Stop Tolerating Your Life.. Start Designing It

In this powerful episode of Dual Coast Podcast, we sit down with Chad Lefevre to break down what it truly means to live a life by design—not by default.

Too many people go through life tolerating their circumstances… settling for average… waiting for motivation to show up. Chad challenges that mindset head-on and dives into the truth about discipline, standards, and intentional living.

This conversation is a wake-up call. If you’ve been stuck in autopilot, lacking direction, or struggling to stay consistent—this episode will shift your perspective and push you to take control.

🔥 What We Cover:
 • The difference between living by design vs. tolerating your life
 • Why discipline beats motivation every time
 • Building non-negotiable standards for your life
 • How to break out of average thinking
 • Creating a mindset that leads to real success

You don’t rise to the level of your goals—you fall to the level of your standards.
This episode will challenge you to raise yours.

🎙 Subscribe to Dual Coast Podcast for more conversations on mindset, performance, health, and success.
👍 Like, comment, and share this with someone who needs to hear it.

#Discipline #Mindset #SelfDevelopment #Motivation #Success #LifeByDesign #Consistency #Entrepreneurship #MentalToughness #DualCoast

@Dualcoastpodcast @Movetoday365 @Danscoca

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning, Dual Coast family. Welcome back to another exciting episode of Dual Coast Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Skoka, joined my co-host on the West Coast, Russ Rogers, joined by very special guest this morning, Chad Lefebvre. Chad, thank you so much for being with us. How are you doing this morning?

SPEAKER_02 0:17

I'm doing great. It's a pleasure to be here with both of you.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Awesome, man. Thanks for coming. Actually, you should have introduced him as uh Chad Lefebvre, T M-I-C-C-G-L-O-B.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Yeah, TMIC Global.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

That's our that's my company, yeah, our organization. That is awesome, man. Love it. Hey, it's great having you on, man. I know we missed uh the last time because 5 30 on the West Coast is not your hour. Not my hour. No.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

I don't know. It's someone's hour, it's not mine.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yes. I was telling Dan before, you know, before you came on, it's like, man, I felt like I had all day, you know, to get ready for this show because normally I'm up at 4:45 and you know, no shower, throw on the cap, brush the teeth, you get the coffee, and let's go, you know. Um but today it's like, man, got to wash my hair, took a walk. You know that old saying for you. I know it's you know, they say in military, you know, we do more before 5 a.m. than most people do all day. Yeah, that's true. That's what we do when we're we have a show at eight o'clock. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, then you have the whole afternoon to yourself. Oh, I've got it, man. Skoka, I love that you did, you know. Welcome to Dual Coast family. I love that, I love that introduction. It's family. Change up a little bit today, but spicy for chat. So, Chad, let's get right into it. The last time that we actually had a conversation, and we'll get into a little bit of introduction in a little bit, a little bit more. Sure. Is I remember you saying that you were reading uh 11 books at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

You know? Well that changes from yeah, it's anywhere from seven, eight, nine. Yeah, there's always books going on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Now, I I know you are a very intelligent person, very intelligent. Your IQ is is up there and and at a higher level than most. I can't imagine. Is um how does one absorb seven to eleven books at one time?

SPEAKER_02 2:19

I don't know how to answer that question. There's no technique. Um I I think for me, the um there's probably some, if I thought if I thought about it, there's probably some sort of that pattern that I'm picking up across all of these different books that I feel like I'm almost exploring it almost like a um, you know, a prism. It's like, you know, these are different doorways or access points to sort of some underlying common pattern or theme uh that I'm exploring. Like for example, right now, uh I'm working on this book that uh I'm trying to get done for the end of the year. Um and um I mean, I'm I'm I don't know how many I'm reading right now and going through, but the the single theme or pattern that I'm exploring in all of this is what is the essence of being human. And so I'm looking through all of these different uh books and the the things I'm researching, the topics or the themes of these books through the lens of what is the impact on human beingness in this context. Okay, right? Whether that's human beingness through how the brain works, whether that's human beingness through um, you know, our our health and our wellness, um, or whether that's human beingness through um one thing I'm really exploring a lot right now is how our beliefs determine what we perceive as possible in our life, and then um the that that um that we don't have access to uh uh this thing we call reality as this sort of objective thing, as though it exists as it exists outside of us. It doesn't, it exists only within our own experience and within our own mind, and we have the ability to uh to to change um you know that that experience of reality if we're so bold enough to actually address um our our belief systems. And because our belief systems then lead to what we perceive and and and what we perceive, we then take action around uh or based on or or no action, which is still an action, right? We either act or we don't act based on our perception. And and yet those perceptions aren't like we're not all perceiving the same thing. I'm not perceiving the same reality that you are or Dan is, um, and that the the reality I'm I'm perceiving is totally tied to my belief system. So anyway, coming back to the books, I mean, I'm exploring these kinds of things right now. And so I think to your question, you know, Russell, in terms of how does one make sense of and read all these books and and you know, uh connect to some level of coherence with them, I think it's sort of these underlying patterns that have got me sort of digging into them. And so that that would be the only answer I could give. From a surface level, it probably has no meaning whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

So now, do you hand select the let's let's we'll just go with the simple seven. Do you hand select these simple seven to or are they related? Are they totally different from one another? Are they uh in agreement with your beliefs? Are they in disagreement? Do you expand upon that? Do you look at how other people think? You know, uh tell us your tell us your insight as far as like selecting a book and and what you want to hopefully gain from it.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Uh I think it's very for me anyway, um, I think it's very much like these books are like breadcrumbs into reality. So I might be reading a book and there might be something in there that makes me go, oh, I'm curious about that. And then, like literally what happens is, you know, I'm I'm in the middle of book one and I'm already buying book two because book one talked about something that made me curious. So now I'm going, I'm gonna go buy a book on that subject, and then the same thing. And so before you know it, I've got seven or eight or nine or whatever books on the go. Because again, they're all just to me access points uh into the prism of this experience that we're having, right? This this dispensation or this reality. Um, so how I select is is not really sort of there's no strategy to it. It's very uh spontaneous. Um, and and it's in response to what what is showing up in whatever I'm exploring at that moment. Um, and sometimes I'll buy them, I'll be in the middle of of reading this book or that book or whatever, and I'll just buy them to make sure I don't forget that I want to go cover that topic at some point, right? So um, so I have a yeah, I have an enormous library that I've kind of just built up, but it's very organic, it's very breadcrummy, you know, following the interest and the passions. There's no real strategy to it.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Yeah.

unknown 7:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

That that's amazing. I I I would imagine, like if I had this elaborate, you know, bookshelf with you know, library and everything, I'd be looking up and I'd go, man, I can't remember what I read out of that book.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Well, I so when I read books, so there's a book on how to read a book, by the way. I think the 1960s, it's very famous. Uh I need to read that. Yeah, yeah. And um, and so I I wrestle with these things, these books. I don't just read them. I I'm I've got highlighters and pens and flags and and all of this kind of stuff um and um going on. And so, you know, I'm writing in the margins and uh I'm highlighting, you know, things that I need to. I I learned this um in university. You know, I never had to read a book more than one time because I was able to remember it. But the reason I was able to do that, I think, is because I was such an avid uh you know note taker and and and highlighter. There's something about writing out and highlighting that locks it into your memory. Um and um now I do this because I'm writing a book right now, so I want to go back and reference some of this as well so that I can maybe quote a different author on something or whatever. So it just makes it easier. Um what I'm doing right now, because I'm about to go on the road for a year in July, is and I've I've got to write this book while I'm on the road. So what I'm doing is preparing to write the book right now, and that means going through all the source material and actually creating um documents of quotes and summaries of all of these books, because I can't take them with me on the road. There's too many, there's probably over a hundred that I'm referencing. So um, so I want to have that at my disposal so that when I'm traveling and I just have my computer, I can just go and grab you know the choice bits that are relevant to what I want to comment on. So, anyway, uh the way I write or read these books is not just passively, it's very much like a wrestling match with the ideas um, you know, in there. And sometimes I'll read something in one and then I'll like, oh, that reminds me of the one over here. So I'll go over to that one and I'll make notations that it's like this. So no one's gonna want to rebuy, maybe not, maybe I'm wrong about this, but rebuy my books at some point. They're just they're just messy with my own thoughts. They're they're one and done. They're there's no value. I'm sure it's not messy. Um reselling them.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

So well, when uh when Chad is traveling, you can you can find him at Ernest Chadlife Hemingway. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, this week this summer I'm going to uh so we're going to Europe. Um we're gonna be in France, Spain, and Italy um for for the summer. I'm doing the I'm turning 50 this uh summer. Nice uh in August. So I'm doing the El Camino. Early Congress. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Oh, are you?

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Yeah, yeah, we're doing the El Camino, the one from you know France into Spain, sort of yeah. And um, so we're doing that. And then uh after Europe, when we when the fall comes, then we're headed to Asia and we're going to Bali and Thailand, and we were there a couple years ago, so but gonna spend a longer time, but probably about seven, eight months there uh this year. So that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Oh, that sounds like a great trip. Yeah, a friend of ours, uh Dana Grant, she uh last summer went to, I think it was last summer or fall, she went to Portugal and did that same walk. I forget how many miles, I maybe a hundred miles or something, you know, along those lines. Yeah, there's a 10-day walk. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

No, this one's a six-week walk. Woo! Wow, yeah. Like they have different ones. There's uh there's an El Camino in Italy, there's the the the sort of the I'll call it the famous one, only it's the one that everyone knows is the longest one, I guess, but it's the one from France into Spain, and then yeah, Portugal has another short walk. Okay. Um, the one in Italy, we may do that as well. Uh, so we may do the France, Spain, and the Italy one. The Italy one's short, but I'm told that uh if you do the one in Italy, then what you you know it ends at the Vatican. And and if you're on the walk, you don't need to stand in line to go into the Vatican because they kind of give the pilgrims uh sort of they defer to them. So um, so if you're willing to do the walk, you can you can get an easy uh entrance into the Vatican.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Um and how how long is that short walk? I believe it was about it's like two weeks. I think it's two weeks. Okay, so that's uh are you averaging about 10 miles a day or more?

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Well, I haven't done it, so I don't know, but I mean okay, yeah. I I've got friends who've done it, and um I would think you know the average person walks about three and a half miles an hour. So, you know, if I'm if I'm gonna put in um you know a six-hour day, maybe walking five, six hour day, that yeah, you're getting about 15 miles, maybe something like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Yeah, yeah, putting down some tread. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Yeah, well, so I had planned this. There was this the I don't know if you guys uh saw this um this Stephen King thriller horror movie that came out last year called The Long Walk. And uh I went and saw that movie and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna do a walk like this. You never you don't think about walking as being something that could actually be hard on you, but you know, in this movie there get you know knee problems, and by the way, it's a horror movie. There's other plot to it, but just the basics of like, you know, like they're they're they're you know knees hurting or they're getting a blister in their shoe. And yeah, and so you know, we've been kind of researching, you know, what what what are the ideal, you know, here's a here's a tip I didn't know. Don't get waterproof shoes because and I wouldn't even have thought of this, but it rains, you know, as you're on these walks, and sometimes you could be in all-day rains while you're walking. Um, and and uh waterproof shoes aren't truly waterproof with enough rain, even they get wet. And then the problem with them is because they're waterproof, they have that sealant, the air can't dry them fast enough. So if you have waterproof shoes, they actually end up staying wet longer once they get wet.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

And then you have a horror movie based on your wet feet. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Oh my, we're learning a lot here about the uh what to do and what not to do. If anyone's gonna do the Al Camino Trail, yeah. Yes, exactly. Love it, man. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Chad, I want to kind of dive into one of your core beliefs a little bit, and that's the idea that most people are living a life by default instead of a life by design. So you deal, you know, you kind of talk about breaking conditioning, beliefs, routines, programming, reconnecting to your natural wild intelligence. Can you dive into that a little bit for us? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Sure. Yeah. Um, so when I talk about um people living lives of default, I I literally mean that most people are living someone else's life. Um, they're living the life according to their conditioning. Well, who's the someone else that they're living, whose life they're living? They're living the life of their parents, of their friends, of their family, of their community. Um, because these were all the individuals who um created the context in which our conditioning occurred when we were very young. So it was when we were very young that we learned um, even if it wasn't directly or overtly taught to us, we picked it up sort of, you know, just like osmosis through the environment. Um, it was it's where we learned our value systems, it's where we learned what things mean, um, what's important, what's unimportant, um, how to uh react to this situation versus another situation. And it is a reaction because it comes becomes habituated. So it's not even a response because we're not even aware of it most of the time. Um, so all of this was picked up through our friends, family, and community and became the conditioning of our life, became the way that we perceive the world, the way that we attach meaning to what happens in the world. Um and so these these are lives by default that these are the lives that we've inherited or picked up or learned from our conditioning as children. And and even though we're doing different things as adults, um we're applying the same value systems, the same uh behavioral patterning, the same uh way that our our brain interprets and makes sense out of um each new situation that emerges. So it's kind of like what I was saying earlier about your belief system drives what you perceive. Um, our belief systems are part of our conditioning, the conditioning that we've learned. We've been taught by our friends, family, and community what to believe about things. And then what happens is um this is just classic confirmation bias, you know, that you hear in psychology, that we're going to our brain, you know, wants to be right, it wants to be accurate because it needs to support the um the the view, the world view that uh, you know, the paradigm that it is bought into. Um and otherwise uh our brain freaks out because there's there's there's unknowns. You know, we don't tick typically like the unknown. It makes us insecure, it's sort of like a security risk to not know what's gonna happen next. So we literally invent stories uh about what's gonna happen next. And we we gather data from the external environment uh to support those stories. So these stories are our belief systems. Um and so whatever we believe, we then will our our our our our physical body, the five senses, will perceive evidence for that to therefore reinforce and support our brain's narrative or story. And now the brain can relax and our HRV levels can spike because we feel like we know something. Um, right? We can predict something. We we we don't have to now. What's interesting about this is I think about animals, and you know, they're they're not, you know, what distinguishes human beings from animals is our ability to create. Yeah, that you know, animals they have uh a certain intelligence um which is instinctive. Uh it's instinct intelligence, and we have that, but we also have creative intelligence. We have the ability to create um worlds, and the entire human world is a world that has been created. Um, right? Everything that you were the computers we're on right now, you know, the chair you're sitting in, the building you're next to, the roads, the computers, the planes, everything has been created. And before it was created, and this sounds self-evident and obvious, but if you think about how profound this is, I mean, you know, the last I checked, deer and wolves aren't building buildings and creating things. Their intelligence is instinctive, but they they they can't invent something that doesn't exist and then make it so. I mean, Leonardo da Vinci, you know, was drawing uh, you know, sketches of what he called a flying machine, which resembles a helicopter, you know, and this was like 400 years ago, uh, 500 years ago now. So um, you know, these everything begins as an idea. I always tell people that an idea is the only thing that exists because everything that we experience as physical existence began as an idea. It wouldn't be there if we didn't have the non-physical form idea first. And so coming back to you know your question, Dan, that these all these ideas that we're talking about, which lead to what you know, the world of effects, the the the the you know, the outer world, the world we experience as reality is not actually the reality at all. The reality began in the in the mind of someone as an idea before the word the effect of that idea was manifest and found uh or experienced. So so when we talk about lives, uh conditioned lives or lives of default, um, we're talking about basically building a life around someone else's ideas. And then we have the effects of that in our own life, like manifest effects. We have the experiences we have, we hang out with the people we hang out with, we are where we are geographically in space and time. Um and so most people are living these lives of default because it never occurred to them, or that they've never been taught or instructed that they are creators and that they could even create a different life. They just kind of engage life as though it happened to them. And that essentially relegates anyone who's living a life by default, relegates them to being a victim. Because life happens to them. They don't feel like they're autonomous or have power to influence it in any real substantial way. Like we think we have micro influence, but we don't understand that the very underlying premise of our life could also be totally recreated and reinvented, and you would have a totally different life. Well, that's a life by design if you will it to be. If you wish to create a life by design, you can be that attentive to it, you can be that intentional with it. You can look at all of the, you know, we have this program called Whole Life Architecture, where we literally treat our life uh as a creation because it is. Just most people don't think that they've created their life because they inherited it from their friends, family, community as a default life. But that was created by somebody, you know, someone in your family lineage, a grandfather, a great-grandmother, you know, had an idea and passed it on through generations, and this is why history repeats itself. Yeah, because we we aren't we aren't, most of us are not connected to the idea that we could push the stop button at any time and create a totally new life for ourselves. Now, there's a ton of uncertainty in that. Why don't we do that, you might ask? Because there's uncertainty and the brain freaks out. What do you mean all the things we know aren't absolute truth? You mean we could drop these things and then we have nothing? And then, because creativity can only happen in nothingness, it comes from nothingness. There's a blank canvas, there's a blank page. Uh, you know, there's there's it says in the uh, you know, for those who are are religious or spiritual, if you take, for example, in Genesis in the Bible, you know, it said that in the beginning God hovered over the void. What is the void? The darkness. It's nothingness, it's it's the absence of a thing. And then spoke the words, let there be light. And then that's an act of creation. Um, and so anyway, we have this ability. It even says in Genesis, we are made in the likeness of God. Well, what is that? That is as creator, right? So we are in creators. So human that distinguishes human beings from other animals. We have instinctive intelligence, we have creative intelligence, and most of us have never really um uh you know contemplated the idea that our life could be totally different if we so choose, if we chose to architect it by design. And in our program Whole Life Architecture, we go through the four architectures that constitute being human. Uh, those are the cognitive architectures, which is the life or the nature of our mind. How do we think? Why, like, not how do we think objectively, like as a scientist might look at it, but how does Chad think? What is my thinking pattern? What are what are the underlying premise that I premises that I'm working with? What are the underlying beliefs? How do I arrive at a conclusion? Like, like this is this is another way of saying this is the realm of metacognition, thinking about thinking. So we actually look at how, you know, those that are in our workshop, they actually get the opportunity to go through and analyze their own thinking. And then we look at the emotional uh architecture. You know, what is our relationship to our emotions, to our feelings? Um, do we repress them and suppress them? Do we do we glean the wisdom they're actually trying to provide us uh if we were so bold enough to actually fully feel them and to be with them and to not just try to move through them quickly? You know, we live in a society, um, particularly in the Western world, that doesn't really have a lot of time for your emotions. You know, you think about sort of the popular cliches and memes, you know, uh, you know, you know, people are like, you know, we don't care about your feelings, you know, screw your feelings, you know. Let's just, you know, but but our feelings are actually trying to guide us towards greater alignment. And we don't know that because we've been taught, we've been taught, we've been conditioned by default, um, to repress, ignore, and and they're just that they're not relevant. Um, they're something to be managed or dealt with, but they're not actually something that is is providing us, you know, they're not a guidance system or a source of wisdom for us. And then we look at um the sensual architecture, which is everything that is the the five senses, everything that your uh your body engages with. So when we look at sensual architecture, we're looking at where you live, where you work, what is the environment in which you live, what are you eating for food, what's the relationship you have to um your body from a health perspective? You know, we think about exercise and all of this. Like we you could you could be the creator of your your the the the life of your five senses and your physical existence, and then finally the spiritual architecture, which also includes having no belief system or no spiritual belief system. That's also a spiritual belief system, by the way, even if you don't have one, it's still the absence of one, right? So that's still part of your architecture. So they get to go through all of that, and and in so doing, there is this awakening that happens that um I I can actually create a life by design. I don't have to just merely tolerate my life by default. So I think that is kind of what you were getting at, Dan. But if there's more, I mean happy to dig in further.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

That was that was powerful.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

I I think listening to Chad's response to your question gives us the idea of how he wrestles with a book. Yes, right? For sure. I got that right there.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Yeah, I do I do a full uh a suplex on that book, no problem. For the wrestling fans out there. I grew up as a huge wrestling fan, so I get that.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Um who was your favorite wrestler? Did you have a favorite?

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Uh Macho Man Randy Savage was my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Oh, Macho Man.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

There you go. Yeah, I love that guy. Yeah, it's surprising. You you'd think I'd say like Hulk Hogan or something like that, but I was always in Macho Man's corner. There's something about him.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Oh, that's that's incredible, man. What do you think? What do you think about the person? I'm I'm wrestling, using that word, wrestling with my question here, but uh to try to make it set make it sensible for people to understand what's going on here is that what do you think by not creating the design of life, what are people missing out when they choose the defaults? Or they not necessarily choose it, but just that's what they go to, right? What are people missing out when they're not creating?

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Well, uh the way I would answer that is um that if you look at most people's lives, it's they're sort of they're sort of moving between two spaces. Uh one space is sort of managing the life that they have, and the other is complaining about the life they don't have.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

So I I find that people are in one of two mindsets, you know, just kind of getting, and it doesn't mean that everyone's life is is you know all is awful. Like, like there may be elements of your life that are all just you know accidentally in alignment. You might be like, you know, I and and how you know is because you're feeling you're this is where the wisdom of our emotions come in. We're experiencing these feelings of joy and contentment and peace and and happiness in those parts of our life. So there it's not that your whole life, you know, uh in our in our work, we we invite people to take a look at um what are the elements or the the aspects of your life that are out of uh alignment? Alignment with what? With your true self. Well, in order to answer that question, you have to know who your true self is. So we actually do some deconstruction work for four months to help people get into uh the connect to their true essence, their true self. So what they're missing, Russell, is a really knowing themselves. You know, as Socrates said, there's no greater, you know, know thyself. There's no greater maxim than knowing yourself. So what they're missing when they're living a life of default is truly knowing themselves. And when they have moments of peace and joy and and and contentment and happiness, uh, that occurs to them as just sort of circumstantial or accidental. It's not like they could create a life where that is reliably the state they are in 24-7. You could create a life where you are reliably uh in the state of happiness, joy, peace, contentment, and thriving. You could create a life like that. It doesn't occur to most people when they're living by default that that's possible. There are there are there are things that happen in their life where they experience those emotions, and then there's the other parts of their life where they're in chronic complaint and they're dissatisfied and they don't have satisfaction. So living a life by default is essentially tolerating the the the experience of having a a life that is sometimes aligning with your true self, but you don't know who or what that is, and sometimes not, in which case you're in wishful thinking, you're in complaint, you're in, you know, some other space. Yeah. Um, so that's what they're missing out.

unknown 29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Love it, man.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

So I tell people all the time that complaint is one of the most powerful transformational tools if you're bold enough to look into it. Um, like, you know, and first of all, you have to be aware. Most people aren't even aware of how much they complain throughout the course of the day. Like it could be a flash in your mind of, oh, that stupid person, or I wish that, or whatever, right? Like these we have 30,000 thoughts a day, okay. Psychologists tell us. I can't remember 29,950 of them, right? I have no idea because it's all background chatter, you know. But but and in that chatter is is just a ton of complaint for most people and dissatisfaction. Complaint is just the verbal articulation of an of a dissatisfaction from non-alignment with your true self. That's all it is. Um and what we do is we tend to sort of complain and move on as opposed to treating that thing that just happened, that complaint as gold. Like, okay, why am I dissatisfied with this this moment, this thing that just happened, right? And getting curious about that. We tell people in whole life architecture that that this work requires that you be your own uh self-anthropologist, you know, really getting to the the the underpinnings of why you are the way that you are and and who that is, and to create a life that aligns with that. But you've got to be curious enough, like an anthropologist is to really get into all of it. You know, we go back in history and we'll, you know, we'll look at you know the the Pompeii disaster, you know, with the the uh volcano and all of that, you know, how Pompeii was wiped out. And we'll ask questions. Gee, I wonder why they lived this way. I wonder why they, you know, what they thought about, I wonder what their belief systems are. So we have no problem doing that with other people, even people who've been dead for hundreds of years, but we never do it with ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

You know, that's powerful. So people just throwing it out there, people don't really question enough things, is kind of what you're saying, also. Like they kind of just go with this belief system, they run with it and they stay with it, they don't question enough things in society. So there are people who can be successful but completely misaligned internally at all times, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah, it's it's crazy. I mean, just in general, like I just think just thinking about it. He's waking me up a little bit, like to certain things I think about it. You kind of you kind of just like run with things during the day, like you don't really question a lot of things, it's just it's interesting to me.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Well, 98% of what you did yesterday, you're gonna do tomorrow. Yeah, you're gonna do the day after that. That's history, you know, history repeats itself, and and this is why it repeats itself. Because, yeah, you know, Dan, to your point, we we we aren't curious enough about ourselves, we're curious about other people, and we're curious about things outside of us because we're because our orientation is external versus internal, right? So, this work is is work that requires you to go within and to get curious about your inner world. Um, you know, I mean it it's it's fascinating to me. And when people do this work, you know, it's not it's not easy because the first, so our our work is is um technically a one-year program, but actually it never ends. And we tell people that you should never be outside of the whole life architecture program, and the reason is because where else do you get to go uh every single week for two hours to work on yourself? Now, this isn't bizarre logic. We say to CEOs and companies all the time that it's important to have the perspective of being to work on the business, and you can't do that when you're in the business, because when you're in the business, you're being overwhelmed by all of the things going on that you're dealing with. It's kind of like when you're in your life, you're overwhelmed by just managing life, which is where most people find themselves. And and and most people are never outside of in their life, most people are always in their life dealing with in their life stuff. So, what whole life architecture does is it provides people with an opportunity to work on their life, which begins with working on yourself. Who are you? You know, Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, you know, the caterpillar asks Alice, who are you? I mean, this is the quintessential question of the human experience. Um, Nietzsche said, there is no greater joy than the privilege of knowing yourself, right? I mean, this on and on and on. I'm I'm not inventing this stuff. This has been the quest of of humanity. And so you can only get to the answer of that question for yourself, which by the way, it's not like digging up something and discovering it, right? Nobody's gonna discover themselves like under a rock or something like that, right? Knowing yourself is knowing that you are a creator and you can create yourself. That's actually what's going on here. And you lose your emotions to know whether or not something is in alignment. It's pre-linguistic. This is these are not ideas that we can write in a book. This is a these are feelings. Um, you know. So um, so most people, yeah, they're they're just they're just you know, they they don't take the time to to work on themselves because they're in it. So one of the one of the distinctions we talk a lot about in in our work, uh our program is ontological, so it's all around being uh and getting to the source and essence of what of beingness, right? And one of the um one of the distinctions that we talk a lot about is how to be in the world and not of it. Right. So so the of the world dynamics are dynamics where we are sucking up, vacuuming up the world's value systems, expectations. Um, you know, we're we're adhering to the existing systems and structures that already exist without even um contemplating the possibility that there could be different systems and structures. And if you under so everything that we experience is system driven, you know, um Parmahansa Yogananda said that environment is more powerful than willpower, right? And and so we are all in an environment, and that that environment is more powerful than our willpower. So you're not going to be able to will yourself out of the conditions of your life. You have to recreate those conditions, recreate those systems, recreate those structures to align with yourself. And it may not look like anything that anyone else is doing, or, you know, at least not in totality, because it should be uniquely your own life. So to be in the world and not of the world means that I am participating in the world. I'm not off in some monastery or on a mountain, you know, hiding away from the world. I'm I'm participating, I'm engaging. Um, but I'm not of it. I'm not of the value systems, I'm not of the dynamics, I'm not of the conditioning, I'm not of the way of being um that conforms to reinforce the systems and structures that don't work for me. Once I know who I am, once I know myself, I can create my own life by design and I can participate in the world, but I can also be just a little adjacent or to the side of the world without having to be, you know, totally trapped in it.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

You know what, you know, people, as you described, are so into living their world. How do they how do they pump the brakes a bit to slow down to really help themselves to discover themselves? You know, what are what are some things that you could share with people? Like, because we're, you know, we're just we we just go about our day, we get up, we you know, we eat breakfast, we get on a walk, or we go directly to work, we're on a call because we got to commute, what two hours or you know, whatever, you know, we're just busy with life. But how do we how do people pump the brakes to slow down so that they can learn about who they are?

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Yeah. So we're human doings and not human beings. You know, we've been conditioned over the last especially 80 years, I would say, um, since the second world war. Uh, and I and I I have this whole sort of um theory about the the transformation that we've gone through as human beings into human doings. Um but I'll first answer your question. So doing nothing is the hardest thing for a human being to do, right? Doing nothing is is not meditating, that's meditating. Uh, it's not going for a walk, that's walking. Uh, it's not watching TV, that's watching TV. Doing nothing is literally nothing, right? Like, we don't like this seems like a profound. When I introduced this on our whole life architecture workshops, the the the the the inquisitive, curious, confused look on people's faces. It's it's like you'd think I'm speaking Yiddish or something like that, right? I mean, I say doing nothing, so is that watching TV? No, that's watching TV, right? So, so then the question is, well, what does it mean to do nothing, right? Well, it's the absence of meaning. So you can't even answer that question. It's doing nothing, right? And so, and and and so uh why am I bringing this up? Because this is actually an access point, uh, whether you can do it for 10 minutes a day, 15, a half an hour, um, to inject nothingness into your day, which you know is just being. You might be sitting in a park, just being, right? Not looking at your phone, not attending, just just being in the moment. Now, what that does for you, Russell, is it uh creates space in your emotions, it creates space in your thinking, it creates space in your body so that you can begin to hear that inner voice that's been there all along, trying to guide you towards greater and greater alignment with your true nature, your naturalness. But because we're in this human doing state where we're perpetually moving from this thing to the next thing to the next thing, there's no space. I I I so all of my work and everything we've been we teach in whole life architecture actually comes down to two things your relationship to space and time. All of your problems uh eventually come down to that, your relationship to space and time. And and we play this game, you know, where I'll have people say, you know, give give me something that you think is a problem that you have, and I'll show you how it relates to some, you know, distorted relationship you have for yourself with space and time. Now we don't spend a lot of um you know time in our conversations talking about this because it's so like philosophical, it almost feels impractical to people. And I always tell people that a lot of our work is is is on the surface, can occur to them as philosophical, but that there's nothing more practical than applied philosophy. Because when you really understand like these aren't these philosophy is not meant to just be a bunch of ideas, it's meant to be actualized, it's meant to be put into practice, it's meant to be put into your doing. But in order to have that happen, you have to be able to connect to it at a being level first, and that's where the doing nothing comes in. Because if you if you give yourself space, you're going to notice new thinking, new thoughts, new insights percolating that you've never thought of or or experienced in your being before because you've been too busy doing, yeah. You were too busy just managing things, right? So so that would be one immediate, easy, free, accessible uh tactic that you could deploy in your life, which is just to carve out 15 minutes, 30 minutes a day. You don't have to be in a park. If the weather's not good, you can do it in your own house. You can just be in a chair and just be and not be reading or writing or scrolling, you know. We scroll 78 miles a year on our phone. It's crazy, right? If if you look at every little thumb tick, 78 miles. Like so, not not doing any of that. You're you're just you're in nothing, and you're and and you'll see how hard it is. It is, you know, I I I give this as a one of we have 52 different practices over the course of the year that people are given to go out into the world as an anthropologist and to actually try these practices on to give them a different as, you know, um uh aspect or a different access point to their life. And the doing nothing one is one of the hardest. Everyone always comes back, they're like, I couldn't even do it for like two minutes. You know, before I knew it, my brain started chattering about all the things I needed to do and the planning and all of that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Um, and I and I they you know, you're you start to feel agitated and you start to feel like I want to get up, I want to, you know, I want to do something, right? Right. You know, there's this this saying we have in our culture, don't just sit there, do something. But it's actually the reverse. Don't just do something, sit there.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Sure. Sure. You know, it's very hard. Well, you know, it's it's just like anything, right? If you you know, for somebody that's not used to walking, right, and they feel like, oh, I need to go out and walk 45 minutes. No, you don't need to walk 45 minutes, just go walk out, go walk 10 minutes, right? So it's it's practicing, right? That level. So if we're not practicing for two minutes because we feel like we have this anxiety of wanting to move, like or go do something, like if you practice with one movie, then you build up to two minutes and you, you know.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, if we didn't live in a society that rewarded us to always be in frenetic action. Like so, one of the things we talk about is distinguishing activity from action. Um, the the Taoist principle, um uh known as Wu Wei, which stands for no for it it means no forced action. Okay. And so uh we we talk a lot about this in whole life architecture, that you do not act um until it feels like it's totally in flow and organic. Um, that there's no forced action. Now, we as a society, because of the don't just sit there do something sort of maxim that sort of drives us, um, you know, we have all kinds of social shaming and things like, you know, you're lazy or whatever, right? If you're not always busy, you know, we it's being busy is is a badge of honor in our culture. You know, how you doing today, Tom? Oh man, I'm so busy. I got so much, you know, it's like the bragging starts, right? And you know, you just asked how. And and and so yeah, it's it's it's sort of this badge of honor, and and that's that's a problem, actually, because we don't get to connect deeply and profoundly to ourselves because we're so busy doing things all the time.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

Um, so yeah, it is a it is it is a practice. You can you can you can start with two minutes and move to four minutes and move to uh and and I promise you that that things will start to open. I've been I've been I've been doing this work for 20 years and I've been teaching whole life architecture now for eight. And there's you know, I always tell people that time is 50 percent of the magic of what happens in this program, right? Just being with it over time. That time is a variable that acts on human beings uh in profound ways, but we don't realize it. And, you know, I I've seen all kinds of things, you know, after I don't know, four months, six months, sometimes two years, people have been you know with us in this program, and they're like, Oh my gosh, I finally get what you're saying. And they have this, you know, but it took two years to get to that. Um, and so that's that's why I'm you know, I'm speaking out against this whole notion that we've created over the last 40 years in the self-help personal development, uh, personal growth world, that there's you know, only a few steps uh required for all of your life's dreams to come true. Follow these three steps, seven steps, you know, these step programs, you know. Uh oh, come to this weak retreat. Your life will never be the same. No, you're gonna get some insights. I mean, insights are important, right? Inspiration and motivation is what the personal development delivers. It does not deliver transformation, it never has, never will, because um transformation requires that we reorient ourselves to our rel and in terms of our relationship to time. And we that's that's something that the the current personal development industry has no time for. You know, they they actually want they have no time for time. I mean, they actually want uh everything done yesterday. Um, the promise is by coming to this workshop or retreat, your whole life is gonna be different. It's not the case. You'll leave with a bag of books and some business cards, or maybe now they don't do that anymore, but you know, and and you're gonna go home and the and the self-help books you just were given become shelf help because you don't read them. Um, and you go right back to your conditioning. Um, and and and you wonder why, you know, six months later, you're like, gee, I better go take another one of those course. You may, you know, buy another book, take another course, take another workshop. It's a great recursive birth uh business model, but it doesn't actually address the fact that human beings are reliably spending a hundred billion dollars a year on on content that they hope will transform their experience of their life. And in less than two percent of it, does it do that because most people are so conditioned, so habituated. So you need time. And um, and so um, you know, that's why our program we say is never ending. Where in the course of your week, other than these two hours, are you working on your life as the creator of your life versus being in the doing of your life? Most people just don't set time aside for that.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Chad, I want to ask you one question out of the chat actually on Instagram right now. Is self-realization a feeling? And how do you measure self-realization?

SPEAKER_02 48:48

That was a question.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Well, the question from Wex.

SPEAKER_02 48:51

Right on. I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry about measuring it. We get obsessed with trying to measure it because, well, when you what does measuring mean? Now, measuring means that it there's whatever you're looking at, then there's the then there's that which it is not. So, you know, to measure something is to to say what it isn't as much as to say what it is. Uh, I wouldn't worry about measuring it, but yeah, self-realization is absolutely that feeling. It's that feeling you get when you feel whole, complete, peaceful, contented, um, happy, joyful, when you're in that zone, when you're in that space, right? These are just words we use for this emotional state. So that's the feeling of self-realization. When you when you connect yourself deeply and profoundly, you're in a state of total peace, contentment, and joy. Um, when you are engaged in in life or in activities that are unaligned with the true self, um, and um you you will feel the opposite of joy, peace, contentment, and all of this, which is not something to disparage and push aside because it's trying to guide you, it's something to pay attention to. Um, but self-realization is absolutely it's a state that you get into, and you know that you're in it when you are experiencing this total peace and contentment over your body. And and but some of us have it just for fleeting moments, right? We we um I actually think if you want to talk about self-realization as like a constant state that we can be in, I I really don't know many people who um who have ever really got to that place in their life, and it probably takes the majority of your life to get there, you know. Uh to me, this is what I think salvation is. I think it's it's working, you know, we hear about salvation and working out your own salvation. I think it's it's it's self-realization is Socrates's maximum of knowing thyself, right? Um, and and that can take the better part of a life. It's a journey. It's uh I wouldn't even think of it as so much of an end state as sort of an of an ongoing, always becoming, you know, like I say to people all the time, we aren't actually human beings, we're human becomings. Because to to talk about us as human beings uh you know has us believe that there's some state that we can attain. But actually, you know, I'm always a becoming, I'm always um getting, you know, if if we believe that the human soul is infinite, then how do we ever believe we can realize an infinite soul in a finite existence like this particular dispensation? It's going to be very difficult. So it's more of a journey, you know, it's like a pilgrimage. Consider your life like a pilgrimage where you're like a flower always expanding, opening more and more and more to the realization of yourself. And you know when you're in it because you feel peace and contentment and joy, and those are the moments to pay attention to. And you can get more and more of those as you go about your life to the point where may, maybe much of your life is in that state. But because we're always growing, we're always being presented and encountering new experiences that have us have to reorient our relationship to now this new experience. And it might be it might not be uh an experience of joy and peace initially until we figure out how to orient ourselves to it or not to walk away from it altogether, perhaps. Right. So we're always encountering new people, new experiences, new situations. Uh, we're always encountering ourselves anew. So self-realization isn't really a state, it's uh it's more of a of a of a journey of becoming. And you know when you're locking into it because you're you're you're experiencing that peace and joy and contentment, and you know when you're not locking into it because you're not experiencing that. That's where our emotions are so powerful. And yet we have a society that's spent, you know, so much um so much time and effort to try to get us to just put your emotions to the side, you know?

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Yes. Dan, have we ever had a three-hour podcast? No, but because I feel like I feel like we I feel like we need to. I feel like we're just touching you guys. That would be uh incredible. Like uh, you know, the time has just flown. And Chad, your your uh your thoughts, your your depth is just it's just beautiful. And the way that you explain things, like it makes sense. And I I really hope that a lot of people listen uh to this message, to this podcast, because uh, you know, your thinking, I love your thinking and the way it just you know it makes sense, it makes sense to people, right? It should make sense, right? It should, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:53

Well, and I think we're in a time where it's so important though, Russell, because so I'd be delighted to do that three-hour, you know, podcast with you guys if you want to. And the reason is this, though. Um we we are in, you know, it's it's it's almost not worth saying because we all get it. We're in these massively transformative times right now, right? I mean, a lot of the systems and structures that have defined our existence are um crumbling, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. We don't actually talk in in our work of whole life architecture, we don't sit inside of the worlds of good and bad. That's just not where we're at, right? I mean, if when there's a forest fire and there's destruction of the forest, a new forest springs forth. We are going through destruction as part of the creative process, and so we are going through a destructive phase of what will be created next. Um, but because our brain requires certainty and predictability, that's going to cause a lot of people to um to have an experience of panic and disassociation and suppression, you know, not deal with it, you know. Um, and so I can't think of a more important um conversation to have right now than to give people access point to the power of their own creativity, which will provide them hope that they're going to be able to navigate this. But here's the challenge. I believe we're on the verge of a mental health crisis, the likes of which we're unprepared for as a society, precisely because we aren't having these kinds of conversations. You know, we call TMIC stands for the most important conversations. And our work is to facilitate the most important conversations humanity needs to be having right now. Um, and the mental health crisis is caused when a human doing has lost their identity for what they do and has never inquired who they are as a being. That's the moment we're in right now, because so many people in our culture have been brought up to just be human doings in terms of identifying their themselves with their job, their career, you know, and other things in their life, the doing of life. But they've never asked who they are as a being. And as we bring in artificial intelligence now and it starts to, you know, displace workers and and particularly, you know, the white-collar workers, there's gonna be a lot of people under immediate duress who are like, well, my whole identity is in what I do, and you've just told me you don't need me to do anything anymore because artificial intelligence is gonna do it, and I can't just go get a job up the street. So there that's the mental breakdown right there. Yeah, exactly. You know, so it's an important time to talk about these things.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Yeah. Well, we're gonna entertain that idea of a long-term um podcast, you know, because I think that would be I think it would be really um oh yeah, I I think people would latch onto that and want to hear, you know, deeper conversation with you, Chad. Um I feel like this, I feel like this question is gonna be too light as we wrap things up here, but I'm gonna I'm gonna ask it anyway because we always end our conversation with this, but I know I'm gonna get a deep response. Maybe not. Maybe not. Wellness is not about perfection, but it's about progress. And I would love to hear your thoughts. We asked everybody, every guest that's on here, what does that mean to you? Wellness is not perfection, it's progress.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

Sure. Well, that kind of goes to what I was saying a few minutes ago that we are not human beings but human becomings. Yeah. Um, and so, first of all, I don't believe perfection exists. I believe it's a construct of the human mind because we want certainty. So the mind wants certainty, so it wants to idealize a perfect state. And we do that for ourselves as it pertains to our wellness. We have these sort of fantasies or these idealized perfect states. But perfection is actually, huh, perfection is the brain's way of making sure we don't take any new action. It's kind of strange. Why? It's an unattainable thing, it doesn't exist. And so therefore, what ends up happening is we end up in these start and stop kind of situations. Uh, we teach in whole life architecture about this mechanism of the brain called the near-win. The near-win is where our brain neurochemically rewards us for almost winning behavior. Okay, it we get flooded with dopamine. So we're taking a new action, and suddenly the brain is like, uh oh, this could lead to a total new type of behavior, and new is risky because it's unknown and unpredictable. Um, there was a study done of heart attack patients years ago. Uh, and these were people who had had a heart attack, and they were told by their doctor that if you don't make substantive lifestyle change to your diet, exercise, and sleep, uh, that you will either within five years suffer another heart attack or you'll die. Those are, you know, statistically, the probability is against you that one of those two things would happen. And in this study, they found that less than uh 10% of these heart attack patients made any change whatsoever to their diet, sleep, and exercise. When I read that study, I thought, well, this is this settles it for me. If you won't make change or can't make change to uh to basic things like diet, sleep, and exercise. That's that's very available to everybody. It's not like it's you have to come up with a million dollars to go for a walk, you know. If if we can't even do that, um, then forget about all the other things that we want to change in our life, make more money, the better relationship, and you know, whatever. All the things people are paying money. If you won't even do that, now why is it so hard for human beings to take a new action and to change? Why is it so hard for these heart attack patients to not eat the cheeseburger and instead go for the salad? And the reason is because the cheeseburger is predictable, and the brain is concludes subconsciously, this I know, this we know the outcome. The salad, who knows what could happen, right? And and and so and so it so what happens is our brain becomes flooded with dopamine to to to continue to take the same action. Okay, so this is just one health example, okay. Um, so this idea of perfection creates a situation, our brain idealizes and fantasizes a perfect state. But now we lowly imperfect beings are looking at perfection, and we may take one or two or three steps towards it, but then our brain floods us with dopamine to not take more steps because you know what? It's too hard, it's too difficult, you're never gonna attain it, so just give up. And this is what happens. This is why so many people struggle in their on their wellness journey because they don't see it as a journey, they see it as an end state that is perfect, that is attainable, but they are imperfect, and therefore they'll never attain it. So why try? And their brain neurochemically rewards them to do nothing, and so they just stay stuck in the state that they're in, right? They may get like two steps forward and five back, and that's why that happens.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:15

I knew I wouldn't get a surface level answer on that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:19

Yeah, it would be but a surface level right there.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

Oh my gosh, this has been an unbelievable conversation, Chad. And we are Dan and I are gonna talk and we're gonna figure out what we're gonna do, you know, for that podcast and whatever. We're we may not even call it a podcast. We'll just, you know, mindset or whatever, yeah. Sure. Um, you know, the TMIC, you know, conversation, right? The most important conversation we can have. Um beautiful, beautifully said today. Uh, appreciate your time, appreciate your depth, appreciate your knowledge. Keep reading those seven to eleven books that you're doing because uh, you know, there you just seriously, you're a wealth of knowledge. And I love the way that you explain life, life because that's what it is, and what do we want to create, you know, um for ourselves, no matter no matter what age. We have a friend, and we we talked about this recently, is like we have a friend who is recreating herself at age 83.

unknown 1:02:20

Good.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:21

83. Yeah, yeah. Like it's phenomenal to watch all of her thinking going into this. Like she wants more, she's hungry for more at 83. Like that's the way, you know, that's the way we should be. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:35

I totally agree. Yeah, this idea of retirement is ridiculous. It is, yeah. You know, it's also a construct, it's not reality. It's you don't you're not you're not washed up and useless just because you turned 65. I don't understand this notion that we have, but it fits into something I won't get into now that maybe we can get into on another call about the history of work over the last 80 years. Work is an environment, we've been in the environment of how we relate to work and career and how we base and orient our life around it. And there's a lot to discuss in that that creates the mindset of retirement being somehow rational, it's not rational at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:16

Wow, wow, that's good stuff. That's good stuff. Well, Chad, thank you so much. I gotta bring this orange in there. I gotta bring this orange bottle into view because look at this beauty. Where'd you get that? Isn't that awesome? It's at our store on Prentify, and Dan's gonna put that in there, but uh yeah, drink some drink some good water today from our Printify bottle of dual coast water.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:41

Yeah, and where can people find you in your organization?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:44

Tmicglobal.com is where they can find out more about what we're up to. And um that's just the the when when you go there, you'll see that's really just the beginning of what we're up to because we're because we've got some large projects that we'll be sharing on our site in the fall. We're building recreation centers around the world where people can go and recreate them. Uh that's a long-term vision. Um, that's not up there right now, but for them to engage in our work, whole life architecture, what we're up to, you can just go to TMIC Global. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:17

And by the way, a for a friend who retired last year, he said he doesn't call it retirement, he calls it refinement.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Yeah, you know, yeah, it's like I'm refining myself at age 65. Yeah, and just do doing other things, right? So yeah, that's it. That's awesome. Chad, thank you so much so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:36

This is really great. Please check out tmicglobal.com, everybody. Check us out, dual coast podcast. We're on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Check us out, all social media handles, Dual Coast Podcast. Please check out the Dual Coast Podcast store at our printify account. It is also on our website. There's a link for it. You can see where Russ got that beautiful water bottle. Bring that back into view real quick. We'll see everybody next week. Thank you so much for listening.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:03

Thank you so much. Thanks for the chat.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:05

Thank you.