Living in the Amazon Jungle: What Shamans in Peru Can Teach You About Sales w/ Jake Housdon

Brian: 00:00:00

Welcome back to another episode of the art of mindset with your host.

Brian: 00:00:04

Me Brian Sage today's guest.

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We have a guy that's living in the Peruvian Amazon jungle.

Brian: 00:00:15

Okay.

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He has one line in this show that just blows my mind.

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He says, you can learn more from shamans in the jungles of Peru

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about sales than anywhere else.

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Sales.

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We're talking about business transactions and who can teach you more.

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According to Jake Howden, it's the shamans in jungles of Peru.

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So what do we talk about?

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Let me just dive right into it.

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We talk about what it takes to move and live in the Amazon jungle.

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What it's like, we talk about the shaman teachings and really what medicine

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is there and how different it is.

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To the first world countries around the world, even talk about who

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oversees, changing your mindset and how you can do it even now.

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And then as always, we talk about the true art of living and

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it's all about one worth living.

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And let's be honest.

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We all want practical steps and I can guarantee this entire show drops them.

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I had a notebook full re-listening to this show because Jake, he just drops

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continuous tools and practical steps for how to improve your life, how to become

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a better salesperson, how to see people.

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And how to really align yourself with everyone you interact with

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no matter where they are, who they are and what they believe.

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So I'm not gonna keep you from the show anymore, but if you haven't

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already hit the follow, hit the subscribe, leave a five star rating.

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The show depends upon it.

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And.

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Let's get into the show,

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Jake, this is awesome, man.

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I'm so excited to have you on the show.

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Welcome on you.

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Have a beautiful background, those that are not able to see it and are listening.

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Jake is in the jungle right now, and he'll tell us a little bit

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more about where he's at and how he got there and his entire journey.

Brian: 00:02:28

But first off, I gotta say, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Jake: 00:02:33

Oh, it's my pleasure, Brian.

Jake: 00:02:34

We've had this teed up for a while and I was really looking forward to

Jake: 00:02:37

it and thanks for your patience to postpone so that I could be back in

Jake: 00:02:42

my home here in the Amazon jungle.

Jake: 00:02:45

thought it might make for a more interesting show for everyone.

Jake: 00:02:48

Absolutely.

Brian: 00:02:48

I, I gotta say, I'm curious to know about certain things and how you

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got there in, in that entire journey of find yourself in the Amazon jungle.

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But I first like to know who Jake was as a kid and who you were on the

Jake: 00:03:04

playground.

Jake: 00:03:05

Great question.

Jake: 00:03:06

Hopefully there's not too much background noise.

Jake: 00:03:08

There's just a boat going by here.

Jake: 00:03:09

One of my neighbors, but when I was young who was I?

Jake: 00:03:12

I think I was very Kid who thought a lot who was on a quest for truth from a pretty

Jake: 00:03:18

young age as a baby, I was very calm.

Jake: 00:03:20

My parents always joke that they had me and I I was calm,

Jake: 00:03:23

like a Buddha or something.

Jake: 00:03:25

And then my sister came along and she was quite the opposite.

Jake: 00:03:27

And so they always joke that, if they had her first, then I

Jake: 00:03:30

wouldn't exist and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:03:32

But yeah I always love nature.

Jake: 00:03:34

I think that's where I've always felt most at home.

Jake: 00:03:36

And that probably has a lot to do with why I've ended up here in the Amazon.

Jake: 00:03:40

But yeah, just, someone who thought a lot and was really into

Jake: 00:03:43

nature, , it's hard to remember back then, you know how I was really.

Jake: 00:03:47

Absolutely.

Brian: 00:03:48

No I gotta say that's probably, I can see that now in everything that

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you're doing in the nature in the Amazon forest or in jungle, excuse me, and

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everything that you're pushing plants and.

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Bringing awareness to that.

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And I want to get into that, but I want to also bring light to

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this was not Jake from the get go.

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You had to take a leap to get here.

Brian: 00:04:08

What were you doing prior to now where

Jake: 00:04:11

you're at?

Jake: 00:04:12

Yeah Like a lot of people, I went off to university, when I hit the age

Jake: 00:04:16

for that, I went to business school.

Jake: 00:04:18

And from a really young age too, to get back to your question before I always

Jake: 00:04:21

envisioned myself, creating a business, creating businesses anywhere I would go,

Jake: 00:04:25

I'd go into Tim Horton's shout out to any Canadians listening who know Tim Horton's

Jake: 00:04:29

and I'd just imagine I'd reimagine like the customer experience in there.

Jake: 00:04:33

I'd be like, wow, mom imagine they did this.

Jake: 00:04:35

And this was like this.

Jake: 00:04:36

And, and I was always like that.

Jake: 00:04:38

I always saw the world through the lens of someone who wanted to create

Jake: 00:04:42

things in the world basically.

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And so that, that was always there.

Jake: 00:04:45

When I was in high school, writing was really one of my gifts.

Jake: 00:04:48

So a lot of teachers, would always kind of praise me for

Jake: 00:04:51

my writing and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:04:52

I was accused of plagiarizing a lot when I was young and I didn't And I loved words.

Jake: 00:04:57

I loved kind of the art side of things and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:05:01

So I was like, Hey, I'll be a lawyer or something like that.

Jake: 00:05:04

Because when you're young, you just have to choose one of these,

Jake: 00:05:07

predetermined sort of paths.

Jake: 00:05:08

And then at the same time though school came very easily to me.

Jake: 00:05:11

So I had high grades and everything.

Jake: 00:05:13

When I was young, I was deemed to be gifted, whatever that means when I was

Jake: 00:05:17

in grade two I was encouraged to skip a lot of grades and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:05:21

But my mom worked in education and she advised me against that

Jake: 00:05:24

because of just the social impact, in, in that aspect of school.

Jake: 00:05:28

So I didn't do that.

Jake: 00:05:29

But school came very easy.

Jake: 00:05:30

So all the subject science, I loved math.

Jake: 00:05:33

I loved I really loved a lot of it, visual arts music, even.

Jake: 00:05:36

At one point I actually wanted to go into a music school for high school.

Jake: 00:05:40

was really into the guitar and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:05:43

I was stretched in a lot of directions and I wasn't exactly sure what I

Jake: 00:05:48

wanted to do or what I wanted to be, which I think is a pernicious question

Jake: 00:05:54

that we ask, young kids, like we really want cute response from them.

Jake: 00:05:57

Hey, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

Jake: 00:05:59

And then, little Tommy says an astronaut or, Susie says she wants to be a

Jake: 00:06:03

business woman or something like that.

Jake: 00:06:05

And the parents chuckle and it's all good, but I'm just having fun

Jake: 00:06:08

with this because I think that same question, what do you wanna be?

Jake: 00:06:12

Makes us choose something.

Jake: 00:06:14

And by choosing something, it makes us neglect all of the other potential

Jake: 00:06:18

possibilities that we could be, and it makes us neglect the discovery process.

Jake: 00:06:23

So I personally think that it's a little bit troublesome for the world when we ask.

Jake: 00:06:30

children and teenagers like to just choose a predetermined path.

Jake: 00:06:35

And the education system seems to lend itself towards that the amount of money

Jake: 00:06:40

you put into your degree is so great that like you ought to have an idea about

Jake: 00:06:45

what you wanna get out of that because it's such a large investment, right?

Jake: 00:06:47

So you really are forced into this choosing type of mindset.

Jake: 00:06:51

And so for me, I was pulled in bunch of different directions and I was heavy on

Jake: 00:06:57

the law thing for some reason that just seemed like a sexy career or something.

Jake: 00:07:01

And I guess I liked arguing things and and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:07:05

But in the end I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go to business school.

Jake: 00:07:09

Business school is the thing that I'll be able to fall back on to

Jake: 00:07:13

have this like security blanket of like money and Hey, I've got the

Jake: 00:07:16

grades to get in wherever I want.

Jake: 00:07:18

Like, why don't I choose that?

Jake: 00:07:20

And so I kept taking like calculus and like all those things.

Jake: 00:07:23

I'm not sure why calculus is really required for business school by the way,

Jake: 00:07:26

but I kept taking all those subjects.

Jake: 00:07:28

Yeah.

Jake: 00:07:28

So that I could take that path.

Jake: 00:07:30

So I went off to business school and when I was there I noticed that all of

Jake: 00:07:34

the older students that seemed like.

Jake: 00:07:37

Cool.

Jake: 00:07:37

And what I wanted to be like, they were all the ones who were most busy

Jake: 00:07:41

with extracurricular activities.

Jake: 00:07:43

They definitely held it down academically too, but they were like

Jake: 00:07:47

very heavy on the extracurricular life.

Jake: 00:07:49

So when I first got there, I immersed myself in, extracurricular

Jake: 00:07:53

activities as much as I could.

Jake: 00:07:54

And one of the things that I did, because again, I was like,

Jake: 00:07:57

Hey, I wanna be an entrepreneur.

Jake: 00:07:59

I want to run my own business.

Jake: 00:08:00

So business school is probably the place to do that.

Jake: 00:08:03

Turns out that's not exactly what they teach at business school,

Jake: 00:08:05

but so I got involved in this competition and entrepreneurship

Jake: 00:08:10

competition at our school and I was volunteering my role as a team host.

Jake: 00:08:14

So I was 18.

Jake: 00:08:15

I was a team host.

Jake: 00:08:16

And so companies, promising startups came to compete for the $30,000 cash prize.

Jake: 00:08:22

And I had two teams assigned to me and basically just had to make sure

Jake: 00:08:26

they were in the right place at the right time, chat with them stuff like.

Jake: 00:08:30

One of those companies was.

Jake: 00:08:32

I'd say ed tech now, but we didn't know that we were

Jake: 00:08:35

really in ed tech at the time.

Jake: 00:08:37

It was this mobile application for students basically.

Jake: 00:08:40

And I met the founders.

Jake: 00:08:42

We really hit off.

Jake: 00:08:44

They had started at the university of Toronto and McGill and they wanted to

Jake: 00:08:47

branch out into different universities.

Jake: 00:08:49

And I was at Queens university.

Jake: 00:08:51

As the weekend went they ended up winning the competition and the founders

Jake: 00:08:55

basically asked me to join the company and help them with their mission.

Jake: 00:09:00

So I got involved in that pretty quickly.

Jake: 00:09:02

And that, that became like more important to me than even like the classes and like

Jake: 00:09:08

stuff like that in school, that, that really became the lens through which I

Jake: 00:09:12

saw the rest of my educational experience.

Jake: 00:09:15

And that was really cool and very rewarding for me.

Jake: 00:09:18

I definitely learned a lot.

Jake: 00:09:20

And yeah, I got started in this by students for students, mobile application.

Jake: 00:09:25

So at the time Facebook had left the college space and it was, the

Jake: 00:09:29

big Facebook that it is today, Groupon was really big at the time.

Jake: 00:09:33

And mobile was really new, like iPhones.

Jake: 00:09:36

I think we had the iPhone, like three GS back then or something

Jake: 00:09:39

like just to put into perspective.

Jake: 00:09:41

And so this application was a mobile app where college students could connect

Jake: 00:09:47

with each other, see which other students are nearby get discounts on things like

Jake: 00:09:52

the campus pub or, stuff like that.

Jake: 00:09:54

Even get on the guest list to nightclubs.

Jake: 00:09:56

We even had this like silly feature where you could rate how hot other

Jake: 00:09:59

students were and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:10:01

So definitely like taking a lot of pages out of the Facebook, playbook and

Jake: 00:10:05

trying to create something on campus.

Jake: 00:10:06

And it was all just direct to the students.

Jake: 00:10:10

Like we didn't used to partner with the universities.

Jake: 00:10:12

We used to partner with the student unions.

Jake: 00:10:14

And so what I would do is I would go around downtown Kingston for

Jake: 00:10:19

anyone knows it, princess street.

Jake: 00:10:21

And I remember my first day with the CEO we were walking down the street

Jake: 00:10:26

and what we had to do was go into each place and basically, pitch them on

Jake: 00:10:31

offering a coupon to all the students.

Jake: 00:10:33

So he went into one.

Jake: 00:10:36

And, he did it and he got them signed up and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:10:39

And he showed me how it was done.

Jake: 00:10:40

And then he is the next one.

Jake: 00:10:41

He was like, all right, Jake, like now it's your turn.

Jake: 00:10:43

So I did it too.

Jake: 00:10:45

And I learned a lot from him and what he taught me right away was okay, as soon

Jake: 00:10:48

as you're, done talking in the store and they want to sign up, then just go

Jake: 00:10:52

right outside the store, sit down and send all the follow up, take care of

Jake: 00:10:56

all the emails, get them signed right up and just close the loop right away.

Jake: 00:11:00

So that was my first it wasn't, it was my first proper exposure to selling.

Jake: 00:11:05

And I had a lot of fun with that and it gave me this identity when

Jake: 00:11:08

I was younger as this young guy on campus, like hustling and working

Jake: 00:11:12

on a startup and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:11:13

So it was.

Jake: 00:11:15

So that was what I started with.

Jake: 00:11:16

And I almost dropped out of university because the startup

Jake: 00:11:19

was picking up traction.

Jake: 00:11:21

We got into an incubator program called founder fuel in Montreal.

Jake: 00:11:24

We had raised money from investors.

Jake: 00:11:26

It was all getting very exciting.

Jake: 00:11:27

But after a bunch of intense chats with my parents, let's say I, I chose to

Jake: 00:11:32

stay the course and complete my degree.

Jake: 00:11:34

That was how I got exposed to what eventually became my

Jake: 00:11:38

tenure in the SAS startup world.

Jake: 00:11:41

So at some point working with this company we decided that.

Jake: 00:11:44

It was really difficult to just partner with universities directly and try to

Jake: 00:11:48

get students onto the app that way.

Jake: 00:11:50

We would we needed to partner with the university directly basically.

Jake: 00:11:53

So we started branding the app and we like white labeling it to each university

Jake: 00:11:59

and selling it directly to them.

Jake: 00:12:01

So that was a really interesting transition point in the company.

Jake: 00:12:04

And I remember like I just used Skype to cold call universities.

Jake: 00:12:09

And we were reaching out to them.

Jake: 00:12:11

Everything was very new.

Jake: 00:12:12

We didn't know how much to charge.

Jake: 00:12:14

I'd ask okay, so like how much should we charge?

Jake: 00:12:16

And they're like, what do you think?

Jake: 00:12:17

And that to me was really interesting.

Jake: 00:12:19

I was like, okay, interesting.

Jake: 00:12:20

So eventually I sold the first ever contract to a university.

Jake: 00:12:24

It was Indian Hills community college in Iowa.

Jake: 00:12:26

And that kind of set in motion.

Jake: 00:12:29

This whole journey to basically learning how to sell reaching out outbound, doing

Jake: 00:12:34

the full sales cycle and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:12:36

Eventually we built out a team with SDRs.

Jake: 00:12:39

I didn't really know what an SDR was at the time.

Jake: 00:12:41

And a way we went and in our first year we ended up doing close

Jake: 00:12:45

to a million dollars in sales.

Jake: 00:12:47

So that, that was really what set my early career path in motion.

Jake: 00:12:51

And.

Jake: 00:12:52

After that I spent 10 years working in three different startup companies,

Jake: 00:12:57

helping them from early revenue stage to, build up their team get some

Jake: 00:13:02

traction and operationalize everything.

Jake: 00:13:04

So yeah software startups was my previous life and it's still a part of who I

Jake: 00:13:10

am today and I'm very passionate about selling and, going outbound and the

Jake: 00:13:14

empowerment that can bring to people too.

Jake: 00:13:16

That's the part that's most exciting to me.

Jake: 00:13:18

Like I still remember that feeling selling that first contract.

Jake: 00:13:21

I was walking down, sing the hall in Montreal after, and I just felt.

Jake: 00:13:26

Bold and just powerful.

Jake: 00:13:28

And I remember thinking like confidence is the key that,

Jake: 00:13:32

unlocks like everyone's potential.

Jake: 00:13:34

And I wanted to get a tattoo at the time of the key to our office, just to, to

Jake: 00:13:38

symbolize like this key of confidence.

Jake: 00:13:40

That was my idea.

Jake: 00:13:41

I wanted to get it on my leg to be like it was in my pocket, but I I never

Jake: 00:13:44

ended up doing that, but that was that's why I love selling, I think is that

Jake: 00:13:48

feeling and it makes you just reimagine what's possible in life, like when you

Jake: 00:13:52

grab life, it gets really interesting.

Jake: 00:13:54

One of my favorite rappers, Russ, he has this line, that's I don't believe in luck.

Jake: 00:13:58

I believe that life's a buffet.

Jake: 00:14:00

You better eat it up, and yeah, I think that there's a lot of truth in that.

Jake: 00:14:04

Yeah, so that's my little long-winded Ramly version of kind

Jake: 00:14:07

of how I got started and stuff

Brian: 00:14:09

like that.

Brian: 00:14:10

Absolutely love that.

Brian: 00:14:11

And I think the whole journey of knowing you and even knowing where you're at

Brian: 00:14:14

now and those that might not even know you or finding this out, we're talked

Brian: 00:14:18

about how we're starting out now, here, we're in the Amazon forest or jungle.

Brian: 00:14:22

And then now we're we went from SAS and we started up and right.

Brian: 00:14:26

We, we weren't initially here and that entire journey is that's the point of it.

Brian: 00:14:31

That's the point of life is that it's experience based, right?

Brian: 00:14:35

You're meant to have experiences.

Brian: 00:14:36

You're meant to have bold decisions and have to be fearful and step out

Brian: 00:14:42

into that courage of trying to sell.

Brian: 00:14:44

And like you said, once you sell something.

Brian: 00:14:47

There's a lot of confidence that comes with that.

Brian: 00:14:50

Like you're like that person just bought an idea of mine or a project

Brian: 00:14:55

of service of mine that I created.

Brian: 00:14:58

And there's a lot there.

Brian: 00:14:59

And like you said, it breaks down the walls of if I can do this, then I can

Brian: 00:15:02

get another person and another person.

Brian: 00:15:04

And then we see the real passion and the real fire of, I can create something.

Brian: 00:15:09

I can do this.

Brian: 00:15:10

And the belief starts to set in.

Brian: 00:15:13

Anybody that's I want to try to highlight something here, anybody that's trying to

Brian: 00:15:17

get confident with selling their first product, first service first, whatever

Brian: 00:15:21

they want to be an entrepreneur, they want to start something, they might have

Brian: 00:15:24

an idea and they want sell themselves on it or sell even another person on it.

Brian: 00:15:29

What is something you could say to them that you used to believe

Brian: 00:15:34

in yourself that you can do this?

Jake: 00:15:36

One thing that I think holds a lot of people back is that they think

Jake: 00:15:39

that there's something wrong with selling like fundamentally, right?

Jake: 00:15:43

We know the annoying retail sales person that sort of asks

Jake: 00:15:47

us if we need help with anything.

Jake: 00:15:49

When we first walk in the store and we all say, oh I'm just browsing.

Jake: 00:15:52

Thanks.

Jake: 00:15:52

Just looking right.

Jake: 00:15:53

There's all the used car salesman stereotypes.

Jake: 00:15:56

I've never had any experience with the used car salesman,

Jake: 00:15:58

those stereotypes exist.

Jake: 00:15:59

And I think that.

Jake: 00:16:01

It's an aspect of human behavior where it really exposes to us whether

Jake: 00:16:06

we have faith in each other or not, whether we trust in humanity.

Jake: 00:16:10

It's where we transact with each other.

Jake: 00:16:12

It's where we exchange energy.

Jake: 00:16:14

And the thing with financial resources is that it's a resource

Jake: 00:16:18

that in theory, gets us anything, not anything, but any material, things

Jake: 00:16:23

that we need to fulfill, the rest of our sort of hierarchy of needs.

Jake: 00:16:28

And so people are, just interested in having as much of it as they can

Jake: 00:16:32

and are biological instincts end up making us not really see a limit to

Jake: 00:16:39

that sort of imagine this, right?

Jake: 00:16:40

You only want so many oranges at your house or something like that.

Jake: 00:16:44

Because you can only eat so many before they go bad.

Jake: 00:16:47

But like with money, like you're down in theory to just

Jake: 00:16:49

have as much of it as possible.

Jake: 00:16:51

And fear is an emotion that drives us.

Jake: 00:16:54

Like it helps us evolve.

Jake: 00:16:55

It helps us stay alive.

Jake: 00:16:58

And now that there's money, that fear ends up doing some wonky things in terms

Jake: 00:17:03

of how much of that we wanna have and what we're willing to do to get that,

Jake: 00:17:08

because we attach our survival, to money.

Jake: 00:17:11

So I think that's the root of it where we end up like mistrusting each

Jake: 00:17:14

other because we know that deep down, like we would do anything to survive

Jake: 00:17:21

and have that if push came to shove.

Jake: 00:17:23

So it, it it has us proceed with this sort of skeptical lens in terms of how

Jake: 00:17:28

we view people that have a desire to make a transaction with us, let's say.

Jake: 00:17:33

So I think that overcoming that aspect of let's call it, this stigma

Jake: 00:17:38

of selling is probably one of the most important parts to being able to

Jake: 00:17:43

sell freely and to sell effectively.

Jake: 00:17:46

Because most people just demonize what they're doing.

Jake: 00:17:49

Like most young salespeople even very experienced people, like some

Jake: 00:17:53

of them still have this like inner part of them that thinks what

Jake: 00:17:57

they're doing is somewhat wrong.

Jake: 00:17:58

So I think that's something that those layers need to be shed.

Jake: 00:18:02

And yeah it's something I became really passionate about the way I

Jake: 00:18:07

always led was very heart centered and very with a very human approach.

Jake: 00:18:12

And I'm a big daft punk fan actually.

Jake: 00:18:14

And I love the juxtaposition of robot human.

Jake: 00:18:18

And that became almost my brand in the sales world was this person that

Jake: 00:18:22

would, still leverage technology and automation and being efficient and

Jake: 00:18:30

all of those things, which we need to do as sellers, but also, would unite

Jake: 00:18:33

that with the fact that as DPU would remind us, we're all human after.

Jake: 00:18:39

All right.

Jake: 00:18:40

And ultimately like I think that understanding that what you're doing

Jake: 00:18:44

as a seller at the heart of it is you're helping someone to understand.

Jake: 00:18:52

If they ought to mobilize some of their resources to obtain a better future

Jake: 00:18:57

state for themselves, essentially.

Jake: 00:18:59

And you're like a guide for them in discovering that.

Jake: 00:19:02

And yes, you do have an inherent self-interest in

Jake: 00:19:06

that transaction taking place.

Jake: 00:19:08

But if you do it long enough, you end up realizing that you don't want

Jake: 00:19:11

transactions to take place that aren't meant to take place and everything.

Jake: 00:19:14

And that in the end, that doesn't end up serving you.

Jake: 00:19:17

So you almost don't actually have that, but the way commission plans are

Jake: 00:19:21

structured, the way all these things work.

Jake: 00:19:23

Yes.

Jake: 00:19:23

People wanna have that happen because again, they want their needs to be met.

Jake: 00:19:28

They wanna achieve their dreams.

Jake: 00:19:29

They wanna, do things with the money, and so I think that's a big part of it.

Jake: 00:19:34

Brian is really just like shrugging that stigma of getting it off.

Jake: 00:19:38

And then that allows you to be in a place where.

Jake: 00:19:41

You're having real conversations like, and you're not attached to

Jake: 00:19:45

the outcome of those conversations.

Jake: 00:19:48

And I call it like, like a lot of people say detached from the outcome.

Jake: 00:19:51

That's a very popular mantra in the sales world.

Jake: 00:19:53

And it has a lot of validity.

Jake: 00:19:54

I like to say attach and detached, so attached to the thing to attach to is

Jake: 00:20:00

trying your absolute damn best to help that person discern whether they ought

Jake: 00:20:05

to do this or not and trying to help them basically trying to help bring

Jake: 00:20:09

them to that, future state that they probably have a high chance of getting

Jake: 00:20:14

to, or else you shouldn't really be talking to them in the first place.

Jake: 00:20:17

Yeah.

Jake: 00:20:17

Anyways that's just a bit of a bit of.

Jake: 00:20:19

Rhetoric there for you on that.

Brian: 00:20:21

No, it's true.

Brian: 00:20:22

You do, you dove into some really heavy stuff and in the symbolism with money and

Brian: 00:20:26

where that's created as financial resource of where we're, it's really just a tool.

Brian: 00:20:31

It's a, it's an asset if you will, but we think too highly of it and that's

Brian: 00:20:34

because the world's kind of built around it and same, you need it in

Brian: 00:20:37

order to eat, you need it for living.

Brian: 00:20:39

You need it for a car, your kids, blah, blah, blah, all these things

Brian: 00:20:42

that we really truly care about.

Brian: 00:20:44

Like you said, the hierarchy of needs.

Brian: 00:20:46

And then we've put this symbol on each one of them.

Brian: 00:20:50

And I think it has to go back to.

Brian: 00:20:53

You gotta have good intention and your connection.

Brian: 00:20:56

So where are you when you are trying to com converse or sell or connect

Brian: 00:21:02

with another, are you doing it with intention that you just want their

Brian: 00:21:06

money, or do you do it with an intention that you want to actually help them?

Brian: 00:21:09

Like you said, step up in this service that you're providing and

Brian: 00:21:13

make that resource mobile for them in order for them to step into

Brian: 00:21:16

that next level or next realm.

Brian: 00:21:19

And I think that's lost a lot.

Jake: 00:21:22

Yeah.

Jake: 00:21:22

That's exactly it, Brian, like the thing that I've come to learn that

Jake: 00:21:27

differentiates exceptional, outstanding, incredible salespeople and sales outreach

Jake: 00:21:34

from let's say good or very good is that the person genuinely truly in their heart

Jake: 00:21:43

actually wants to help the other person.

Jake: 00:21:45

Like in its intention.

Jake: 00:21:46

That's what you said.

Jake: 00:21:47

And intention is really a technology.

Jake: 00:21:50

I like to think of it as it's almost a GPS that allows you to navigate

Jake: 00:21:55

life without having to punch in the actual coordinates, into Google maps.

Jake: 00:21:59

And if you ever get lost, it lets you reroute in the same way, but without

Jake: 00:22:03

fixating on an actual destination.

Jake: 00:22:06

So I think intention is very powerful and I think it's misunderstood.

Jake: 00:22:12

And if let's say, if the business world truly knew the power of

Jake: 00:22:16

intention, then half the training more than half, would be all about that.

Jake: 00:22:22

It'd be about energetic concepts.

Jake: 00:22:24

It would be, it'd be things that you could learn from shamans in the jungles of Peru.

Jake: 00:22:29

Those would be literally the first things you would want to teach your sellers.

Jake: 00:22:34

And that's what I essentially did.

Jake: 00:22:36

My team and I like that's what we were all about.

Jake: 00:22:39

Like we were it was all about and that's how I conducted

Jake: 00:22:42

myself in the business world.

Jake: 00:22:43

That's how I've had the success that I've had today is I view

Jake: 00:22:45

it as an energetic exchange.

Jake: 00:22:47

I come into that experience with my heart open, wanting to help people.

Jake: 00:22:52

And that, that just never leads you astray.

Jake: 00:22:55

And you will go astray sometimes like your but again, like

Jake: 00:22:59

it's okay to get lost, right?

Jake: 00:23:00

Just come back to your intention, come back to your intention.

Jake: 00:23:03

And that's, what's gonna create the container that allows you to have

Jake: 00:23:06

this experience that ends up being just what you need at that time,

Brian: 00:23:12

basically.

Brian: 00:23:12

No, I think you're absolutely right.

Brian: 00:23:14

And maybe these group retreats for these business teams need to go

Brian: 00:23:16

down to the Peru jungle, Amazon jungle and have these shamans teach.

Brian: 00:23:21

'em a few things and be like, what?

Brian: 00:23:24

I can make my numbers with this.

Brian: 00:23:26

Yeah.

Brian: 00:23:26

I think that's it.

Jake: 00:23:27

Yeah.

Jake: 00:23:28

Bridging the worlds.

Jake: 00:23:28

And that's very much the role that I see myself playing.

Jake: 00:23:30

This is just hilarious that at that moment all exactly what this is, right?

Jake: 00:23:35

Yeah.

Jake: 00:23:35

Like I'm doing a podcast in the jungle sitting in a boat.

Jake: 00:23:39

And then yeah, chatting with my friends here at the same

Jake: 00:23:42

time, but that's all just, fun.

Jake: 00:23:44

That really like to return back to the seriousness of this.

Jake: 00:23:47

Like I think the the bridging is what's required now and we've had

Jake: 00:23:50

globalization we've, got all these cultures, we've, got all these things.

Jake: 00:23:54

And I think now it's time for everyone to come together and learn from each

Jake: 00:23:58

other and focus on like the spaces in between, the common ground, but also

Jake: 00:24:03

the ways that the differences can.

Jake: 00:24:06

Help to create harmony and something that's greater than

Jake: 00:24:09

the sum of all parts, basically.

Jake: 00:24:11

So I envision myself doing things like, bringing sales leaders together

Jake: 00:24:16

with shamans and seeing what that leads to and, helping bring different

Jake: 00:24:20

scientists, medical professionals together with people here who are very

Jake: 00:24:24

steeped in plant medicines and the healing arts and all of these things.

Jake: 00:24:28

And a lot of people are doing this type of work.

Jake: 00:24:30

Now a lot of people are feeling this calling to go down

Jake: 00:24:33

here and do stuff like that.

Jake: 00:24:35

So it's really a beautiful time to be alive.

Jake: 00:24:37

Yeah.

Jake: 00:24:37

It's fascinating time

Brian: 00:24:38

to be alive with just again, like you said, and what we're starting to

Brian: 00:24:41

see is we're finally at a point where we're willing to listen to another person

Brian: 00:24:45

that they might have some insights.

Brian: 00:24:48

I didn't consider.

Brian: 00:24:48

If you went 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, and you're like took a

Brian: 00:24:51

sales team to the jungle in Peru.

Brian: 00:24:54

And said, go sit with the shaman.

Brian: 00:24:55

He's gonna teach you some things.

Brian: 00:24:56

You'd be like, what?

Brian: 00:24:57

what?

Brian: 00:24:58

No.

Brian: 00:24:58

So that would never thought, but here we are conveying this.

Brian: 00:25:02

And then showing science is catching up.

Brian: 00:25:06

Energies are showing up, businesses are showing up and saying, look, the

Brian: 00:25:10

same principles that the shaman's been talking about, those the ancient

Brian: 00:25:13

techs have been talking about.

Brian: 00:25:15

There might be actually something here.

Brian: 00:25:17

Let's actually push our egos aside and open ourselves up to that.

Jake: 00:25:21

Exactly.

Jake: 00:25:22

And I think Brian, the work you're doing with the art of mindset,

Jake: 00:25:24

you're helping to also be a bridge with a lot of different perspectives

Jake: 00:25:28

and it's really important stuff.

Jake: 00:25:30

And just to take it to the mind for a second, right.

Jake: 00:25:34

The mind, let's say the collective mind of the Western north American world.

Jake: 00:25:41

I'm not sure that anyone could argue that it's not sick.

Jake: 00:25:44

Like it is sick.

Jake: 00:25:45

The amount of drugs anti-depressants anti-anxiety medication like it's,

Jake: 00:25:52

the consumption is far higher than anywhere else in the world by a

Jake: 00:25:56

long shot by orders of magnitude.

Jake: 00:25:59

And when you come in places like the jungle here in Peru, there

Jake: 00:26:04

is no such thing as anxiety.

Jake: 00:26:05

That word doesn't even exist.

Jake: 00:26:07

There is no such thing as depression, like yes, people have ailments and

Jake: 00:26:12

they have illnesses and things happen.

Jake: 00:26:15

Those aren't terms that are even understood.

Jake: 00:26:17

There's not even a place for them.

Jake: 00:26:18

And a lot of the work now that's happening with healers here is they're

Jake: 00:26:22

healing, people of those things.

Jake: 00:26:24

So it's really interesting.

Jake: 00:26:25

Anyways, yeah,

Brian: 00:26:26

now I wanna dive into that.

Brian: 00:26:27

I want to get into that component of what you're talking about and

Brian: 00:26:31

plant medicine and all the sorts.

Brian: 00:26:32

And I once read it was an article and it changed me, right?

Brian: 00:26:35

Like you just said, it caused me to think about something that depression, anxiety.

Brian: 00:26:40

Yes.

Brian: 00:26:40

People suffer from it without a doubt in the Northern right.

Brian: 00:26:43

Western culture.

Brian: 00:26:44

We can say north America, but the Northern side of it, uSA, united States, Canada,

Brian: 00:26:49

these major entities of these countries.

Brian: 00:26:53

But the thing is, was this a marketing.

Brian: 00:26:56

Was there an idea of saying, how can we get people to believe

Brian: 00:27:00

that they have this right?

Brian: 00:27:01

Where a pharmaceutical company can say, Hey, look, let's say you have anxiety.

Brian: 00:27:06

Do you suffer from XYZ?

Brian: 00:27:08

All these ailments, right?

Brian: 00:27:09

We'll name them.

Brian: 00:27:10

And we'll get you to start to think that you have these and then

Brian: 00:27:13

we'll sell you a silver bullet.

Brian: 00:27:15

But then we don't tell you that these silver bullets have side effects.

Brian: 00:27:19

You'll find that out later.

Brian: 00:27:20

And that it doesn't balance you holistically.

Brian: 00:27:22

We even talked before this we've said search and destroy

Brian: 00:27:25

reductionistic medicine.

Brian: 00:27:28

So I'm curious to know with you and your exposure to what you've seen in

Brian: 00:27:32

Peru and plant medicine, holistic, what are people not seeing or even

Brian: 00:27:38

knowing right now in that area?

Brian: 00:27:40

Yeah,

Jake: 00:27:40

so quickly I.

Jake: 00:27:42

Yes, there are always those incentives at play that we discussed before,

Jake: 00:27:46

which make it such that let's say perhaps a corporation may have a vested

Jake: 00:27:51

interest in, marketing magic pills, to ale alleviate you of something.

Jake: 00:27:57

But that's also, what's at the heart of selling at the end of the day.

Jake: 00:28:01

It's that we want to offer this sort of silver bullet solution.

Jake: 00:28:06

But maybe not even a silver bullet solution, we just wanna offer a thing,

Jake: 00:28:10

let's call it a pill that is gonna help bring someone to a better place.

Jake: 00:28:14

But there therein lies one of the issues with the Western mindset

Jake: 00:28:19

and it's not a bad thing overall.

Jake: 00:28:21

Like it's very helpful in some context it's extremely useful.

Jake: 00:28:25

But in trying to heal your mind, trying to heal your body, your spirit.

Jake: 00:28:31

it's difficult.

Jake: 00:28:32

There's a time and place for it.

Jake: 00:28:34

But with the things people are experiencing now, it's not

Jake: 00:28:37

necessarily the path forward.

Jake: 00:28:38

And I think it's clear to see that with the amount that people are

Jake: 00:28:42

hurting and struggling, right?

Jake: 00:28:43

So you brought it up.

Jake: 00:28:44

It's very much this juxtaposition of a reductionistic lens where we in our

Jake: 00:28:52

current paradigm want to basically have a study of a study of a study of a study.

Jake: 00:28:58

Like we have a discipline of this, and within that we have, a subdiscipline

Jake: 00:29:04

and within the subdiscipline, we have a, this and I think about this with

Jake: 00:29:07

creators and their creativity and their niches too, and all of that stuff.

Jake: 00:29:10

And the effect that can have on people, but we can get into that later.

Jake: 00:29:13

But it's that is very helpful sometimes to study things, to understand them, we

Jake: 00:29:17

break them down into their little pieces.

Jake: 00:29:20

But when we look at the way, things are presented to us in nature, They're not in

Jake: 00:29:24

their little pieces, they're in, beings like plants or they're more whole right.

Jake: 00:29:29

And everything that's separate wants to become whole.

Jake: 00:29:31

And so a lot of people approach their health where they're like,

Jake: 00:29:34

Hey, I have this problem going on and I want it to be better.

Jake: 00:29:38

So I'm looking to make that happen.

Jake: 00:29:41

And that's BEC the reason people sell you things in that format is because you seek

Jake: 00:29:47

solutions in that format to begin with.

Jake: 00:29:49

Good sellers are adapting what they do to the buyers journey or process.

Jake: 00:29:56

So it's not like there's these evil corporations out there who are just

Jake: 00:30:01

trying to, like it's not quite that it's that based on the way that

Jake: 00:30:05

we're evolving and the way that we think about the problems we have.

Jake: 00:30:09

That produces the potential solutions to those problems.

Jake: 00:30:12

That informs what the solutions look like.

Jake: 00:30:14

So that's why it is a mindset change that needs to take place.

Jake: 00:30:18

And yeah, to get back to this holistic idea, it's you need to you need

Jake: 00:30:23

to think of yourself as an entire organism and you may have one problem.

Jake: 00:30:28

You can't sleep at night, let's say, but that may be intertwined

Jake: 00:30:33

with so many things that.

Jake: 00:30:35

You can't quite put your finger on.

Jake: 00:30:37

And so I think having this more holistic viewpoint can lead us to

Jake: 00:30:42

better health outcomes because we won't, because anything that we take

Jake: 00:30:47

into our body that has an effect it can take us towards balance, but it

Jake: 00:30:52

creates imbalance at the same time.

Jake: 00:30:53

Anything that, that does anything has an effect, that happens.

Jake: 00:30:57

A lot of times we're correcting a symptom by taking a pill let's say

Jake: 00:31:03

or doing some prescribed thing, but we need to understand that in,

Jake: 00:31:08

so doing, we are not necessarily getting to the root of the problem.

Jake: 00:31:12

And we may actually be making it more difficult for ourselves to

Jake: 00:31:17

even get to that, to the root of the problem, because we're masking it.

Jake: 00:31:20

And we may even worsen the root problem because we're pushing.

Jake: 00:31:24

The illness deeper and deeper into other parts of our, our being basically.

Jake: 00:31:30

An example could be someone has eczema, let's say, on their skin

Jake: 00:31:35

and they take some kind of, topical steroidal, ointment for this.

Jake: 00:31:41

And it maybe helps to clear up the skin a little bit on the surface, but it's

Jake: 00:31:45

suppressing that illness deeper and deeper into the tissues of their body, basically.

Jake: 00:31:49

So now, oh, my skin looks better.

Jake: 00:31:50

Like I'm better, but no, like you've just pushed the illness deeper and

Jake: 00:31:54

deeper into other parts of yourself.

Jake: 00:31:56

And the paradigm here, the shamonic lens is that all illness has a root

Jake: 00:32:03

in a sort of psycho emotional place.

Jake: 00:32:09

So that the fact that you have anxiety now could be related to

Jake: 00:32:14

a traumatic, childhood experience that you had or something like that.

Jake: 00:32:19

And they view every physical ailment aside from like someone smacks you

Jake: 00:32:23

across the head or something like every physical ailment has an emotional,

Jake: 00:32:28

psycho-spiritual kind of route.

Jake: 00:32:30

And that's the work that they do is they focus on going to that place

Jake: 00:32:35

and they do so through spirit.

Jake: 00:32:38

And they basically are able to manipulate what's going on in the spirit world

Jake: 00:32:44

to rectify this energetic imbalance that's happening inside your body.

Jake: 00:32:49

That is a very different paradigm than taking Advil.

Jake: 00:32:53

When you have a headache or taking Prozac when you feel

Jake: 00:32:55

depressed or something like that.

Jake: 00:32:57

Now again, there's a time and place for the Western medicine, the seek

Jake: 00:33:02

and destroy type of mindset, right?

Jake: 00:33:04

Okay, there's an illness and we gotta get it out.

Jake: 00:33:06

Like we gotta get rid of it.

Jake: 00:33:08

I, myself I, at a young age, had my gallbladder full of stones.

Jake: 00:33:12

And that was a result of a lot of things in my life.

Jake: 00:33:15

And it got so bad where I almost essentially died a couple times

Jake: 00:33:20

because the stones ended up blocking the biliary ducks and all of that.

Jake: 00:33:24

So the bile couldn't flow from the liver.

Jake: 00:33:26

Like my skin turned yellow, my eyes were jaundice.

Jake: 00:33:29

I was vomiting for days on end.

Jake: 00:33:31

I was in and out of the hospital quite a few times for that.

Jake: 00:33:34

And it ended up being that like, yes, if I didn't have Western medicine, if I didn't

Jake: 00:33:39

have that at that time, I would've died.

Jake: 00:33:41

Like I absolutely would've died.

Jake: 00:33:42

My body had infection, all those things.

Jake: 00:33:45

So there is a time and place.

Jake: 00:33:47

For all of this.

Jake: 00:33:48

And I think where a lot of people go wrong is the pendulum always swings.

Jake: 00:33:52

We go way too far, one way.

Jake: 00:33:53

So we need to correct.

Jake: 00:33:54

And we need to go the other way, but then people end up just

Jake: 00:33:57

getting way left field again.

Jake: 00:33:58

And they end up discrediting their credibility.

Jake: 00:34:00

You know what I mean?

Jake: 00:34:01

Because they're like, so passionately stuck to one side or another.

Jake: 00:34:05

And I think that's the type of thinking that it's all part of the journey.

Jake: 00:34:09

It's all part of the evolution, but it doesn't do so much to help us advance.

Jake: 00:34:12

I think we, our times now call for this kind of understanding this integration

Jake: 00:34:18

of both sides and not demonizing anyone, but seeing where they can come

Jake: 00:34:22

together and, understanding what's the right time and place for each.

Jake: 00:34:26

And so that's why you might see me on LinkedIn saying things like,

Jake: 00:34:28

I like to deploy the dance moves based on the music that's playing

Jake: 00:34:31

or all of these types of things.

Jake: 00:34:33

Trying to just have fun with the tension between the two poles.

Jake: 00:34:37

Most people try to be polarizing, that's an effective way to, spread a message.

Jake: 00:34:41

But it's also like how can we help to unify polarity?

Jake: 00:34:45

How can we help.

Jake: 00:34:46

People to, participate in polarity.

Jake: 00:34:48

We don't need to transcend it and say, oh, nothing's good and bad.

Jake: 00:34:51

Everything's just nothing matters.

Jake: 00:34:53

Let's just, that's a nihilistic perspective that I don't

Jake: 00:34:56

think is so enjoyable in life.

Jake: 00:35:00

But I think at the same time there's a kind of a middle ground

Jake: 00:35:03

and it requires us to yeah.

Jake: 00:35:05

To have this open mindedness and this openheartedness basically.

Jake: 00:35:09

And self-awareness as well.

Jake: 00:35:11

Yeah.

Brian: 00:35:11

I think that's a, you hit a lot of points that are really powerful and

Brian: 00:35:15

highlighting that there are parts in our lives, if you will, or portions

Brian: 00:35:20

of our experience, where it might require us to have a seek and destroy

Brian: 00:35:26

find this problem, I'm about to die.

Brian: 00:35:28

You need to help me.

Brian: 00:35:29

I come from a background in healthcare at emergency medicine.

Brian: 00:35:32

So know that there are points in time where that's helpful.

Brian: 00:35:36

But then there's other parts of it.

Brian: 00:35:37

Like you said, where if we're treating the depression, we're

Brian: 00:35:41

treating the skin problem, we're treating all of these things.

Brian: 00:35:44

Can we think that if we're doing this, if we're taking this pill and

Brian: 00:35:48

we're taking the ointment and we're putting it on, is it like you were

Brian: 00:35:52

saying, pushing it somewhere else?

Brian: 00:35:54

Is that a possibility that it's just like us?

Brian: 00:35:58

It's just like energy.

Brian: 00:35:59

It's just transactional.

Brian: 00:36:00

It's gonna there's no, energy's never created nor destroyed.

Brian: 00:36:03

It just is.

Brian: 00:36:04

So where does the Glen go?

Brian: 00:36:05

And if we can open up our minds to that possibility, that, and the same

Brian: 00:36:09

exact thing, these polarizing points, and that's where the podcast comes in

Brian: 00:36:12

and we're having these conversations that it's an art form, right?

Brian: 00:36:16

Reality in life is an art.

Brian: 00:36:18

The mind is just as one.

Brian: 00:36:20

So the polar the polarity points of where we're creating polar points of focus.

Brian: 00:36:26

Doesn't mean one's right or wrong.

Brian: 00:36:27

It doesn't mean whatever.

Brian: 00:36:28

But if you were to walk that same walk that mind is having, and that experience

Brian: 00:36:32

is having in that individual, then you might have that same point of view.

Brian: 00:36:35

And that's the point in which we need to understand is that don't judge it,

Brian: 00:36:39

don't say it's wrong or bad or whatever.

Brian: 00:36:41

Just begin to understand that and be like you said, open minded, open hearted

Brian: 00:36:46

in that, and allowing that possibility to be that there is ability and there

Brian: 00:36:51

are people out there in the Peru jungle, Amazon jungle using spirit.

Brian: 00:36:56

Sounds crazy to somebody right now.

Brian: 00:36:59

That's very in the, in a world that's not there, but can use spirit to help heal.

Brian: 00:37:04

That is the doctor for that culture to a Western medicine individual.

Brian: 00:37:09

They're like that doesn't exist here.

Brian: 00:37:11

Or that's a nutty person right on the street somewhere.

Brian: 00:37:14

But now again, perspective belief, patterns, upbringing.

Brian: 00:37:19

Is there a possibility there?

Brian: 00:37:21

So how do we open up to that more?

Jake: 00:37:23

I think empathy, it does begin with empathy and I think it, it first

Jake: 00:37:27

begins with empathy for yourself.

Jake: 00:37:31

That's where a lot of people are.

Jake: 00:37:32

That's the foundation, right?

Jake: 00:37:34

We hear it all the time.

Jake: 00:37:35

You can't love anyone else until you love yourself.

Jake: 00:37:37

It's true.

Jake: 00:37:37

And we need to have com compassion for ourselves.

Jake: 00:37:40

So all of this duality, this polarity, these different sides that we're

Jake: 00:37:44

talking about, this tension that all exists within ourselves as well.

Jake: 00:37:49

So there's an alchemical piece of wisdom that says as above, so below as within.

Jake: 00:37:54

So without right.

Jake: 00:37:55

And what that's telling us is that everything is a

Jake: 00:37:58

microcosm of the macrocosm.

Jake: 00:38:00

So everything that exists in.

Jake: 00:38:04

External life, your external world, the existence, you have the relationships,

Jake: 00:38:10

the work you do, you know how you derive, meaning in life like that all

Jake: 00:38:15

takes place like within you as well.

Jake: 00:38:17

And everything that's outside is a reflection of what's inside.

Jake: 00:38:21

And so I think that we could take a page outta Jordan Peterson's book and

Jake: 00:38:24

we could say clean up your room first.

Jake: 00:38:26

That's the first priority is clean your house yourself.

Jake: 00:38:29

But love yourself, take time to find all of the parts of yourself that

Jake: 00:38:34

you've neglected that you've put in the corner that you've told, you're bad.

Jake: 00:38:38

Go wear the dance cap and be shameful about yourself.

Jake: 00:38:41

And the analogy I like to think of is.

Jake: 00:38:44

imagine that each of us is like this, like castle, this great castle, okay.

Jake: 00:38:49

With all of these rooms this amazing castle and we're having this beautiful

Jake: 00:38:53

party that we call life and, there's people from different cultures

Jake: 00:38:58

there's, different ages, and maybe just think of it as your family.

Jake: 00:39:02

Imagine you have this big, huge, extended family, different relatives.

Jake: 00:39:05

Let's say cross-cultural like everything and it's this incredible party.

Jake: 00:39:10

But like some people are like in a room downstairs, closed off, the door's closed

Jake: 00:39:16

and they're just on their own in there.

Jake: 00:39:18

And over there upstairs, there's another group and they're closed

Jake: 00:39:21

off they're in their room.

Jake: 00:39:22

And maybe they were told to go in there, you put them in there or something

Jake: 00:39:26

unintentionally, and your job to, to fix that is, is to say Okay, let me

Jake: 00:39:31

go to all of these different rooms.

Jake: 00:39:33

Let me be a good host to myself and let me go see all these different

Jake: 00:39:38

versions of me, these different aspects that seem like they might be at odds.

Jake: 00:39:42

And let me like go in there, open up that door, light a few candles for them,

Jake: 00:39:48

put out some food, maybe I'm half Greek.

Jake: 00:39:50

Put out some olives, some Fe cheese and, pour a little wine for them and say,

Jake: 00:39:55

look, if you wanna stay there, if you wanna, hang out here, that's totally cool.

Jake: 00:39:59

And I'm here and that's fine.

Jake: 00:40:01

And I love you.

Jake: 00:40:02

And but there's also a cool dance going on, like in the great ballroom downstairs.

Jake: 00:40:07

And like those other people are there and it's pretty cool.

Jake: 00:40:09

It's pretty fun.

Jake: 00:40:10

Do you wanna come join?

Jake: 00:40:11

And it's a fun metaphor and I'm, getting goosebumps, but it's.

Jake: 00:40:15

It's really like to say that this is the process of integration of self,

Jake: 00:40:19

and it begins with that compassion and love and being a good host, right?

Jake: 00:40:23

If you're a host of a party, you're not gonna go around, like your goal

Jake: 00:40:28

is to create harmony for everyone to have a good time together.

Jake: 00:40:31

And that's what we're all here to do in this life.

Jake: 00:40:33

To learn from each other to experience and just to exist, cuz

Jake: 00:40:37

it's more fun too, than to not.

Jake: 00:40:38

So I think that's the place where we have to start is with ourselves and

Jake: 00:40:43

the Hawaiian whole Pono technique is very useful technology for

Jake: 00:40:48

that, where it's about forgiveness.

Jake: 00:40:50

So we could say, thank you.

Jake: 00:40:52

I love you.

Jake: 00:40:54

I'm sorry, all those things.

Jake: 00:40:56

And what I like to add is I, am you like.

Jake: 00:40:59

Understand, and you can apply this with yourself, different aspects of

Jake: 00:41:03

yourself, but you can also apply this to other people so that, so it starts with

Jake: 00:41:06

self then we start to go out to other people, family members, I think are most

Jake: 00:41:10

important first friends, community and on.

Jake: 00:41:14

But I think understanding that like you are each other, we are each other

Jake: 00:41:18

that is the way to integrate, like you, your demons and stuff like that.

Jake: 00:41:23

Like your demons are a part of you.

Jake: 00:41:25

They're a helpful part of you.

Jake: 00:41:26

They help you to evolve.

Jake: 00:41:27

They help you to steer you in a certain direction towards

Jake: 00:41:31

something or away from something.

Jake: 00:41:32

And we just need to like, love them, give 'em a big kiss, give 'em a big hug.

Jake: 00:41:37

And understand that you are them like set them free in that way.

Jake: 00:41:41

So that they don't have to be this big where a Demonn right.

Jake: 00:41:43

Like they want love too.

Jake: 00:41:44

They're just trying to do their job too, basically.

Jake: 00:41:47

And this is this extreme compassion, extreme empathy kind of lens that I think.

Jake: 00:41:52

Is really the way to, to heal yourself and to heal others and

Jake: 00:41:55

to make the world a better place.

Jake: 00:41:57

Yeah.

Jake: 00:41:57

I think it

Brian: 00:41:57

at all, like you said, work inside, love yourself.

Brian: 00:42:01

It's a cliche.

Brian: 00:42:02

We hear it all the time.

Brian: 00:42:03

Love yourself, and then you can love others, right?

Brian: 00:42:04

Yes.

Brian: 00:42:05

That's true.

Brian: 00:42:05

But what does that really mean?

Brian: 00:42:07

What does that really mean?

Brian: 00:42:08

I think that analogy you gave with the castle and components of there's portions

Brian: 00:42:12

of myself, I can tell you right now they're stuck in a dungeon somewhere.

Brian: 00:42:15

I should probably let 'em out.

Brian: 00:42:16

I should go light some candles, see if they want some wine and come on out, man.

Brian: 00:42:20

Let's cry it out and then go and dance.

Brian: 00:42:22

There's parts of myself that need that.

Brian: 00:42:25

And I think we all have that.

Brian: 00:42:27

And then we start to see, and then we can see that in other people.

Brian: 00:42:30

And there's oh, they're ignoring portions of themselves.

Brian: 00:42:33

There's portions of themselves locked away somewhere or in a dungeon

Brian: 00:42:37

somewhere or in a room that they haven't talked to in a long time.

Brian: 00:42:41

So how can we help them on that same journey?

Brian: 00:42:44

And that's where we're really seeing compassion and outside of

Brian: 00:42:49

self, into other selves and seeing.

Brian: 00:42:52

That portion of that.

Brian: 00:42:53

So how did you start to see this in your own journey?

Brian: 00:42:56

How did that awareness come to be for you?

Jake: 00:43:00

It's a dog.

Jake: 00:43:00

He does a good job protecting the house, but I think it's been an evolution,

Jake: 00:43:04

I don't know if I could pinpoint one exact moment where that happened, but

Jake: 00:43:07

I think like I've just been on this journey of shedding these different

Jake: 00:43:10

layers of like shame that I've harbored, for myself or guilt, shame

Jake: 00:43:15

and guilt are good places to start.

Jake: 00:43:17

Like where do you feel?

Jake: 00:43:18

Shame, where do you feel guilt?

Jake: 00:43:20

And it, you might not know at first and stuff like that, but like a good clue is

Jake: 00:43:24

if you see something in another person and it like upsets you, or it like triggers

Jake: 00:43:28

you, that word that's a clue, right?

Jake: 00:43:30

That's telling you that there's something inside you that you haven't

Jake: 00:43:33

necessarily integrated, or that you've been neglecting that you've put into one

Jake: 00:43:36

of those rooms and you've closed it off.

Jake: 00:43:38

And you've said it was bad, basically.

Jake: 00:43:40

I think just be very careful with the labels of good and bad on yourself and

Jake: 00:43:44

examine the labels of bad, especially that you have and why you've placed

Jake: 00:43:48

them there and what they mean.

Jake: 00:43:50

And generally speaking we can quote rom dos, like we're all

Jake: 00:43:52

just walking each other home.

Jake: 00:43:54

We can think of each other as like mirrors to each other.

Jake: 00:43:56

So I think like the external world is like a feedback loop that helps you to

Jake: 00:44:01

understand where you might have some of this shame, this guilt that type of thing.

Jake: 00:44:06

And yeah and it, sometimes it's Your family members like played

Jake: 00:44:09

a huge role in like creating this shame on you or something, right?

Jake: 00:44:13

Like sometimes it doesn't, it has something to do with you cuz you're

Jake: 00:44:17

the one, ultimately that places the shame there and that maintains it

Jake: 00:44:21

and that continues to cultivate it.

Jake: 00:44:23

But it can be like yeah, you have to try to free yourself from it and you have to

Jake: 00:44:27

see that part of yourself and love it.

Jake: 00:44:28

I used to work a lot, like way too much.

Jake: 00:44:30

And I drove my health into the ground.

Jake: 00:44:33

And I used to have habits, let's say ways of relaxing that were unhealthy.

Jake: 00:44:36

And even within plant medicine I've, had a relationship with cannabis for a

Jake: 00:44:40

very long time which is an incredible teacher plant that has so much to

Jake: 00:44:44

offer humanity at the same time as with anything, you can use something

Jake: 00:44:50

in a way that ends up hurting you.

Jake: 00:44:52

And I've been through all kinds of stuff like that.

Jake: 00:44:54

And you can end up then creating shame though, over something that like you

Jake: 00:44:58

love or over a part of you, that's actually just like something awesome.

Jake: 00:45:02

But you just went a little bit, awry.

Jake: 00:45:04

So I think We see this with like burnout and stuff.

Jake: 00:45:07

That's why I have the whole hustle healthy thing, because someone

Jake: 00:45:09

has to stick up for hustle too.

Jake: 00:45:11

Like we can't just put shame on hustling and working hard.

Jake: 00:45:13

Like I, as a person I enjoy working hard.

Jake: 00:45:17

Like not everything needs to be hard.

Jake: 00:45:19

You can get the fruits of your labor.

Jake: 00:45:20

Some of the most amazing fruits might come from something that didn't feel so hard.

Jake: 00:45:24

We don't have to put ourselves through suffering in agony at the same time.

Jake: 00:45:28

Some of us like genuinely like to serve.

Jake: 00:45:32

And we like to have a little bit of an element where, we're we're, putting

Jake: 00:45:37

sometimes our own needs, secondary in order to be a leader, for others.

Jake: 00:45:42

But we have to be careful when we do that, that we don't, go way overboard

Jake: 00:45:45

and we don't end up not loving ourselves and not taking care of ourselves.

Jake: 00:45:49

And that's actually in the healing world.

Jake: 00:45:50

What happens with a lot of healers is that they end up not taking care

Jake: 00:45:54

of their own energy as they need to.

Jake: 00:45:55

Anyways.

Jake: 00:45:56

Yeah, I could riff on that topic, like all day, basically.

Jake: 00:45:59

But I think that yeah, start with, where are you shameful?

Jake: 00:46:02

Where do you feel?

Jake: 00:46:03

Guilt?

Jake: 00:46:04

Where are you placing labels of bad on other people on yourself and just

Jake: 00:46:09

shine a bit of light there and anything that's dark or that feels scary,

Jake: 00:46:13

or, you don't really wanna go there.

Jake: 00:46:14

Yeah, there's emotion.

Jake: 00:46:15

That's not been processed by you, right?

Jake: 00:46:17

Like the emotion has to be expressed.

Jake: 00:46:19

So you are gonna maybe cry about it and you are gonna, you have to feel it.

Jake: 00:46:24

You have to go through it.

Jake: 00:46:25

The only way is through it.

Jake: 00:46:27

That's the only way.

Jake: 00:46:27

But guess what?

Jake: 00:46:28

It's not as bad as, as bad.

Jake: 00:46:30

There we go.

Jake: 00:46:31

Again, it's not as scary as it seems.

Jake: 00:46:33

It's not as I posted on LinkedIn something today from Terrence McKenna,

Jake: 00:46:36

where he talks about how nature rewards, courage, and that the trick is to, hurl

Jake: 00:46:40

yourself into the abyss and realize that it's just a feathered, once you

Jake: 00:46:43

actually do so I think it's be bold enough to venture into the dark parts.

Jake: 00:46:48

Don't be afraid of them realize that they are important parts of you.

Jake: 00:46:52

And, don't even when people then get shameful about what they did

Jake: 00:46:55

in the PA, like it's like shame on top of shame on top of shame.

Jake: 00:46:58

It's you don't need to do that.

Jake: 00:46:59

It was there for a reason, it happened for a reason.

Jake: 00:47:01

It's all good.

Jake: 00:47:02

And just move forward and integrate that part of yourself.

Jake: 00:47:05

Yeah.

Jake: 00:47:05

Take that lesson

Brian: 00:47:06

and just walk with it and just learn, take what you

Brian: 00:47:09

learned along that walk with you.

Brian: 00:47:11

And that's it, man.

Brian: 00:47:13

And that's probably one of the most difficult things to do in

Brian: 00:47:16

this entire experience is love and really forgive yourself and then,

Brian: 00:47:21

and help others do in that same way.

Brian: 00:47:23

And.

Brian: 00:47:24

That's a big part of what we got to consciously do intentionally do back to

Brian: 00:47:28

that, tying that back to the beginning of this conversation, how we need to really

Brian: 00:47:33

just do that on a day to day aspect of

Jake: 00:47:36

yeah.

Jake: 00:47:37

Hold space.

Jake: 00:47:38

You need to create the time and space.

Jake: 00:47:39

You need to hold the space for yourself for that to take place.

Jake: 00:47:42

And sometimes that means dropping a few things you're doing, taking

Jake: 00:47:47

time, like getting time back and being able to do that sort of thing.

Jake: 00:47:51

You don't need to venture down to the Amazon jungle,

Jake: 00:47:53

but you might want to, right?

Jake: 00:47:54

That might help you.

Jake: 00:47:55

It's incredible.

Jake: 00:47:56

The change in perspective we have when we change environments,

Jake: 00:47:59

when we do all those things.

Jake: 00:48:00

But to your point, I think we need to create the time and space

Jake: 00:48:04

for these things to take place.

Jake: 00:48:06

So it is a conscious intention based type of work.

Jake: 00:48:10

And it is work.

Jake: 00:48:11

There's no getting around it's the work.

Jake: 00:48:13

And we will always try to find ways to avoid the work and to look for that

Jake: 00:48:17

magic pill, to look for that silver bullet that doesn't quite exist.

Jake: 00:48:21

And eventually we're just gonna have to face it.

Jake: 00:48:23

And we can avoid it all we want.

Jake: 00:48:25

We can kick it down, kick the can down the line a little bit.

Jake: 00:48:28

And sometimes we might need to do that.

Jake: 00:48:30

It's maybe it's whoa, that's a lot, like I'm not in a place right

Jake: 00:48:33

now to fully deal with all that.

Jake: 00:48:35

That's okay.

Jake: 00:48:36

But at some point you probably want to, because it's only gonna

Jake: 00:48:39

intensify, it's only gonna grow.

Jake: 00:48:42

And darkness is just compressed light.

Jake: 00:48:44

It's just light.

Jake: 00:48:45

It's just light in a dense position.

Jake: 00:48:48

And so just bring your awareness to it.

Jake: 00:48:51

That's the thing, that's all you have to do at first is bring your awareness.

Jake: 00:48:55

And by doing that, you're like a lighthouse you're shining your

Jake: 00:48:57

light on the dark part of you.

Jake: 00:48:59

So it can find its way home from the dark storm you sees basically.

Jake: 00:49:02

And that's to get back to intention, thank you, Brian.

Jake: 00:49:04

And to get back to intention and the other part of intention is attention, right?

Jake: 00:49:09

So think of them as two sides of the same leaf intention informs like, the type

Jake: 00:49:14

of energy that we're sending somewhere.

Jake: 00:49:17

So right now, if my intention is to have a, open-hearted conversation with

Jake: 00:49:22

Brian, then that's the container in which this experience will take place.

Jake: 00:49:27

But then the other piece is attention.

Jake: 00:49:29

So that dictates where you send your energy.

Jake: 00:49:32

So it's awareness.

Jake: 00:49:33

So if my awareness is on Brian, that's where the attention is, intention

Jake: 00:49:37

is being sent via my attention.

Jake: 00:49:39

You use intention and attention to create the space, to hold to then reintegrate

Jake: 00:49:46

aspects of yourself, basically.

Jake: 00:49:47

But you can also like use intention and attention in your sales meetings, in your,

Jake: 00:49:52

chat with your wife in your, the way you cook your food for your children, right?

Jake: 00:49:57

What.

Jake: 00:49:58

You lead with an intention, and put your awareness into it.

Jake: 00:50:02

And that's literally what shamans do.

Jake: 00:50:04

That's, what's at the heart of all of this.

Jake: 00:50:06

It's like using your heart to create intention, using your awareness, to

Jake: 00:50:12

send that energy to different places.

Jake: 00:50:14

And there's more to it than that, but that's really at the court.

Jake: 00:50:17

Yeah.

Jake: 00:50:17

That's a

Brian: 00:50:17

big part of it.

Brian: 00:50:18

And I wanna highlight that for people that are just really hearing this

Brian: 00:50:22

intention and attention is that's what anybody that's ever grown up in religion.

Brian: 00:50:28

And when we're talking about praying over our food and giving blessings

Brian: 00:50:31

and giving thanks that's setting intention and attention right there.

Brian: 00:50:34

You were literally saying, thank you for putting this all and

Brian: 00:50:37

coming together at this one point.

Brian: 00:50:39

So I can consume to get energy to whatever.

Brian: 00:50:41

That is it.

Brian: 00:50:42

And there's so much of this reality of life, of what we walk, where.

Brian: 00:50:47

Hey, I want a degree or, Hey, I want a good job or, Hey,

Brian: 00:50:50

I wanna make a lot of money.

Brian: 00:50:52

There's our intention and intention.

Brian: 00:50:54

So what are you doing that on a day to day basis?

Brian: 00:50:57

And that brings it back to the mind.

Brian: 00:50:59

What are you doing right now to set intention and attention and the things

Brian: 00:51:03

that you don't even realize you're doing?

Brian: 00:51:05

How can you bring attention to those dark places?

Jake: 00:51:08

Yeah.

Jake: 00:51:08

And also again, do your best to a, as one of my friends says bow at the

Jake: 00:51:13

altar of impermanence, to understand that everything is temporary, so don't

Jake: 00:51:18

get so attached to those destinations, that job, you really want that it,

Jake: 00:51:23

it doesn't mean don't aim for things, take aim and, head towards something.

Jake: 00:51:26

Eventually you have to choose something and move towards it.

Jake: 00:51:28

But like the more you attach, the more, the extent to which you want

Jake: 00:51:33

something is the extent to which you're afraid of not having it.

Jake: 00:51:37

So by understanding that deeply it's one thing to just hear me say that,

Jake: 00:51:41

but you will integrate that as you go about, continually setting yourself

Jake: 00:51:48

these outcomes that you want and then having these suffering of not

Jake: 00:51:52

achieving them or not getting them.

Jake: 00:51:54

And we do that with so many things, and the rooster agrees.

Jake: 00:51:56

, it's

Brian: 00:51:56

our call to the hour too.

Brian: 00:51:58

, I could talk on this so long and it's been such a great conversation with you,

Brian: 00:52:03

Jake and just having this experience.

Brian: 00:52:05

And I hope our listeners were able to gain a lot of awareness out of it.

Brian: 00:52:10

Bringing in attention, bringing into the mind opening and forgiving ourselves.

Brian: 00:52:15

We touched on so many parts of healing and really integrating

Brian: 00:52:19

into life for the fullest.

Brian: 00:52:21

And it's been great.

Brian: 00:52:23

And I have to say, I gotta cut it to close or else we'll go on for hours and hours.

Brian: 00:52:28

But Jake, this has been a great convers.

Jake: 00:52:31

Much Brian very grateful for the work you're doing, keep keep expanding

Jake: 00:52:35

and, stay curious and yeah, everyone listening, like if there's anyone who

Jake: 00:52:39

wants to, discuss more of these topics or maybe experience life in the Amazon

Jake: 00:52:43

jungle or help to plant some trees or anything like that I'm your guy

Jake: 00:52:48

feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.

Jake: 00:52:50

That's a good place to find me Jake Howden.

Jake: 00:52:52

Thanks so much, Brian.

Jake: 00:52:53

Big love to you from the jungle.

Jake: 00:52:56

. Brian: And that's this episode of the art

Jake: 00:53:01

if you haven't already hit the follow hit the subscribe, we drop an episode every

Jake: 00:53:05

Wednesday, seven o'clock Eastern, and we have a new guest, new entrepreneur, new

Jake: 00:53:10

leader, new someone that is just breaking the mold of mindset and really living.

Jake: 00:53:16

What I like to say is a lost art of mindset.

Jake: 00:53:20

And if you're looking for more information about Jake and this episode go down

Jake: 00:53:24

into the show notes, you'll find some more information about him and

Jake: 00:53:28

you'll find even information about me.

Jake: 00:53:30

If you want to check out more stuff around Brian, sage.com, feel free

Jake: 00:53:34

to head over there and as always stay curious, keep expanding.