Jake Adelstein

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Cameron: How do you handle yourself during conflict? How do you navigate your agenda under immense pressure and stay centered as opposed to becoming too emotional? And how can you prospect rather than protect yourself and engage rather than walk away when things get difficult?
Welcome to Flow Unleashed. I'm Cameron Norsworthy and this is your podcast for human performance
conflict surrounds us every day. Whether it's a disagreement with a partner, a difficult client, or our own fatigue, clouding our own judgment. Conflict is an unavoidable part of an engaged life. It touches our jealousy, anger, frustration, envy, and ego, constantly triggering emotions that [00:01:00] shape how we think, feel, and interpret the world around us.
But how aware are we of these triggers and their influence on our minds and perceptions? Our capacity to handle conflict often feels steady until external pressures or fear escalate. Suddenly that threshold is tested, sometimes pushed to its breaking point. Consider this story of a Zen Buddhist priest who chose an unconventional path, known as a talented writer with an unshakable curiosity for truth.
He stepped away from the monastic life to immerse himself in society's chaos. He sought to shed light on injustice. During a time when rampant violence and corruption overshadowed morality in writing for prominent newspapers and magazines, he documented the truth on the ground, often challenging the powerful mob responsible for the nation's unrest.[00:02:00]
This brought immense risk. The mob angered by his unrelenting pursuits of truth, pressured him to stop. He found himself in a storm of external conflict facing opposition from a group that represented everything. He opposed, and at times the personal stakes felt overwhelming, yet fully aware of the danger he didn't back down.
Following his unwavering commitment to truth and accountability, he made the bold decision to sit face to face with the very people threatening his life.
Most of us won't face conflicts involving life-threatening danger. Yet in smaller, significant ways we all face our own difficult moments. Confronting a colleague addressing tension at home or navigating heated disagreements, how we respond to these moments, shapes our relationships, [00:03:00] influences our happiness, and can define our personal and professional growth.
Leadership like a strong marriage or effective teamwork often comes down to handling tough conversations. Can we remain open, composed, and engaged in the heat of conflict? Can we explore the psychology of disagreement to master the art of effective communication under pressure?
Joining us today is the person in my earlier story, Jake Edelstein. Jake, an American journalist, author, and former and Buddhist priest, built a career reporting on Japan's infamous Yakuza mafia. Jake's firsthand experiences have given him a unique perspective on handling conflict, staying composed in high stakes situations, and the power of conversational receptiveness.
Jake's career spans decades of investigative reporting in Japan, [00:04:00] exposing corruption, injustice, and the underworld. His work on human trafficking and organized Tribe has been featured in The Daily Beast, the Independent, the Guardian, and he is the author, author of Tokyo Vice, an American reporter on the police beat in Japan, and his latest book.
The last Yakuza life and death in the Japanese underworld. In today's conversation, we'll dive into Jake's remarkable story and the lessons he's learned about conflict lessons we can all apply to ourselves, whether we are leading teams, strengthening relationships, or striving for resilience. In challenging times,
flow unleashed. Unleashed. This chat with Jake has been remastered from several years ago, I imagine gaining the accuser's trust and, but at the same time, riding truthful, interesting pieces on them must have been a difficult balancing act. What [00:05:00] dangerous situations did you get into in order to uncover the truth?
Jake: You know, you, when you, when you write about something that the police have announced, they don't care because the police have announced it, 'cause everybody writes about it. But in the classic way of, in Japan, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. When you write about something that they don't want in print that nobody else has written about, then you start to get some blow back because they figure if they can shut you up, that you will cease to write about these things and that the police may not investigate or let the investigation go and they will get away with what they've done.
The first time I really realized that this was an issue was in Tama, there was a series of banks mostly run for Zainichi, meaning Japanese Koreans who were allied with North, with South Korea rather than North Korea. So these banks were called Shogun, and Oggi [00:06:00] was going to go under. They had reached the point where they had more debts than earnings, and a lot of that money had been lost by loans to Yakuza.
Many of those Yakuza who were also. Korean, Japanese. That's not a, a huge secret in Japan. Many people in the underworld, I, I'd say maybe a third of the Accusa are Korean, Japanese, because Japan really discriminates against their Korean population. They were brought over slave labor. Japan colonialized them years ago, and for many Koreans growing up after the second World War, your job options were Korean, barbecue, love, hotel Pachinko, parlor, Yakuza.
And since the Yakuza was kind of a meritocracy, many went into the Yakuza. So by writing about this bank going under, which was more of a financial news story, but also writing about the fact that many of the bad loans were made to organized crime members and their associates that aroused the ire of the [00:07:00] Akai, which was the principal organized crime group in Tama that had eaten into this bank.
So I got death threats to my house and. It was about that point that the Shinbo decided to move me to Tokyo. I had a lot of problems getting the story into the newspaper about the, these savings and loans companies going down. One was because there was this kind of attitude like, who cares about a Korean savings and loan going under?
It'll all be covered anyway. And the Koreans and Japan, they're kind of a minority. It's not a big famous bank. And the, the argument I made was, well, you know, millions of dollars of tax money is going to be used to bail out this bank. And the fact that these illegal and questionable loans were made to organize crime is a huge issue.
It's a compliance issue. It's a bad example. It's a problem that we're ultimately gonna pay for. So I wrote a couple articles about it. Uh, it took years to really get to the bottom of this story. [00:08:00] One of the stories I spent the most time on was probably the least social impact, but one that I felt was important.
The reward was that I had angry Ya is threatening me. And from the Tokyo office, Stan, who is the number two in the National News Department, came down and said like, you know, great work on that article. You're, you seem to be not welcome in anymore. So we're taking you up to Tokyo and we're putting you back on the police beat.
You'll be covering Kabuki Cho, which is the fourth district. So in 1999, suddenly I was outta Tama and then in Tokyo and in the big leagues, right? And so in 1999, suddenly I was in charge of covering the Shinjuku police station in all the, the stations. Then the area, it was a lot like being on the police beat again.
And of course Cocho is rife with organized crime groups. So once again I was back doing that. But I really have not had too many in unpleasant encounters with Leah. 'cause I, I've had talks at their offices that were hostile and I felt. [00:09:00] Anger and tension. But most of the time, because they are organizations of the public image to obtain, they don't want to attack reporters and they don't want trouble.
They don't wanna do something that's going to interfere with their business without some kind of tangible reward in the process. So that is a certain amount of protection. But after having this period of time when I was under police protection, because I insisted on following up a story about a Yakuza boss who got a liver transplant in the United States and three other Yakuza bosses that got liver transplants in the United States, I decided that I didn't really want experience that anymore.
So in recent years, if I'm writing something that has to do with organized crime and it is a scoop and it is going to make people angry, I either write it under pen name for a weekly magazine since they have lots of lawyers and lots of staff and they're too big to tango with. So I can sort of hide in the background or before I write the article.
[00:10:00] I call someone up in the organization and I tell them like I, I'm going to write this article. For example, about four or five years ago, I wrote an article that the vice chairman of the Japan's Olympic Committee, a guy named Tanaka, was a close associate of several yakus of bosses over the years. And there was a picture of him with the current head of the Amag gummi.
I mean, it's the equivalent of the vice chairman of the Rugby Association in Australia showing up in a picture with the most infamous gangster in Australia. You know, it's a pretty sensational picture and there was definitely an association between these two. And especially you have this guy who's on a committee that is gonna be overseeing billions of dollars worth of construction.
That's a huge problem. And the photo and the connection I knew was going to be trouble. I knew that there had been two journalists writing for right wing tab, sort of a right wing scandal, tabloid that had tried to write about it and had their knees broken with baseball bats. No one ever caught the person [00:11:00] responsible.
And I already have a bad knee from karate. And I was like, I don't wanna be that person. So I took the article, vice, vice News, and I said, this is a good article, um, but I need a promise that you will publish this within 24 hours. After I start asking questions, I have everything done. I just need to ask Tanaka what he has to say.
But once I ask him, that sends out an alert to everyone that someone is working on this story. And if they think they can stop the story, they may do something stupid. Um, in the yakasa world, there's this word called, this phrase called, which means like air gets in. And I don't, and I don't, and I think it actually relates to shooting yourself up with meth, that if you wait too much, you hesitate or you don't shoot it right?
That air gets in the needle and that can be fatal. So in a sense, the longer you give someone to brew about something. The more likely they are to do something drastic and stupid because they think on it or they plot. So [00:12:00] in the case of the, with writing something controversial about the act, something that's not in the paper, something that the police haven't announced, I make a courtesy call.
You reach out to someone hi in the organization and you tell them over the phone, I'm writing this article, I'm not asking you for your permission, but as a courtesy I'm telling you what's gonna be in it. And I'm not even asking for a comment. I'm just letting you know. And most of the time there's not trouble if you do that 'cause they can't stop it.
And at least you've warned them so they can be prepared so they can at least tell their boss what is going on. Uh, in the case of this Yaku Olympics article, the person I was speaking to asked me, can you please edit the photo so that no one sees his missing finger because he is very sensitive about that.
And I was like, I can't edit the photo. I can say what a nice boss he is 'cause he knows Yaku bosses go bu who's the current leader of the Yamaguchi Me is a nice boss and that it's the best I can do. And so that went smoothly. You know, [00:13:00] when you, you know, but, but basically yaku are, tended, be sort of sociopathic, violently aggressive people.
They can be charming and they can be erudite and they can also be reasonable and logical, but most of them are very violent people with a hair trigger. And that makes dealing with them incredibly stressful. I think in 2009 I went to see a, a source, a good source in that world who was really high on meth.
And, um, for whatever reason, what I said to him triggered his paranoia and he beat the shit out of me. I mean, it turned into a, a brawl between him and me. I walked away. But not without, I mean, I kind of limped away. He was in worship than I wasn't. The dilemma in that case is, well, he's my source. So if I turn him in, I go to the cops, he's probably, he's got Methodist system that he is gonna go to jail.
Then I made [00:14:00] an enemy for life, you know, and you have to ask yourself, well, was that intended to hurt me or was that just someone on meth having paranoid delusions and conclusion it was someone on meth having paranoid delusions. So, you know, I just left it at that.
Cameron: Interesting. As a, as then Buddhist priest, I imagine a lot of your training and your beliefs and values and thoughts, contrary to a lot of what you are reporting on as a journalist, how do you.
Jake: Well, it's, it, it certainly makes the job harder. I spent most of the college living in a zen Buddhist temple in Toshi Maku, which is sort of blue collar, poor neighborhood of Tokyo, bu a lot of crime. Not exactly, I wouldn't call it a slump, but it's not the, it's not the greatest of places. It's, I don't think Toshi maku ever be hip, you know, and I studied Zen Buddhism under my teacher for 20, 25 years.
And [00:15:00] definitely the training helped. You know, it helps you stay calm. It's a very good thing to have done Zazen for a long time because sometimes if you can remember to breathe, but you can remember to center yourself and be completely there. Um, it's extremely helpful in staying calm and sensing what is happening and, and moving with the conversation, moving with the moment, um, and not losing your cool.
And losing your cool is no good with these people because they try to provoke you. They try to provoke you all the time. I mean, a conversation with Yakuza is like having a conversation with the worst ex-girlfriend you've ever had in your life. You know who is, who wants to fight, she wants to have a quarrel.
She's waiting for you to slip up for you to say something. And if you make and if you apologize, it makes the situation even worse. So it's a very tense thing. But the hardest part of being an investigative journalist and being a Zen Buddhist priest is that a Zen Buddhist priest. You have to take these 10 vows, what [00:16:00] they call the 10 gray precepts.
And many of these vows are, make it hard to do business the way that you've done them before. For example, and I remember having a long discussion in 2017 with my teacher about this on whether I could even take the vows. I said like, I think vow number six or number seven is that you cannot criticize other people.
And I'm like, how can I possibly be a journalist and be as an Buddhist priest because I. Criticizing people and institutions is what I do all the time. And he said in his gravelly voice, if you're writing the truth, it's not criticism. You're just writing the truth. And, and I was like, okay, that's, that's okay.
That's that works. And I'm like, well, what about this thing you can't praise yourself? And he was like, well, putting your name on an article isn't praising yourself. You're just writing that. You, you wrote the article. And, and I said, well, [00:17:00] what about this part about not lying? And he's like, well, like why is that a problem?
And I'm like, well, if you ask a dishonest person an honest question, they're not gonna give you a straight answer. When bluffing and insinuation and misdirection are all part of what it takes to get an answer from someone, also you, you can't burn your sources. And he said, well. You'll just have to learn to ask questions straight up.
And if they don't answer honestly, then, then you'll deal with it. So it, it is hard. You learn all these tricks to get people to tell you the truth that you learn from detectives and stuff. Bluffing is a huge one. You imply that you know more than you do or you say, you know, so and so says this, well, you can't do that if so and so didn't say that.
So it makes my job a little more tricky. But fortunately for me, in the last, since primarily since 2011, the Zas [00:18:00] power and numbers have dwindled so much that the amount of time I spent writing about them is a, a 10th of what it was. Um, compared to 10 years before. I mean, the last long article I wrote about the was that Ya, which is in Kobe Bay, has a fortress.
It's like an entire city block. That's where the headquarters are. I mean, everybody knows where it is. For many years, starting around 19 79, 78, they held a Halloween party for the neighborhood children. The Halloween isn't normally separate, celebrated in Japan, but the Canadian school used to be nearby and after Canadian kids kept knocking on the door demanding candy and the was it first gave them money in envelopes, not knowing what to do, eventually realized under the tutelage of the third generation leader that they should probably be nicer to the kids and started throwing a Halloween party for them.
And this year law was passed. That made it illegal for you 'cause to [00:19:00] give candy to children. I'm not making this up. So no more giving candy to kids, no more inviting 'em on the premises. And that was the end of Yoko's Halloween. So I wrote a very long piece about how this tradition began and how people in the neighborhood felt that it was ending and pointed out that all yoko's do horrible things and you don't want children emulating them.
This is probably one of the few. Good things that they did and in the effect that it made them interact with people in the neighborhood. It was kind of a restraint. And personally, I will miss those Halloween parties because there was an Indian family in the neighborhood. There are many Indian families in the neighborhood.
They used to borrow their kids and go to the Halloween parties. It's kind of fun to see all the Aza, and if anyone recognized me, they didn't say anything.
Cameron: Living and working in a way that's congruent is one of the most challenging things in life, especially when we're in environments and context that may ordinarily be [00:20:00] contradictory to what we may hold dear.
And I was privileged enough to listen to the Dalai Lama speak one time, and he talked about his relationship with George W. Bush. And them being great friends, which was a huge, huge surprise to me. And, but yeah, I came away with the message that engagement is more important than disengagement. And we can always operate in a manner that's congruent even in those complex situations.
And I imagine in your life and world, you've had many phone calls, interviews, situations where you've had to tread lightly, manage your internal conflicts, but also get the best information you can at that particular time. And I wonder what role flow has had in that, in the sense of you being able to really become immersed in that moment and tread that tightrope [00:21:00] really well.
Jake: Ah, well it is funny that you mentioned sort of the, the conflict between engagement and non-engagement, because. Mm. And the Dalai Lama because in 2008, once I had, I was working on a story that I didn't really wanna write and I figured the only way I could clarify it was to actually speak to the Dalai Lama.
So I hunted him down and interviewed him Gorilla Style on a United Airlines flight. I still have a picture of it. Very nice. He was very, had a very firm handshake. I'll send you the picture. And I got to ask him my question, which was about an issue with the Dai la in Japan. And, uh, his answer was very, very good.
And it's, I'll probably wait until he passes away 'cause I don't wanna give, you know, give way too much. But it was also about engagement versus non-engagement. So that, that makes me smile when you mention that he's quite a character and he still has my noise canceling headphones, which was, which is interesting 'cause I finally cornered the Dalai Lama.
I'm on this plane and came outta the bathroom and [00:22:00] I, I really like to get this flight. I had to really jump onto the last minute. So I had, I said I would shave in the bathroom, but I didn't know how. A very good razor and so. You know, I, you know, while the wait, well the flight attendant was okay, I sat down to Dal Lama to the horror of everyone.
His bodyguard didn't seem to mind. And as I was talking to Dal Lama, he was like, you are bleeding on my robe, which is true. I was bleeding from my, from my face. And he was like, and he's like, you know, when I shave, sometimes I cut my head be, 'cause if I'm not careful. So the secret is you must shave very slow.
And he said, these robes are red, so it's no problem. So we had this nice talk and the fight said it came over and, and he, he politely shoot her away, which was nice. So after we were talking for several minutes, uh, you know, I had on these audio techniques, noise canceling headphones that at the time in 2008 were pretty, pretty advanced.
And a lama pointed in my headphones, he says, I said, ah, [00:23:00] are those noise canceling headphones? He says, those are very nice. Sometimes when I get on the helicopter. They give them to me. So because they're very noisy on the helicopter, but I do not have any of my own. And he just let this pregnant pause there and I was like, oh, oh, your Holiness, would you, would you like these?
No, he canceling headphones and he and I like, here, try them on, put them on a, show them out to use them. And he is like, oh, these are very nice. And I'm like, like, okay, please Your Holiness since I bothered you on this plane. Like please take them, but you have to share them with your bodyguard. And, and the bodyguard was like, gave me a thumbs up.
And, and that was like, he was like, oh. And it wasn't like a Japanese thing, like, oh no, I couldn't. He was like, oh, thank you so much. And so I ended up getting to talk to Dial LA for 20 minutes and got a photo with him and then he got my headphones with the noise kind thing. It wasn't like I, I expected to get them back because I did offer them to him.
Yeah. And, and a Gadget Magazine. 'cause [00:24:00] he is really into gadgets. Like he likes. Weird gadgets like electronics and mechanical things. So I brought him a Japanese Gadget magazine. I, I plan to give him the Gadget Magazine. I didn't plan to give him the headphones. Okay, so let's get back into the flow. It's just an interesting, funny story that I was thinking about the other day.
The flow works two ways since primarily my job is to get people to talk about things that they don't want to talk about, that they don't want to people to know. And in order to do that, the best way is if you can find some something to appeal to them that makes them feel like it's in their best interest to speak to you, or that not speaking to you will put them in a even worse situation.
And that requires quickly getting a sense of who that person is and what motivates them. Um, most of the time you have time to prepare. But in some senses, it's only, that [00:25:00] skill only comes from meeting many, many people and learning to recognize a slight timber in the voices, certain types of people listening to the way they use words and getting a sense of what motivates them and what their sense of honor is.
Or they have a sense of honor and I, and ideally too, if you, you want people to feel good about telling you the truth. Um, someone who has a sense of right and wrong sometimes is actually feels good unburden themselves of the things that they've done wrong to tell you something. So it's a very, it's such a, it's such an, it's such a strange alchemy to what you're to when you're speaking to someone, to get the sense of where they are.
And the longer you have to chat with them, the more you can get a sense of where they are in the world, what their viewpoints are, what they understand. For example, if you're talking to Iza and you're trying to get information about them, and let's say they're doing something slightly unethical, maybe [00:26:00] slightly but not horribly unethical, but you know, just kind of what a business making them.
If you talk to them about, I was working on this case involving this, these hosts who are, you know, putting their female customers and debts and then convincing them to take out loans from loan sharks and basically sexually enslaving them. They're just really scum and you, and you know, you get the yaks talking about how horrible hosts are.
'cause most YaaS really hate host. They feel like these sort of male entertainers, companions, gigolos, whatever you wanna call them, are like the scum of the earth. So you can get them talking about how terrible these people are. They feel a little less bad talking about the things that they've done 'cause it's a higher class of crime.
Or if you take the mindset that this person has absolutely no sympathy for the victim and you sort of, I. Can get to, into their mind this point. It's like, yeah, if these people weren't so greedy, I know they wouldn't have fallen for this scheme in the first place. You know, what did they think that they, that you could act if you invested in this shady company and evaded [00:27:00] taxes, that you would really make money if they hadn't been so greedy, aren't been willing to pay their taxes, like other people, they would've never got themselves in this fix.
I remember having this conversation once when I, I was working on this story about the YA as a crime boss who got a liver transplant in the United States, and I was talking to one of the people involved and as someone who I'd known for a while, and the conversation was going fairly well. And, and at one point we sort of reached a, a stage where I realized they weren't gonna say much more.
They didn't wanna say much more. And, and it wasn't a book, but I realized this is the time to just lay it out before I get kicked out, put my cards on the table, which was, you know, this is what I know. I'm gonna write this story about how your organization made a deal with the Jock ABOs to get them into the United States and was screwed out of the information they were promised.
And it makes the organization look [00:28:00] bad and it makes you look bad. But I would like to hear your side of the story because if I knew your side of the story, then I could write a more balanced thing and maybe it isn't what it appears to be. And that opportunity to explain yourself, right? Here's your last chance to explain yourself.
'cause here, here's what, here's what I know. This is all that's going to go out. So if you want to put in your extenuating circumstances, um, now is the time. And that worked very well. Flow is interesting. Sometimes the flow is you follow the conversation, you laugh, you get along, and then you slowly steer the conversation towards the topic that you want to get into.
Sometimes flow works in the sense is that you match with the person, then you just stop, you break the flow and you leave this huge silence there, which is, you know, everything's been going forward smoothly. And then you stop and you say, wait, and you pull back. And that break [00:29:00] in the flow in the conversation.
That long silence that is painful for most people often is what encourages people to talk. I I don't know if this fits into your idea flow, but, uh, there's this idea in Daoism, in the Da Ching, which is part of the philosophical basis of Zen Buddhism, that there is a sort of flow to the universe that there's sort of a, a harmony, a waves of energy, right?
And that you need to recognize what those are and sort of flow with them. And that's something like the secret where you, you know, this is, this is what I want, this is what I imagine, but more like I am open to many things that will take me. To where I need to go on this story or this event. And you, you relax a little bit and sometimes in that moment of relaxation, the inspiration comes to you are you run into the person that you need to meet.
And that's counterintuitive, right? How can being a lazy ass actually benefit my [00:30:00] work? But sometimes it does, and I don't know how to describe when you get that sense that this is the place I need to be right now. The best example I have is I think 2003. Normally at that time I was covering organized crime control in Tokyo for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, but there had been a murder of a Malaysian businessman in my neighborhood.
Like they dumped the body that's 300 meters from my house. And so, because it was so close to where I lived, my boss was like, okay, you're gonna be the one casing the area for three days. So normally as a police reporter not covering homicide, I don't case neighborhoods, right? That's the job of the homicide guys.
But in this case, since I live so close and I knew the neighborhood ostensibly, that was my job. So after about three days, it, it dawned on me that the body must have been, that the body had been dumped there, but he probably was killed somewhere else. Nobody had seen anything. Someone had seen a van [00:31:00] drive up and toss out a body, which matched my conclusions that he hadn't been killed there.
But I was like, this is a colossal waste of time. So I went to a bar in Rapon called Propaganda, and I was having a smoke and talking to the bartender, Jaan, and he asked me what I'd been up to and I told him about this case I was working on, and this Malaysian guy who'd been thrown out of a van who'd been stabbed to death.
And I. His face went white because he turned out to have been the only eyewitness. So he was living in a assay and the van was parked out his, in front of his house and he heard noises from the van and he looked out the window and the Malaysian guy had been strapped to, was tied up in the seat across from the driver's seat.
And suddenly he saw like blood spurting. And he ran down and tried to open the doors of the van, and the van took off. And then they dumped the body probably, probably 10 kilometers or less than maybe four kilometers away, uh, in my neighborhood. [00:32:00] And I thought that is really too much. But he had the police detectives business cards, and he told me all the details and he told me details that the police had told him.
And so the thi the most interesting thing is that one of the cops who talked to him was from the credit card fraud squad, which was also my, one of the areas that I was responsible for. I had organized crime as my territories. That department and also the credit card fraud squad was part of that. So I went to the head of the that division.
I said, Hey look, you know, why are you investigating the murder of this Malaysian? And he was pretty shocked. But I guess he assumed that I must have talked to another cop. And he told me, well, this Malaysian guy was stabbed to death. He came into the country with 400 blank credit cards. So he was probably part of a blank, a credit card fraud scheme.
Something must have gone wrong and he had been killed. So collecting all that information, we were able to write a story, identifying him what had happened to some extent, and what was the background [00:33:00] of this case. And I always thought, you know, that's really interesting. Like my goofing off is actually what got me the story, not doing the work.
I mean, I did the case, the neighborhood, but it was that random decision to just go drink at the bar at this night. And he wasn't on, you know, he wasn't working at the bar every night. And he said some things are like that. You're working on a story, you're trying to identify a company, whether it's a front company or not, and you have to sort of.
Let your mind go from what's in front of you to what to make the other connections. Uh, and that intuitive process is very hard to explain. I mean, it's much easier to tell people, okay, here's a checklist. If you're trying to identify a ya as a front company, here's the 27 things that you look for. Here's the databases that you search.
And maybe you can figure it out, but it doesn't always work like that.
Cameron: Hmm. I I think there's a really interesting conversation there in terms of when we slow down, we start to see opportunity. [00:34:00] When we slow down, we start to become present. We start to listen and we start to see where's that line between self-determined intrinsic motivation and becoming an automated script and becoming a consequence of our predetermined agenda and becoming so blinded by this thing that we need to tick or do or achieve, that we miss it.
Right, right.
Jake: Yeah. You, you, you talk about having an agenda, sort of predetermined agenda and being blind to these things. In Zen Buddhism, we talk about seeing things like it was for the first time because that is you, you are open to things, you're not you, you're putting aside your confirmation bias and, and seeing things for the first time without preconceptions, without judgments.
And that is so important, um, when you're having a conversation with someone. Um, that ability to do that, to, to not decide, this person must be like this or this person must be like that. [00:35:00] Um, it, someone said, and it wasn't, definitely wasn't me, that most conversations today are people's, an exchange of monologues.
Like, I wanna share whatever I've been doing this or that, or, or brag about this or that, or get something off my mind and I'm just waiting my turn for you to shut up so I can speak and I want to be listened to, but yet I don't want to listen to you. Maybe social media has done that, but. Part of that flow state that is so necessary that, that, that I really feel sort of the zen of investigative journalism is you're talking to someone and if you're open and you're really listening to what they say, you, you may have your, your next question ready.
But if you listen to what they say and, and, and are open to all the visual cues and stuff, you have to drop that question. You have to go with where they're going and see where that takes you because you may find that, you may find that you're, the entire basis of what you're asking are the, are your preconceptions about what this case involves, are completely wrong.
And you only gonna find that if you can [00:36:00] really listen to what the person is saying and adjust to what they're saying and follow that up. And, and the flow of information is the same way, but you really feel it the most in, in a conversation with someone. Um, and the conversation sometimes is like martial arts.
I, I've done Aikido for years and I'm terrible at Aikido. I really just, I'm really abysmal. I did Wing Chun for many years before that. But there is these moments of almost tactile sense, like, okay, here's the opening, here's the punch. You know, you don't have time to consciously think that in your head, but you recognize like, this moment, this is where, you know, this is the chance.
And, and in order to have a flow with someone, in a way, you have to put aside your ideas of what things are and where things should be and what you think they're gonna answer is going to be. And you have to drop the questions. You have to drop the script.
Cameron: Hmm. Putting the right steps and processing and arriving with intention, but being [00:37:00] open enough to not allow that intention to blind us and pick out bits of information that support what we thought we wanted in the first place.
I imagine in journalism that's ever so critical.
Jake: Yeah. Yeah. You, you think that, you know, um. A lot of times people and police do this as well. You learn, you know you, you create a scenario and you make the facts fit the scenario, and that gets you into a lot of trouble. That's why people get convicted for crimes that they didn't commit.
And as a journalist, you can't do that either. You have this bits of information, sometimes you're misled. You have the conclusion, and if you try and make the facts fit your conclusion, you can go seriously wrong.
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I'd love to talk to you about is this idea of the satori and the Buddhist term for awakening. And it reminds me of Aristotle's work of discovering your diamond and uncovering your true nature or your true self and then and be live with it. And I'm wondering whether having this philosophical outlook and discovery when you're in isolation and in a temple is somewhat easier 'cause there's less noise around you, but I guess it's somewhat avoidant in, in other terms, living a career as a journalist.
[00:39:00] Does that help you more towards that place of awakening or it takes you further away from it?
Jake: It, it takes you more awakening. I believe that some of the, the Zen masters have said, you know, there, there are many stories, science, but if you can't put it into practice in the real world, then it's of no value at all.
Like, anybody can be a Buddha if there's no one else around, because there's no one to get angry with. There's no, there's nothing to desire. There's no one to envy. All the foibles and sins that we can commit in the world are almost impossible to do if someone isn't around. It's, it's the ability to control your anger.
Like a chariot controls their chariot at a time when you have a reason to be angry. That is the true marks of a certain enlightenment. Now, in Buddha, in Zen Buddhism are two different schools of thought. There's the Rinzai School, which is famous for these. Impossible riddles, like what is the sound of one hand clapping you?
You solve this riddle and meditate on it for years and when you reach this sort of [00:40:00] intuitive conclusion, then you achieve it. The kind of satori. Whereas in Dogan JI'S School of Sotos Zen Buddhism is the, basically the teaching is that when you are in, when you are actually meditating, when you are essentially in a flow state, that is when you are enlightened.
That is when you are Buddha. But if you're not in that state, then you are no longer enlightened. So it's like, uh, it's not something permanent. You don't achieve it, and then you're enlightened for the rest of your life. You have a great realization, I think would be the term. And that elevates your wisdom and your ability to understand, uh, the world.
But if you don't keep up the practice, if you don't meditate, you lose that. Which is the concept I think in the West is that like you would, you know, I. You know, show me your original face before you were born. Suddenly you understand what that means. And then for the rest of your life, you're, you live blissfully and have a smile on your face like the Dalai Lama and nothing phases you and you, incredibly wise, that would be nice, but it [00:41:00] doesn't seem to work that way.
You do have realizations as over practice and time that like, you know, oh yes, it is true that, but I, because I want the things that I don't have and I'm not satisfied with the things that I do have that this is a great deal of suffering comes from this. Now, philosophically you can understand that, but then there's some days you just have this realization and then there are experiences through separate from the practice of Zen Buddhism and things where you just realize that when you realize that, oh, I am mortal and I will die just like everyone else.
The fact of not being dead makes you feel wonderfully happy. Until you've experienced something that, where you've really been that close to dying, it never really dawns to you that, you know, actually the, the, the, the, you know, happiness and contentment, the bar is pretty low once you've had enough experiences with mortality and extremity.
Cameron: Yeah, it's really [00:42:00] with a lot of people I work with, we often spend a little time meditating on death. 'cause it really gives that perspective to life. And we ordinarily don't value the, the time of each day and the moments before us. And going back to what you're saying before, I think for most people we've been born into for the majority dysfunctional families by modern terms, but in past terms, probably quite good families and, and behaviors and thoughts.
And so we wake up in the morning with our kind of conditioning and our, our head and our programming and then. To find that awakening throughout the day, whether it comes easily or whether we've gotta work at it or whatever rituals we may have to finding it, I think is, is a really interesting path for all of us to have.
Jake: Uh hmm. I, I, I think it is really true and, and I think that a lot of people are, we're obsessed about our, our past and our childhood and all these things. And you're [00:43:00] right, by many perspectives we maybe we had parents who were slightly inattentive, but by compared to parents of the past, we were incredibly blessed.
We don't see that blessing part. We just harp on the negative part. But while Zen Buddhism and stuff talks about the original self and this person who you were before you were born, what the real teaching there is that what you find is the dma pat is we are, as we think, and so we become that. We make ourselves.
We are responsible for being the people who we are. We may have had a shitty childhood, we may have had abusive parents, but how we react to that and how we grow from that and what we learn from that, that's on us. So we become the people that we are now. And, and that is the person that people like, it's not this, it's not some sort of abstract perfect you that's there.
It's, you are the person you've decided to be. You make yourself, and that's also a big realization. It's like, oh, you know, you, you can't blame anybody. It's you. You make the [00:44:00] decisions, you determine it. And that ability of self-determination is also something that, that's also a realization. It's like, oh, I can control my temper.
Like I can stay calm. I can do these things. These things are within my control. There are many things that are not within that I cannot control and I can't be blamed for those. And that sense of within my own dominion, in my own mind and my own behavior, I am the master of myself. That's, uh. That gives us sort of Buddhist, like calm when you are Buddha, like calm when you attain that state.
Cameron: Hmm. And it empowers us to live and do how we want to do things. Which brings me on to your writing. I've written a book and academic articles and, but I always look in awe of journalists because you've got a timeline and it's normally A-A-S-A-P if not hours. And, uh, yeah. Rather than my processes more being like a curation of editing.
You know? How do [00:45:00] you, are there things that help you get into that flow where you can just sit down and the words just seem to come out effortlessly and, and you look at the text and you're like, great. That, I'm happy with that.
Jake: Yes. So, you know, we, you cultivate rituals and things, but. The pro, the, the worst thing is right.
The, the most challenging thing is journalist is there is breaking news related to something you know nothing about and you have very little time to write about it. And in that case, to get into the flow, the first thing I do is I like look up an encyclopedia entry on it. If I don't know the fair. It's like you immediately go macro, what is the big picture?
Then you go to this picture, then you read everything that has been written about it so far, or if nothing's been written about it, you try and look for something similar that has been written in the past. So you get an idea of like, how do you frame this story? Now I've been doing this for like 25 years, [00:46:00] so I have an idea.
History repeats itself. So when, when Prime Minister Albe resign resigns, like I know what's gonna happen next. I know the procedure. And then of course I've been following that story. So what I do to get myself in, in that state is I take a deep breath. I jot down a couple thoughts that I have and then I think a second about what is the structure, what is the entry point?
How do, how would I end this story with what I know now? And sometimes I work backwards. And what is very interesting about modern journalism is working for Japanese newspaper. It's who, what, when, where, how, and why. And why is the last thing that you write about. 'cause you often, you don't know why, but with a publication now for whether it's the Daily Beast or the Los Angeles Times or or Z 10 or like a Japanese publication, you have to draw in the reader.
You have to be. Innovative and interesting, or no one will read past the first paragraph [00:47:00] and each one of them has their own style. I mean, if you read The Daily Beast, it's Daily Beast has a certain style. It's very different from the Los Angeles Times. Um, so you have to have these personalities in your head.
Like, this is my daily beef voice. This is my Japan Times voice. This is my Asia Times voice. Sometimes I cover for the Times of London, which is rather stodgy, but does allow a certain amount of restrained British wit certain amount. And you assemble your materials. If there's anything been written about it previously, you read through that as fast as you can.
And then you jot down the what are the major points, and this is how I do it. I do it in pieces, then I assemble it all together, then read it once through to make sure I'm not repeating myself. Um, and then I go, and often the, the process of writing something is finding the way to start and the way to end.
And then. Making it connect through the middle are building the very bare ba bare skeleton. And after you built the skeleton, adding [00:48:00] on bits and here and there until it's a complete thing, depending upon how much time you have.
Cameron: Fascinating. Yeah. 'cause you, you're approaching as well, such a new subject with so much new information.
Having that structure and getting that backbone helps to add clarity and purpose to what you're writing.
Jake: Uh, you know, we, we were talking about how we don't really about you, me, meditation on, on death and or how you have people meditate on death and stuff. And I, I've covered horrible crimes for years and years, right.
As a police reporter. But, you know, sometimes I, I think it was very late in this game that I realized that what you write actually can save lives and it can also cause people to lose their lives. Not because of your intention, but because of. What you've written, and this comes to mind because yesterday I ran into a police officer from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department who is now [00:49:00] doing, who I knew when I was covering the drug squad in like two thou from 2002 to 2005, who is now doing security work on the set of Tokyo Vice.
Right? So here's this guy that I met 15 years ago when he was a real cop, and now he is doing security on a TV series based on something that really happened, except now he's not a cop, he's a, a security. He is a security guard. But we were going over this case and we it because it was an unsolved case.
We both remembered it really well. And basically to it it was that there was a drug dealer in Rappongi, which is another red light district in Rappongi, another red light district in Tokyo who had been mixing heroin with the cocaine that he was selling. People were overdosing on it and dying. So we had, I think we had seven, eight deaths.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department didn't want to announce that it had happened, or because [00:50:00] they were ruined or worried it would ruin the investigation. And by the time that I, I realized that people were dying in the area because the drug overdoses, they had pretty much stopped. So one of the people that overdosed was the, uh, Canadian, who was the head of Pfizer Japan at the time.
So big names. And one of the other PE-people who, who, you know, who became a break in the case was an Australian who was working for Goldman Sachs. So I wanna scoop, right? It's a, it's a big story in the sense that there's foreigners, powerful foreigners and famous people in RGI buying cocaine and dying of overdoses.
Um, who. But, and it stopped. So I made a deal with the, with his boss that they would gimme the scoop and I would share information that I had because it's a lot easier to get information on a foreigners working in that area if you're a foreigner yourself. Now it was all going swimmingly, right? We had an agreement when they made the arrest, I would get the scoop.
But then I think around May 9th, two more people fell unconscious [00:51:00] into coma from the drugs because apparently they bought the drugs but kept them for a rainy day. And so at this point, I went to my boss and I said, look, we have to write this story because we don't write it. Whoever bought those drugs and still is holding them is they're gonna take them and they'll probably die.
'cause that co it's a bad batch of cocaine. And I went to the head of the division, I said, look, uh, I'm gonna write this story. I know that I said I would wait till they arrest, but you know who he is. You have an arrest warrant and there are people who are still, uh, in possession of this coke. And if they take it, they're gonna die.
So there's a good chance that they might die, and I have to write it now because clearly this is still happening. And he was furious. He was like, you're gonna ruin the investigation. We're never gonna catch this guy. And I'm like, you know, this is where you and I have a different opinion on things. My job ultimately is to inform the public, and this is now a public health matter.
While drugs are a terrible thing, I know actually think they're a really terrible thing, but whatever. I mean, that's his whole reason for [00:52:00] existence. Say, well, drugs are a terrible thing. They're not a death penalty offense. And we can't let people die because they were dumb enough to buy bad coke or, or had enough money to buy it in the first place.
So he wrote the story, it was on the front page of the paper, and I got banned from the detectives press conferences and briefings for like three months, which is what the police do when you pissed them off. But, and you know, I was asking that this cop who, who was friends with the division chief, is he, he's still, she's still mad at me and he's like, yeah, he's still mad at you, but he understands that you did what you had to do and.
While writing that article, I think saved lives. I was kind of careless in sharing information with another reporter who named, who named the stockbroker, who had taken the cocaine and fallen into a coman about, and I found out that two years later he killed himself. And I was like, wow, okay. That's not my bad, because I didn't name the individual and my article, but because I was careless with the information and somebody else wrote it up and, and it ruined this life's, this guy's life so badly that [00:53:00] he saw no, nothing else to do but kill themselves.
I, I was like, yeah, that's really awful. Everything that you write has repercussions. And I think ultimately probably more people were saved than, than the person who just chose to kill themselves. But, you know, writing is a very serious business. And I think that when I found that out in like 2006, it was one of the first times I go, wow, what?
Telling the truth without being very careful of why you're telling it or, or the importance attached to it, uh, can ruin people's lives. Made me a little more reluctant to write scandals. You don't need to name someone who's overdoses on drugs, even if they're a famous celebrity. I don't, I don't see the point.
Maybe the public has a right to know, maybe they don't.
Cameron: Do you find that significance of your words and the potential impact where they might have something that helps you get into a deep state of focus, or do you feel like it's a distraction and you are, you are worried about how, what you might write?[00:54:00]
Jake: Most of the time, if I have a sense that writing this does more harm than good, I have the luxury now of not doing it. I'm just like, no, I'm not doing that story. That's a good place to be. I mean, I am freelance and sometimes I barely have enough money to pay the rent. Like you might think that with the TV series being under development, that I would be loaded.
You would be seriously wrong. But it, it's good because from the very beginning, I'm not gonna touch a story. In which I feel that it's not worth, worth writing in the first place. And most things that I write about, I don't have to face that moral dilemma. You know, a a lot of stories, a lot of what I write about these days is current events and political scandals and social phenomena, and most of the time I feel like I'm doing more good than harm, certainly.
And I have written stories over the years that I felt had a, a positive effect on the formation of Japanese law, uh, especially the laws relating to human trafficking [00:55:00] and even, um, a revision of Japan's, um, sexual assault laws, which were very weak to begin with. So, you know, I feel like I've definitely contributed to making the society I live in a better place.
But as time goes by, I also am more aware that the pen can heal and it can also kill if you wield it poorly.
Cameron: I'm curious as to how you've. Responded in some of the greatest difficulties or failures of your life?
Jake: Uh, well, like anybody, you know, difficulties and failures. I mean, I've gone through periods of bleak, deep depression, I think is everyone does when things go well poorly in their lives.
And probably what was just a terrible, terrible year for everyone. In 2011, there was a the to earthquake and hundreds of thousand people die. Over a hundred thousand people died, I believe, or maybe I, not a hundred, a hundred thousand, [00:56:00] 15,000 people died. The Fukushima nuclear actor melted down. You couldn't get into Japan, and I was outta Japan at the time that happened.
And I came back. I came back bringing supplies, toilet paper, diapers, essentials to be taken to the, the stricken areas because the United States had plenty of those things in Japan. So it was a short supply. When I got home, the first thing waiting for me were results from my very expensive physical, and the results were that I had liver cancer, a 3.6 centimeter tumor in my liver.
So I immediately started treatment for that the next week. And because it was so close to a major artery, I also had to get chemotherapy. And you know, the irony of having liver cancer after writing about this ruthless asshole, Yakuza Austin, made all these deals to get himself a new liver and had survived, wasn't lost on me.
And at the same time, I couldn't really be, you know, [00:57:00] angrier, curse the heavens because I smoked like a chimney and I drank all the time. So it wasn't any mystery to me. I remember like sitting in my room looking at the results, smoking a clo cigarette, and then thinking, oh, well this, this shouldn't be a surprise.
Uh, and I handled that poorly. I just kind of went crazy. I, I smoked more. I drank more even while I was getting chemotherapy, but just sort of, you know, like, you know, fuck everything. And what probably saved me is that I started writing again. I started writing for The Daily Beast. And then I also realized there are worse things than the, the Yakus are terrible, right?
They're parasites, they're a very clear and present evil, right? You can see the harm that they do on people that the extortion, the fear they strike in people, the violence they use to get what they want. But I realized that there are also worse things, and that was the Tokyo Electric Power Company. That was the politicians that let them get away with nuclear accidents and sweeping under the table for years and years.
The people that ignored all the warning signs that this, that the Fukushima [00:58:00] reactor was gonna melt down and with a new cause and a new enemy and something to write about that had nothing to do with organized crime. I sort of reinvented myself. And, and that was. That was a good thing. I'd have to say that the last time I was seriously depressed was, well, my best friend who, who also became sort of my girlfriend, was I had leukemia and, and she didn't survive.
That was 2012. Like I said, like 2011 was like one horrible event after another, and that sort of sent me into another depression by, by the end of 2012. I don't think I've been depressed ever since. I, I mean, I think it's okay to be sad about things. I mean, I could have handled cancer a little better than I did, you know?
I, I mean, at least I didn't, I didn't tell anyone except my father and just dealt with it. I felt like that was the easiest thing to do. I didn't wanna burden my kids because there's nothing they could do about it. And
Cameron: what helped you out of those times of depression? [00:59:00] What's got you back to feeling the, the joy of each day?
Jake: Well, well, with cancer, at one point I was just like, you know, I. I think one day I was just, I was, you know, working on an article for, I think it was, I was working on an article for The Daily Beast and down on the balcony to Smoke. And I just realized, you know, like, okay, you might die, maybe you'll die and maybe you won't, but no one is trying to kill you right now.
Like, no one really, you're, you're in reasonably good health. Like you might survive and you've had a, you've had a good life. You've done all the things that you wanted to do. You know, you, you have enough money put away so your kids can go to college. I did at the time. Um, you've written a book that you always wanted to write, and so the worst thing you can say is you didn't have as much time as you would like, so just fucking get over it.
That was a voice in my head, like, you know. Yeah. So I started meditating again. I went to see my, my Zen master, I hate to say that word 'cause i's, he's such a goofball. It's kind of hard to think of him as a zen [01:00:00] master and just had a nice talk with him and put my will together and hoped for the best. And then it worked out when my friend Michelle died, I, at some point I realized it's.
You know, I will, I have every reason to be sad, you know, somebody I've loved who's not going to be around anymore. Um, it seems very unjust for someone who just turned 30 to not make it to their 31st birthday, especially when I'm older. But, but you know, she, I, and I realized, you know, that she, she left me, she left me a very nice note.
I realized that she would never want me just to be moping around and be sad all the time. 'cause that's not who she was. She was someone who handled leukemia and she had leukemia three times. She kept getting reoccurring leukemia. It's a really rare condition. She had three bone marrow transplants and she was never depressed.
And I was like, if I can't deal with this as, as well as me, me, then I'm a total failure as a human being. And that helped. And then I realized, it's just gonna take time. Yes, I'm gonna be sad and missing people who [01:01:00] aren't there and wanting to be with someone who you can't see. And I. Feeling sad about it.
That's okay. I mean, that's a natural reaction. I think you just have to let it play out and in time, you know, in a time it did, around the period where she passed away and around the period was her birthday, I would get really depressed, but, and every year I still, I still think about her at those times, but that's, I didn't want to be numb and I didn't want to take, you know, antidepressants or anything.
It's just like, that's a fact of life and it's okay to, to miss people and mourn them. The problem with getting older is there's more and more people to mourn, but you have to sort of, it's, it's almost like a meditation exercise. Like, oh, I am feeling sadness because the person I love I can't be with and, and I will never be with them because they're not coming back.
But sometimes you, you, it's a different way of looking at it. It's not like they're really gone. They're just not here.
Cameron: Hmm. Sounds like an amazing mix of self-love and tough love to heal [01:02:00] and to reengage with your own life. Yeah, well done. Great. Oh, thank you. Are you looking to improve your performance stress less and flow more?
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I've got some quick fire questions. Shoot for you. What are the three pillars do you believe have given you a foundation for your success?
Jake: Curiosity. [01:03:00] Perseverance, compassion. Hmm. If you're not curious, you don't learn. This is, well, you'll laugh. This is so ridiculous. When I was looking for jobs, I was in kabuki cho like 92.
I kept the printout and there was a fortune telling machine, like a tarot card, fortune telling machine in the middle of Kabuki show, like in a game center. And you could ask it for like, love, luck, life luck, work luck. So I, I chose work luck and the printout came and what it said was, you know, you are blessed with a morbid curiosity.
This incredible morbid curiosity you have if you harness it and keep your intent out and keep seeking information will give you great power and fortune will be on your side. And. The word of Japanese jijo, which is kind of with the best translation, is morbid [01:04:00] curiosity. And it was true because I want to know, because I have to know, because I am interested in understanding things that motivates me to study.
And the more knowledge you have, the better you are able to take the facts that you're given and move to the next step. So curiosity is incredibly important. Intellectual curiosity, morbid curiosity. Um, perseverance is also really important. I wasn't good at Japanese. I wasn't the best in my class, but I just kept hammering away at it, like almost brute force, like a really crude computer hack, like again and again and again and again.
Three hours in the language lab, three more hours in the language lab, sentence pattern drills until it was in my head. And the last one is compassion is if you don't, if you don't feel like you're, you know, journalism is a hard profession if you don't. Care about the world that you're in or other people are, are making the, the, the [01:05:00] place that making the world a better place or understanding why people do the things that they do, then, then it, then you burn out.
That that compassion is a huge motivator. And those are the three pillars of my success. You know, my limited success in the world that I'm in.
Cameron: And what KO film has had a huge impact in your life.
Jake: Ah, um, one of the books, it's also a film, but that had a huge impact on my life, was The Hustler by Walter Tevis. Now, Walter Tevis is, you'll hear his name recently because the Queen's Gambit was made into really great Netflix series. Right? Which everybody's watching.
The one about chess, I. Walter Travis wrote a book about a pool hustler. I think his name is Fast Eddie. I think Paul Newman plays him in the movie. And [01:06:00] the point of the book is that most people sabotage themselves on the verge of success. Meaning that it's most pe that it's easier to fail than it is to win.
Most people don't really want to win because once you win, once you have what you want, then you've gotta worry about losing it. Then you've gotta keep it, then you've gotta fight off challengers. Um, it's much easier to be a loser. And so most people, when they're on the brink of success, screw themselves up.
And that book, which is also really a well-written character study, I realized, yeah, I've come very close to self-sabotaging myself many times in life. Like walking away at a critical moment. And that book comes to mind. It's like, no, you know, this isn't the time to fold. Let's, let's see where this goes as far as books.
I guess actually the book that has had the most impact on my life that I read and, and made two, there's two. One was the [01:07:00] DMA Patta, which is a book of like 22 chapters. It's a collection of sayings by the Buddha, by the historical Buddha that's very profound and very well written. Um, and it has some very beautiful chapters of about, you know, it's full, uh, it's very dense, but it has some of my favorite verses, like, conquer the Liar by truth, conquer Greed by Generosity, um, conquer hatred by kindness, the evil things in the world with their positive counterparts.
And I remember reading that book and, and the opening versus all that we are as a result of what we thought is founded in our thoughts. And it's based on our thoughts. And you know, a 14-year-old me was just like, realization. Oh yeah. Like I am who I am because of what I have done, because of what I think, because of what I've just chosen to be.
I'm making these decisions. So I'm not something that's created by the world. I am the person that I've determined who I want to be. Um, and the second is the Da Ching, which is [01:08:00] very esoteric, but it does have some of those great contradictory passages. Like he who speaks, does not know, he knows, does not speak.
Um, it also has a very wonderful philosophy of learning to be content with the way things are and enjoying the presence and the flow of things, and simplicity. Those two books occupy a very sacred place on my wall. I mean, I like those books quite
Cameron: well. Jake, thank you very much for your time so much. Um, such a great conversation from sharing headphones with the Dalai Lama to meditating on death and so much more. So thank you very much for your time.
Jake: Oh yeah, thank you. It was a pleasure being on. Flow
Cameron: unleashed, unleashed, unleashed. I found this chat with Jake really interesting, which is why I broke it outta the vault.
I find it fascinating and admirable [01:09:00] when people have a particular quest and have the courage to weather the conflict that comes their way and continue to engage with the journey.
There are two main takeaways for me. Firstly, addressing and resolving conflicts require an enormous mental and emotional strength, which is why many of us try to avoid it. Typically, when facing conflicts, we either move away, flee the situation, and to avoid the risk of loss and social embarrassment, often relying on others for resolution or we fight it, perhaps adopt a position of power to quell the opposing argument.
Often double downing on our points of view or placate. Give in, in the hope of making everyone happy, preserving relationships in the status quo. And these responses are very normal and natural. However, these reactions are also adaptive [01:10:00] behaviors. Remove from an emotionally mature adult to adult response, Jake, through his professional lens, has instead learned to approach these conflicts in a very adult to an adult mature manner.
And if we want to follow our dreams and not be derailed by rising conflict, we need to find a way to hold our ground and remain open and curious during the conflict in an adult to end up mature. And we can do this by first clarifying the conflict by talking through each party's stance. For example, what I'm hearing is, is that right?
Is this what you mean? Is there an upside or downside to this impasse? These phrases don't mean that you are compromising or changing your view. It just means that you recognize that most disagreements are multidimensional. When miscommunication is often the main issue in conflict, it also goes a [01:11:00] long way to showing your intent to understand their position, unlocking their protective response.
Then we can look to reframe or refocus and redirect the conversation to a positive event. Use the conflict as a springboard to find common ground or a win-win, for example. It's clear we both really care about the situation, which is great. Is there any aspect that we can agree upon or do we share an an outcome that we are all happy to walk away in this manner?
We can take the discussion away from no, don't, can't, won't. Away from the you versus me and into. Place of opportunity in collaboration. It is often during this engagement with complexity, be it two partners talking or two political leaders talking, that empathy and compassion has a chance to shift perceptions, [01:12:00] reduce the emotional temperature of the conflict, and find a way through the complexity.
Once we take charge of our communication and adopt an intellectual humility, there is often a contagion or ripple effect that occurs with those in the room.
My second main takeaway from Jake's journey is, is about his transition from being a Zen Buddhist priest embracing the challenging life of a journalist. It's both inspiring and thought provoking by following his passions even in the face of conflict, financial instability, and discomfort. Jake forged a path that ultimately rewarded him.
Those same passions became a source of resilience, pulling him through some of the most difficult and discouraging moments of his life. Here's an example of the power of aligning passion with the greater good. And when these two aspects can align, we create both a deep motivation and [01:13:00] meaning to our focus, which creates purposeful action.
I wonder how you can continue Jake's journey and align your passions with the greater good and embrace the rising conflict to evolve your own human performance. If you want to find out more about Jake, please see the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others find this pot. Until the next time, thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed.