Mapping Life's Transitions with "The Hero’s Journey" - Paul Cuneo

OUR AWESOME GUEST This WEEK: Paul Cuneo 

Change doesn’t start with a neat plan. It starts with the knowing that your current path no longer fits, and the quiet nudge that something braver is calling. We sit down with Paul Cuneo, creator of the Hero’s Journey Odyssey Experience, to explore how ancient story patterns and Jungian psychology can turn that restlessness into a reliable map for reinvention. From the call to adventure to the ordeal and the return, Paul shows how each stage reflects an inner identity shift—and how recognizing where you are can reduce fear, clarify next steps, and restore momentum.

Paul’s unconventional path from music and movement to acting and identity work reveals a key insight: the world doesn’t need a perfect performance, it needs your singular presence. That principle anchors his client work. When the ego gets loud—demanding certainty and control—intuition speaks in whispers that are easy to miss. Paul offers practical ways to hear those signals, “follow the firefly,” and clear the hidden blockages (guilt, old stories, outdated defenses) that keep solutions out of reach. One powerful reframe: you don’t have to give up who you are; you only have to release the belief that you need certain traits to be safe. Set the sword down so both hands can be in the work, and pick it up again only when it’s truly needed.

We also unpack a liberating lens on agency: reality versus agreement. Buildings are real; businesses are agreements. Labels are agreements. When you see how much of your life you’ve consented to, renegotiating becomes possible. If you agreed, you can change the terms. By mapping your journey, honoring the old identity with gratitude, and stepping toward the new one without clinging, hard stops feeling like failure and starts feeling like progress. If you’re navigating a career pivot, a relationship shift, or a deep reinvention, this conversation offers structure, language, and tools to move forward with courage. If it resonated, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review—we’d love to hear which stage of the journey you’re in now.

"One of the MOST profound, think outside the box episodes I've experienced while hosting the show" - Brad Weisman

Living the Dream with Curveball

On the living the dream with curveball podcast I interview guests that inspire.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts  

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Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! 🎙️ Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! 🏡🌟 #TheBradWeismanShow #RealEstateRealLife

Credits - The music for my podcast was written and performed by Jeff Miller.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Intro
• 2:32 Paul’s Path From Music To Movement
• 5:37 Acting, Identity, And Being Yourself On Set
• 9:42 Jung, Campbell, And The Monomyth
• 13:52 Mapping Clients’ Lives Onto The Hero’s Journey
• 18:27 Where People Get Stuck: Ordeals And Restlessness
• 22:13 The Hero’s Journey Explained Simply
• 28:38 Intuition Versus Ego: Hearing The Whispers
• 30:01 [Ad] Living the Dream with Curveball
• 30:44 (Cont.) Intuition Versus Ego: Hearing The Whispers
• 34:50 Clearing Baggage To Unlock Insight
• 39:00 What To Give Up To Embody The New Identity

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:48

From real estate to the market as a whole is going to sometimes affect the people right in the beginning in real life. We all learn in this. If you think about it, Wayne Dyer might not attract everybody and everything in between. And now your host, Brad Wiseman. All right, we're back. Whether you like us or not, we're back, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:15

That's right. We're here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16

We are here. Yeah, we are here every Thursday, 7 p.m. So we we uh hope that you join us and we have some amazing guests uh that are lined up for the next couple months here into the end of the year. And uh just want to make sure you guys are tuning in because we got some really good, good, really good town here. Uh just like we do today. We have an amazing guy. This guy actually was brought to us through Sylvie, Sylvie DeGiusto and Shauna Um Van Bogart, I think is her last name, if I'm coming off of that right. They said to me, you know, you should have this guy on. He's really, really good. And when I started digging into what he is doing and how deep he gets with the with transitional, when people are going through transition and and looking for deeper meanings in life and things like that, he is onto this thing called the hero's journey. And it's nothing new, but he's taking a new spin on it. And he actually helps people uh get through this process, and it's really neat. We're gonna be talking about that. Exciting, exciting. It is exciting, right? Yes. So his name is Paul Cunio. He's the creator of the Hero's Journey Odyssey Experience. Paul helps clients move through personal and professional transition and reinvention by mapping their lives onto the hero's journey and pulling back the curtain on the identity transformation they're going through. Uh, through this process, clients learn to trust and respond to their intuition and instincts, embrace their fears, and find the answers to those seemingly intractable problems that life, career, and relationships present to us. Now, I don't think there's anybody out there that wouldn't want to go through this, right? It sounded pretty good. So where's where's Paul? Let's get Paul on here and we'll start talking.

SPEAKER_00: 2:51

Hello. Paul, how you doing? I'm doing great, Brad. How are you doing? I'm doing wonderful. Doing wonderful. I've got some Halloween stuff in the background. I hope you don't mind. I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 3:02

There's nothing wrong with Halloween stuff. In fact, you can have Halloween stuff up all year if you want. That's how I feel. That's totally that's how you feel. That's funny. That's funny. So, yeah, so welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

SPEAKER_00: 3:16

Um, thank you so much for having me. I've heard so many great things. I've been enjoying the episodes, like the um Death Talks guy. Yes, and then the the realtor who's like the spirituality realtor of like Sage. Yeah, Adam. Adam's amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 3:29

Yeah, well, we appreciate that. We're glad that you were listening up here, but I'm really intrigued by the hero's journey and what you kind of turned me on to. I mean, last night I couldn't go to bed. Um, you know, I told my wife, I'll be up early tonight, and I'm gonna, you know, just touch up base a little bit on the on a guest that I'm having on the tomorrow. And I started digging into this stuff, and it's it's it's deep. It's pretty cool. It is cool, it's really cool. So let's jump in. So who are you? Let's like who's Paul?

SPEAKER_00: 3:59

Well, Paul is this kid who was born in LA. And then when I was five, my family took us out to Nebraska. Oh, wow. Yeah, I grew up there until I was like 21. I went to college in Illinois, and then you know, I came back. It's just the the Californian in me, the the Los Angeles was like, I'm getting back to the big city. Yeah. I've enjoyed my time in the Midwest, but in the small town, but something was calling me back here. And so I came back. I was pursuing music, taught music for a while, and then this director and actor in LA, she saw what I was doing with the junior high kids. I wasn't just doing music, I was doing a lot of movement with them. And so she said, Gosh, what you're doing, I'd really like to have you come and work with my adult actors at this acting studio in LA because they're so not into their bodies.

SPEAKER_02: 4:52

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

Um, I had had a lot of dance and movement and mime training. And so I came in and I did some guest spots at this acting academy. And then one day their regular person had left and they were like, Will you take over? So for seven years, I taught movement for actors at this acting academy. And then I got the bug, you know, it was just like I came out for music and I was doing movement, and then being around acting and being around actors, it was not hard to want to do it myself. And so that started a 13-year journey. Um, five of those really getting started, and then the eight after that, where I really kind of got my footing and figured it out and pursued acting. But during that time, I met a man named Sam Christensen. And Sam Christensen was a former casting director. Um, he did MASH. You remember the show MASH?

SPEAKER_01: 5:51

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:52

And so um he and he was a casting director for a number of different shows, but he had really started to pursue the psychology, um, analytical psychology, Carl Jung, the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell, the idea of the personal myth and archetypes. And what he realized is that actors don't know how to be themselves on set. A lot of actors just don't get it. And the reason is because when when you're starting out as an actor, you think that your job is to totally not be yourself, right? You think your job is to become someone else, and that your training is gonna teach you how to totally become someone else, and then you find that that's not working, and the reason it's not working is because Hollywood doesn't want you to be someone else, they want you to come in, put on the cowboy hat, wear the clothes, talk in the southern accent, but come in totally as yourself. Because what they're looking for is they're looking for someone with a totally unique perspective on the role. Yeah, they don't want what you know. Most people come in and they're like, I wonder what the casting director or the director wants me to do. And so I'm gonna come in that way and try to figure out what they want me to do. And then you learn, no, what they want is for me to be myself and bring my own unique perspective onto this role. And so through these workshops that Sam Christensen did, I started to understand more and more what my job was as an actor, but it got me really turned on to Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey. And understanding all that helped me to understand story structure, which then contributed to my writing. And one day, through a series of fortunate events, I wound up working for this um podcaster slash author slash blogger. And they saw that I could write. And I started doing proofreading for them and then copy editing and then copywriting, hung out my own copywriting shingle. And then people were coming to me for copy. But what was happening was I was listening to them and to their story and to how they got into their business and why things aren't working right now and why they think they need a new website. And invariably, it was they didn't really understand the journey that they had been through. They didn't understand the journey that led to their business. They didn't understand the transformation they were going through that was making them feel restless about their current path and why they wanted to shift into a new path. But for me, having come from this background of union psychology and depth psychology and heroes journey work and Joseph Campbell, I was able to see that they were on a hero's journey. And so what I would do is I would say, well, let me, I would basically map their life or a particular portion of their life onto the hero's journey. And I would say, This is why you're going through what you're going through. This is the identity you started in. This is the new identity you're in now. And or maybe it's like you're not quite in the new identity, but you're at the ordeal in the hero's journey. And so it's coming, but this is why you're feeling so restless. And I would just do this as part of the copywriting work, and then I'd be like, okay, let's write your copy. And then we do that. But afterward, they would always say, Man, thanks for the copy. But the best part about this whole thing was you mapping my life onto the hero's journey and helping me understand the transformation that I was going through. And so later, I thought it actually intuitively it came to me, I should open this up to people who don't need copy, but are just going through a transformation. And it's hard. Transitions are hard, reinventions are hard. And so I opened it up, sent out an email saying, Hey, you've been through this with me. We did your copy, but I'm opening this up now to people who don't need copy. And then they just started sending people my way, and that's what where we are now.

SPEAKER_01: 10:10

That's where you are now. That's what you're doing. Yeah, and it and so it almost seems like when you do this, you're you're mapping out something that already happened. They're not actually they're at a certain are they in a certain place of the hero's journey? They're in a certain a certain place of that. Uh or a certain, like, I don't know how to say place, but you know, like you have the departure, the initiation, the return. So they're somewhere, they're they're in there somewhere, or are they already past it all? And now you're kind of just you're putting it out there and saying, here's what happened uh in your life.

SPEAKER_00: 10:43

It's both. So sometimes they're coming to me and they've already been through it, but they're struggling to articulate it. And so then I'll come in and say, Well, this is this is what happened. And this, like, this is where you heard the call to adventure. This is where you refused the call. This is where you met the mentor, this is where you crossed the threshold into the special world, and we and I can show them because I asked them all these questions about their life. Yeah, I can show them, you know, what happened and and why those people showed up in their life and why they took that particular path. And then I we could go all the way through it if they've been through the whole thing. But sometimes they come to me and they're in the middle, and that that happens more often than not. They're in the middle of the hero's journey, their particular hero's journey. And so I'm listening and I'm helping them to understand what I believe the unconscious faculties are asking them to let go of and what the new identity is calling, what what the new identity is, and then helping them to see where they are on that journey. And so, in some ways, you could say it's predictive because it's like, well, if I can see you're going through the ordeal right now, then I know that after that you're gonna get the reward, and then you're going to have the road home, and then you're going to have the resurrection, and you're going to go through these processes. So it's somewhat predictive to say this is coming up for you. Yeah. But I don't know what it's going to look like. Yeah. It's just I know the structure, and so I can identify it.

SPEAKER_01: 12:14

All right. So let's go back. Explain in the easiest of terms what the hero's journey is.

SPEAKER_00: 12:22

So the hero's journey is like you said, it's not new at all. Right. I mean, you can trace this. Yep, the the earliest written story, you know, the written narrative. The earliest that we have is the Epic of Gilgamesh. And in that, it's about a king that's, you know, not doing great things. He's basically uh what what's our rating on this show? You could say anything about the F bomb. Okay, good. So he's basically sleeping with all the brides before they sleep with their body. You're good. Okay. So this is Gilgamesh, right? So for people who aren't initiated, um, this is the story. So, and then the gods are like, this guy's kind of unhinged. So we're gonna send this guy, and he's gonna be like this wild man, and he's gonna come in, he's gonna challenge Gilgamesh. They have this big wrestling match in that goes throughout the whole city, and then um Gilgamesh wins. But he's like, bro, because no one's ever challenged him before, right? He's never, he's just gotten to do whatever he wants, and he's got this hole in himself because he's not fulfilling his potential. But he gets challenged by this guy, and he's like, Okay, so let's hang out. And now they go off and they leave the city and they go on all these adventures. Then the gods kill his best friend, and he doesn't want to die, so he goes on a search for immortality and he meets this bartender who's like, You're mortal. Your job is to enjoy your life now. And it's like crazy to think 4,000 years ago, yeah, that same theme of live in the moment, enjoy the present, right? Was being articulated and in oral traditions, way before that. I mean, this was the earliest written narrative that we have. But this was coming from oral traditions from hundreds and thousands of years before. So now he's like, Yeah, never mind, thanks, but I'm gonna go try to be immortal. And he goes, sets off to meet this guy who is immortal. This guy tells him how to be immortal, but he can't do it. So he goes back home and he just feels depressed and forlorn, but he's just been on the greatest ride of his life. And in going on the greatest ride of his life, and in being challenged, and in being and and in life demanding that he live up to his full potential, he goes home and he sees his kingdom brand new. And he decides this is the most beautiful place ever, and I'm gonna devote my life to doing great works, great deeds from my people. And so this is 4,000 years ago, we're getting the same narrative arc that you would get in Toy Story, yeah, that you would get in Star Wars or the Barbie movie. And so what happened was is that the hero's journey has been a narrative arc that we just seem to inherently understand as human beings. It has to do with our instincts. A lot of times we get into a rut, and our instincts pressure us to make a change. Your marriage isn't working. You either got to fix your marriage, you gotta get out. This job isn't working, you're not fulfilling your potential. And so we get this pressure from the instincts to make a change. That's the call to adventure. So this has its roots in biology and then in human psychology. And so what happened was that you know, Carl Jung came along and he's doing archetypes and he's looking at the hero's journey and mythology. And then Joseph Campbell comes, and Joseph Campbell looks at all these stories, and he recognizes a pattern, and he articulates this pattern in what he calls the monomyth, which is what you discovered. He articulates this pattern called the monomyth, but what's so remarkable about it is he's drawing on Yoon, he's drawing on everything he knows about personally, about mythology and and archetypes and studying all these cultures. But what he does is he makes the connection between the outer journey that the hero goes on and the inner journey that the hero goes on. And he articulates in each stage not only what the hero is doing in the outer world, but what's going on internally for the hero. And so in articulating this, we get this what he called the monomyth. And then later, a guy named Christopher Vogler came along and he reduced Campbell's 17 stages down to 12 stages for narrative purposes and for like screenwriters. And I tend to work with the 12 stages with clients because it's just more kind of it's easier to kind of wrap your head around, but then I bring in 17 stages uh as as needed.

SPEAKER_01: 17:06

So crazy. It's just wild. It it's it's an interesting concept or theory or whatever you want to call it. And you're right, not everybody agrees. Yeah, right. Well, but as I was reading it last night, I was going through, you know, here's the thing about when I was reading it is that it'll say the refuse refusal of the call. That didn't mean anything to me. But then when I read the hero's hesitation and doubt in the face of the unknown, that means something to me. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's so like when you look at the actual term that it gives you, meeting the mentor. The hero encounters a guide who provides training advice. It's it's kind of like that's your teacher. I get that your mentor, I get that. So it really, when you read the actual definition or the explanation of each stage, I'm sitting here going, oh yeah, I've been through that. I that I recognize that. I definitely recognize that. So it it is really, really interesting. And so when people come to you, I know Sylvia has come to you. Uh, she made a quote, there's a quote on your website from her and from Shauna. Um, and so they come to you to what? To find meaning in in the in their things, something that happened there in their life. Yeah, and they don't always know why.

SPEAKER_00: 18:19

Yeah, they don't always kind of they kind of like they they're like they're like going through something, and maybe they've met with therapists, and maybe they've you know done different types of coaching and they've explored different modalities, and but there's still something bothering them. There is still a nagging from that kind of inner place that we all have. That inner voice is still saying, not yet. And so sometimes they'll come to me and they're just like, so-and-so said I should meet with you. That's funny, and there's a trust there. And then what I do is in our discovery call, then I explain what I do and what I'm gonna be listening for. And I basically tell them, you know, whatever route you decide to go with me, is I say, in general, I'm going to be listening to you and your story and your life. And then I'm going to be identifying what the identity is that you're being asked to let go of. And I'm going to identify what the new identity is that I believe you're being called to. And I'm going to tell you what that transformation is about. And I'm going to tell you where you are on your hero's journey. I'm going to help you make sense of this path because all too often we get told, yeah, you know what? If it's if it isn't easy, man, it's probably not the right thing. You know, if if it's if it's not flowing, like, you know, you're probably barking up the wrong tree. And if you just try something else. But one of the lessons of the hero's journey is there's a very good chance that if it's hard, you are on the right path.

SPEAKER_01: 20:27

And see, and I agree with that, even that's something that I agree with just from the mentors that I've had in my life, and and and coaching and and just in life. You know, the things that were hard, that's when I got somewhere. And and that's when and that and the person that I became on the other side of that pain or that that um challenge was a different person. Yes. Um, and because the old Brad couldn't have done that, or could the old Brad couldn't be where where I am now. Right. You know, it's kind of interesting how you go through things in life. And I think there's obviously there's reasons for the things we go through too. It makes us stronger, makes us tougher.

SPEAKER_00: 21:10

Yeah, and and we are so grateful to old Brad. Right. And that's that's a big part of this process, is we're not here to denigrate this old identity, we're not here to be like, this is bad, so you gotta let go of it. Like, what's your problem? Well, we spend a lot of time appreciating how far that old identity got us. And what's happening is there are typically parts of yourself that you have rejected because you thought that those parts don't make you safe. And what's happening right now is that your instincts are saying, you gotta get those parts back, Brad. Yeah, because the only way you're gonna do the next thing you need to do, the only way you're gonna fulfill the next level of your potential is if you call back the part of yourself that you rejected. Because believe it or not, that wasn't a bad part. You believed it was bad, you believed it made you unsafe, but we got to get that part back because you need that for the next chapter. And isn't it your ego that makes you want to be safe? Yes, and that's again, we're so grateful to our ego. Yeah. Like, I need to get to the grocery store. Ego, please help me. Like, I like you have things that you do, ego. You're you are the self-aware of the self, and you're aware of what's going on around me, and you're processing and making sense of things, and you're helping me remember stuff, and you're helping me figure things out, and that is such an important function, and we need you. However, what happens is we come to overrely on it. And there are times when the ego can't figure out what we need to do next, but your intuition and your instincts and your emotions know what you should do next. And so we're learning to disassociate from the ego so that we temporarily, yeah, so that we can hear the guidance of the intuition and instincts.

SPEAKER_01: 23:23

Oh, because the maybe the the volume of the ego is too loud. So you have to kind of tone it down a little bit so you can hear, you can hear the inst yeah, yeah. I get it. Yep, yeah, exactly right. That's that's interesting, really interesting. That that is just it's good, it's just deep stuff. I I love it, I love it, I love it. So let's go. You had some things here that you you had put in uh for bullets here, and I had some um some comments about them. So you were just talking about the guidance from our intuition, instincts, and emotions shows up, uh how they show up. Uh, we can recognize it and then allow or follow it to work out our life in a way the ego and conscious awareness can't. And I is that to me, you say intuition, you say instincts. There's also something I I use a term uh called the whispers uh of of advice. Perfect. Like the you know, there's a lot of things I've listened to over over the years, uh Wing Dyer being one of them, a big Wing Dyer fan, and and um he always talked about you know, we sometimes ignore those whispers. Would that be the instincts? Would that be the the intuition that you that you're speaking of?

SPEAKER_00: 24:28

Yes, absolutely. And that, yeah, it could be either of those, but that's the beauty, I think, too, of I love that phrase, whispers, because that's really the beauty of how the unconscious faculties communicate with us is that you can be in a stadium at a rock concert, and you can be worried about all kinds of things in your family, and so there's all this onslaught of noise from the outside, and there's all this noise from the inside, but you still hear it. And it does whisper, it's so quiet, but it's so clear to itself, it's not competing with anything, it's on a different channel, and so you can have all the noise on all these other channels, but your intuition is gonna speak on its own channel, and so you'll always hear it. But you just have to be careful because the first response from the ego is gonna be you know, it's like yeah, what do you mean? Pay my uncle back the 50 bucks. Like, what are you talking about? Like, come on, I'm enjoying this concert, I'm gonna go home. Yeah, it's like I'll get I'll get him paid. It's not a big deal, you know, and you you your ego starts justifying the decisions that you're making consciously, yeah. But one of the signs you need to do it is that there's resistance. Right, right. It's like if you get met with that level of resistance from the ego when that little thought bubbles up, you probably should follow that. Interesting. And what often is happening is maybe you're struggling with a problem in your business, but and you can't figure it out. You've consulted with consultants, you've hired the coaches, you've enlisted enrolled more of your team members to like work on this problem, and you're working on it, and it's keeping you up at night, and it's you're it's intractable. And you keep getting this hit, you know, to pay your uncle back. And so you pay him back one day and you get the idea for your business, and it's because the instincts and the intuition, I'm gonna go with intuition in this case, the intuition knows that the solution is behind the guilt, and so you need to remove the guilt, and then the solution can come forward, or the intuition might know that your uncle has some experience, some wisdom, and he can, when you go to pay that money back, he's like, How's it going? And you're like, uh, it's you know, okay, I'm dealing with this thing in my business. And he's like, Oh, do this. Yeah, and you're like, Oh my god, you know, and you're like, Why does this keep coming up to do this? And it's not always that simple. Sometimes you have to clear a lot of stuff that the intuition is giving you before you get that next message. But what I tell people is follow the firefly, the unconscious, the whispers. I I think of it like little blinks from a firefly. Yeah, it's on your website. Yeah, and so you're you're in the dark, you're in a problem, and there's a little flash. And just like a kid on summer nights, your job is to just run after it. Wherever it flashed, you run to that spot and you just keep following that firefly wherever it's leading you, and it will eventually get to that place that you're trying to go.

SPEAKER_01: 28:19

That's that's cool. I like that analogy. That's a good one. So, you know, it's interesting too. It's almost like when you were saying, so the intuition or or the instinct, they have to actually get rid of some baggage first, which would be that guilt. It well, it can be guilt, it can be so many things. Yeah, so many things, but that but you're saying is once you once you get past that point, then it then there's openings for other things and and other things to come through. It's that's really, really neat.

SPEAKER_00: 28:46

And it knows it's been with you your entire life. The unconscious has a record of everything you've ever done. Sometimes you'll get a dream and it's predictive.

SPEAKER_01: 28:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:56

And you're like, how could that, how could it know that in two weeks I'm gonna do this? It has a record of everything you've ever done in your life, everything you've experienced, everything anybody's ever done to you, everything you've said, everything you've done, it's all gone to the unconscious. And if you knew every single thing about a person's life, you would know what they're gonna do in two weeks.

SPEAKER_01: 29:57

Oh, wow, that's wild. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, because the roadmap is kind of is there. It's it's kind of the evidence is there of what's gonna what's gonna be next, the decisions they're gonna make.

SPEAKER_00: 30:08

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are people in your life that you don't know that intimately, but you're like, Yeah, I know what he's gonna do in a week. I know he's going to that concert.

SPEAKER_01: 30:16

Yeah, right. So true. So true.

SPEAKER_00: 30:19

What can the unconscious do?

SPEAKER_01: 30:21

Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it's it's wild. So then let's go into um this was um some of the things that you had on here was what you have to give up in order to body the new identity and shuffle off the old identity as you affect uh your transformation. And I put in, I had a uh just a note here. I put in here who you need to be in order to get you where you want, is what I wrote down from last night. Kind of what's what I kind of got out of that is who I need to be in order to get gets to the next space or next spot.

SPEAKER_00: 30:51

Yes. And I and I and if I if I understood correctly, that was that was the you see you were saying that was the bull about what you need to give up.

SPEAKER_01: 30:58

This is just yeah, yeah, would you have to give up in order to embody the new identity, yes, yes, exactly?

SPEAKER_00: 31:04

So, yes, you're exactly right, who you need to be. But this is kind of a this is I think often brings a lot of comfort to people, which is you know, a lot of times we think, man, this I feel like the person I am right now is not enough to meet the moment, but it it it sucks because I like who I am. Oh wow, I I like my sense of humor, I I like the relationships I have, I like the people in my life, and like, yeah, I yeah, I have problems and there are things I'm trying to work out, and there's like this big one that I'm really struggling with, but I don't want to give up these parts of myself, and so there's this fear that you're gonna lose. All these things that you love about yourself. And so this is man, if there's one thing for your listeners to take it take away from this, I would say it's this you don't have to give up anything in your life. You just have to give up that you need it to be safe. You're losing the attachment, which is an overcompensation. You have come to believe that if you don't grip this aspect of your personality, maybe it's a dominant personality trait, it's something that you think have always made you successful or it always kept you safe. It's like when you were a kid and your dad would come home in a rage, like this particular thing would show up and it protected you, and you've carried that forward through the rest of your life. And so you think to yourself, I don't want to give that up. And then your complexes also don't want you to give that up because they helped you develop that. And that's how we kept you alive, Paul. So you're not giving that up. And the lesson is, I'm not going to give it up. That thing that I developed, I don't have to give up. I just have to set it down and pick it up when needed. Because right now I'm holding it on onto it all the time. For those of you who are listening, that are um, for those of your listeners who are familiar with the Bible, there's the story of Nehemiah building the wall. And one of the things that it says is that all of because there's threats from all around who don't want them to rebuild this wall. And so there's enemies all around. And so as they're working, it says they all had one hand on their sword and one hand in the work. Because they know there's a threat around every corner. Yeah. But what your unconscious is trying to get you to do is it needs you at this point in your life to put both hands in the work. And you've been carrying around this sword because of a threat from 25 years ago. And you develop some really special skills and you're really good with this sword, but you don't need the sword right now. And what it's doing is it's preventing you from using your other hand. So we got to get you to put that sword down, release that, and now both hands are in the work. And if that threat shows up again, your sword is right there and you can just pick it up. So you don't have to give up anything, only that you need that thing to be safe.

SPEAKER_01: 34:13

Wow, that's great. That's really good. That really, that that analogy and that whole thing, that that's great. And it and it's it, you know, it's funny. You said anytime I'm listening to somebody talk, I'm sitting here going, okay, so how do I do this? What do I do? Like, what's my what's my thing? You know, and it's it's so true. You we have these stories that we tell ourselves, you know, from even if you had a gr I had a great upbringing, a wonderful upbringing. Yeah, uh parents are still together, all that stuff. But there's things that happen in your life. And and you know, there's there's all these stories. And and I think sometimes, you know, the thing I look at like that sword is a story uh that you're that you're not willing to give up. And it's okay. You don't have to give up the story, but you don't need to be telling that story all the time. Yes. That has that doesn't have to run your life, it doesn't have to be at the forefront. It did happen, and and there's no reason to be embarrassed about it, there's no reason to hate it or whatever. It's it's just, but it it can be let go. And if you need that story at a certain point, you can tell that story or or yeah, we're reflect on it, right?

SPEAKER_00: 35:15

Perfect. Great way to say it.

SPEAKER_01: 35:16

Yeah, yeah. So now I wonderful, wonderful. Um what do you want to what would you want to use as as uh like a final thing? I'm gonna have to have you back on again because this is just wonderful stuff. For and before we also end, so I want I want you to come up with uh whatever you want to end with, okay, for the audience. And then I also want you to tell them how to get in touch with you and how they can you know move on with this work uh through your um the hero's journey experience.

SPEAKER_00: 35:46

Absolutely. So just go to uh the road home with a dot after the O, and that'll take you to my website, and you can just go through that, and then there's ways to contact me at the bottom.

SPEAKER_01: 35:57

It's a great website. It's a very nice website, yeah. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00: 36:00

Yeah. Um and so that's a great way to get in touch with me for anything. Oh, so then uh what kind of the thing that I want to leave with.

SPEAKER_01: 36:09

Yeah, it's just like if there's some kind of little nugget that you want to leave us with, you know, that you say you know that you in your mind you're like, you know, this is something I want the audience to hear or or um or know about. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 36:21

What's coming to mind is uh one of the things that we do in this work is there comes a moment where we get out a piece of paper and we write down everything in our life that exists in reality and everything that exists by agreement. And so you might start by and you can just start writing stuff down in your life. It's like, yeah, I got my marriage and my spouse and my business, and I've got my kids, and I've got my dog, and I've got this laptop, and I've got I've got my place of business, you know, and I've got my this, and you start going through all these things, and then we go, okay, let's separate them out. What exists in reality and what exists only by agreement? And so they're like, Well, my marriage is real, and I'm like, Really? Oh wow, and then we look at it and we go, Oh, wait a minute, she's just a woman in my house, and then we go, wait a minute, that's not my house. Oh, geez. Okay, I'm not her husband, I'm just a man. And you kind of can ask yourself, if my dog walked in, would my dog be like, Yep, two married people, yep, this is our house, this is our, you know. Your dog's gonna be like, No, it's just I this is a this person, and then there's this person over here, and they seem to like be with each other a lot, and they all hang out in this place, and we all kind of hang out together, and I love it, and I love these people, but you start to see your business isn't real, the building's real, the business isn't, and you start to really start to realize how much uh is real and how much is just an agreement, and then what it starts to do is you start to understand how much agency you have in your life. If you agreed, you can stop agreeing. If you agreed, you can change the agreement. And so sometimes people come in and they feel really stuck in their business, in their life, and whatever it is, and so it just kind of helps us to get back to a place of like, okay, this isn't real, it's just an agreement, and I have a lot of agency over here, and so I might just share that just so people maybe reflect on that, and it might open up something for them to be like, oh, this actually is something I could change, or this is actually something I could walk away from and start a new agreement over here.

SPEAKER_01: 38:56

Yeah, that's good, good stuff. You know what I thought in my mind, I don't know why, when you're saying this that I think of the agreements uh that we make like a stop sign, it's a sign, it's a it's a piece of metal. Yeah, we just agree to all stop there.

SPEAKER_00: 39:12

And and have you ever have you ever been at a stop sign? And nobody's no police are listening to this. Have you ever been at a stop sign or a red light, and you're just like uh yes, absolutely, and that's it's the weirdest feeling. It is, it's a weird feeling, but reflecting on that moment, which you're doing, which I love, it's like I became aware in that moment that there is really nothing making me stop. Oh man, it's just an agreement. Yeah, isn't that why I agree? I agreed because we all agreed and it keeps us safe, but yes, I can also at times be like, you know what, this isn't serving me right now because my wife is pregnant and it's like she's in the hospital and I'm flying from work, and it's like there's nobody around. I'm going.

SPEAKER_01: 40:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 40:02

And you get there in time.

SPEAKER_01: 40:03

Yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great. Good stuff, man. I I had an awesome time. We do talking to you, man. This is just great. I this is the kind of uh kind of stuff I love to talk about. It really is. It's it's it's it's good, it's healthy. Uh, I think we need to be in these spaces to understand our lives, understand how we think, uh, why we think the way we do, and it's just good. So, Paul, thanks so much for being on today.

SPEAKER_00: 40:28

Thank you so much for creating a space to have this conversation. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01: 40:32

You're you're very welcome, very welcome. All right, we'll get you back sometime, all right? Oh my goodness. There you go, Paul Cunio. You have got to check him out. Hero's Journey Experience. Uh, go look him up. Uh, he he's just amazing. If you just look up his name, Paul Cunio, and that's C U N E O, is how you spell that, and uh you'll definitely find him there. All right, come see us again next Thursday, 7 p.m. We will be here. All right, thanks so much for listening.