Jeff Charno

Cameron: [00:00:00] What do 30 speakers on flow have in common and how can we live our lives and coincidentally move towards flow naturally occurring more frequently?
Welcome to Flow Unleashed. I'm Dr. Cameron Norsworthy, scientist and high performance coach to multiple world champions. In this show, we unpack key insights on specific topics so that you are kept up to date with the latest science and practice of human performance.[00:01:00]
A little while ago, I was asked to speak at a deep flow conference in which over 20 speakers were invited to talk about flow. And today we are joined by the host of this conference and the man behind the vision, Jeff Charno, Jeff, who's the founder of being and Doing, has one way or another spent the last three decades living and working in the space of self-actualization from running one of the leading audio publishing companies for relaxation, meditation and healing to founding tech startups in this space.
Jeff holds a number of board chairs. In this conversation, we unpack how he is balanced a spiritual approach and being an entrepreneur. We'll take a look at both the persistence and temporary aspects of flow. And what that means. We'll look at the dynamics of intuitive [00:02:00] intelligence and some advice for those starting out as an entrepreneur flow.
Unleashed. Unleashed. Welcome to the show, Jeff.
Jeff: Hey, good to be here, Cameron. And I enjoyed your participation at the Deep Flow Conference.
Cameron: Deep. Thank you. Yeah, it was a good chat. The roles are reversed. I'm the one asking the questions now. You know, I think a great place to start is we'll go into a little bit into your personal life a little bit later, but initially, this conference on Deep Flow was a great event that I had the privilege of participating in, and you had the opportunity to speak to 30 different speakers, mainly in the non-academic world, people putting it into practice.
And I'm really curious to hear your overall summary of the messages that they brought.
Jeff: Okay. That was a big opening question. Summarize [00:03:00] everything. Well, I, I approached this conference not so much as a student of flow states in the way that they're typically understood. I came to it more from the way that flow is described in Traditions of Awakening. And a lot of the traditions describe many of the same benefits and many of the same experiences and many of the same qualities that emerge spontaneously.
But it's not in the same context. It's not in the same framework. When one of the speakers, and we could talk about many of the speakers, but one of the speakers, Jeffrey Martin, has done this enormous research project over a. Um, 12 years, I think, or 15 years, he's talked to more than a thousand people who are awakened.
He, he, his project was to find the happiest people he could find and he would sit [00:04:00] with them for hours and hours. And he's a scientist, so he researched it rigorously and he used a lot of established psychological measurement tools and he asked them a lot of questions about their experience and we can get into that.
But the point I wanted to make was when I invited him to participate in the flow conference, his first question was, do you mean persistent or transient flow? Right. It's a great question. Right. And I said, I mean both, and I did because we had people who focused on this kind of transient hypofrontality, right?
And, and that's an enormous body of. Work important to everybody, including people who are meditating and including people who are in traditions of awakening. It's still important to know how that works and how they can manage that, and how they can manage their own consciousness that way. Those are great insights, but at the same time, [00:05:00] people like Jeffrey Martin have been in his interviews.
Those thousand people or 1200 people were not people who were getting on the side of a mountain or taking on enormous challenges or putting themselves in feedback situations to attain a. A flow state that they would go into to optimize at their peak and then return to their normal state and then go back to it again because it was so great.
It's they, those people that he interviewed were people who had been practicing to be in a sustained flow state. Now, I'm using the term in a sloppy way now, and I know, and I, what I love about the work you do is you're so rigorous about the language, so, but he's talking about people who are experiencing many of the same spontaneously arising experiences that people experience while they're on a big wave.
That kind of lack of self-consciousness. That's that [00:06:00] feeling of not the extreme timelessness, but the feeling of being mostly just here and in the research, and this is important. He identified different degrees of this. Awakening and it starts at people who are basically a little bit more transient and it goes all the way up on the other end of the spectrum to people who are experiencing a complete lack of self-consciousness.
They experience themselves without agency almost. Not that they can't do things, they're living their lives and they're functioning fine, but they don't exper, they experience just kind of things happening and they're there and they're feeling themselves living and making their choices, but it doesn't have that interference, you know, the, all the mental activity, which is what goes offline [00:07:00] in transient hypofrontality, right?
So, you know, there are people who live that way and as a quick. Aside, he made the further point that a surprisingly large percentage of those people don't have any retirement savings, which is just, which is just an interesting consideration. You know that when you're going with the flow and when you're just following your guidance and following, you know your impulses, it's great, but it doesn't necessarily mean things are gonna work out just right for you.
There are some blind spots there. So you asked for kind of a big summary, and I think the summary is somewhere in that, that there's a range of experiences as the narrative self thins out. Or you could say that our absorption or our identification, or our grabbing onto the narrative, self [00:08:00] lessens and diminishes all the way to where you don't have a narrative self.
There aren't that many people like that, but there are enough in his study for him to have identified it. And then on the other end of the spectrum, where you live like a perfectly normal narrative self, and then from time to time you take yourself into a flow state by doing specific practices and then you go back to your narrative self.
So that's a big meta summary, I think. Yeah,
Cameron: superb. And what were commonalities or similarities between the speakers in terms of the descriptions and conceptualization around flow?
Jeff: Well, a lot really, even though they use different language and even though they use very different methods, and we have some time, and we'll talk about some of these different methods, when you are freer, when you take the emergency break off and you let your deeper nature [00:09:00] without the impediment of your.
Super ego without the impediment of your consideration. Uh, when you're, when you go unconscious, um, you know, in, in sport, when you are free from that whole gnarly conflicted inner di inner dialogue, you know, your best self comes and what that is and where that comes from. People, some people call it essence, some people, and there are all kinds of metaphysical beliefs about it.
Some people think it's just in the biology. I think Stephen Cotler used that phrase. It's like, it's, it's all in the biology. And some people envision a realm which transcends biology of essence, of unconditioned human nature. I'm. Agnostic about all of that. I do know that it's outside of the ego structures and, and it flows from our deeper nature and, and that involves a lot of [00:10:00] things and different people emphasize different qualities of that.
So I don't know if you happen to catch Karen Johnson's talk. Karen Johnson is the co-founder of a kind of psychospiritual school called the Diamond Approach. And in the diamond approach, they don't work to attain states to attain any particular state, but they do an inquiry process to look at what you're experiencing at any point in time.
Like now we could, let's just look at what am I experiencing. And you start to look at it with curiosity and openness, not trying to change it. Which seems like a simple thing, but the habit of trying to change our state is so subtle and so deep and so established. We don't even notice it most of the time.
But when you can let it just be what it is with curiosity, what happens is there's a kind of an [00:11:00] intuitive intelligence that begins to untie it. So when you get in a big wave, the circumstance pulls you right out of all of those aspects of yourself. But if you wanna live in persistent flow, and I really in this sense just mean if you want to have more of your deeper, less conditioned nature spontaneously arising, then you need to untie the conditioning, which repeatedly pulls you back into your.
Reactivity and your identification and so on. So that's a whole system that starts just on that level of untying your, you know, your ego structures as they've taken shape during the course of your lifetime. Now, if you ask what other qualities that begin to arise, there are so many, and I practiced a lot in the diamond approach for many [00:12:00] years, and I experienced all kinds of fascinating things.
Like sometimes what will happen will be you'll be inquiring it to something and you won't understand what it is, and you just, you're all over the place and you think it's just random, but you just stay with it and follow. And before you know it, something arises. Like you might feel a surge of a kind of radical strength, like a kind of like.
I mean, I, I just talking about it there, I felt it a little bit and it's almost embarrassing to admit, even though I'm just speaking to you now, I know other people will listen and watch this, but it's kind of like there's this feeling of like this authority, this truth that you're willing to fight for and it's like a really interesting thing that arises, right, or you might feel, you might feel compassion arise.
And that's a central theme that a lot of people spoke about. Compassion is a remarkable spontaneous quality. I mean, I experienced [00:13:00] compassion. I didn't invent it. I didn't make it happen. It wasn't my good idea. It's just what's there. It's like in our nature when we're open to it and we're not blocked. So in the diamond approach, they see the blocks and they've even studied them to the point where it's a science.
They can tell by the nature of the block what quality it's repressing and cutting you off from. So there are a lot of central things, strength, um, compassion, um, creativity. I think that's my next conference, next fall, I think I'm going to do a conference on creativity. And it's a fascinating quality, isn't it?
Because the whole universe is a creative process, a creative expression. There are these big breakthroughs, and then the breakthroughs get iterated apparently. Uh, you know, forever. And there's a breakthrough of like, [00:14:00] the Big bang is the first breakthrough, right? And then you have, and you have stuff, but we don't just get stuff.
We get every possible kind of micro stuff, energy, quantum possibilities, black holes, galaxies, you know, it's almost like, I mean, I'm speaking in a silly way now because I don't, what I mean is, I don't mean everything I'm saying is silly, but what I'm about to say is silly. It's as though, you know, it's like an artist comes up with a new technique and then they mine it for all it's worth, and then eventually they get tired of it.
They use it up, they've done everything. They've been doing one inch dolls made from paperclips for 10 years, and they've done every possibility, and then they move on to some other paradigm. So it's almost like that. And then it's like life explodes in the universe, but we don't just get. Life, we get every form of life, right?
And then little micro breakthroughs we get, one day we had the wing, that [00:15:00] seems like a good idea. Let's leave the oceans and let's see if we can take to the skies, right? But we don't just get a bird, we don't just get bird. We get the infinite variations on birds with every shape, beak and every kind of life pattern.
And so creativity. And then you get into human consciousness and, and then it's just an explosion. We get language. We don't get one language. We get, we get music, we get mathematics, we get binary code, we get printing presses and the internet. And it's like the whole thing just gets, so it, that's how I see creativity as just this process of breakthroughs that get iterated.
Mm-hmm. And so creativity is one of the qualities that arises when you're more connected to flow. I'm gonna say it that way, as opposed to when you're in a flow state.
Cameron: Creativity and flow, as in my understanding, they're both very natural places of being. As you said, it's inherent within nature. We [00:16:00] just need to look inside our bodies and our biology and look out in the world and nature around to see it, but or ordinarily we're limiting ourselves, stopping ourselves, getting in our own way, being too rigid with our scriptures and so forth, and our egos inhibiting our access to it.
But I just wanted to come back to something you were saying earlier, which I really enjoyed, which was looking at the diamond approach of assessing one's experience to empower our journey towards flow. And back in Emmi High days, he came up with the ESM, the experience sampling method, which was essentially to take random moments in the day and assess experience.
And certainly at the Flow Center, what we believe is that. If people are educated on flow, if they're given the knowledge about flow, then we have the signposts and we are are empowered then to find our own paths and answers towards it. And if we [00:17:00] can take stock on our experience, flow in in another description can also be viewed as a very high quality of experience.
So if we're constantly reassessing that experience and going, okay, what is my experience? Is it of high quality, of low quality? What are the characteristics of it? Then we can cut to find that as you. Talked about that intuitive intelligence towards increasing the quality of that subjective experience.
Ultimately it being a subjective experience, it needs to be a subjective reverse engineering towards it. But there's so much stuff out there about hacking it and trying to find shortcuts, and I find the quality of that subjective pathway towards flow is timeless and real and more connected with our, rather than looking for the answers outside.
Finding those answers within. Was that a sort of a
Jeff: common theme across all the speakers? There was one. One [00:18:00] speaker in particular is coming to mind as I hear you describe that named Diane Allen and she's a, a concert violinist. She was always getting into a flow state playing the violin, and one day she goes to perform, she has a concert and she can't get into it and it freaked her out.
And she didn't know what was happening. She didn't know what to do. And you know, so she got through the concert, not transmitting joy in the way that she was used to, but she got through the concert, she's the lead violinist. And, um, she set out to figure that out. She wanted to find out how can I control that and ensure that's happening.
And she went through a very interesting process, which she described in some depth, but the essence of it is what she teaches. And she, she did this great TED talk, which is how I found out about her. And the essence of it is very personal in the way that you just described. That's why she came to mind.
It's very [00:19:00] subjective in the way that you said she works with people to find their own unique flow strategies. And she discovered something, I'm trying to get it back, but it was something about, um. I think it was about sharing. So she really discovered that what it was that got her into the flow state when she played was her great joy at sharing the beauty of the music.
It wasn't the playing as an, it was the people on the other end. And it was the, so what she was able to do was when, uh, uh, she was able to take that and then bring it into other, first of all, repeat it musically. So she now felt like she'd master that and then she was able to take it into other areas of life.
But she, it was always that central principle of her wanting to share and contribute. That was her special sauce. That's what got her [00:20:00] in the flow state. And when she works with. People, when she works with clients, she helps them find the strategy and she finds that they're quite unique from person to person and sometimes surprising, but it has that same personal subjective flavor that you were alluding to.
So I think she's a good example of that.
Cameron: Hmm. You've obviously thought a lot around flow and spent many years prioritizing it in your life. What, what does flow mean to you?
Jeff: You ask big questions to first describe, summarize everything and then tell me what flow means to you. Well, it really is, I would put it in the context that I mentioned initially, which is, let me see.
No, let me say it in a different way. Just for fun. The, if I just in this moment, you know, I'm here and I'm me. I'm in a completely ordinary state. I'm not in a special state, [00:21:00] but what is this? And if you are absorbed in your head, you're kind of in this narrative life. But if you let, if that relaxes a little bit and becomes a little more transparent and a little less compelling and you kind of get over it, then well, what is this?
What is it just to be ordinary? And the the truth is that we're not separate from everything. Like the whole universe is ha. I mean, it sounds a little bit corny maybe, but the whole universe is happening right here, right now. And I'm the whole thing. There's nothing in me or in my consciousness, which is not reality.
So that, hopefully that doesn't sound too extreme. It's not, it's just true. There's no distance between me and reality itself. So I'm not a separate bubble. I'm not cut off. So you say what does flow mean? Flow means that when you're less here, unless interested in all of [00:22:00] that, and you're more open to what's, to what can I know?
Okay. I'm the, I'm the universe. Okay, well that's interesting. What can I know? What do I know? You, you start to give yourself more permission to let yourself just happen instead of trying to direct yourself. I'm speaking a little bit in a polarized way, which is a little extreme, but that's the general idea, you know?
So there's just a kind of a relaxation and an opening. And then over time, my experience has been. I talked about, for example, the quality of strength that would arise or the quality of compassion that would arise, those qualities, and this is, is nothing new. Uh, this is Buddhism 1 0 1. The positive qualities of mind emerge spontaneously from the ground of being, you know, you don't have to make it happen.
So there's less of a sense of making [00:23:00] myself happen, and I'm more, you know, as the years go by, I just, I say better stuff and I'm kinder and I, I do, I do nicer things, you know? And these are the qualities that all the teachers talked about. Like Craig Hamilton is a great teacher of this, and he makes the point that talking about meditation is like talking about exercise.
There's a whole world of ways to exercise. There's a whole world of ways to meditate. And his approach to meditation is not well, let's build this muscle of concentration and maybe 20 years from now we'll taste what the Buddha was talking about. His approach is no, take the inner posture now of awakening, so to speak.
That would be his words. And how do you do that? And how can you practice? You know, and I don't remember if it was him in the, uh, workshop or somebody else teaching this way, but there's a kind of an interesting little one minute illustration of this that people [00:24:00] get very quickly. But it's like if you just sit and rest and you just ask yourself the question, what would be here if there was no problem to solve?
I don't know, maybe lock Kelly taught this in the workshop. I don't remember. But that orientation, because this mind is always solving a problem. It's subtle. The problem could be, I wanna be more meditative. The problem could be, I don't feel great. Now how can I feel a little better? The problem could be, or get ready for it.
I'm not in flow. How can I get into flow? The, the pro, the problems can be obvious or they can be really subtle, but it's just amazing how we're always looking to improve the situation, you know? And if you see that clearly enough, you can just relax and then let it happen more. So I think, you know, back to the original thinning out, [00:25:00] you become less agentic and a little bit more flowy.
Something like that. I wonder,
Cameron: I wonder if there's an underlying quest for order and if we were just to sit with not finding order, same thing. What would the world look like? Right? And you've talked about letting go of this order or improvement, or in other words we might use will fall focus. Yet you've also been a very successful individual.
You've founded and set up and sold multiple companies and organizations practically. How have you married that? How have you been able to, when you take the normal entrepreneur textbook, there's this sort of, I've got a vision, it's happening, come hell or high water, and there's more new age conscious business ideas of.
Staying present and taking opportunities moment to moment, but still having a plan. How have you found [00:26:00] that juggling act of being focused and having a plan, but also letting go of that willful approach?
Jeff: Well, that, you know, that paradox is the heart of the name of my company. Being a doing just for fun, I'm gonna go way back, went to being like a teenager to the inception of this, of the, the first time I recognized this paradox.
So it was the first time I recognized this. It was the last time I did LSD and I had, I won't tell you the whole story, but just one of the remarkable classic transcendent healing, you know, healed something in my body. Stop smoking cigarettes, work through fear after fear, after fear, after four hours of being guided through this healing.
Process. It's the white light and the tears of ecstasy and joy are pouring down my eyes, and then a kind of [00:27:00] voice comes to me and I, it's like I, I'm not ready to really enter the white light. I have to deal with responsibility. And I'm like, what, what could that possibly, I'm like, you know, I was in college and I'm studying poetry and I'm doing creative writing, and I'm gonna be a creative person.
And this meant it, it was completely, you know, just like I didn't know what to make of it. But anyway, I come down from this journey and I'm, I stand up from this chair I was sitting in with my eyes closed for four hours, and I wanna speak to see if I'm like myself. I don't know, I just wanna say any gobbly gook just noise come out of my mouth.
And the words that I said, were doing it, but it's happening. Right? Which is the paradox of agency and flow. And I was stunned by it, and I said, are, are you allowed to curse on your podcast? I naturally swear a lot there. Yeah. I, so I was dazzled, uh, by it and I was like, oh [00:28:00] my God. That's true. I never saw it that way before.
It's like, I, you know, how could you say, I don't have agency. When I count to three, I'm gonna bend my finger. 1, 2, 3, boom. I have agency. I'm sitting here feeling it. I feel myself in my finger. I'm, this is me. I'm doing it. Say, I have no agency, is absurd. But at the same time, why did I decide to play this little game?
Where did that come from? You know that the brain research shows that we're making decisions before we become conscious of the decisions that we've made. And in any case, the whole thing is an unfolding happening. I had nothing to do with it. I'm certainly can't take credit for being myself. I'm just, you know, I'm just an outgrowth of whatever this reality is, right?
So I'm sitting there as a 19-year-old and I'm realizing, oh my God, it's true. You can look at it both ways. You can have both experiences. [00:29:00] So one was, you know, all the way on the far end of Jeffrey Martin Spectrum where people have no agency. That was everything is just happening. But when this is alive and your sense of individuality is present, we have this reflective quality which gives us the sense of agency.
So it's like both are true. And so I had to learn about responsibility and then I decided I was gonna take a year off of school to digest all this, uh, teenage wisdom and see what happened next. And. One thing led to another, and I kind of just started a little business selling little new age music things on the side just to figure myself out.
And it seemed like a right livelihood and I wasn't hurting anybody. And, and, you know, and one thing, you know, I, I kind of sensed I had an aptitude for it and I got a little lucky and it was a good time in the marketplace. And the next thing I knew I was building a business. And here I am, like, I'm like 22 years old and I've got a warehouse [00:30:00] filled with 15 people and I'm like shipping new age music cassette tapes just to date myself all around the country.
And my experience of it was, okay, if this is what I have to do, then I'll do it. Like it didn't, it came from that sense of, oh, I have to learn about responsibility somehow. And it came, I'm like, okay, I guess this is me learning. I'm, I'll do this. It's like I thought, oh, it was gonna be some kind of poet, whatever that's supposed to mean a writer, but I'll run a business and all kinds of things kick in and take over.
And yeah, we had goals and we had plans and um, you know, it's, I've changed over the years. I'm much lighter on goals and plans now. I'm embarrassed. Don't make me admit that. Some people suggest we do a three year plan. I've got about like a 30 day plan going, maybe, maybe the, so there has been a, a big shift from.
Doing to happening? Uh, I'm doing it [00:31:00] to, it's happening, but I remain, uh, alive in that. And I don't hold, just to be clear, I don't personally, this is just a personal thing. I don't have a goal, like I wanna be on the far end of the spectrum where I have no sense of individuality or agency. I mean, I have a brother like that.
He just sits on the couch and smiles. He's one of, he happens to, he, you know, he's one of the guys that would have no retirement savings. If he, if he didn't get lucky with real estate, he'd be, become, he'd be homeless. 'cause he just has no. He's genius. Very talented Nash actor in movies and a jazz pianist and all this great stuff.
But no, just follows his joy and that's it, period. And, but I don't have as a, I don't have that as a goal. Like I like being a person. I like being Jeff, right? It's like, I think it's really great to be Jeff for a little while here until it goes away. And then, and I love that sense of agency, so I play with it.
But I guess what I'm trying to paint here is a picture of the [00:32:00] territory as opposed to some definitive statement about where I am or where I want to be or where I think one should be. People are in all places along the spectrum, right? I will say that in my view and. I think it's not very humble to say I know this to be the case, but at the risk of hubris, I'll say, I know this to be the case.
If you don't figure out a way, however you do it, to thin this out a little bit, if you spend your life in the inner conflict and the super, you go and the ha, it's not gonna be that great. It's just, it's not, it's, you're not gonna be your best. You're gonna suffer unnecessarily in all kinds of craziness and neurosis, and you're not gonna have your fullest, richest life.
So whatever practices resonate with you, you gotta do 'em because you know, so that I [00:33:00] will say, but then there's all kinds of degrees and places and I don't think anybody has a right to say. Where someone should be or what someone should pursue or beyond that piece of, I think very true advice,
Cameron: but as a leader and of an organization or a company, decisions have to be made.
What I'm hearing is there's a, you have the space and the rituals to stay agile and intuitive and and open within the moment, albeit there will be plans and goals in the background or formulation. How have you transcended that to other people who you have to work with to either be on board of what your style or helping them find their way to make that
Jeff: happen?
I mean, to be clear, first of all it's, I haven't had the record company in 10 years, so I haven't really. Been [00:34:00] running an organization for 10 years. My organization now is just freelancers and people, you know, more flexible relationships and so on. But that said, I'm a very analytic data-driven guy. This is not, this is not, there's nothing I'm saying that's opposed to being smart about things.
The, you know, I, I, uh, on the couch, a lot of people don't have their, you know, their retirement savings worked out at the same time. I probably, um, I just trust that I have the resources to work things out without over planning. But at the same time, I don't know what your experience of my conference was, but I've had feedback from many people who attended our conferences that they were the best organized, that the communications were great.
I'm not forcing you to agree now on, on your podcast, but the, but you know, we, we run a tight ship. So they're not, those things are not an opposition to each other. It's not like flaky versus grounded. It's sharp and crisp and [00:35:00] precise and happily so. And, but it still has a quality of, none of that is in conflict with this underlying sense of being more flowy, allowing for more spontaneity.
Cameron: I think that's a really important point. 'cause I guess there's this connotation or idea around flow of go, just go with the flow man, which could end up with people on the couch. That's not my understanding of flow. My understanding of flow is a synchronous, harmonious, congruent energy moving forwards that might be very inspired, that might be very active, that might be very intrinsically motivated.
And Chi Mihai and lots of other studies have talked about having clarity of goals. Having clarity of feedback. So in the moment we're not constantly guessing or confused or there's just this clarity towards what we're doing. And that tight ship or that [00:36:00] order can help people find an optimal state of functioning, find that optimal experience because there's a pathway which allows us to go to a greater depth of experience.
'cause we're not constantly questioning the foundations of, of what's happening. So we can go to greater depth. And it's a really interesting kind of intersection of having order. But, but letting go of, of certainly the outcomes of the order, but also any order that might be too prescribed.
Jeff: And within it, there's, I think a lot of people would agree that there's more spontaneity available, more kindness available, more wisdom available.
That's a big word, but you're just, you're functioning better. Um, and it's broader. It's more human like. I have these freelancers that I work with and I have lovely relationships with the [00:37:00] freelancers. I care about them and they care about me, and it's just, they could be short term relationships. They come and go, but they're generally very positive and they're richer.
They would've been for me, let's say 10 or 20 years ago. And I think that's an aspect of it too. So while you're going about doing your, running your tight ship and doing your, sticking to the program and keeping everyone on track and keeping it organized and well run, you're still a human being in the midst of it.
And there's a lot of richness that can be experienced during the process.
Cameron: Yeah. And just to get personal for a a, a few moments, I already been a little personal here, I have to say, but Okay. More personal. Well, what was your takeaway from that conference? What did you learn? What was your growth?
Jeff: Well, that's a good question.
I clarified my, the perspective that I [00:38:00] shared in the beginning is something that got clarified for me during this. I even, I, I, I spoke about it right in the middle of the conference. As I was speaking to, uh, Jeffrey Martin. I was just like, oh, I see. It's just, I mean, he has a system and a map and I, everybody's got a map and then, and it just, it, to me, it just became clear that what's happening is however you talk about it.
You know, we had, I'm gonna get back to answer more directly, but Martin Ward came on and he talked about the super ego. How to overcome the super ego and not get caught in its traps and not take it seriously and get, you know, just, you know, it's a huge piece of life to, to get that worked out for yourself.
And people talked about spontaneity and how we had a, we had a, an improv comedian, which was spectacular, right? And she's just, she's just an absolute professional in taking the brakes off and just [00:39:00] letting her mouth work and her body work. And so I think what got clear for me was that whatever the methods are, whatever the approach is, the process is thinning out your identification over time with your internal dialogue, with your sense of self that gets formed and starts to take itself.
As being something. It's not, it's not that it's an illusion. The illusion is that that's the whole of you. Right? That's the illusion. It's not an illusion that that's happening or that you have thoughts or that what feels like you, but people take it to be the whole story. They, they, they think that's their life.
They think that's themselves. And what got clearer is that in all of these processes, it's a matter of that becoming more transparent so that that absorption and that grabbing onto it is [00:40:00] just less compelling. And I just, I was able to make sense of many different methods in that context. Something like that.
Cameron: Do you want to help others unleash their performance? I. Do you want an internationally recognized accreditation to stand out amongst the crowd? Or do you want the playbook I use every day when helping professionals to be their best and find their flow when it matters most? If this sounds interesting, join others who are training to become a high performance coach.
We are on a mission to train a fellowship of expert practitioners and coaches to work with us and help make the world a better place. To find out more, go to flow coaching federation.org. And check out the Flow Coach accreditation today. Speaking to a lot of different people, I often find that some of their [00:41:00] greatest strengths come from the moments where they've had to dig the deepest.
And some of those moments where they find a, a greater sense of connection is there's times when they've had greatest despair. So curious to hear what might have been some of your greatest failures or low points and how you were able to bounce back or respond to them.
Jeff: That's a very, that's a, a very human question.
Thank you. After I sold the record company, I followed my flow and I, my tongue is in my cheek and, and I decided I was going to build a meditation app. And this was before there were. 5,000 meditation apps. There were only a couple at the time, and it was just right for me and you know, and I did it. I I, and it was all new to me.
I don't know anything about apps. I wasn't a tech guy. I wasn't even a startup guy really. I had a record company for 30 [00:42:00] years or something. So I raised some money, partnered with a tech company, built great app, licensed hundreds of tracks of guided meditation from so many teachers. Built a beautiful app, got it all working.
Ran four and our idea was we were gonna do a B2B for starters, a B2B model, and took it out into hospitals. We set up three or four different pilot studies in some of the top hospitals in the United States. And we got them giving it to the staff. And for about a year we did that. We pushed it and at, at about a year into it, now I'm probably two years into the business at this point, a year to build it, a year to run the pilots.
And it became apparent it wasn't gonna work. The engagement was just far too low. And we didn't have the resources or even the insight, honestly, to know how to rectify that. We just thought, I think we made a [00:43:00] mistake. And so then I'm, I'm like really getting, you know, it's hard, you know, I raised all that money and I know the people and it's like, I, you know, I didn't wanna just let this go and, and I wanted it to work and I believed in it.
And so I was, but I was getting pretty, pretty down about its potential, almost ready to let it go. And I pivoted. I had an insight. I said, ah, what I should do is I'll find a large health organization and I'll brand it. With their name on it, and I will then go out into the world, they'll get a license, they'll dah, dah, dah.
So I, I found a perfect partner, uh, um, a nonprofit, the second biggest nonprofit in the cancer space. And we had all this content for cancer patients. So the idea was we would do an iteration of this where we would build it just for the cancer patients with, we would get additional cancer related content.
We would add the [00:44:00] company's content so that they, that gave them another upside. They could use it to promote events and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we. We branded it and we put it out in the marketplace and it was the cancer care meditation app. And it was awesome. And they got it out into their world a little bit and we got great feedback, but I could not get it to catch on in the world at all.
And I really tried. And we ran it for another, so it took a, that's another half a year to get that done, or a year, then we ran it for another year. So I'm about four years into this and I finally just had to let it go. And, you know, I couldn't have tried harder. And so there's a couple of lessons in this, but to your point, I think the most interesting thing is how it impacted me is what you were asking, I think, and how it impacted me [00:45:00] was it's, it's spectacularly uncomfortable.
And to go through all of that and it. It made me a more compassionate person. It sounds like a cliche, but it just worked that way. And I just felt like, you know, there was a subtle judgment about people's success and failure. And even though I'd like to think I was above it, I was a little, I was more attached to being in the former category.
I was like, oh yes, my record company was great and we did this great stuff and, but it just kind of feels good even though I played it off because it was, wasn't spiritual to be attached to all of that. But there's a level at which it just feels kind of good. And this felt really bad and, and I just started to look at people differently because I just realized, oh, with, there's so much that we're just not in control of, you know, and people's lives go so many ways for so many reasons.
And they try and they want it and they, you [00:46:00] know, and you know, so I just find myself much more. Sympathetic and less judgmental and more compassionate toward people in general, but people who've had things not go well and or people who struggle, or people who just find themselves unable to cl climb out of a hole they feel they're in or something.
So something like that. Does that, that kind of.
Cameron: Yeah, I think that's a great message. I mean, I've experienced that myself where the low times, either through failure or just feeling like they soften my, my hardness or my judgments or my conceived ideas around things, and they gives me a greater sense of compassion and empathy and ultimately connection.
So I That's nice,
Jeff: right? Yeah. It's a, it's, it's a real, it's a really, it really enriches life. I mean, it's even just talking to you now, it's like, in a way, compassion hurts, right? [00:47:00] In the way that like sadness hurts or you, it, it hurts your heart in a certain way, but it's such a good way, it's so worth it, right?
Because you feel real and you feel like you care and feel so good to care. Um, yeah. So
Cameron: what advice would you give to a younger entrepreneur? I.
Jeff: Yeah, that's another big question. Well, I mean, mostly it depends. If they were my friend and I could speak with them freely and we could hang out more than once, I would start by telling them what I said to you earlier. It's like entrepreneur, non entrepreneur. If you don't, if you don't get this basic thing about awakening from this absorption, it's just not gonna be great.
You could be the most successful entrepreneur on the planet and you're gonna be a slightly miserable entrepreneur, and you won't ever feel like you're your fullest self. You won't have these experiences like you're talking about, about compassion and [00:48:00] that softening of your heart and so on. So that would be my, if I cared about somebody, that would be my first piece of advice.
As far as entrepreneurship, the, you know, who I resonated with a lot and it was Michael Beckwith at the conference, at the Deep Flow conference, and the way that he was working is the way that I would. Work with, or that I do work with. I don't do it formally, but when I'm speaking with people, and what it is basically is it's this idea that, you know, that, I mean, I don't wanna, I I, I'm gonna say it as a cliche first just to get the ball rolling, but the cliche is that, um, you are your best teacher.
Um, so that's the cliche, but if you get past the cliche, what it's, what it's saying is that there's an innate intelligence and it's so fine tuned to you and the truth of your life. What Michael Beckwith did in the conference was he took people on a guided process, [00:49:00] maybe 15 or 20 minutes, and it was, first he did a little bit of a slowing down, uh, some kind of a focus process.
I don't remember, maybe it was breath or whatever, just to settle a little. And then he had people asking themselves a question. I can't remember the exact question, but it would be some form of, and this is how I've done it, it would be some form of. What is it that wants to emerge in you? You know, like what inside of you do you feel is like really wanting to come out?
If life was too good, if life was just so good you didn't deserve it, what is it that would come out of you? Like, what is it? What do you, you know, you could say like, what are you here to do? That's a little bit, adds a little bit of metaphysical baggage, but, which I don't intend to do, but it's like, what?
You know, how is life moving through you? This creativity we've been talking about? What's your unique form of it? So that would be where I would, how I would work with somebody. I would just say, [00:50:00] what is it that's gonna come out of you? Because otherwise they'll go do something and it'll work or it won't work, but it'll never be, it'll never really be their complete, you know, best lived life.
And for me, just to be clear, I'm doing this creativity conference and I'm projecting traffic and conversion rates and cart value and I'm trying to make money outta it. Right? So I don't separate the two. I don't, I don't like to me, but I wouldn't, like if somebody came along and said, Hey, you can make a lot of money selling shoes.
I'd be like. The Zappos guy just died. Did you hear that? He was supposed to be the, the, the entrepreneur of Zappos just passed away. Tony, I don't know how to pronounce his last name. I've seen it writing, but he was supposed to be the most creative, kind, generous entrepreneur, and a genius. He just passed away.
But, you know, [00:51:00] I, I just, I, I lost my thought 'cause I got caught up in that. But the, the point was that I don't really separate it. I wouldn't, in his case he did do shoes. That's how I got there. I was using shoes as an example of something that would be preposterous for me to do to, to get into a shoe. But if somebody said, Hey, you know, and here's the return and you do 10 x and here's it, then be like, I'd rather, I'm gonna think of an idea that solves, that solves my whole self.
And to solve my whole self, it has to be aligned with what wants to emerge in me. But it also has to make good business sense. Right. So it's like, it just raises the bar on my creativity because it's only a good idea for me. If it solves both, you know, needs or both desires, it's not a good idea if it's like, oh, you know, follow your love.
Well, this might be a terrible idea. I don't have time for that. I'm too old to trace down bad ideas. So, so something like that, it's like, you don't, I don't separate it. It's not a, it's a false [00:52:00] dichotomy in my mind. I was at a, a retreat one time with Shanti and I dunno, sitting for a week or something, and somebody got up and asked a question was like, but what about the oceans are heating up and the fish are dying and they, what's the, the storms are coming and you know, what, what should we, and you know, and he says, if you are inclined to go.
To go try to rectify that, to be part of that solution. Please, thank you. Do it. But I'm not gonna sit here and tell you you should. And I know that that's not what's bubbling up in everyone's hearts. Some people, what's bubbling up is they need to heal. People have stuff to heal. People have trauma to heal.
People have relationships to heal, you know, and it's like before they gonna get to climate, they're gonna, they're gonna wanna work out their, their deep wounds. Right. And, and if somebody's there that I would never tell [00:53:00] them or assume that their life's work is to contribute. Right. Or, or make an impact.
But, but it is beautiful how that's becoming almost an assumption. Like it's almost more and more of assumption. I just, today I was noticing more and more companies, it's almost like. It's almost like what everybody does. They're just putting it out like we're here to and see how many people we can impact.
You're no longer just like, you know, a Facebook advertising agency. You, we, 'cause we wanna impact as many people. And you know, some, I saw one today that picked a number we wanna impact, our vision is 20 million people by 20, whatever it was. Right. Which I just thought was kind of funny. But the, but it just shows you how that orientation is in the air that we're breathing and it is becoming more the cultural norm and more people are feeling into that.
It's beautiful. Mm. Not but it's not everybody's path. Right?
Cameron: Yeah, absolutely. And having a, a unique position of [00:54:00] seeing such a wide spectrum of people that focus on flow and are passionate about it and clearly their hearts are bubbling about it. What do you feel is, uh, a next step for. Discovery around flow.
Did you feel that there was an area that was missing or an area that's really interesting?
Jeff: I don't know. One thing that's coming up is that, but again, I got into this kind of from the spiritual side of things. I lived in an ashram and I practiced meditation when I was 14. So I kind of come from that perspective.
But what's interesting to me is that a lot of the window dressing of spirituality is falling away and the heart of the matter is getting more clear. And I grew up in the seventies and when Eastern Spirituality was here and Maharishi Ma Yogi gave me a secret mantra and it was all this kind [00:55:00] of import of this Eastern form of spirituality and gurus.
And in my view, there's a lot in that is just cultural and has nothing to do with the heart of the matter. And that the practices themselves are gonna get is that we're getting better at understanding what really makes a difference. Uh, and we don't have to package it. We can take off the clothes and we can take off the, the rituals we can keep them to, but we don't need them.
That's not it. Because I've been, I told you, I started selling new age music when I was a kid, and I remember I'd go into like, you know, I went into all the spiritual bookshops and I remember even as I, like a 20-year-old or whatever, I was 21 at this time. I'd go into the store and I'd look on the shelves and there would be some great philosopher Krishnamurti, let's say, right?
We'd be on the shelf and then next to, you know, Krishnamurti. I guess that's a [00:56:00] K would be something like, you know, you know, keys for. Healing your pet with astrology. And I'd be like, well, some, I'm trying to, no offense to anybody who heals their pets with astrology, but I'm trying to pick something on the fringes of magical thinking and there was no discrimination.
It could be like the what I, people I would consider to be the courageous, insightful, wise teachers of the day, side by side with, you know, just sort of silliness. And I've always seen that distinction. And I think that we're getting just clearer and clearer and we're separating out more and more of, which is not to say that everything is straight and narrow.
I mean, the whole world of shamanism opens up realms and. You know, I'm, I humbly bow, it's over, it's over my pay grade. I mean, there are worlds within worlds and people have experiences that are so remarkable and so hard to explain. I'm not diminishing any of that, but as far as the beliefs [00:57:00] that people have and the personality identities and the schools they get caught up in and the trips.
Jeffrey Martin said something really interesting. I was so surprised. This is one of the takeaways. I'm still digesting this, I notice as I say it here, but he said something like, yeah, he sees that he, he identified from interviewing all of those people, that there are some, I don't know, I'm gonna just say it.
I don't know the number eight major techniques and this is the one that works for most people. And then this, if that doesn't work, try this. If that doesn't work, try this. If that, he said, yeah, if you put two weeks into something and you don't really notice a significant difference, he's like, don't keep doing it.
If you notice a difference, and then like over time you stop noticing an impact, do something else. And that stands in contrast to the kind of spirituality that came in in the seventies and has continued and where people will like, [00:58:00] have as a badge of honor. I've been doing this meditative practice for 40 years, but they're still seeking, they're still trying, they're still trying to, you know, they're still trying to seek now, it's not like there's a certain maintenance element to it as well, but if they're still feeling like there's more to get and they wanna understand consciousness more and they haven't had the, the awakening that they were looking for and they're 40 years in, try something else.
You know? So I, so I just think we're gonna, I just think, I imagine 10 years in the future, not to mention, you know, hundred, we're just gonna get really, really good. How to be happy, how to be wise, how to be compassionate. We're gonna sort out what works and what doesn't work and what's magical thinking and what's real and um, you know, so something like that.
Yeah,
Cameron: I guess, and certainly in scientific literature, there's a ambiguity [00:59:00] around spirituality and flow and certainly in people's experiences and practice. For some people they're quite separate. And for other people they overlap. And for some people they're kind of integrated or one in the same. Given your background and at time spent focusing on spirituality and flow, how do you see them interact?
Jeff: Well, kind of, kind of like what I said earlier and being super focused. Being in something, whether it's playing music or whether it's something that, you know, writing will pull me in. You know what really pulled me in, I think was doing the interviews. Um, it was like the first interview at the Deep Flow conference.
We opened up the room and people couldn't get in. Like we hit a hundred. Meanwhile we had a 3000 person license with Zoom, but we hit a hundred and we stopped and we didn't know why. Right? So, there I am and I'm like, oh, [01:00:00] okay. We have, we, we solved it. But, and then, you know, Stephen Cotler came into the Green Room before the interview, and then he, he was the first interview and he said, okay, so I have a hard stop at nine 30.
And I said, well, no, actually you have, you're here till 10. He goes, I can't be here till 10. So we worked it out. But the, my point being that there's like all this storm of chaos and then I show up in the interview and I'm live and it's, and then it just pulls me right in, and all the interviews just pulled me right in.
I mean, occasionally I would drift away, not very often, and mostly I was just listening acutely and then responding. I literally did not have any planned questions. I knew people's work. I had a general sense of where I wanted to go, but all I, I started it off and then I just listened and I let the whole thing just come out of me.[01:01:00]
And I just followed and went with them and I tried to pull things out, but just a complete lack of preparation on my part. A complete, a complete lack of, I'm saying it with my tongue and my cheek, a complete lack of strategy. It's just that's how it works for me. So that kind of pulled me into a kind of flow.
So there's that sense of flow and people need so many things by spirituality that you'd have to kind of start to really parse that out before answering in a complete way. But in the way that we've been talking about it today with this thinning out of identification with ego being the central. What I'm describing as the central pattern that I saw in all of these speakers teachings, and that resulting in a kind of spontaneous arising of these essential qualities, of these positive qualities of mind, of these, all the things we've been discussing, strength and intuition and compassion and creativity [01:02:00] and love and kindness.
That it happens spontaneously, but that's happening. That doesn't require being pulled into a, a, a, a heightened focus. That's just how you live as this is just kind of getting thinned out because, you know, um, the side of a mountain will thin that out really fast. Right. You know, like if you're in danger, you know, it's just gone.
But in a general way, as you thin that out throughout ever practice as you do. There's just more flow, but it's not that kind of necessarily that kind of full focus, which obliterates the identification with your narrative self. Something like that. Yeah. Is that a, is that a kind of a response?
Cameron: Yeah. I mean, it's a question that probably deserves a couple of hours.
Well, I don't know
Jeff: where, I don't know where we are in time, but you know, [01:03:00] yeah.
Cameron: We're coming to the end, so maybe we can save that for another conversation and unpack that further.
Jeff: Yeah, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on that too.
Cameron: All right. Quickfire questions three pillars to your success.
Jeff: And that's supposed to be a quickfire question. You know, I'm gonna answer in a funny way because the, the word success is, can be a very one dimensional word, and I'll, I'll answer it in a more full way, but mostly it's, I've been lucky through practice that my heart has opened more.
And so I would start there and because that's, that means success in family and success in relationship and success in community and success with my business partners and my, you know, so it, it doesn't, doesn't go through the bottom line necessarily, but I, I would be remiss [01:04:00] if I made that a second priority.
And then I myself, um, I love, I. Creativity. And I just, for me, this is not a, you can, you can make you, you know, you can just do another widget and you can just do a variation on a theme and sell it cheaper and make it somewhere else and be successful. Knock yourself out. It's all good. But for me, what drives my passion is creativity.
And I, I won't, I don't, won't take the time now 'cause these are the quickfire questions, right. But if I looked at my, the things that I've done that have been like the little mini breakthroughs in my business over the years, they were all innovations. And for whatever reason, I'm just built to seek those.
That's where I get my juice. I wanna do something that's not gonna happen anyway.
Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. And a book or film that's changed your life or had a huge impact on it?[01:05:00]
Jeff: Well. This creativity conference that I'm doing, my, my fantasy guest who I hope to have is John Cleese. He just wrote a beautiful little book on creativity, right. On how to be more creative. So I thought maybe he'll wanna get in. Anyway. So just inspired by that thought. I watched the life of Brian again and I, I think I'll be happy forever.
It's just so spectacularly delightfully wise and silly in equal measure that I just really, I just love that creative spirit. So that's how I've been inspired by that since I saw it, what, 30 years ago? The uh, yeah, and I just watched it again the other day.
Cameron: Fantastic. Well, Jeff, Shauna, thank you very much for your time.
Yeah, thanks Cameron. Really nice to see you. This chat with Jeff highlighted the importance of sidestepping our identification with the [01:06:00] narrative self. That we'd have us believe that our super ego is who we are. That through compassion, kindness, and love, we can unearth a space that allows us to self awaken and find flow more readily in our lives.
I enjoyed Jeff's more intuitive and innovative leadership style, and whilst it may differ from the more commanding and targeted leadership approach that we often hear about, it is no less successful, especially when deep satisfaction is your aim. It seemed to enable him to bypass the usual stresses of life and not just endure, but enjoy the rollercoaster that running a business often brings.
His comments around being and doing with an open heart has reminded me and inspired me to hold that space before and [01:07:00] whilst doing what I'm doing. Not to save it for when things are calm and safe, which is often assumed after we do the hard stuff. Instead, if we can lead with compassion and openness, we can navigate the complexity of each moment with a richer experience, a deeper connection, and we're more likely to have better decision making.
If you want to learn more about Jeff Shano, 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 [01:08:00] Unleashed.
I.