The Power of Letting Go | Brent Perkins

00:00
So I showed up and I just got this encouragement which was let go, stop trying to control everything. You're not God, you're not a genius, stop, let go. Like in your meditation? Yeah. Had you like growing up, was this a thing like where you would meditate and listen to your inner voice or whatever voice that might be? Very little. I did a lot of prayer, especially when I was...

00:30
really heavily in church. But even in that prayer, I didn't listen in the way that meditation taught me to listen. You know, prayer was a lot of asking and hoping and wishing and meditation brought silence and gratitude for me. So it was a different, it was a different way to show up. Today's guest is Brent Perkins. Brent was a successful entrepreneur. He was the CEO. He was really a driven business leader,

00:59
After achieving what we might call conventional success and reaching this pinnacle of what society deems as successful, he really found himself at a crossroads. He was standing pretty much on the mountaintop of success, and still he felt super empty or a deep void, something that really couldn't be filled with these things like external achievements and whatever the next goal might be.

01:26
In this episode, Brent opens up about his journey from this illusion of success to really the discovery of his inner wisdom and spirituality. He shares his realization that the mountain of success that I just mentioned, the one that he's been climbing his whole life, didn't really exist. This led him to let go of control, quit his job, and reassess his life's purpose. One of the key themes of our discussion today is really the power of letting go and stopping this.

01:53
trying to hold on to control of everything. This act of surrender really marked a turning point in Brent's life. Brent also highlights the importance of recognizing, developing, and really sharing our innate talents and the gifts that we have. He believes that each of us have a unique gift to offer the world, and our purpose lies in sharing that gift. Before I jump into today's episode, I'd like to thank Bryan, Gale, Nic, Sari.

02:18
and Trapper and Shane of Dream Vacations for sponsoring one episode a month on the Patreon tier. This monthly support helps me produce this show all by myself, and that means hosting and editing and the software and the hardware and all the things that I need to be able to bring these important stories to your ears. So thank you so much for that support. If you are interested in supporting this show, please head to patreon.com forward slash the Life Shift podcast and you can find all the information there. So without further ado,

02:48
Here is my conversation with Brent Perkins. I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is The Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

03:12
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with Brent. Hello, Brent. Hey, how are you, Matt? I am fantastic. And we were talking just slightly before recording and we have a mutual friend, Hector. And Hector is a fantastic human being and he's not paying me to say that, but he said that you are a gem, so no pressure on you. Thank you. He is paying me to say that he's a wonderful human being.

03:39
I hope it's a good amount. He didn't offer any of that for me. So hello, Hector, if you are listening. I appreciate these connections and really honored that he reached out and he was like, hey, I know this guy Brent, he's got a story and he might wanna share it. So here we are, we are able to connect and just for a little backstory for anyone listening that is new and for you, this whole show started as a school assignment. I did a master's degree, a second master's degree during the pandemic.

04:09
took a podcasting class and I was like, I don't think I can do that, but I'm gonna try. And here we are 130 plus episodes later. And it's really fulfilling something that I didn't know I needed in this life. Because when I was eight, my mom was killed in a motorcycle accident. And at that moment, my life shifted 100%. My parents were divorced. My dad lived a thousand miles away. I lived with my mom.

04:38
everything about my life was different. And it was early, it was late 80s, early 90s, and not too many people were talking about grief or helping kids. It was just like, make sure he's happy so that, you know, he's happy. And not really figuring out the underside of that. But as a kid, I assumed that. So it was like, oh, I gotta show everyone I'm happy. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I was a mess. I was like, does anyone else have like something in their life where...

05:07
everything changed and they don't know what to do about anything. And so that's how the life shift really came about is like, I'm just curious about people's moments. Are there significant moments or specific moments in their lives where everything was different from one day to the next? And I've just been on this journey talking to all these essentially strangers about these moments in their lives, and it's just been so fulfilling. So thank you for being a part of it before we even have this conversation. Yeah, yeah, I think we.

05:34
We all have our own story to tell in a different way and it's all impactful and unique. I love the concept. Yeah, it just, you know, I think how lucky are we or am I to be able to have the opportunity to reflect back on those moments and see, oh, wow, what did it teach me? You know, it wasn't all bad. Like the moment itself was bad.

06:00
but growing from that and the things that I've learned because of that and the people that I've met because of it, there are some silver linings in any moment that we have, whether that's a super negative traumatic experience or something that is positive that we've created in our own sense. So I love it. To get us started, maybe you can just kind of tell us who Brent is right now, like without giving away too much of your story, but maybe you can just tell us about who you are right now to kind of situate us.

06:30
in this second season of life, kind of climbed one mountain, fell down part of it, climbed back up, and I'm really embracing the next mountain in front of me. And I find there's a lot of us in this, you know, 35 to 55 year old age range that are questioning, what's my purpose? What's the meaning of life? What do all these struggles mean? Did I make the right choices?

06:59
You know, how do all these lessons come together for me? As I've synthesized this in my own life, it's come through in a very interesting way. I've shifted from building this entrepreneurial career, owning and running businesses, being CEO of two different companies for just over a decade, to a very different life of one where I am sharing wisdom. And I guess you could say I'm on a mission for permission.

07:28
And what I mean by that is I have nothing to tell people or to get them to do or to teach them. All of our wisdom is really inside of ourselves and it's finding the permission to look inside, to find that guide that lives in us, right? And it seems like I would imagine that you find a group of people that are like, yeah, let's go, but then you probably find a larger group of people that are so afraid of that or breaking through that barrier.

07:58
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was one of those for the first 40 years of my life. So, yeah, I think we were trained that way. I think that, you know, society kind of brings us up in that sense of I often talk to people about this kind of like checklist life of like, you know, you graduate high school and then you're supposed to go to college and then you're supposed to graduate and get a good job. And then you're supposed to get promoted. And then you're supposed to get married and buy a house. And, you know, like everything was like this. Chasing success until someday you realize,

08:27
The next thing is not bringing me that. Now what? Now what do I do? Yeah, and that's actually, it's one of the ways I use to describe kind of what this journey for me has been like, which is how to shift from chasing success to really finding significance. It's powerful. And have you found the meaning of life yet? Because I wish I knew, but I don't think we'll ever.

08:55
figure it all out, right? And that's maybe part of the journey. You know, Picasso has this quote, which I definitely use as a baseline for some of the conversations I have, which is the meaning of life is to find, develop, own your gifts, right? Urinate, I'm expanding now my own words, but like urinate talent, your God given specialness, right? And the purpose of life is to give it away. That doesn't mean for free and that doesn't mean

09:23
anything except that we're meant to be in tribal and in communities and sharing with each other and supporting each other. And it's, I believe, I really do that. We all share that same purpose, which is we're meant to give that part of ourselves away. And I'm gonna foreshadow here a little bit. We get it backwards though. So it goes, find choice in life, which is our superpower, then really step into the meaning of your life. Like...

09:52
Own that gift from God or higher source, whatever you believe it is, but you've got this innate talent, right? Own it and develop it. And then once you've done that, once you've chosen you and you've developed that, give it away. And we go backwards. We think we've just got to give and we've got nothing to give because we didn't do anything for ourselves. We never chose us. We never developed what we had. We just started giving from an empty tank. And we wonder why we are so confused and get it all backwards.

10:20
It's almost like we chose from a list. It wasn't necessarily we got to explore and figure out what that choice is, but it was like, here's your list of five things that you can do as you move through your life. I hope it's changing for like younger generations now. And I think that, I think it has, but you know, I love that and curious how you got there. So maybe you, before you kind of give it all away, maybe you can kind of take us through what led you up to kind of this pivotal moment that we're gonna center today's conversation around.

10:49
I mean, my journey centered around everything you just said, which was I was checking boxes. Like, my dad owned a company, I'm gonna own a company. My parents got married and had two kids, I'm gonna get married and have two kids. Go to college. Yeah, there's a college. Go to college, buy a house, do all these things, achieve success in this specific pattern that probably ties back to your family, because that's what you know, right? And I did all those things. And I think I...

11:17
I bought my first house at 25. I started my first business at 26 and got my first CEO gig. I worked my way into it at 33. I did all these things and I was like, checking boxes. Yes. Meanwhile, I'm ignoring my own health. I'm ignoring my own physical and mental, ignoring my own spirituality, ignoring people in my life. Like they took second seat to this checklist. Right? Yeah.

11:45
And it felt like I would sit here and say, oh, I'm doing it for them. Well, that's BS. I was... They had no choice in it. Did you feel fulfilled though, like as you were checking those boxes? No. Okay, so it was just the chase. Was it the chase? Yeah, part of it. I mean, you get there and you reach some height of success, right? Whether it's money or whether it's some sort of an award or some accolade of some sort.

12:15
And it feels great for about 10 seconds. You tell enough people and then you're like, oh, great, cool, now what's next? What's next, exactly. Yeah, it was just, it's never enough because it wasn't, ultimately it's not what fulfills you because you're chasing something that the biggest lesson I've learned in all this is, didn't need to do any of that to define or to know that I was already good enough. Do you know where it came from for you? Like was it?

12:45
fed to you by your parents? Was it fed to you by school friends? Like, where do we absorb that? All the above. You know, in my family, I was raised in a middle-class family, but my mom's side grew up really pretty poor. So she, you know, but actually both my parents' money meant it was pretty important to them. And so while they didn't earn enough to just go get crazy with it,

13:14
It was definitely something we saw, like they would spend more as we earned more and it became really this important piece. And then you start like gripping on tighter. Well, you've got something your previous generations didn't have, so you grip on tighter, right? So I definitely saw that control factor playing an ugly role. Cause then you're also, I don't know about you, but I see like in my family, like am I the first one to go to college? Okay.

13:39
there's a check mark. Now there's this responsibility that I automatically assume that now I went to college. So therefore, I should elevate to this level. And anything less is not successful. Anything less is I'm not living my life to its fullest. And it was just like this assumption. But I think a lot of mine, and I don't know if you had any kind of moments in your younger years, a lot of mine was out of fear of abandonment.

14:06
So like a lot of my success driven things were, well, is my dad going to leave too? Because my mom left, you know, in my small brain, someone dying was someone abandoning me. And so the fear was if I was not perfect or successful or checked all the boxes, that my dad might also leave me alone. So I don't know, does any of that resonate or is it more of just like society telling you?

14:37
inner child, traumatic wounds tie back to either abandonment or lack of self-worth. And or an excessive amount of self-worth that looks like a lack of self-worth. But it feels like 90% of what most of us have gone through our stories, ultimately, when we dig them up deep enough, they come back to one of those two things. In my world, I don't think it was abandonment. I thought it was for a while. But it's...

15:07
It really was self-worth. My dad traveled a lot, and my mom kind of made me her surrogate husband. And so I was the little man of the house. And that's, you know, there's a lot of psychological best practices and know-hows that talk about how that's just a really tough thing to put on a kid. Yeah. And also thinking like the approval. I think there's a piece of like, we just need that approval. And it sounds like when you were saying you were checking the boxes in life,

15:37
and hitting the next milestone, it lasts for 10 seconds because you're like, I expected this to be like the pinnacle. This was going to be the next thing. So as you were chasing this in life, like at what point, cause you said you climbed the mountain, when does the mountain stop for you? Or when, like, how do you realize that you're at the top of the mountain and you can't go any farther?

16:01
Yeah, the answer to that is different for each of us. For me, in my journey, you know, after becoming a CEO twice, having been with both companies for over five years, gotten on the Inc 5000 list, seen different levels of success, like there's always more, there's always more money. There's always something that's bigger, but that's not necessarily higher up the mountain, right?

16:30
it's chasing a false ledge, so to speak. And what is the top? You know, where I sit today is there's no such thing as some top, right? That it's all a false construct. We bake into our story. Yeah, I'm just thinking like, you know, I think of what we're talking about, like this society, like, you just keep chasing, but we always had, like the top of the mountain just keeps like...

16:58
maybe the clouds are in the way and we just think the top is like continuing to go. But at some point, a lot of us hit this point where we're like, I don't want to climb anymore. This is exhausting and I'm really not getting anywhere. It just feels like I'm on the same spot. You know, like climbing a sand hill or something. You just like take one step up and then you end up four steps back. Yeah. I mean, what I ended up realizing is that

17:24
I was in some sort of 3D sphere looking at a mountain on a treadmill, and none of it was actually even there. Like a simulation, like you were just... Yeah, there is no mountain. There's nothing for you to climb. I believe we're here on Earth to experience life, to hone our gifts, and to give them away. And none of that has you climbing any mountains. You're born with it. It's owning it. It's stepping into that choice and then sharing it with those around you and supporting everybody. And there's no mountain involved there.

17:55
Was there like a moment that slapped you in the face to let you know that? Like, did you hit, did someone say something that finally triggered something in you? You know, I'd been on, I'd been on this path. So I went from like really, really, the pendulum was all the way over into like deep Christianity when I was growing up. I think I got a plaque my junior year in high school that said church member of the year. Wow. Because I started, you know, discipleship groups and gave a lot of time.

18:24
to different mission trips and things like this. And so in the latter part of college, I mean, I swung the pendulum all the way over to, all right, we're gonna try everything, do everything and screw everything I got taught when I was growing up. I'm just ditching that stuff and almost all the way to atheism and then finding this middle ground is like, life in so many ways is this pendulum swinging back and forth. And I sit in this place of deep spirituality today.

18:54
But what got me here was this quest, knowing that, okay, I started over here in like deep controlling religion. I took it all the way over to here. Neither felt good. I knew there was something more. I knew it wasn't just me in this one lifetime. It was bigger than that. So I started studying ancient archeology, looking at things we can't explain, the pyramids or like the 25,000 year old cave paintings in France. And these older much-

19:23
cultures with a lot more depth than we give them credit for, because we don't understand. We think that we just went from agriculture to a more industrialized society 5,000 years ago. Well, there's different stories there. What was behind it all? I just had this quest for knowledge and saying, what's really our story as humanity? As I got into that, it didn't serve me. It wasn't helping my day to day. As I continued to climb this mountain, I shut out my kids.

19:52
wife, shut out my friends, and shut out me. And it led to me getting divorced.

20:01
which led to me doing some really, really deep soul searching. And that led to me ultimately quitting my job and stepping out needing to reassess. What was I doing in life? And I had started a meditation practice at that point, and I was sitting in meditation and I got this calling about 15 months ago to write a book. And at first I looked up and I was like, you're crazy. No, thank you.

20:30
It was never even... No. I'm not a writer. I had no content. And the next day it was like, you're going to write a book. I was like, I don't want to. I got to go find a job. I got kids to support. I don't have time for this. And the third day was actually New Year's Eve Day. It's like, you're going to write a book and here's the title. So I journaled the title and I sat with it for about a week. And I finally...

20:57
decided to research because listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast and like, you know what? He did it. He chose the software. I'm just gonna try it. I think like him, let's just give this a shot. Spent three weeks like constructing a really smart outline, trying to just be like, I'm so smart and witty. Yeah, that failed. Another lesson. So I showed up and I just got this encouragement, which was let go.

21:27
Stop trying to control everything. You're not God. You're not a genius. Stop. Let go. Like in your meditation? Yeah. Had you like growing up? Was this a thing like where you meditate and listen to your inner voice or whatever voice that might be? Very little. I did a lot of prayer, especially when I was really a member of the Church member of the year.

21:54
But even in that prayer, I didn't listen in the way that meditation taught me to listen. Prayer was a lot of asking and hoping and wishing, and meditation brought silence and gratitude for me. So it was a different way to show up. It feels like prayer is more constructed and more prescriptive in a way. There's a...

22:20
There's a way to do it, perhaps, for some people, and that you kind of stick to that mold. But meditation is its own thing for everyone, I think. There's like, you find your space in that you can listen to yourself and whatnot. Yeah. And what I didn't realize then that I do now is meditation is religion agnostic. I mean, it doesn't matter. True. Because if you can get to a quiet place and listen, no matter what you believe,

22:47
Virtually every religion out there supports, you know, getting to that place outside of you, right? Recognizing it's something in the universe is beyond you. This is just, this is personal. I feel that there is, in my mind, the difference in meditation and prayer is I feel like there's this expectation that has to happen in religion because you're expecting God or you're expecting whoever to

23:15
respond or connect with, whereas in meditation, it feels more silent, more like internal, more you. But this is, I mean, these are just my assumptions here, because I have a certain feeling about one area and then a misunderstanding of another area, or maybe not a full understanding of another area. And so it makes more sense for me if I was to fall into your shoes, meditation would be where I go, because that would be the hardest place for me.

23:45
because I would have to sit in that silence and listen. Whereas I could pray because I know the prescription, I know how to follow the rule, I guess, to check the box. You know, in my journey today, it's funny, I'm on a panel tomorrow morning with a rabbi and an ordained priest, and they're calling me the yogi, and of course they made the joke.

24:12
Rabbi, Yogi, and a priest walk into a bar, dot dot dot. But what's interesting is the three of us have talked and they're more, both of them are more on the mystic side of their religions.

24:27
they fully embrace meditation. But I would agree with you that there are a lot of different versions of different religions that call it down to this kind of prescriptive piece, which it feels like that maybe for a lot for the masses because it's easy. But there's a depth to it that can exist. So I don't want to preclude that for any religion because I've seen them all include it.

24:54
No, I was just thinking like personally for myself. I feel like when I was growing up, it was like, okay, we go pray now. It wasn't like I'm called to do this, or it was just like the next thing on the to-do list. It wasn't, and because I wasn't, you know, immersed, I wasn't church member of the year, I wasn't any of those things, but it was just like a check, it was a check mark. It was like, okay, I say these 10 words and I've met the requirement today, you know? And so meditation scares me because like...

25:24
There's such an open door to that. It feels like walking into an abyss. So thinking, if I was like you climbing this mountain, how do you even go, okay, well, I'm gonna embrace that? Or was it just because you fell down the mountain a little bit with your circumstances that you're like, this is just another opportunity? Yeah, you know, honestly, I don't know if I would have found it if I didn't have kids. It was too easy to...

25:53
Use alcohol, use cannabis, use dating, use sports, use TV. I mean, there's so many ways to just distract and numb. Yeah. And, you know, having kids, I've got teenage daughters. I mean, those, those other things were options, but I did not want them to be options. It wasn't what I was trying to, the father I was trying to be, how to model, which I think is.

26:23
I've really learned that as parents past the age of about seven or eight, we're nothing more than guides and coaches. Neurologically their brains are done and locked into their systems. They're programmed and it's us guiding them, like putting up the bumper lanes. When you go bowling, they're on their own. They're throwing the ball. You can't stop that. You can try. We can get mad. We can yell, but they're throwing the ball and we're just the bumper lanes to make sure they don't.

26:52
crash and burn and die, but they're gonna fall. We're gonna slide down the alley. They're gonna drop the ball on their toes. It's just gonna happen. And I couldn't step into that role as the guide, as not even a coach, just a mentor, if I didn't change what I was doing. And I had to do a 180, so I was willing to try whatever. Yeah, because do you look at the start? Because I mean, it sounds like your door into this meditation opened.

27:20
a lot in you, but also introduced you to this idea, which was probably your voice all along, to write a book, to put it together, to dive into this, to let go, to do all the things. Do you look at that embracing meditation as kind of like something that really changed you or do you look at quitting your job? Because if you didn't quit your job, you wouldn't have found this. What do you see as like more of like, you turn the corner?

27:50
For me, yes. One of the things I teach today, because that spawned a lot of different modalities. I'm trained in different breath work and different mindfulness and gratitude in a couple of different meditations. And I'll teach some of these different modalities because the biggest thing I've learned in life is that, and what I wrote this book about was how to step into your personal agency, how to retain choice. And I mean choice at every level. Choose, choosing ourselves in every decision.

28:20
And to do that, you've really got to step into the present moment. You can't be living in the past. And, you know, I think it was Lao Tso who said, if you're living in the, if you're living in the past, you're anxious. If you're living in the future, you're depressed. If you're living in the now, you're peaceful. And whatever these modalities are that bring you back into the present moment, because that's the only place we can, we're, we're only living in every, every second, right? Everything else is a, an idea or a.

28:50
or a possibility or a thought or a remembrance that's not real anymore. So I somehow, for some reason, jumped all the way to meditation, which is like the, what I end up teaching as like the 10th step on steps one through 10, it's what I needed. And yes, it was the doorway to everything else in my life. And if you think about it, do you think that 33-year-old CEO version of you be like,

29:19
Would you be into meditation or would you see that more as like a protocol to follow? Yeah, I would have liked the idea of it and I would have done it like once a month when things got really bad. Like going to yoga or something. Yeah. Like, oh, I'm not very flexible right now, so I'm going to start yoga, but not intentional. It's just like a it's a relief. It's a it's a distraction, I guess, or something to fulfill that empty box that you have.

29:48
But it's so fascinating. I love the idea too of the modeling for your kids because I think when I saw my father finally feel like he was living like his most real authentic life, that he wasn't trying to chase the best job or do this or do that, or you know, like he wasn't trying to cultivate some life. He was just trying to live his life. That was the first time where I was like, this is the model.

30:18
this is what we want to see. And I think of that for your daughters, of like, you know, they saw you, or they saw some part of you, maybe they were much younger, but they saw you kind of reaching and trying to hit these successes. And like on paper, they're successful, but you weren't you. Like you weren't like your authentic leaning into this present moment version of Brent. And now they probably see this version of you and are like inspired. They're not gonna maybe be just like you, but they're...

30:47
can be inspired to have that agency to do whatever fills that present moment for them. That's why I said in the beginning, my mission is permission. Yeah, and you can't give that, well, I don't know, maybe you can, but I feel like you can't. You almost have to like model it so that we can see like, oh, that's what that looks like. And that's how you give permission, right? It's like, you think of any...

31:15
Any like thinking of yourself as a kid walking into somebody's house or you're going to some birthday party at like a like a roller coaster park, you're going somewhere where you're like new and you don't know where you can go and what doors you can open and where you can walk through. But you see somebody else do it and you're like, oh, I have permission to do the same thing. Or you talk to somebody you thought maybe was off limits. You're like, somebody else just did my friend did. Now I have permission. That's what I mean by permission, right?

31:42
When we model it, when we show it, when we do it, when we live bold, we show up this way, it lets people know it's okay. It can work out. I can do it. Does that feel like a lot of pressure on yourself or do you feel that a different way? Like, oh my God, I have a lot of pressure now to help give permission to people. Not at all. No pressure. In fact- This is my neurosis speaking. Yeah. The only pressure I feel like I have, if anything, is-

32:14
I have never until the last couple of years really thought about what does it mean today? What do I have to do to show up as my best self? Does that mean that I don't have that beer at that birthday party tonight because it's going to impact how I show up in the morning in my sleep? No, I don't do that. Does it mean like, so these are the, it's not pressure, but it shifts what you're paying attention to. And that's where it's really more about the choice piece.

32:44
When I teach about stepping into our choice, our personal agency, it's that it literally exists everywhere, every minute of the day, there's some choice you could be making even as simple as, you know what, I'm breathing really shallow. I've got anxiety. I have like the one autonomic part of our body that we have control over is breath. I'm going to choose to change my breath. We don't do that. Like simple things, or I'm going to choose that.

33:13
My best friend, I know they're having a hard time. They invited me out to dinner tonight. Man, but I really shouldn't because I need to sleep. I need to talk to my daughter. I need to whatever, but you do it anyways. You didn't choose you. Like, choices everywhere, all the time. And I bet, I mean, do you see a lot of people that do not realize the choice, or they know it, but they choose otherwise? You know, I don't judge. I just look at my own life, and the other piece of choice, I didn't. That's very kind of you.

33:43
Well, I try not to anyways, right? I'm human, so I judge all the time. I try my best not to. But this other piece of choice is over our interpretation of life. And what I mean by that is we are creative beings who experience life through our five senses. We don't understand life. We can't touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it, or feel it.

34:09
That's why people were so freaked out over COVID when you lost your sense of smell. It's like, I can't eat food. We don't know how to interpret our experiences in the world without our five senses. So, getting access to that and then realizing, wait a minute, Matt, yours are different than mine. You smell things differently, you taste things differently, you see things differently. So we could both be in the same.

34:39
place, watching, tasting, touching the same thing, wildly different interpretations. And because of that, it's allowed me to go back in my life, places where maybe I had regret, which I don't live in regret anymore. I think regret takes away from us being able to honor the lessons that were gifted to us hard or easy, right? But I can look back and say, gosh, my mom was a jerk to me then. She ended up spanking me.

35:09
She treated me like crap. And I can look down and be like, I'm almost scared. And I can completely rewrite my story. Is that an active process? Like, is that something that you would do like actively? For me in the early stages, it was an active process because I needed to get practice in, right? And I'm at a point now where I don't need to actively do it but I also don't take anything at face value.

35:38
even my own thoughts and my own experiences, I pulled them up and it's like, oh, that triggers me to be frustrated with my brother. But you know what? I'm gonna ask some more questions. I'm gonna get curious. I'm gonna actually imagine what is the most generous interpretation of what it could have meant versus this like ugly thing that I remember. Personally, I feel like that would become, and I know myself,

36:06
become like a checklist, almost like I have to, this moment, I have to take the moment and analyze it. Do you feel any pressure to do that? Or is it just like, because you've been doing it for so long, it's more of this innate process of gratitude and existence in that way? So I'm gonna fast forward in complexity just to touch on this and I'll pull us back out of it. I finally have come to a place where, since I trust myself, I love myself, which I never did before.

36:33
And I sit in this place in my own spirituality that I realize we're all one, we're all the same energy source. I think scientifically that's been proven. And then, you know, whether you're talking about religion or, you know, other spirituality, like it ties back to we're all part of this global unit. And all there is is love. The Beatles said it, God said it in the Bible, you know, He is pure love. And so as I sit and I try to...

37:03
and I work on unconditional love in my life, showing up in that way. I know when I'm out of integrity with that. And that's what triggers me to ask those questions. Okay. Because if I'm sitting here in love, in a space of love, non-judgmental, unconditional love, I have no check boxes because I'm already there. Yeah, because I mean, I think, you know, as a human, we have all the emotions. It's not always sunshine and rainbows. It's not always love. And I think that

37:33
Sometimes, like your pendulum example, I think there could be a tendency where people then start to spend so much time trying to, maybe it becomes less authentic because they're working so hard to be authentic, if that makes any sense. Like everything kind of swings way too far and you're not kind of living in the present, which I guess brings us back to that other point you made of sitting there. But here's my mind going all over the place because I think that I'm probably...

38:02
more of the norm of people that just exist in this hyper, exaggerated sense of certain emotions or certain things where we can't always operate in the space where we do what you do. Yeah. I don't even know if there's a question in that. I'm just kind of curious so that you know, you do have human experiences as well. So there are times when you're mad and that you're sad and you're all the things that are not happy.

38:32
I guess. I guess we assume that living in love is happy, and maybe that's the wrong assumption to begin with. So when I say living in unconditional love and living in love, it's not that all I experience is love. I mean, quite the opposite is true. And in what's become my truth, I want to be very specific about that. I don't actually believe there's any universal truths. Because we all have our own experiences. Truths are subjective, right? Okay.

39:03
And it's, you know, some of the biggest pain comes from when you feel like you have to get somebody else to understand your truth. You're like, hear me, just understand me, right? It's like, it doesn't matter because it's just your truth because they can never fully experience what you felt. Like they didn't have the hormones pumping in in a certain way that tingled your arm because of that music set, whatever it is, right? And sitting in this place of knowing that my truth is just mine and I'm okay with it.

39:33
and I am refining it and all the emotions hit me because we live in this place like God or source, energy, whatever you wanna call it, blessed us with relativity. And we have relativity because if we only knew love, or if we only had love, it's like the fish in water, right? Like the fish talking, I forget how the story goes, but basically he finally jumps out of the water and he's like, oh, I was in water that whole time, right?

39:58
You don't know what you don't know the opposite of. So this relativity that we live in is us moving from the opposite of love is fear, right? So it's getting into deep fear to see, oh, that's what love looked like. Or getting into extreme anger to see the opposite side of that, right? And it's us knowing this relativity of knowing the polar opposite of it so we can now say, I know what that looks like. I know what that feels like.

40:28
And even though that might have triggered an emotion of me being

40:33
you know, angry or me having fear or me whatever it may be, it doesn't mean that because an emotion happens to us, feelings.

40:45
are controlled by us. And what I mean is an emotion is data. Data comes in, boom, we're hit.

40:54
The feeling is actually something we do have control over because that's our interpretation of that. We decide, like when my mom died, do I get angry? Do I play the victim and say to the world, like what is this, she was young and this was unfair and all these things? Or do I take that emotion, honor it, and say, you know what? I actually put a smile on my face. She lived a good life. Right? It's a hard one. It's nothing I...

41:23
None of this is easy. It's just possible. No, I agree. I think there's a lot of awareness. I think there's, I mean, it's, I feel like I look at you and the way you describe yourself as like where I hope to be and where I think I'm walking towards. Because my journey, you know, decades, it took me like 20 plus years to quote unquote, grieve the loss of my mother.

41:51
mainly because I just didn't have the tools and I was taught to suppress it. And it was just like, we don't talk about that. And it creates a whole mess. But where my journey kind of started to align with aspects that you're talking about is when I realized that so much of my life, I was operating as that eight-year-old out of fear that that was gonna happen again. And all I was gonna do was try to protect myself through that whole thing because that was the feeling I didn't want anymore. Once I had that awareness,

42:20
that I could control that and I could control my choices like you were talking about and have agency over the things. Everything started to unravel in this nice way of getting rid of that and moving through into the next thing. So that when my grandmother, who basically became my new mom when she got diagnosed with cancer and we were facing her end, I felt those feelings that you describe of, this is sad, this is terrible, this is the worst thing that I have ever seen, but.

42:49
Everything that I got to do with her brings those smiles to my face. And so I was able to have the final conversations. I sat with her for her last 96 hours of her life because I knew that's what I needed to do and that's what she needed for me. And that was going to make me happy in the sad moment. And so I think so much of this comes from just being really in tune with how we are feeling and how that makes us feel and how that affects the choices that we make and how that affects our being, if you will.

43:20
So I think I feel like I'm walking down the path towards where Brent is right now, but I'm somewhere in between. I call it the oops loop, where we get stuck and create so much pain for ourselves is that emotion comes in and most neuroscience data shows it's like 75 to 90 seconds. If we sit with it, if we allow it through.

43:45
and we don't judge it and we don't try to categorize it or compartmentalize it or shove it down. If we let it come through, and it's whatever state it comes through.

43:54
It's gone. The initial, it kind of bursts, like a bubble coming up. When you get in the spa or the water and something comes up from your bathing suit, it just bubbles to the surface. It just pops, right? Versus, you shove it down and you're creating some sort of yellowstone level, old faithful geyser of just ready to explode. Yes. And when I say the oops loop, we can...

44:21
There's three parts to our brain and everything comes into our mammalian brain, our hypothalamus, and we can choose to just let it sit there and say, I've got an emotion. Here it is. Or we can fight or flight it, which moves it down to our brain stem, which is our natural 100,000-year-old, million-year-old reaction to things to keep us safe. Or we can move it up into our prefrontal cortex and start thinking about it. What happens there is that's when we shove it down and we think about it and we create a new emotion.

44:51
And that's what I call the oops loop. It's this evil loop of emotion. I'm thinking about it. I suppress that one and I create a new one. And it just goes on and for you it was 20 years and some people it's longer until you finally start to just let this go here. Is it weird to think back to the old version of Brent? Like the chase that you were in, that kind of success loop, if you will? You know, the question I get most often is do I have any regret?

45:20
And I kind of addressed that already, which is I don't, I have no regret for anything and.

45:27
I learned lessons and I choose not to live that way anymore. I think more than anything, there's...

45:38
I feel a little sad for the person I was then to realize all of this was always available to me and I didn't realize it. Just didn't know. And that was my lesson. Yeah, I always look at that as kind of like, well, would I have gotten here had I not done all of that? You know, had I not made that what...

46:07
maybe at the time or shortly after I realized was a bad decision or I called it a bad decision, had I not done that, would I be where I am now? Would I know the people that I know now? All these things feel like it kind of brought us to this particular point. Had you started meditation right in college, would you have come across the idea to come up with a book? To write a book, to put, right? So you kind of had to do it. I look back at this.

46:35
with regards to my kids and go, you know, when my kids saw some really, really ugly signs to me, right? And now they see today and they see me talk about it and apologize and honor it. And I think the thing we don't teach our kids or the next generation, however you, you know, whatever your involvement is with it, is that life's about failing.

47:00
That's how science works. You create a hypothesis, and then you fail trying to recreate it 20 times, and then you figure out a way. Life's no different. Like, you can't win at every stage of life, or pretend like you do. Like, let's stop. Let's embrace failure, and instead of hating it, say, ugh, cool, one step closer. It's like it has the wrong connotation. Yeah. Like, I feel like we look at win and fail.

47:30
as these like polar opposites, but I think they're just like, I mean, we need to look at them differently because they're just lessons, right? They're just both cases. Yeah. Like even winning is a lesson. Right? Like we don't always have to fail.

47:46
I mean, do we? I hope not. I mean, I don't have the answer to that because I don't know. But it feels like there's a lot we can learn from winning depending on how we how we deem a win. Like if we worked our tail off because we cared, we did this, we did this, we did this, and we quote unquote, won, there's something to be learned there. There is. And you just nailed it, which is.

48:11
It's what is your truth? What is your story that you tell yourself about what winning is? Because if we get rid of failure together and we say, Hey, I want to go learn to play pickleball and you go out and you get beat and you get beat. Did you, did you fail or did you actually you're winning because you learned a skill, you learned how to tap the ball. You learned to serve. You learned of all, you learned, you're not good at it. Or you learned you're not good at it. But the point is, is you're growing your.

48:41
you're experiencing, you're taking in data. Isn't that winning like the whole time? Right, yeah. Yeah, I think it's societal. I think it's kind of just this whole idea of that checklist. I think it's also that there is this binary of like winning or losing, and if you're not great at first, then you're not good. And I think that it's not true, but I think it was something that we absorbed for so long. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really dangerous, dangerous lesson for...

49:11
for any of us or lessons wrong word, it's a dangerous statement for kids too. Because those of us, those among us and those no longer among us have created some of the most amazing contributions to society. If they believed that statement, we wouldn't have a lot of things that exist in our world today.

49:35
But I also think that we, to your pendulum idea, I think there was a lot of times, maybe not now, but there were a lot of times where everyone won, or quote unquote won. And then we kind of eliminated the idea of failing, in a sense too, which I think there's value on both sides. And so, in any case, I'm still curious, what caused you to quit your job that day? Because I mean, at that point,

50:05
winning technically on paper. Yeah, sort of in that particular place. We had, we had won and failed in that business and taken it to the 5,000 list. And then we actually were taking an IPO and that we got, we kind of got the rug pulled out from underneath us, from a market standpoint, and it was a matter of digging down deep to, to reboot it with new investors and raising more money. And while it was all possible.

50:34
I just, I was spent, I was done, I knew I couldn't. Like I just did this. It was, yeah, it was more than that. It was knowing that like, this isn't fulfilling anymore. It's not fun. I don't like going to work every day. And it wasn't just the career. It was, I'm not finding fulfillment in directing people and putting myself at the top of this, you know, food chain and pretending like I have all the answers. I don't want to do that anymore. Right, and you.

51:03
said you weren't showing up as the person you wanted to be in the other relationships that you had. Yeah, no, no. In your actual relationship and then your relationship with your kids and all those things. And I guess at some point you're just like, why would I do this all over again? And I'm just curious because I've talked to other people that like one day they woke up and they're like, I'm not doing this anymore. Or someone said, you're a jerk. And they've had said it a thousand times, but that one time was like, that's it, I'm done. Yeah.

51:33
And sometimes we need that. Like I think I've talked to people too about like, they've read a book a couple of times, but the third time that they read it, this one sentence was just like shining, you know, like blinking in their face and they changed their life because of it. And so it's so curious to me, but it sounds like this meditation was really this, this unlocking of a door, if you will, in your life, more so than the quitting. It's true. And as we wind this down, what's interesting is that,

52:02
While there's been plenty of people that have really enjoyed the book and it's touched some souls and changed lives for people, it turned out to be what I needed in my journey. And I didn't write the dedication in the book, so the very front page until the end, and it says in there, this book is dedicated to Brent Perkins, yes, myself. And it goes on to say, if I can do the work that only I can do.

52:31
and maybe it will give you permission to do the work that only you can do. And I just found that the book was like the last part in that segment of my journey, that season of my journey, to let go, to release, to surrender, which is a scary word for a lot of us. Putting those words to paper was probably in a way a release of a lot of that, right? It was. Putting it together.

53:01
Writing itself gets it out of you and gets it because I think there's a lot of things that happen in our heads sometimes that Feel like a catastrophe and then you say it out loud and you're like Oh, that's not quite. It's not quite as bad as it sounded in my head So I would imagine that putting that through and kind of going through your process in your book. What's the name of your book? paper cuts The art of self-delusion It sounds like it would help a lot of people. I'm so truth

53:28
To everyone, we know that I go into these without knowing too much, but it sounds like, you know, it helps you, but it also helps a lot of people. If you were like, I know this is not possible, but if you could go back to Brent, 25, buying your first house, you know, doing the things, getting all the chasing the successes, is there anything that this version of you would wanna like whisper in his ear or like drop a note in front of him?

54:00
Yeah, it would be.

54:06
Slow down and trust yourself and take care of yourself. Because one of the things I've lived my whole life doing is, well, it turned out I was doing it for selfish reasons. I thought I was showing up in a way to help other people solve their problems, make them feel good. And I just ended up hurting them and myself along the way. And it's because it's so weird, like choosing ourselves or me choosing myself.

54:35
You know, there's people who are like, oh, that's narcissistic, oh, that's selfish. And it's like, you know, it could be. And there's also another way to do it where nobody, like, nobody learns by you telling them what to do. Everybody learns by either reading or seeing or observing or experiencing, and then making their own choice. And if they can see you doing that for you.

55:04
eating right, exercising, taking a pause, saying no, doing whatever it is for you, that's where that permission comes in. And it's like, that's the best way to influence somebody else. Well, I mean, you really, at the end of the day, we can't take care of other people unless we take care of ourselves. And it's to that same point of like, you can't really show up or model or do anything that can be any kind of influence to help anyone else without.

55:33
doing the work ourselves, but that's the hardest part. I would imagine that's the biggest barrier when you talk with people and work with people and try to help them. It's like they're in their own way, possibly. I'll judge for you, because I know that you don't wanna judge. But speaking for myself, I think as humans, so many of us were conditioned to just like get in our own way.

55:59
outthink ourselves and talk ourselves out of things that maybe could bring us value. It's true. And what the other piece that's been difficult for me to understand, and I think I have a pretty good concept today is...

56:14
Even though I can't, like you said, you have to help yourself before you help other people. I don't know if I can actually help other people. I can hold space for them. I can show up in a way where I'm not needy or trying to get something out of the situation. So I just, I hear you, I see you. I'm just gonna allow you to like bounce things off of me or just like work through what you need to. And I might need to hit the eject button when I need to for me. And that's, I'm okay choosing that.

56:44
But I would argue that that's helping them. Of course it is, but not directly. Right, well not in the way that we've been conditioned of what help is. It's not a handout, but it is, you're serving what they need. And if that's holding space, or if that's listening, or whatever it is, but you're also, by protecting yourself, like saying, I'm out of here, this is all I can give. We see that, and we go, oh, again, permission to do that ourselves. So I love that, that you're really in the...

57:15
in the world of giving permission, you know, like you're trying to help people, no, wrong word, you're giving permission to people to make their own choices and to live the life that feels most real or authentic to themselves. I don't know how to describe it in words that are not my own, but I feel like that's how I would interpret that, is like living in the present moment as yourself and doing the things that feel right for you.

57:44
That doesn't hurt anyone, hopefully. You don't know what I'm about to say, but you just described why I built this brand, 3X Bold, and how to show up to life bold, which I describe as courageous, authentic, and wild. I like that. Tell me a little bit before we go about your business itself. The business that you've created for yourself now, are you a CEO again? A CEO? No.

58:13
No, but I did start a small business where I do some speaking. I do some one-on-one coaching. I do leadership training. I do some executive mentoring and I've got some online master classes, everything from doing this inner work. How do you, how do you calm the inner so you can deal with the outer chaos to, how do you show up bold? How do you start to step into, you know, what's the pathway to let go, give yourself permission. And so this is the work I want to give back to the world.

58:43
Because I believe that if we all show up bold, when you're bold, you don't care what everybody else thinks, and you're not doing it in a way that's ugly, you're just like, this is me. I'm so confident and comfortable with who I am right now. You bring your best self, I'm bringing my best self. We're gonna be bold together. And if we all do that, then we're kind of living in that love in that way that you described. If we all showed up in our best self all the time.

59:09
I don't know if we can handle that. No, it'd be amazing. If someone listening now wants to check out your book or check out all the things that you offer, what's the best way to get into your space and connect with you? The easiest way is go to 3xbold.com. Number 3, letter X, bold.com. But if you go to Amazon or Audible, type in paper cuts, it's going to come up. Did you read it yourself? I did. Was that a totally different experience?

59:37
It was one of those things where I started looking at it and going, okay, I'm gonna judge myself, and I sound horrible and going, you know what? This is silly. I wrote this for me, I have to read it. I locked myself in my- Be bold. Yeah, be bold. I locked myself in my closet for two days and just did it. That's awesome. I have heard a lot of people that read their own book and they're like, wow, that was a lot harder to read it out loud than it was to read it because of the way, you know, I don't know if you share a lot of personal stories or things in it, but sometimes you're like, oh, that's wow.

01:00:07
It's hard to say out loud. Good for you. And cathartic. Yeah, oh, for sure. We will include that link in the show notes just so people can easily get to you and connect with you. And I encourage you, if you've listened to Brent's story and you're inspired by the way that he lives his life and the things that he chooses for himself, please reach out to him, connect with him, see what he's offering, read his book, all the things. It'll definitely be worth your while. And now that I've met you, I can read it so that now I can know information.

01:00:36
But thank you for being a part of the Life Shift podcast. I really appreciate it, Brent. Yeah, thanks, Matt. If you are listening and you think someone else should hear this episode, please share it with a friend. I would really appreciate that. And I will say goodbye now. And I'll be back next week with a brand new episode.