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Conversations about deep end meditation, skills for emotional fluidity, and living a life with more authenticity. All grounded in our work and relationships.
Hey, Scott.
Pranab, what's up, man? Likewise, brother.
Good to see you, too. I appreciate you
coming on.
And I think this will be a fun conversation
since we've been thinking about a
lot of similar ideas around work,
accomplishment, spiritual practice,
integrating the two and just what that
looks like sort of
Hmm.
in the years forward.
Yeah, I mean,
it's something that I've basically been
obsessed with for almost eight years
now. And it's a deeply meaningful topic to
me.
Nice. So for people who don't know you,
how would you introduce yourself?
Is this where I'm like, do I say I'm an
awareness that's blah, blah, or, you
know, yeah, no, I think my background has
been entrepreneurship
and probably about almost eight years ago,
my consciousness journey really
kind of flipped on and became central to
my life.
And I think I was faced with this really
interesting
at the time what seemed like a dilemma,
which was, okay, so I went all in on
startups and success and building the
perfect life.
And I saw where that got me.
And now it seems like this kind of inner
work consciousness thing is actually
a more fundamental path to well-being and
fulfillment.
And so what does going all in on that look
like? And I thought that
you know, like so many of us do, like,
okay, do I leave my company that I was
running? Do I, you know, meditate eight
hours a day? Do I take up the robes?
Like all of these kind of like over-rotations
were questions that I was asking
myself.
And I was fortunate enough to meet a
teacher who was like, no, actually like
the complexities of your current
experience are the perfect arena for your
consciousness evolution.
And so I'd say, you know, for the past
probably six, seven years, I have been,
you know, doing all the things, running
companies, selling companies, married,
with a kid, but also deeply immersed in my
consciousness and really kind of
using all of those experiences in service
of that. And so
And that's what this upcoming book that
we'll probably get into some of the
topics is about.
Because there seems to be this, I know I'm
not alone in the experience I
described of like, there's this
compartmentalized view of, okay, we have our
practices, right? And then we have real
life, right?
And we just go back and forth and back and
forth and back and forth.
And it's kind of missing the point, in my
opinion.
And so what I found having gone on that
kind of oscillation and these
different like,
pendulum swings is that there's an
integrated way to do it all at once.
And that for me has created the richest
experience, which is why I'm
passionate about sharing it.
That's awesome.
As you say that I just feel lit up because
that's sort of exactly what I'm
thinking about these days a lot too, with
the Attention Copilot sort of going
into that concept of the pendulum swing,
which we'll talk about in a minute
and thinking about how that doesn't have
to be so intense.
I think for me, eight years ago, I was
still in college and the thing that I
saw in a similar way was all these people.
sort of on that same journey: they got
really successful and exited their
companies or just did really well.
And then we're like, I wish I didn't work
so hard and they meditated and now
I'm really happy. But I'm like, well,
you're happy and you're rich.
I'm still a kid. How do I, what do I do?
You know, what does that
Yeah.
mean for me?
And sort of navigating that struggle of
like, wait, so does that mean you have
to do this path? What would it look like
to do both at the same time?
That's sort of been a question I've had
for years, and it's been cool as I've
sort of unfolded my own journey.
of working through stuff and learning from
people like you and from other
people around our spheres.
And yeah, I think there's a lot we could
talk about.
Yeah, I think there's this idea. I mean,
this is the idea that I had.
I was like, okay, enlightenment, I've
heard of that.
I will pursue that when I'm rich.
Like I will, I need to like take care of
my worldly, like everything that I
want.
And then like, on the back end of life,
like I'll try to go for that maybe.
And that's actually what's funny is like
that is actually in certain cultures,
like how it's done, right? There's like,
I don't know if it's a particular
tradition, but I know in like certain Indian
cultures, it's like the last 20 years of
someone's life, they like leave their
families and they like just like focus on
their enlightenment.
And so like that was my game plan, right?
And you know, I do believe in a notion of
karma and kind of a destiny of a
soul and an intention of the experience.
And for whatever reason, like that wasn't
the plan for me.
Like I was kind of dragged.
kicking and screaming onto this path.
And I'm now so grateful that I have been.
Yeah, there's sort of an interesting
question. Where do our wants come from?
And that's a whole other thing. I have no
idea. Who knows?
And there's sort of this thing, but it
does seem true that especially these
days, more and more people are coming to
this sort of thing much earlier in
life, where traditionally, I think, yeah,
in the yoga traditions and some of
the yoga traditions, it's sort of this
like, you know, education and then
build your career, have a family and then
spiritual path.
And we sort of don't really have the
affordance for that now where it's sort
of everything all at once.
due to the complexity of the world and all
the craziness and all that.
But yeah, I've been really enjoying, I
think there are a few things that I'd
love for the audience to pick up on: your
podcast where you just talk to
people about these things.
I've just met so many interesting people
through that.
You started a business recently, which we
can bookmark this for later.
And your book, Conscious Accomplishment.
So yeah, really appreciate the work you're
doing and the explorations you're
diving into in this space. Yeah.
Thanks, man. You know,
just to share something, like I had a
vision.
I would just share that when I got on this
path, I remember, you know, I was
probably 30 and I had been meditating for
six years up to that point, but it
had been a very like, okay, 20 minute
checklist item, you know, get on with my
day.
And I remember when I really got serious
about this, I was like, you know, I'm
gonna connect like,
What would it be like? First off, no one
looks like me.
I'm like a 30-year-old
ex-college-football-player bro.
Everyone is just like old Indian dudes and
gray-haired white guys talking
about this stuff. What would it be like to
actually connect this to business?
And the irony of that, and I kind of had
this concept, right?
And the irony is, like,
I literally am doing that with my new
business, which is like funny.
It's a, the new business is called
Conscious Talent.
It's a recruiting company that kind of
pairs companies and individuals who are
on a conscious path.
But yeah, man, I think this is the future,
and it's also so needed right now.
It's so needed. Like there's so many
people that are
Like this compartmentalized way of living
just does not seem to be working for
people as evidenced by, you know, just the
mental health crisis.
And there's lots of other reasons for
that, right?
But I just think like whatever we have
been doing has like not been working.
And I think this type of approach is very
fitting for a certain segment of the
population.
Yeah, I think there are, in my mind, there
are two or three sort of trends
that have made this seem really obvious to
me or much more obvious.
One is not really a trend, but I think the
rise of Silicon Valley coaches,
like within the Bay Area scene, there's
all these coaches on performance and
execution.
And I think the best coaches like Joe
Hudson with Art of Accomplishment, Jim
Dethmer, Conscious Leadership Group, there
are definitely a couple others that
are slipping my mind right now.
But a lot of them in my mind sort of come
from this place of sort of getting
in touch with your inner self, your true
self,
Yep.
self-realization, self-unfolding as
applied to emotions, relationships and
work. And it's very clear that it works at
least from the social proof of
high-functioning executives paying for
this and having this be a sustainable
industry.
And it's been really cool to sort of have
a little taste of all that stuff, at
least the little that I have, where it all
does sort of seem like it's coming
from the same foundation of almost
how I would describe as like the stuff
that Tibetan Buddhism talks about plus
like parts work and IFS and things like
that.
And it's cool to see like that just sort
of is happening.
So it's clear that, well, if it works for
the best, why wouldn't it work for
everyone else?
Yeah,
I think it's like we're at an interesting
intersection in time right now where
these guys are basically all coding
ancient spiritual concepts in business
language and making that accessible.
But at the same time, there's this like
lack of overt admission that like
we're doing spiritual stuff. And,
Mmm, yeah.
you know, I think there's benefits to
that. But I also think
part of me wishes like, hey, can we just
acknowledge that you're talking about
like an eternal self? Can we just
acknowledge that you're talking about God?
Can we just acknowledge like all of these
things?
And I respect those guys and their kind of
desire to make it accessible by
coding it, completely agree.
Like, you know, I think there's been
performance coaches and now there's more
and more developmental coaches.
who basically, you know, acknowledge
there's a continuum of human experience.
We go on an evolution, we develop and we
can evolve what our experience is
like and that's the essence of the
consciousness journey.
And a lot of coaches are starting to focus
more on the developmental stuff.
100%. Yeah.
And to the point of just actually making
what's actually happening explicit, a
couple of things that helped with that.
I think, honestly, COVID and lockdowns
sort of dropped the veil of sort of
separation between work and personal life
in a lot of ways.
Like everyone was at home, people were on
the internet a lot more, people
talked about their experience. And it's
sort of, I think that did two things.
One, dropped the distinction between work
and personal quite a bit more.
So a lot
Yep
of it kind of bled over. And you-
And you could kind of see that it was
always the case.
Like it was always that fact that you show
up to work and work influences your
personal life, but that just made it
really obvious.
And everyone was talking about it, TikTok,
more people on the internet, more
people on Twitter, and just you realize
how common and universal of an
experience that is.
So I think now in these sort of
post-lockdown, the last few years era, people
just, I think, have a lot of appetite to
just, let's just say what it is.
Let's just talk about it. Let's just see
what's actually happening. Yeah.
Dude, 100%, man, 100%.
And that was part of the reason why I was
like, with my book, the subtitle is
How to Use Personal Achievement for
Spiritual Growth, because part of me
wanted to just be like, hey, can we just
fucking own this?
You know, can we just like stop dancing
around the like elephant in the room
and just like call some of this stuff what
it is.
It's like it is, you know, it is what the
ancients talked about.
It is what the masters talked about and
I personally, coming from a lineage that's
very, I would say, metaphysical,
right?
Like, I just tend to gravitate towards
people that are like, no, yeah, you can
understand natural laws of the universe.
Like, we are living in [unclear] and maybe
even an energetic field.
Like, you know, I just actually want to
just kind of get to the
straightforward fundamentals, like
you know, what is it that we're actually
talking about?
And so for me, the overtness is actually
something I'm attracted to.
Yeah, yeah, super cool. Nice. Yeah, I
think there'll be an interesting...
I'm not sure what the word is, but
there'll be an interesting sort of thing to
look at over the next few years because
it's very clear that more and more
people are into this and then some choose
to be more overt, some choose to be
less overt, but it's sort of like no
matter what, it's just growing, which is
really interesting and super cool.
I'm interested to see what happens with a
lot of these like creators who are
going to go on this path inevitably or are
already on it and they've kind of
like shied away from it or haven't
embraced it.
And then like, is everyone going to have
like, okay, I'm actually going to
start talking about this stuff now because
this is what really matters.
Tim Ferriss kind of went through that a
little bit.
He's an example.
But I just suspect like, all these people
with audiences are going to go on
this journey and then have to have a
confronting situation of like, how do I
talk about this stuff?
Is this actually where my heart is and
where I start talking about it?
You know, what will that do for the
population?
I think it will be very positive.
For sure, for sure.
Yeah, I mean, I can attribute a lot of my
own growth to watching people on the
internet from a younger age go through and
talk about this stuff. Yeah.
And that sort of gets into a topic that I
want to dive deeper into on the
pendulum.
How would you describe the pendulum swing,
and how do you think that could be
better over time?
Yeah,
so I think a fundamental concept with the
pendulum swing is a perspective that
I call the outside-in paradigm, which is
essentially a set of beliefs that the
problems and solutions to your life exist
outside of yourself.
And so when you hold this concept,
basically, you're in achievement mode.
You're in trying to shape the world mode
where, okay, I'm gonna have the
excellent job, I'm going to have the
partner, I'm going to have the money,
like I'm going to have all these things
and doing those things is going to
make me feel better. And it's going to
create meaning and fulfillment.
And at some point in that quest, you just
realize the hollowness and that
ultimately, like all those things do is
create a very temporary state of
feeling good and then you just kind of
feel the same.
Like it doesn't fundamentally change.
your experience in a more permanent way.
And so when you have that recognition, and
you start to touch some of this
inner work consciousness stuff, you just
realize that there's a more direct
way to work on your experience and how you
feel.
And for many very like ambitious people,
and people that were very fixated on
that external orientation, there's a
tendency to kind of go all in on the
other direction.
And so that's the pendulum swinging from
the external fixation to the internal
fixation.
And you just, I mean, I went through my
own experience of this and you see it
where it's like, people are obsessed with
healing.
You know, they're constantly doing all the
work and all they want to talk
about is the work and like, you know, all
that stuff that they used to do in
terms of like hustling and achieving and
accomplishment, that's like less
spiritual and that's bad. And you know,
it's, it's, there's a polarized view.
between like the new way of being and the
old way of being.
And I think this is almost like something
that people have to go through until
they have instruction on how to not have
it be so polarized and so radical.
And so that's the pendulum swing.
And ultimately where I netted out and what
a lot of my journey was, how do I
hold both?
Right?
How do I do both at the same time and move
that pendulum back to center?
So there's a harmonious relationship
between the external stuff and the
internal stuff.
Like, I believe like we incarnated into
human form, not just to do spiritual
work, but to experience and enjoy form and
to make it better, to contribute.
Right? That is a big part of this
experience. And at the same time, like,
I know that I came into form for the
evolution of consciousness.
So it's not one or the other, it's both.
And there is a way to do both at the same
time.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I was just talking to a founder
friend a couple days ago on this sort of
thing of the arc of, you know, you kind of
are doing work and you do work in a
place that maybe leads to a lot of
achievement.
If you're sort of more, there's sort of
this distinction on people who like
run towards work and run away from work,
the more perfectionism versus
avoidance side. That's a whole other
thing.
But you know, you're sort of doing work in
a way that will lead to burnout,
but maybe you achieve a lot in the way
that it feels like that's the only way
it can be. And then
People often swing the other way and go
full on healing work, full on
recovery, figuring themselves out.
And then they sort of return to work, but
then how to sort of be in the
middle, like how to actually integrate
those two modes, both in sort of what
you do and how you do it.
And like a lot of people think, does that
mean I have to go into coaching or
supporting other people?
Or they think, maybe that means I have to,
maybe I can only go back to the old
way of doing things.
but then the echoes of those old scripts
come back in.
And it's sort of interesting how what I'm
also seeing—and I'm curious what you
think, too—is that it's more about how you
do something and
Yes.
sort of, yeah, and just like the feeling
and working through the old patterns
and sort of the way of being more than
exactly what someone does.
But naturally, if you kind of bring a new
way of being to your work, you'll
also do work that's more interesting to
you and for other people.
And I sort of like this idea of freedom
from.
At first, you're sort of getting freedom
from your old patterns, old ways of
being, you know, societal scripts.
And then by the end or through the end,
you're sort of building a freedom to
like a freedom to go back into the world,
to engage
Yep.
with form, to do really cool things.
Maybe even to do stuff, to do really hard
work, right? It's not about
Yeah.
not doing hard work. It's about doing hard
work in a way that you want to.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I love that. I mean, I think it's like
what?
Yeah, it's like you have the awareness now
of the old, essentially why you
were doing what you were doing before.
Like, for example, there was recognition
for me of, all that ambition, all
that hustling behind all that was a huge
pile of low self-esteem and the
concept that I was worthless. That's what
drove that.
And so you're kind of set up
at first with the situation of like, okay,
so is hustling bad?
Am I just reinforcing that part of myself
that doesn't believe that I'm
enough?
And that makes you, it kind of almost
makes it difficult to do what you used
to do.
And I certainly experienced that, but the
key tool and concept here is that as
you reenter these familiar scenarios, the
work is noticing the resistance.
Right? It is essentially a direct through
line to whatever is left in your
subconscious that is preventing you from
exercising total freedom.
And I'll give you a perfect example.
Like, you know, I remember when I was
selling my company, like I was selling
my company, I told some people about it.
And then all of a sudden, like I was just
around all these people that just
like
wanted to—all they wanted to do is talk
about business every time I saw them
and I was on the spiritual path.
And I was like, man, like, all these guys
want to do is talk about business.
I used to be like that, but I'm not like
that anymore.
Like this is out of alignment, blah, blah,
blah.
And there would be immense resistance in
these conversations.
And so, like, paradoxically, I actually
had very little freedom to enjoy
talking about business.
which is something I once enjoyed.
And eventually, like the main practice is
like using your reactions and having
meta-awareness to see how you're relating
to the situation.
And when I went into that, you know, I
realized that, yeah, I didn't want to
talk about business because I felt
ashamed.
I felt ashamed that we hadn't sold the
company yet, even though I had told a
bunch of friends that I thought a deal was
going to go through.
And so my consciousness had devised a very
brilliant strategy of
making me think that I didn't want to talk
about business anymore because that
was out of alignment.
And so as someone goes kind of that kind
of getting back to center point, it's
not to run away from the old, it's
actually to face it head on and then to
face every single thing that comes up
along the way so that you can experience
true freedom.
So that you can be a deeply spiritual
person and be like, yeah, let's talk
about making a shitload of money or let's
actually talk about the nature of
life. And it doesn't really matter because
no matter what, I am all good.
And that is real freedom.
And so this concept that I'm so passionate
about is like, yes, like your old
ways, business, achievement, accomplishment,
like this is a crucible for you
to achieve that freedom.
You just have to start to relate to it the
right way and start to notice how
you're reacting to everything.
Totally, totally. That's awesome. Yeah.
A few of the things that jump out to me
around meta-awareness, choice,
decision-making, seeing kind of what you
can do.
I'm going to do a screen share. Can you
see that? Yeah.
Yep. Yeah. I love this image.
Yes. I got this from your book and it's
awesome because it sort of just gets
exactly at this.
Like we often think there's just, you
know, it's a guy and there's a cone and
you know,
total choice spectrum is this whole thing,
but we only kind of see this
perceived optimal choice, which is a much,
much narrower band.
There are all these unconscious options
that we don't see because of these
assumptions and limiting beliefs and all
these things that we think sort of
block us from doing things.
And it's been really cool to see sort of
in real time.
So this can happen on like a small scale
in the course of seconds or in the
course of like hours, days or months and
years of.
You know, over the years, things like, I
could never do that thing in life.
I could never be that kind of person or do
those things.
And on the small scale, which is a lot of
what I see in my work with Attention
Copilot, someone will sort of be thinking
about a task for work and sort of
looking at it in a super narrow way.
And I'll just sort of do a breather with
them.
We sort of expand out and just naturally
within five, 10 seconds, the right
answer comes in.
Simply from being in a little bit more
spaciousness and connecting to a more
holistic self. Intuition just sort of
works immediately.
Like, why was I missing that?
And, you know, and it's because there's
all these sort of constructs and this
and that sort of almost creates an
invisible force field, right? And you just—
100%. You're living in a box.
Exactly.
It's just a little box of perception that
we don't even see the options
available.
And I think it's funny because even like
modern, even like psychology sort of
gets at this, like with black-and-white
thinking
Even like cognitive behavioral therapy
sort of gets at it, but they don't
really talk about the root of what it
actually is and like,
Mm-hmm.
how does it actually work?
And it's these really sort of, you know,
these schemas or beliefs or
something.
There's different ways to talk about it
too, but yeah, it's super cool to hear
you talk about that.
Yeah, I mean, it's why I'm obsessed with
the consciousness stuff, because it's
like the traditional approach to this is
the and this is the flip side of I
think a big question that is not really
well documented is like, what is the
how of how working on your consciousness
actually creates more capacity to
create whatever it is that you want in the
world?
Like that just there's, it's a very
big question and it's not well documented
in a lot of the spiritual texts
because many of them actually just say,
no, no.
The only thing that matters is
enlightenment.
And the way that I relate to it is like,
you know, the expansion of the
intellect, which is how many people focus
on improving capacity through
reading books and podcasts and, you know,
getting mentors and accruing
experiences. That's like becoming a better
navigator of your box.
It's like if you have like a go-kart that
you can drive around this little box
and it's like you're going faster in your
little box, right?
And the consciousness work is like
expanding the box outwards, right?
It's creating a new box.
And that's like a metaphor that I love is
like you can become a better chess
player or you can zoom out and see all the
games available in the game room
and decide what you want to play and learn
how they work.
And that to me is just like a much more
interesting way of creating results than
the former way.
But again, back to the polarized thinking,
which tends to creep in with these,
it's actually not one or the other, it's
both.
But there is always going to be a
fundamental constraint when you don't work
on the awareness.
100%.
And I think the cool thing about all of
what you said is it works great as a
metaphor and it's almost literal.
Like let's say you're really stressed,
right?
And you're super stressed and you can feel
the pressure of stress in your
head.
And then it sort of feels like the walls
are sort of caved in, in almost a
literal way. Like there's pressure on the
sides of your face.
You're sort of zoomed in on a laptop and
you're like, ah, what do I do?
There's all the cortisol pumping in.
Your working memory is like filled with
this one topic.
When someone has that same situation, but
has practice with
you know, expanding awareness practices or
any inner contemplative tradition,
you can sort of just sit, rest, and almost
do the thing of relaxing the
boundaries of your perception or almost
expand outwards or dissolve the
boundaries.
There's all these different ways to talk
about it, but it literally feels like
the room you're in gets bigger. So
That's right.
Even if there's an elephant—it's like the
elephant is in a tiny little New
York style apartment versus like a giant,
you know,
King Ranch thing in Texas. I don't know.
You know what I mean? It's like the
Yeah, yeah.
space is much bigger.
It's like it can be the same elephant, but
there's just a lot more space.
And with that space, you're sort of just,
yeah, it's not a big deal, you know?
And it's quite literally almost just
increasing capacity for stress,
increasing capacity for distress,
intensity, and that just clearly helps
people, you know? And I, yeah.
But it's
much more than, because I think a trap for
a lot of people is, oh, well, how
does consciousness help me be a better
performer?
And they're like, well, if I'm less
stressed and I'm less easily agitated,
then I'll do better at my job.
And that's just like a very shallow
fractional view of the how.
And yeah, so I wanna make sure to call
that out because it is that, but it's
also so much more.
Yep, I sort of like that as almost a way
in to be like, yeah, everyone knows
this part works.
So kind of curious how, so like that does
happen and it's like less stress,
better performance, you know, MBSR, all
that stuff, right?
And it is much deeper than that.
And how would you say it goes even deeper
than that?
Well, I think, you know, it comes down to
what is awareness really.
And for me, the definition of that is the
capacity to see truth.
And so I think that we live in a base
reality or a fundamental reality of
which at any given time we can see a
portion of.
And so back to some of the examples that
we discussed, like, you know, with my
ambition, it was like, I'm ambitious
because it feels good to grow, right? And
And that was my perspective, but in
reality, in a bigger reality, there was
actually a subconscious set of beliefs and
patterns around low self-esteem
that was creating that experience. And you
can do this with everything, right?
It's like, I think about like most
materialists who are like, we live in a
world of form and that's all there is,
right?
And then there's like all this science
coming out that shows that actually
there's like,
a world of vibration and energy that is
unseen. That's just how it is.
And so as you go on this journey, you
start to increase your capacity to see a
greater portion of truth, of true reality.
And as that happens, you begin to align
your life and actions to that
understanding.
And I believe that there are fundamental
properties and laws of reality.
There's like just the way things work.
And you start to tune into not only how
are you relating to all of that, but
also what those laws are and begin to
align your life to them.
And in my experience and the experience of
many others and even great texts
like, you know, the Tao Te Ching, things
go better when you do that, right?
Because you're aligning to the actual
natural order.
And so that, for me, is the crux of it is
like aligning to the true way of
things.
And a huge part of that is seeing all the
ways that you show up and why you
do, because I think what we're here to do,
like my belief is that we are here
to go on this journey.
We're here to grow and expand ultimately
discover ourselves and life needs to
kind of
show us that path.
Like we're constantly receiving a
reflection of that in service of that
journey and in service of the whole.
So it actually becomes really like I
almost think of it as a higher organizing
principle of your life is your
consciousness journey.
And you can play that game directly, you
know, and what I've noticed is like,
life has these things that it wants to
teach you about yourself and
communicate to you.
Once you understand receive the message
and in many ways, in many instances do
healing, you don't have to keep seeing
that thing.
And like, if you don't do that, if you
don't work on the awareness to become
aware of that, then you just keep
having—it's like playing something on
repeat, right? You have to keep going
through that experience.
And so like, that phenomenon
I think is like very important and becomes
very important in creating results
in your life as you go deeper on the
journey.
For sure, for sure. Yeah, that's awesome.
It's kind of interesting.
Sort of, as an example of this, I sort of
initially wanted to now move into
thinking about organizations and how this
applies in groups and cultures.
But I think the thing that's coming up for
me now is sort of on that topic, I
think I might have a little bit of
pushback or disagreement, which feels
uncomfortable, too.
I'd love to hear it.
Yeah.
sometimes when two people sort of both
feel like they're coming from truth or
sort of aligning with like absolute truth,
there kind of can be this he said,
she said thing, or it's like, oh, if
they're in disagreement, how does one
sort of discern which opinion to go with?
And I think sometimes if you have two
people who are both like on this path
and on this journey, but then in
disagreement,
it can become a question of who's right.
How do you know who's right and wrong?
And you can sort of devolve into more
tribal dynamics or sort of like ego
games. Curious if you've seen that.
And in my mind, I think that almost pushes
to go more for like the rationalist
or brainy thing, even from this place.
You're always only seeing a portion of
truth.
And one of the understandings that comes
up as you do that is that there's the
recognition that you are an expression of
what you've been exposed to.
And so when I evaluate people's beliefs
and concepts, my truth is that those
people are just sharing what they've been
exposed to.
And that leaves room for all people and
all beliefs.
And so, you know, it's kind of like why
spiritual teachers say, the more you
know, the less you know.
And so I think the idea that there is like
fundamental truths also needs to
accommodate relative truths that are
highly subjective.
But I think that if you just take the
opposite
approach and be like, well, everybody's
just having their own relative
experience, it wouldn't accommodate for
these kind of governing principles
that seem to be at work, right?
And you seem to become more aware of as
your awareness expands that also
mirror a lot of the ancient teachings.
There are absolute truths and there sort
of always has to be this relative
humility to being like, and I don't know
them all the way and recognition that
it's not just this purely relative thing.
It's like, there are probably people who
are more in line with that and more
in touch with it than others. And there's
a way to sort of work with that.
Yeah, good stuff.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
And it's like, you know, I think it's like
if you have this big truth map,
right?
Like, what's interesting is like, and, in
the example I like, a spotlight,
right? Where it's like, your spotlight is,
you know, a certain radius, right?
And you can meet somebody that has a
similar size spotlight as you, but it
could just be pointed at a different
portion of the map. And so,
You know, I think like the people that I
respect are on this path, like they
have a point of view that's grounded in
their direct experience, but they hold
it very lightly, especially in
relationship to others, because there's a
recognition that you're only ever seeing a
fraction of the whole thing.
Yep. Nice. That makes sense. Sweet. That
feels great. Thanks for indulging me.
Yeah, dude.
I'm curious: how do you see this applied
to organizations and companies with
your now new company Conscious Talent? You
talk to a lot of people.
You talk to a lot of founders, a lot of
businesses that think about this stuff
all the time.
I'm curious what you see happening there
organizationally, developmentally.
Yeah, well, I think, first off, this is
still a very nascent thing.
Just want to acknowledge that.
I think what I see is, there's a lot of
founders who are going on this
journey. And they're seeing their own
transformation and the benefit in a more
fundamental way, like not just like, I'm
feeling less stressed.
Like, they're like, okay, wow, there's
like a lot more going on here than I
thought. And
how do I actually start to imbue this as a
part of our culture and with my
people in a way that isn't kind of like,
‘subscribe to my beliefs and
religion’, right? But like, how do I make
this accessible?
And the reason that we started Conscious
Talent, well, there's a lot of
reasons, but one of them is that it's
really hard to enroll people in this
stuff and kind of get them to see
just like get them to see the world this
way if they're not already there.
And I think the traditional approach has
been, okay, founder goes on, founder
does Art of Accomplishment or CLG, has a
great experience.
They bring in a trainer to do a session
once a month for three months.
And then they hope that there's a big
transformation.
And I'm not saying that's not useful. It
is.
but it usually doesn't result in kind of
like fundamental unlocks for new ways
of doing things.
And I think what I've observed and seen is
that when you can try to find
people who are already keyed into this and
are already on this path, it just
opens the aperture of what's possible.
It just allows you to do things that
otherwise would contain a lot of friction
because people haven't enrolled in like,
Did I sign up for this?
Like, I'm glad you're having this
transformation, but I just wanted to work at
this company before you did this.
So yeah, I think there's a growing
appetite in the market of founders who are
like, Hey, like who else out there is into
this?
That's also really good at their job.
And that's what we help with at Conscious
Talent.
And I also see there's a growing appetite
for concepts like a deliberately
developmental organization. And the idea
there is that
the business is, again, it's like this
like, include and expand concept, or
it's like, if you take a look at a circle,
and you're like, okay, the business
is about making profit and creating
win-wins for stakeholders.
And then that grows.
And it's like, okay, the business is about
creating win-wins for stakeholders
and win-wins for the world.
And then that grows and says, okay, the
business is about all of those things.
And it's about the evolution of our
people.
And specifically their evolution of their
consciousness, even though they
might not use those words. And
And so I'm seeing a lot of people excited
about building into that.
And I think like, that's very much
uncharted territory, like there's a handful
of companies that have done that well, but
you're starting to see, you know,
signs of it with like companies doing
things like hiring an embedded coach,
where there's a coach now for everybody at
the company, or like, everybody
gets coaching, right? Or
you know, doing retreats as a company and
incorporating more than just like
strict performance stuff into the work
environment.
And so that's, that's like what I'm very
excited about to see what unfolds is
like, what happens when like, not only are
you personally relating to work as
a crucible for your evolution, but what
happens when you're like in a
container where everyone else is to
How does that change how you interact?
How does it change the way you go about
doing things?
And I think it's still early days for
that.
Know, we're kind of, many of us are
collectively trying to like figure out
what that playbook looks like.
Totally. Yeah, this just lit me up in a
bunch of different ways.
I think the idea of developmental
organizations and just sort of how the
cultures of organizations have changed
over time is really interesting.
Sort of, if you look 200 years ago, many
organizations were like mafias where,
you know, there's like a head boss and
everyone's sort of doing stuff for the
boss.
And maybe later you sort of get, and
there's different versions of that that
are healthier and worse, then you sort of
get military mode and military is
sort of, you know, top down command
control, various levels.
Anyways, I'm sort of just riffing in my
head but I think I need—
Have you read Reinventing Organizations?
A little bit.
I skimmed it a bit and I think that's sort
of where I'm getting this from.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah,
there's a concept of a teal organization.
And basically, you know, a teal
organization is much more like distributed
where it's less hierarchical.
And what's required for the teal
organization concept to work is hiring people
who have a lot of
self-leadership and ownership and autonomy
and can hold this complexity and
you know, also structures that allow
people to do things more autonomously.
And again, like I think there's some
companies out there that are doing it
okay, but it's like very nascent and not
the standard.
And I think a lot of people are struggling
to figure it out. And again, we're
what I've seen is that the failure mode
comes back to the people.
If you have a bunch of Scotts and Pranabs
and a bunch of other people that are
totally bought in and been at this for a
while, that's different than a few of
those and then a few people that are
completely out of tune with all of this.
Yeah, I foresee a world where like as AI
enables people to do more with less,
and you have these like crack five to 10
person teams, right?
Now add the layer of the consciousness
stuff onto that.
Things get really interesting.
Yeah, how familiar are you with Softmax,
Emmett Shear's latest company?
I am familiar with it.
Nice. That's awesome. Yeah. So I've just
been following along on Twitter.
But a really interesting thing about it is
sort of the way he tweets about it
organizationally and developmentally of
sort of creating a meta-rational
organization that also has sort of this
through line of maybe not explicitly
around consciousness, but you know, what
they're doing is sort of on AI
research with agents becoming more agentic
and having higher consciousness in
a way.
So he's sort of applying those principles
to the organization itself.
And it's really interesting to sort of see
from the sidelines at least.
So I'll be curious on how that goes over
the next couple of years.
Yeah, I'm glad you got that on my radar.
I haven't been following him, you know,
equally curious.
Yeah, nice. Cool.
Well, what's sort of exciting for you now
in the next few weeks and months
with your book and with work?
What are some things that are making you
feel excited?
Yeah,
I mean, I'm very excited for the book to
come out.
You know, I think there's a lot of people
out there that are kind of living in
this duality of like, okay, do I go hard
on spirituality or do I go hard on,
you know, the accomplishment stuff and
getting all the things I want.
And this whole like concept of integration
is just like the through line
across all the stuff that I'm doing. And
yeah, I'm just excited to help
hopefully some people that are experiencing
that thing that I experienced—that
confusion and those questions around how
do I actually do this?
You know, Conscious Talent, I think is
really starting to pick up steam.
We're having a lot more founders come to
us and say, hey, like, you know,
let's talk and how do we do this?
And I think an area for me that is a
growth edge is really becoming a student
of
of the developmental organization stuff.
You know, like you, I read Reinventing
Organizations. It was a quick read.
I couldn't actually apply much when I read
it.
Like I wasn't running a company when I
read it. And now I am, right?
And so the conversations that I'm having
are like, okay, what does it look
like to have, you know, everyone at the
company have access to an IFS coach
once a month? What does it look like?
when we use something like Warmspace to
start meetings, which is like a tool
that allows you to like drop in and
reflect. It's kind of built in.
It's like a Zoom that has like these like
different journeys that kind of
integrate this stuff into the flow of
conversations.
And we even do things at Conscious Talent
that are like, you know, co-creative
intention setting with the universe, like
creating a group field. You know,
that's kind of like, yeah, I don't know
any other company that does that.
And so we're experimenting a lot with what
this weave looks like, and I'm
excited to keep learning through my own
direct experience and also keep
learning from other people out there that
are playing in a similar way.
That's awesome. That's super cool. Yeah.
And I think we'll have a lot more
conversations in the future because all of
what I'm doing with Attention Copilot and
my co-founder, Sam, I think you met
recently, we're sort of figuring out, what
does this look like if you sort of
take, you know, the root cause of
productivity is inner conflict.
That's the sort of like mainstream sort of
direct way of the simple way of
talking about it, but really sort of the
bigger thing is
Productivity is just service and activity
and just action that really has no
separation with the rest of your life and
the rest of how you want to show up
in the world.
So what does it look like to like truly
have sovereignty over your attention,
understanding the principles of awareness
and bringing that to the way you do
things?
There's a lot more I can go into that, but
really sort of what does that look
like if more products and services were
oriented around that?
And that will lead to, you know, in a
mainstream way of saying it.
better results, but also just feeling
better about how you do things, feeling
Right.
more agency. And that I think maybe
before, let's say 10 years ago.
even knowledge work was obviously
knowledge work is different from factory
work, but there's a certain amount of
stuff you have to get done in a
traditional work environment.
And now I think it's super clear that what
matters more is leverage and
creativity, especially
Yeah.
with AI and the more leverage and
creativity there is, like this stuff helps
with leverage and creativity again, far
beyond that too.
But it's just so clear to me that this is
sort of the future of how
development works.
And I think supporting people with that
will be really interesting.
That's awesome, man.
I think one thing that's gonna have to be
handled, I know we haven't done an
Attention Copilot session yet, but I want
to, is that there's definitely this
very real experience in which someone is
doing work and using that to work on
their awareness, and they have to just get
comfortable with the trade-off of
stopping what they're doing and pausing
their productivity,
in service of understanding what's
happening in their inner world. Right.
And like, you know, that's gonna be really
hard for a lot of people. Right.
Because the inertia is just like, Yeah,
but I'm in the middle of my flow,
like, but I got to get this shit done.
Right.
And it seems like for me, what had to
happen enough times was to just see the
outer world change as my inner world
changed in order to get really
solid in my belief that the inner stuff is
more high-leverage.
And until you hold that belief, there's
always going to be this like trade-off
game that makes doing both at the same
time a little bit muddy.
And, you know, yeah, so I think like,
collectively, as a society, we're going
to have to kind of shift our beliefs
around like, why are things actually
getting done? Like, what is a more
fundamental force behind that?
Yeah, yeah, totally.
And I think the word that's coming up for
me is unlearning.
Sometimes it just takes more time to
unlearn.
Like if you're in your 50s and you sort of
had a whole career, 30 years of
working in this way, it'll take quite a
bit of time, most likely to sort of
decondition and relax into this new way of
being.
Whereas if you're in your early 20s, you
can sort of spend a couple of weeks
or something and then sort of integrate
much more quickly.
Curious actually, if you have thoughts on
sort of how your book would be
applied to people at different stages of
their path or different.
levels in their career.
Or even just like if someone's doing this
in their 20s versus their 50s, how
this might change.
Well, I definitely think it's less about
like the age and more about where
someone's at in their consciousness
journey.
And I think there's a lot in the book,
right?
That could help people across a wide
spectrum, but really the intended
audience is for someone who's at that
critical juncture where they start to
recognize, wait a second.
the achievement game might not be it.
And this whole inner work thing may be it.
But how the hell do I do that?
And do I have to give things up?
And as you go on that journey, right, so
there's like that inflection point,
right, and there's the big teaching, which
is like, your reactions to life are
in essence, like the path. And you can do
that anywhere.
But then there's like all these little
things that will come up as you go on
that journey.
right? It's like a mountain, there's the
spiral metaphor, right?
And there's like these little waypoints,
right?
It's like, how do I relate to desires?
Like, how do I relate to ambition?
You know, how do I know whether I'm making
progress or not?
Like, there's all of these new components
that must be added as you walk that
path. And so I think it's
a useful read for people that are about to
start the journey considering it,
but also are actively walking it.
And, you know, for me, it's like, I just
wanted to create the thing that
answered all the questions that I had. And
so that's what I did.
And I'm sure there's some other people out
there that have them.
And I think like, one thing I would share
is like, I'm not as sure.
There seems to be these like,
patterns of people that are like, super
ambitious, and they come to this,
right? And like, it's great for those
people.
But I'm less sure about people who went
hard on spirituality from the get-go.
And now they're like, Okay, how do I do
shit in the world?
Like, that's kind of the inverse of that.
And I actually don't know the answer to
that question, because that wasn't my
particular journey.
Yeah,
I was very much a reformed ambition
person.
For sure.
And it's sort of funny because that's in
some ways sort of my journey, not to
the deep end or something, but that's sort
of been a thing I've thought about
for a while where I think since high
school, I sort of was on this thing due
to the way I grew up of just like
rejecting sort of traditional ways of
success. I did pretty well. So it's not
like I really totally rejected it.
Like I did well in high school, college,
you know, career stuff.
but there's probably people even more on
that spectrum than me.
And it's sort of funny, I'm sort of
playing with these ideas I think that'll
unfold over the next years and decades for
me around just actually building
the muscles of having a spiritual practice
and a much more unfettered,
defabricated mind.
Actually, I think it makes people far more
powerful at the ambition thing and
the cognitive thing.
100%.
Like I think there's actually...
in some ways it's really just cultural of
why someone chooses to not really
then apply their mind once they've done a
lot of this stuff.
But I actually think you can learn much
better, think much harder, and almost
like push more, not for the sake of more,
but for the sake of wanting to.
There's just a lot more caveats.
Like it has to feel aligned, it has to
feel with intention and all that, but
that's some stuff I'm exploring and sort
of a...
Yeah, helping spiritual people achieve is
sort of an interesting, interesting
angle too.
Yeah, I think you're nailing it.
I think there's been a lot of shitty
ideas—or just concepts—like, ‘Maya, it's
all illusion.’ It's a waste of time,
right?
That like, have been embedded in people's
consciousness in the same way that
like, things outside you will make you
happy.
And they're just restrictions that are
artificial.
You know, that's all they are. And I think
In the same way that ambitious people have
to like unlearn all that stuff, I
think a lot of people who've been like
devoted to teachings that were highly
relevant hundreds of thousands of years
ago will have to also unlearn some of
those things if they choose to walk a dual
path.
And they don't have to, right?
If you're cool just like hanging out at
the ashram, like sweet, do that.
But if you want to be kind of like a
highly productive change agent who's also
deep on the path, like you're gonna have
to kind of break out of some of those
things that you've learned.
Totally, yeah. Well, Scott, this is
awesome.
This has been a pleasure and such a joy.
The first of,
Yeah, dude, this was really fun.
Yeah, for sure, the first of many
conversations in the coming years.
So this has been really fun.
Dude,
I loved dropping in with you, man. And I
love this topic.
And you're a deeply thoughtful guy and a
great host.
And I welcome the opportunity to chat more
on this whenever you want.
100%. Thanks so much.