a whole new set of tools and thank you for that Um, one of the things you've also said that I think I could use a master class in is

[00:30:09] How often adults or you know people try to fix each other rather than relating to each other I wonder if you could talk a bit about that distinction There are several things that you can do to curate a conversation

[00:30:22] I mean to keep it from expansion and one of them is oh, I can really relate to that That's one of the things the other thing is to offer advice right and the subtle part about this is when people Say hey, what do you think I should do?

[00:30:35] We think they really want to know what we think they should do right and they do too And the whole idea is to help them run into their own wisdom And or run into their own powerlessness

[00:30:49] I always say give them your best advice. All right, so you want to quit drinking go to 12 step meeting Well, I can okay. They're not really ready for advice, right? If they go great

[00:31:00] Got it. I'm on my way. They were ready for advice, but two out of 10 times people are actually ready for advice The other eight times what they're really wanting to do and needing to do is to talk through it And I say tell me what you've already tried

[00:31:16] you know Tell me what you're already thinking about What would you tell me to do and with that third one about 80 percent of time? They laugh because they go okay I know what I need to do right and thank you for the advice. I often hear that's like

[00:31:32] Okay, but you're you just gave it yourself. You didn't know that you had that wisdom in you, right? And eventually they get the idea that they have a wisdom inside of them

[00:31:44] That they've been programmed not to pay attention to not even to believe that they have the wisdom And that's part of what I think my job is my job is to help you learn how to love yourself and also

[00:31:56] To help you tap into your own wisdom your own intuition Their own sense of here's what's right for me kind of thing Did you have an exquisite listener in your life that modeled this for you? No

[00:32:10] So this is one of those skills that you earned because you had the opposite Yeah, and I think it came out of an absence or a deficit of Never feeling understood or heard and judged and and

[00:32:25] You know all those kinds of things knowing that this isn't right and I never stopped searching for the curiosities of life So yeah And there's a lot of teachers you mentioned parker palmer

[00:32:36] There are a lot of people especially in the crisis of my life that I might not have known personally But their work is like oh, yes. Okay. Okay. I'm not the only one Here's a person who's three or four steps ahead of me

[00:32:48] And they literally are the hand that I hold on to as I'm trying to Find my next steps and my next way out And do you find you need that relational experience of someone else? Exquisitely listening to you mentioned your wife and her beautiful

[00:33:04] phrase like baby, that's growth which I love so much Or can you do that for yourself because you've practiced this so much? Yeah, we need three things We need information about how do I listen to myself? What does that mean?

[00:33:25] You know the roomy palm is the basis of my work the roomy palm the guest house and it starts out This being human is as a guest house Each day a new arrival A joy. I love that part. He talks about joy first a depression

[00:33:40] A sadness and he goes through all the emotions You know the idea is how do I become a good host to that? So I need information about how to do that Then I need time to do that time alone to do that to listen to myself

[00:33:55] And the third thing I need is a witness And that witness does not give advice Does not lecture does not ask questions. They just say thank you Thank you for being willing to share with me what it means for you to be a human being around this

[00:34:17] So we need all three of those things and I have in fact, I just had breakfast with him this morning I have my guy. We don't do so much processing

[00:34:25] But every once in a while he'll say have you listened to that part? It's like I want to ring his neck but you know, he reminds me of okay, you've got the tool and you know how to do it and

[00:34:36] You know, I talk to him every month and then every once in a while I have breakfast together. So yes I'm relieved to hear that you sometimes want to ring people's neck too because you're so

[00:34:46] So gentle and loving that it's it just normalizes it and on that note I want to ask is there anything that comes to mind when you think about what's a really unwise thing that you've done well

[00:34:59] Jumped to a conclusion about what somebody's saying before I find out what they're actually saying Words are a terrible way to communicate especially from the depths of the soul I mean we fumble right

[00:35:13] The other thing that's true about listening is we listen least well to the people closest to us and I am guilty of that and part of that is I don't want them to think too deeply about what's going on because at the end of the day they may

[00:35:27] Decide that I I'm not the person they want to be friends with or married to or you know, whatever And that's not a conscious thing. That's a subconscious thing. So not listening in various forms

[00:35:40] I can listen much better to strangers actually one day my wife said to me I'd like for you to pretend like i'm a client And I thought oh my i'm so sorry she has to do that. I am really glad she hasn't given up on me yet

[00:35:53] I'm afraid my husband feels the same way to I'm very much appreciate that I have to ask this. I wasn't planning on it, but I think one of the things I sense from you is Just this total absence of ego in a way that's

[00:36:10] Extremely unusual writ large and I think extremely unusual with someone who's a you know white male of a certain age It just feels like wow like what happened your ego. Did you burn it up in a campfire somewhere or something? Like I just don't even

[00:36:26] I know you have to have enough Belief in the usefulness of what you're doing to pin things down in the way you do sometimes like your ideas You know these three things that people need and these practices you're teaching people all of that takes a healthy ego around

[00:36:38] Just knowing you have something to share that could be useful But I feel an absolute absence of the other kind of ego that feels so present so often Where did it go? My first thought as you asked that question was

[00:36:53] I don't know that this is true, but I'm just making this up the more ego I have The less sure I am of who I am And the less at peace I am with who I am and ego defends the roles I play father husband Author you know

[00:37:13] presenter and the more I'm attached to that The more I will defend that and the less I'm attached to that because I know myself like what is there to be Egotistical about like I I'm no better nor no worse than anyone else

[00:37:29] I'm not an authority on anything except. I think I do know how to help people fall in love with themselves I think I do know how to help people reduce the level of warfare that they're waging against themselves And those are just

[00:37:43] Tools and techniques and I didn't invent them. There's a common way To love people and to have them love themselves And there are many means and methods and tools to get there

[00:37:55] And I think one of the things that I can do is I have a unique ability to to take the really complex things And tournaments is sort of a simple picture that helped people understand the bigger questions The other thing that's an anti-ego thing is the failures Yeah

[00:38:11] Two more questions one is I feel I can sense that part of your ability to help people fall in love with themselves is your relationship to time like there's a slowness and a gentleness And

[00:38:25] I'm imagining just the huge gift of time that you give people who you listen to In a world that moves so quickly Wondering if you can talk a little bit about your relationship to time

[00:38:37] Yeah, as you were saying that I pictured a kaleidoscope those things you look through and you turn and The slower you turn it the more detailed that comes out

[00:38:46] And as ashley said, you know, one of the favorite things is what people need most is a good listening to as they discover themselves as they uncover themselves as they scrape away the garbage that's been thrown on who they believe they are um Yeah time

[00:39:04] Well, I just cannot thank you enough. I feel like this time with you has been such a blessing truly the most deep Definition of that word and I can completely see why ashley has been so blessed by you and so many have been blessed by you

[00:39:21] So I feel very grateful to be one of them and To get to share your essence. I hope people can feel it over the audio format because it really is quite a gift

[00:39:31] So thank you so much. Well, I appreciate you for the gift of the opportunity and I want to let you know that I've learned as much from ashley As she may have learned from me all my clients

[00:39:43] They just remind me of what I don't know yet or what I've already known. So thank you The wise unknown was made possible by the Reese foundation where kyle Reese is a force for good An iron collaborative which just gets wisdom way better than almost any foundation

[00:40:05] We know the show was produced by the amazing gold arthur Our associate producer is Jessica martinez de haas and our sound engineer is eric gomez Our music is by public school teacher and musician kumar butler And our art is by the indomitable wendy mcnaughton