The Secret to Authentic Happiness + Success with Psychology Expert Robert Holden | EP 57

One of people's biggest fears of happiness is that it's selfish and I can tell you right now don't worry about that but not for a minute. The most generous people I know in the world are also the happiest people I know in this world.
When you're happy you want to share it. When you follow your joy, Elisa, it's not always rational and indeed Carl Jung said that if you're going to follow your vocation you may well have to follow an irrational factor so sometimes it's not always rational but my goodness it is always intelligent and it won't let you down often the thing that we think we're not getting is often also the thing we're not giving i'm not saying that's true every time but i'm saying check it out you know sometimes you'll notice that your complaint about X is actually a reference more to what you're not getting giving or most importantly what you're not being what's it like to be you when you're not judging yourself now I would just say please give that five minutes journaling time give that five minutes of your attention and begin to get a feeling for this is what it's like to be me when i'm not judging myself and i promise you if you follow that through you'll begin to see that you don't have to be perfect to be amazing okay that's level one level two.
Level two. Welcome to the Healing and Human Potential podcast, where today I'm joined by a dear friend of mine, Robert Holden.
And we're going to be unpacking the power of purpose, what authentic happiness and success is. And so just to give you context, Robert is a pioneer in psychology and spirituality.
He's been featured on Oprah. He was behind the Real Dove Beauty campaign.
He's coached with Google. He's been a New York Times bestseller.
This man has a depth of knowledge that I'm excited to share with you on the podcast. We're going to be unpacking some of his most powerful quotes so that you can embody the transmission of what these teachings are.
Get ready for a conversation that can change your life. Robert, I'm so excited to have you on.
I want to do something a little different because you have such a breadth of and depth of knowledge with 14 books. There's so much wisdom.
I thought it'd be fun to pull some of my favorite quotes and unpack them on the podcast so that you could really share the wisdom inside of them. So how does that sound for diving into unpacking some of your quotes here with us? That sounds great fun.
And first, may I just say what a joy it is to be with you. You're a very important person in my life.
And yeah, this just feels really good to be together, Alyssa. So thank you.
Thank you for inviting me on your podcast. Yeah.
Just backstory, Robert and I have been friends for quite a while and I have so much respect and love for you and want to share your work in the world in a bigger way and with you, with my audience. And so here we are.
I want to dive into one of my favorite quotes of yours, which is, until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are. And this really ties together with one of your principles that I love, which is destination addiction.
And for people that don't know what this is, it's like the idea that our happiness is found in the next job, in the relationship, in achieving the goal. And it's so important that we see that so that we start waking up from it because we have been conditioned in our society to think it's somewhere outside of us, outside of the moment.
And really this is helping people take their power back. And also you talk about how we are living in a culture that is obsessed with instant gratification.
And of course there's conveniences that come with modern day world, but there's also the shadow that comes with that. And you really unpack that in some of your work.
And so in a culture that is obsessed with instant gratification, and I know that there's conveniences of modern day,

you know, conveniences, which I love, but there's also shadow with that. So talk to us a little bit about how you support people in overcoming some of the challenges that come with a fast results, instant gratification culture.
Okay. So this first quote really belongs to a project of mine called The Happiness Project.
And I set up The Happiness Project in the UK on the National Health Service all the way back in the 1990s. My children would call those days the olden days.
This is from the olden days. But it was pretty radical at the time, Alyssa.
I will say that there weren't many psychologists studying happiness openly at the time. The focus was still more on how to be less unhappy rather than how to be happy.
And the work of the Happiness Project, which I wrote up in two books, one called Happiness Now and another called Be Happy. Really, the work of the happiness project was to help people give up the pursuit of happiness and to start following their joy.
now the pursuit of happiness um clearly is an unalienable right. It's there absolutely in the manifesto, so to speak, of the US.
And it's also something that I think all of us would uphold as a good idea to a point. interestingly the word pursuit means either to take an interest in or to chase.
What I was really addressing here was that the pursuit of happiness encourages us to chase something outside of us. And once you start chasing something outside of you, I think what that does is it sets up a paradigm where you're always feeling as if you're in lack and that you're about to feel more fulfilled.
But a paradigm is a paradigm and you don't ever make any progress in a paradigm until you change the paradigm. So the paradigm for me had to shift from instead of chasing happiness as an external somewhere outside of you.
What if you were to follow your joy joy and this was the big shift in the happiness project the pursuit of happiness means we're always going to be chasing and also we're always going to be future focused whereas following your joy is an invitation to turn within and to see if you can connect with that joy which is your compass which, which gives you guidance, which gives you direction, which helps you to make authentic choices in your life. And that shift for me is vital if we're going to flourish and if we're going to live an abundant life.
And anybody who can make that shift from pursuing happiness to following joy, honestly honestly that for me is the great key and that was the work of the happiness project really when you're chasing happiness you tend to become manic busy and hyperactive and in becoming manic busy and hyperactive you end up experiencing what i call destination. And destination addiction is this, it's really this idea that I've got to get to a destination before I can relax, before I can be present, before I can be in the here and now, before I can be even more myself, before I can be happy.
And that's all well and good, except that, and this is why it's an addiction, is that when we get to our destination, and because we're living in a paradigm and paradigms don't change, as soon as we get to a destination, what do we do? We create another destination. And we're off again.
And so it just becomes one destination after another, where we're always hoping to be happy, but we're never really happy. And that's why in the end, we have to do something really, really radical, which is we have to make this shift from chasing happiness to following our joy.
Now, that means connecting with that joy inside us. And sometimes we might be afraid that there isn't any joy inside us.
but I promise you this, if you pay attention to yourself, if you pay attention to your heart,

you will discover this thing called joy. And you will notice when you're following your joy or when you're not.
And all I would say is when you're following your joy, trust it. When you follow your joy, it's not always rational.
It not always rational. And indeed, Carl Jung said that if you're going to follow your vocation, you may well have to follow an irrational factor.
So sometimes it's not always rational, but my goodness, it is always intelligent and it won't let you down. This is so good.
And there's like, there's, we're going to jump around a bit to some of your different body of work. And I'm just thinking about people because there's a lot of people that want to have a career that's really fulfilling for them.
And they're sharing their gifts. But for people that are totally lost from what brings them joy with career, what advice would you give them? Well, there is such a thing as part-time joy.
You know, we don't have to go into 60 hours a week joy straight away. You know, we can start by just getting a feeling for when do you genuinely feel joyful and then commit a bit more time to that.
So we don't have to set up a whole career for ourselves right away. It might be that we have a little bit of part-time joy just to begin.
You know, a small step is better than no step at all. And once you get into the joy thing and you start to maybe, you know, some careers start out as a hobby.
Some careers start out as things that we spend some time on on the weekend or maybe on the evenings when we're not at work. So don't be afraid to make a small start.
What I will say is once you're following your joy, you're normally connected to something bigger than you. And once you're connected to something bigger to you, then following your joy can take off and it can take you in directions that are delightful and surprising.
Also, when you're following your joy, it's interesting who shows up in your life. Because once you're following your joy, there is some sort of, I want to call it divine assistance that kicks in.
The universe loves it when we are living an authentic life. The universe can get behind us when we're being authentic.
And one way to be authentic is to follow your joy. So start small and connect with those moments when you are following your joy and follow that and see where it leads you.
I love that. And I was just looking at animals and nature and kids and it's like we innately are joyful, like we want to play.
And somehow as adults, we've gotten more serious and really bought into the limitations of the mind and fear, lack and separation. And so when I just investigate, I'm like life is naturally joyful without all of that conditioning.
And so I love what you are inviting people to follow that, that next thread. And I also know that people feel like they have to have their career be their purpose, as if like, it's almost like coming from scarcity is like, what can I get from my job versus what can I give? And one's scarcity, one's abundance.
And when we really shift that paradigm coming from wholeness, it's sort of like this formula that supports happiness in all areas of our life. And one of the things that you share is if you're looking for the world to make you happy, you will be disappointed.
And I'm curious if there was a moment in your career or what supported you in coming to this realization so that it helped you really step into more authentic success. Yeah, thank you.
Well, maybe we could go back to destination addiction for a moment, Alyssa. You know, as an ambitious young man, I was always heading into the future as fast as possible.
I was always sacrificing now for the future. I'd heard about living in the now.
I'd read Be Here Now by Ram Dass. I was aware that the great mystics were telling me that living in the now is a good thing to do.
I was all signed up, Alyssa, except that I wasn't going to live in this now. I was going to wait until I had a better now.
The same pattern gets projected in the future. Yeah.
Yeah. I just need a better now.
I need my now to be as interesting as Eckhart Tolle's now. And then I'll go into the now.
I needed to be as spiritual as the Dalai Lama's now or as interesting as Lady Gaga's now or whoever's. I just need a better now and then I'll be there.
And then I'll really do it. But of course, no now was ever enough.
So I was always chasing. And actually, it was really, I I think the work of the happiness project that taught me that really if you are going to live a happy life you have to start with where you are and you have to truly make that shift from being more journey orientated than destination orientated so I would say know, everything that I teach has come from my personal experience.
I didn't set out to be a teacher, I set out to be a student. And I teach what I learn.
That's really what it's about. I teach what I learn, or I teach what I'm learning right now.
Sometimes I'm teaching stuff that I'm growing into, you know, I know it's there for me to do.

And so that's the work.

I would say when it comes to following your joy, for instance, when I think about it now in this conversation with you, I would say, for example, in terms of career moves and also in terms of income. i don't think i've ever started out on the following your joy journey with any sense of this will be a career move or this will make me money.
And yet, whenever I have followed my joy, it's end up becoming part of my work and also a revenue stream and And again, so I would just say, please hear this. Joy is intelligent.
If you follow your joy, you are tuning into an intelligence that knows a thing or two about who you are and what's good for you. The thing is to stick with it.
I love that. Joy is intelligent.
Yeah. Yeah.
And it's like, as we're following our joy, it's like anytime we're searching for something, we move away from the source of it directly in the moment. And so like the more we look for happiness, the further we are away from it.
But the following of that joy I love because you're still connected to the source of it, breaking that conditioning of destination addiction that we're encultured to really follow and really taking our power back. Are you a new or seasoned coach, therapist, or healer ready to step into your next level of competence and share your gifts in the world while having a thriving purpose-filled business? If so, then I'm glad you're here because my ICF accredited coach certification program is designed to help you do just that.
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The other quote that I love of yours, you say happiness doesn't have to be deserved, earned, worked for, paid for. It just simply has to be accepted.
What do you think is hard for people about accepting happiness? All right. Well, the happiness project, I did a number of different lectures over the years.
The most common one was a lecture called How to Be So Happy You Almost Feel Guilty But Not Quite. Yeah.
It was the longest title. Yeah.
and it was the one that everybody showed up for, because there is this sense of, hold on a minute, don't I have to deserve stuff? Don't I have to be good in order to deserve happiness? Well, if happiness was a reward, yeah, maybe. If happiness was an Easter egg hunt, yeah, maybe.
If happiness was an it or a thing that you had to go and find yeah maybe being good would be part of it and maybe needing to deserve it and earn it would all be part of it but let's remember if joy is part of your spiritual DNA if joy is already one of the fruits of your spirit, you don't have to deserve something that's already been given to you. You don't deserve it.
You choose to see it. You choose to know it's there.
And when you connect to that joy, here's another reason why you don't have to deserve it, is because once you connect to joy, you also connect with this extraordinary impulse, which is to share the joy, to share the happiness. One of people's biggest fears of happiness is that it's selfish.
And I can tell you right now, don't worry about that, but not for a minute. The most generous people I know in the world are also the happiest people I know in this world.
When you're happy, you want to share it. Yeah.
Just imagine for a minute, you see this amazing sunset and you're just filled with joy. You know, in that moment, I promise you, you're not thinking, oh my God, I hope nobody else can see this sunset.
You know, it's like, you're not thinking like that. You're not thinking, why did I deserve the sunset? You're thinking, oh my God, who can I call? Who can I speak to? Who can I share this sunset with? Happiness and joy, they are intelligent, but they're also moral.
They're good for us and they're good for everybody else because when you're truly, truly feeling that happiness, you're also feeling that wholeness that you mentioned. And when you're that wholeness the in you the desire is to share it so we've we've messed with ourselves over the years Alyssa it's a great shame that we've done this but we have told ourselves we need to deserve the happiness it goes back a long way it goes all the way back as far as I can tell from my research to the moment we forgot about the original blessing.
The original blessing is something that the wonderful Matthew Fox talks about. Matthew Fox is one of my mentors.
He wrote a book on the original blessing. The original blessing is the remembrance that each and every one of us was created beautifully, that we were created whole, and that we are blessed.
It's what we are. We arrive in the world as a blessing.
We forget about the original blessing, and then we experience something that's sometimes called the original sin. The word sin here means the mistake.
Well, what's the mistake? The mistake is we forgot we were blessed. And when we remember we're blessed, then you realize you don't have to deserve joy.
You just have to tune into it. And once you're tuning into it, then you're on your path and then you're sharing your love with people.
You're sharing your presence with people. You're sharing your wisdom with people and you don't need to feel guilty about that.
That's a good thing. It's beautiful.
I love that you wove in the original blessing because I think there's a lot of religious upbringings that people feel like they're broken and something's wrong with them and they need to pay penance and do something different. And that's a lot of where the deserving comes from.
I have a hard time with that word deserving because as soon as you can deserve it, then there's another time where you don't deserve it and we're tying our self-worth with our achievements or behaviors and it's just not true. And so I love that you speak to this and then help people really wake up to their wholeness and share about the original blessing.
It's so beautiful. It balances so much of the confusion in my experience.
Yeah. yeah yeah and and for people because i want to go deeper into this because i think that some of the deepest work is around identity is around work and for people because some people can hear it i think the first step is hearing it conceptually and then starting to feel it in the heart and then living it in the gut like it's just like integration integration that deepens.
Lovely. For people that want to live into this a little bit more, and I know one of your quotes is, if you think something is missing in your life, it's probably you.
And I know you mean the real you. And talk to us about this and talk to us about how we can not just know it conceptually, but really start embodying and living the truth of who and what we are.
Okay. So yeah, if you think something is missing in your life, perhaps it's more of the real you.
It's a big thing to say, isn't it? And I would say to everybody, just like you've invited us to do right now, Alyssa, don't just hear those words with your ears. You've got to see if you can take that into your heart for a moment and also into your nervous system.
Bring that into yourself and see, well, how does that fit for me? You know, is there a grain of truth in here perhaps? These sorts of teachings that you're offering from me, you know, they come from my observation of myself, you know, and I just noticed that when I'm really being me. Yeah, I I know I'm coming from a place of wholeness when I think I have to be something else or when I forget to be me, that's when I start chasing, wanting, searching, hoping, you know, trying to acquire something.
I become acquisitive. I become transactional.
I do a meditation and I hope to get something from the meditation. You know, I say a prayer and I want something from the prayer.
I go on a workshop because I want something from it. And I'm basically, it's like I've gone shopping and I'm acquisitive now.
I'm trying to grab something. What is it I'm trying to grab? I think what I'm trying to grab is a connection with myself again.
Really. It's like, these are the fruits of our spirit, really, that we're looking for.
We hope to find them in costco and other places and i love costco by the way but you know i i have to say i think you have to do a lot of inner work before you go to costco i am just going to say that for a minute when i first went to costco elisa i tell you i was not prepared for costco all of the spiritual work i'd done up to that point had not prepared me for Costco. Costco was an extraordinary experience.
And remember, I'm coming from England to America, and America's already a big place, but Costco's even bigger. Extra large.
And it's like its own continent, really. And I just remember like, oh, my God, there's so many things that I need in here.
I actually bought a suitcase from Costco to put the things that I bought from Costco into it to be able to take it home. Anyway, it's a long story.
We should do a whole thing on how to manage Costco. I love Costco.
Please hear how much I love it. But you must do your inner work before you visit Costco, otherwise it's going to be expensive.
The great thing is I notice is when I'm in touch with that, with my heart, let's just talk about that. You're making a deliberate connection to connect with your heart each day.
Immediately, I'm not as acquisitive as I was. You know, But in that moment, when you're with your heart each day immediately I'm not as acquisitive as I was you know in that moment when you're with your true nature you you I think you shift from wanting to being doesn't mean that you don't want anything anymore but it's just that you start with being and when you're in that sense of being you're also more present and when you're more present you're giving now more of a more present, you're giving now more of a chance.
And if you're giving now more of a chance, you suddenly begin to think, wait a minute, those mystics, maybe they were onto something. Maybe this wasn't just poetry.
Maybe this wasn't just sweet talk. Maybe when I allow myself a bit more experience of my being and a bit more of now, I don't need to be so acquisitive as I was before.
So there is an attunement to a sense of an inherent fullness in us that we overlook when we go out into the world. Normally, of course, you know, we can't, it's hard to do this on our own.
That's why we listen to podcasts. That's why we take the coaching programs that

you're offering, for example, and the masterminds that I offer and everything, is so that we can begin to tune back into some inherent fullness within us already. But to be able to take some time, for instance, with a simple journaling exercise where you set up a conscious dialogue with your own heart and you begin to dialogue with your heart just a little bit more about how you're feeling, what you're noticing, what brings you joy, that sort of thing.
Honestly, that's going to save you so much time in the future because you're going to be more in the present and living more from that place today. Yeah.
And I love that invitation from head to heart. So most of us are overdeveloped in our mind and really sinking back down into the heart.
Not only when we follow our joy, like that could just be a practice in and of itself. And I hear you say journal from your heart, connect with your heart every day.
But then also when you're following your joy, I know I just did an event and I love being in person with people. I love live events and everything else when I got back to work and I was on Slack was a lot easier to navigate because I was more in my heart, more connected to wholeness, more awake to the magic and felt nourished by that.
I think it's also why I love Bali so much as a culture. There's a lot of things that Bali represents, specifically Ubud, that I value and love, which is presence.
But even the gesture of putting your hand on your heart as a greeting to say thank you helps me take my awareness from head to heart. So it drops me down just by interacting as a culture.
So there's different things that we can do to add to our daily life to go from head to heart. But I know what you're speaking of is not just a feeling of love.
It's the foundation, the fabric of life itself, which is loving. And that transcends any person that it's projected onto or any form.
It's the formless. And so I love if you think something is missing from your life, it's probably you, the real you.
So we could, yeah. So, and if we were to make that even more granular and more specific, it could be, for example, you're at work and you're in a really boring meeting yeah like one of those really boring meetings where you're bone tired and you you think you've entered into a vortex where this meeting will never ever end and in that moment you could think for for a moment wait a minute what's missing here And maybe it's more of the real you, more of you speaking up, more of you making the meeting interesting.
Maybe the reason why the energy is so flat is because this is your invitation to energize that meeting with something, let's say, a bit more honest than what's going on right now, for or you know take any relationship with a friend a partner a child often the thing that we think we're not getting is often also the thing we're not giving not saying that's true every time but i'm saying check it out you know sometimes you'll notice that your complaint about X is actually a reference more to what you're not giving or most importantly, what you're not being. So it can work like that as well.
So it's just a more granular experience of it. But again, I would say when I'm writing'm writing sometimes as a writer when the writing's not

flowing i'll ask myself okay how can i be even more authentic in this moment

yeah and then i'm putting a bit more of my true self into the writing and then often from that

moment it might flow normally what i catch there elissa is is that the writing's not flowing because i'm trying to get it right and that will block my flow because i'm trying to get it right

you moment it might flow normally what i catch there elisa is is that the writing's not flowing because i'm trying to get it right and that will block my flow because i'm trying to get it right as opposed to saying something true and if i'm saying something true ah now it's happening if i'm in a coaching session sometimes the energy in the coaching session is a bit flat we're doing okay but it's not a transformative moment That'll be when I'll say an internal prayer and I'll say just like, okay, Spirit, come on, let's go for it. What would need to happen here for a miracle to happen? And normally Spirit doesn't say, well, they need to get their act together.
Spirit will say, well, Robert, how about you? How about you take a moment here and go with this question or this exercise or this idea.

So it's to your point. Absolutely.
We're not we're not saying more personality so much as more of our essence, bringing more of our essence into the moment.

That's how we do this. I've been working with somebody recently who's got this new website up about their work.

They're a coach. The website looks absolutely terrific terrific except that their face isn't on the website nothing about them on the website you know and it's like they are leading with the principles of the work which is fantastic but i believe as well in this age we are being asked all of us to show up more and more.
So the dare sometimes is to step forward. Sometimes people send me their 100 word bio, and I'll look at the bio and I'll say, right, how could you add a little bit more of you into the bio now? A bit more of the real you, not the you in disguise, not the you that might be acceptable to the world necessarily, but the you that's not so normal, the you that's the real you.
See if you can put a bit more of that into it. That's what we need more and more of now, I think.
It's just the world needs people who are willing to share their presence with each other. We need to be more and more present.
Yeah. And I love what you're saying about, it comes from scarcity and abundance.
It's not, what can I get from this meeting? It's like, what can I give? And that, even the criticism or the feedback that you're hearing in your head, there's wisdom inside of it. If you hear the nugget and then it becomes your job, you know, rather I have a lot of people that leave corporate and then they're, and because, and then they like, well, maybe that's as you heal whatever you were meant to learn from that experience, maybe part of the work that you go back to do is help shift the organizational structure, right? So true.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Here's another one, Alyssa, that I often find very much along those lines. I'll have somebody come to me and they'll say, look, I'm in a situation where I'm deciding, should I leave or stay? So that's a very common situation.

and context depending but most times i will say start by staying and show up more because if you stay and show up more very very quickly either a door's going to open whether you thought there wasn't a door or you'll be shown another door which is get out of here but either way you know if you have shown up even let's call it a magical or 10% more, and you've just shown up more in the situation you're already in, that situation will show you whether you are meant to stay there or not. But the fact that you have shown up more in the space that you're already in bodes well for if you're going to stay there or even if you have to leave because you're now already on a track of being more of who you are.
And when you're being more of who you are, I do believe you will feel more and more that there's less and less missing from your life. You know, you're living a more full life.
And what I love about this, the principles that you're sharing and that we're talking about is that they can be applied to love or work or any area. So I say a very similar thing, assuming there's no abuse, like stay so that you can heal whatever dynamic that you were looking to heal in that partnership.
And then as you do that work, you completely shift. One person changes the dance

and the dance changes. You may find that they elevate and grow with you, or they shift because

they were a reflection of you, or like you're saying, it's very obvious to move on. Or if people

are looking for a new career, they're looking for their purpose, right? What can I get versus

how do I bring my values in the career I have right now? And either I enjoy that in the short

term while I find something that's more aligned, or I find out that I really do like this career

I don't know. versus how do I bring my values in the career I have right now? And either I enjoy that in the short term while I find something that's more aligned, or I find out that I really do like

this career. It was just, what was missing was, like you're saying, bringing more of me into it,

more of my values into it. It's beautiful.
Yeah. So well said.
Beautiful. Yeah.
Love that.

One of my favorites. And I just love this so much.
I want people to hear it in the back,

all over the round. This is such a powerful quote.
You say, no amount of self-improvement

Thank you. favorites.
And I just love this so much. I want people to hear it in the back all over the round.
Like this is such a powerful quote. You say, no amount of self-improvement can make up for a lack of self-acceptance.
No amount of self-improvement can make up for a lack of self-acceptance. So good.
And I know a lot of people even get into healing work or coaching work from this misunderstanding that they're broken, that they need fixing. And when they're coming from this place of lack, not only is it not true and limiting, but there's no amount of achieving or fixing that will ever resolve it, right? It's an inner perceptual problem.
It's a perspective. And so really part of the work that I know that we both align with is starting from wholeness.
Like in my certification program, we start with wholeness and then we go into goal setting because otherwise that lack perception just gets transferred from one thing to another. And I know that this is the heart and the depth of work that you do as well.
Talk to us about this quote, no amount of self-improvement can make up for a lack of self-acceptance. Yeah, so to want to improve your life is a great thing.
And we're all of us, I think, interested in that and called to do that because I think we understand we're on a journey of growth and evolution. And so therefore wanting to improve our life.
Yeah, we're all up for that. Wanting to improve your skills in something.
Absolutely big tick for that too. When it comes to improving yourself, hopefully you can see that actually what's happening here is we're starting from a judging place rather than a loving place.

Self-improvement, here's how it was for me. I was so into self-improvement.
Oh, my goodness. Self-improvement backed with a lot of work ethic.
So I worked on myself properly. um and i attended so many seminars and i and I listened to so many lectures and I did so many meditations and I went for it and I went for it and I went for it.
And what I realized eventually was that no matter how much I tried to improve myself, I was always left with the feeling that there was something more to improve. So it was never complete.
It was never finished. And I remember feeling this is completely unfair.
This path is totally unfair. I'm working so hard.
I deserve something more. So I'm into my deserving, and I'm still left with this feeling of self-improvement I got a glimpse somewhere along the line that this self-improvement was coming from a sense of judging and eventually it occurred to me one day in a meditation I had tried everything except self-acceptance so all of my self-improvement was apparently the payoff for it was going to be that I'd accept myself.
But actually, when I really took a look at it, I realized the one thing I haven't tried yet is self-acceptance in the present moment. What would it be like if I just accepted that this is me and this is this is how I am now I want you to know one of the first things that I noticed was how much my nervous system relaxed something softened inside something inside me relaxed and I really liked the feeling of that I also felt that I could connect to my heart more more.
It was like that gesture of a hand on the heart. It was as if that happened in that moment.
And I hadn't put my physical hand on my heart, but it was a feeling of, wait a minute, self-acceptance. What do you think? Could I give it a try? What would that be like? What I noticed, and I now call it the miracle of self-acceptance, is that the miracle of self-acceptance is that when you stop trying to improve yourself, your life improves.
Actually, everything gets a bit better. The self-acceptance starts, there's two levels to it, I think.
One is that we, here's a great question. This is level one, self-acceptance.
What's it like to be you when you're not judging yourself? That's the inquiry. What's it like to be you when you're not judging yourself? Now, I would just say, please give that five minutes journaling time.
Give that five minutes of your attention and begin to get a feeling for this is what it's like to be me when i'm not judging myself and i promise you if you follow that through you'll begin to see that you don't have to be perfect to be amazing. Okay, that's level one.
Level two, when we stop trying to improve ourselves, and we just practice self acceptance, there's a great surprise that comes to us. And the great surprise is that we're already whole.
We're already okay. I don't have to make myself perfect.
I was already perfectly made. I just forgot.
I just didn't see it. And this is the great surprise.
And I tell you, you know, my prayer is that for everybody that what you're hearing isn't just words, it's a reality for you, or it's an experience you've had in your life. But the remarkable thing is when we stop judging ourselves, when we stop trying to improve ourselves, we do connect with the place in us where we realize that we are well-made.
You know, there's that modern saying, God doesn't make junk. It's like the design is good.
the design is whole and the design is is beautiful actually one of my favorite um prayers is by the benedictine monk macrina wedeker and her prayer is oh god show me the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is just be willing to see who you are when you're not judging yourself. And it might be a bit blurry to begin with, but I promise you, if you really look without judgment, you will discover the wholeness is there.
The beauty is there. The love is there.
That's the great surprise. It's a big dare.
It's a big dare to give up self-improvement because it sounds like everything's going to go wrong if you give up self-improvement. It sounds like you're giving up on the race, but there is a miracle here on offer for all of us.
And self-acceptance is a risk worth taking. That's all I'll say.
It's a risk worth taking. Yeah.
And it ties back to the original blessing, right?

It does.

Rather than thinking that there's something wrong with me.

And I know for one thing that I was having a hard time accepting within myself was the

part of me that wanted to be accepted by others.

And so I used to judge that part of me.

I used to try to heal that part of me away.

And the only thing that ever actually worked was realizing that it was a part of me, not the truth of me. And that by embracing it, it got what it was looking for from others directly inside of me and it softens.
Like you said, the body knows it softens. and so just being like oh there's the part of me that wants to be seen okay sweetheart just

really embracing that just softened it that and and I call it essence embracing ego. So I'm not identified with that part, just like welcoming it.
And so, and then from there, we still can create from, you know, wholeness. I, I, for, for me, and I think you as well, like I love being a student.
I love learning. I love growing.
I love evolving, but it's not coming from then I, something's wrong with me and I need to fix. It's now coming from a love and I never want the journey of coaching and my craft and skills to ever end.
And so I also want to give people a reference point that that's possible to get to that point or, or working out. It's not so that I lose weight and then I feel like I'm deserving or I'm whole or worthy.
It's like, it's a game. It's, it's what can, what can I create or what can I, you know, what's my edge around this, but not who I am.
And Alyssa, you're taking us, I think, into fabulous territory here because with the invitation to accept ourselves, there's a, there is this opportunity to truly transform the way we go about our own growth. And I would say that I think, you know, initially, a lot of the times when we go into personal growth, we're thinking about what we can change and what we can heal and what we can let go of.
None of that is self-acceptance. Interestingly, it's when we're willing to accept some of those feelings, just like you've described, you begin to get, there's where you get your breakthrough.
So one of mine, for example, was the feeling of not being good enough. That feeling of not being good enough, do you know, no matter what I did to pay off the ransom, no matter what I did to be able to lose it, you know, like take a quick right and hope it would keep going straight.
And, you know, I'd lose that thought of, you know, not good enough. No matter how hard I worked on it, that it just kept popping up.
I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough.
So I tried to heal it. I tried to change it.
I tried to fix it. I tried to let it go.
Nothing worked. Eventually one day, again, I stopped all of that.
And I just said, all right, you and me together, we're obviously on this journey together. And I remember I apologized to the feeling.
I actually said, you know, I just want you to know I'm going to do this differently because I've only ever tried to get rid of you. And so I'm going to apologize to you.
And then I'm just going to let you tell me what it is you really want me to know. Then a miracle happened, Alyssa.
And the miracle was this. The voice that told me I'm not good enough, when I really listened to it all the way through, was saying to me, I'm not good enough to do this on my own.
Now that I can work with. I'm not good enough.
I couldn't, I didn't know how to work with that. But once I really listened to that voice and heard the whole sentence, I'm not good enough to do this on my own.
It was like, oh my God, you've been telling the truth the whole time. Here was a feeling that I was trying to heal and let go of.
And yet this feeling was telling the truth the whole time. Once I got with that and we were now in relationship a healthy relationship it's like I made a promise that please speak up anytime you think I'm trying to do something on my own so stay with me be with me let's take this journey together and anytime you think I'm trying too hard to do something by myself giving a talk doing a coaching session coaching session, writing, whatever.
It's like you tell me. And I will promise to use your nudge as my invitation to connect with spirit more, to be open to help more, and to be guided in the moment.
All of that, Alyssa, came really from the self-acceptance journey. I love that.
I love that you stopped to listen and find the wisdom within it. And now it's moving forward from wholeness, saying yes to all of you, which is integrated, which is sustainable, which there's wisdom in all of it if we listen.
So I love that story really highlights that. And it brings me to this quote that you have that I wanted you to speak to, which is independence is not a strength.

It's a wound.

Independence is, is inspired not by love, but fear and not by wholeness, but aloneness.

Talk to us more about this.

This is big stuff, isn't it?

Yeah.

I should have, I should have known Alyssa. Any conversation with you is like really, really super like this.
So independence. Independence isn't good or bad.
It's simply how we use it that matters. We will be able to look at moments in our life where a good dose of independence saved us, properly saved us.
It gave us the courage to go our own way. It gave us the courage to get out of a certain situation.
It gave us the courage to listen to our own voice. You know, a bit of independence is a good thing.
And there are times in IF where we really need to know how to be independent. Abraham Maslow really sometimes described as the father of self-actualization.
He said, be independent of the good opinion of other people. So in other words, know your own mind and be aware of that and follow that.
So that's healthy independence. Unhealthy independence is where we've created a rule for ourselves that we're going to do everything by ourselves.
Unhealthy independence is where we set up a contract where we say that we're not going to ask for help and that help asking for help is a sign of weakness that asking for help is blasphemous the asking for help is is losing in the game or whatever else it is normally when you really begin to look at a rule you notice that a rule is a defense and the defense is normally protecting us against an old wound did you say a rule a rule is a defense yeah the rule is a way of defending ourselves it's um it becomes a defense and it's normally against a defense against the pain feeling the pain of an old wound yeah um we don't really need many rules when we when we're living in the present that's for sure but also truly when we're coming from our wholeness you know the only rule probably is be true to yourself you don't you know you don't need rules like don't ask for help my way or the highway. I mean, you don't need that sort of thing.

So normally, the secret of very independent people is they're carrying an old wound that they have yet to make friends with. Yeah.
That's normally in my experience what's going on. and and it's and that independence by the way is very wise up to a point because that independence allows you to function in the world it allows you to begin to make that better future for yourself as you recover from a wound but if you're going to recover fully from the wound there will be a moment in time where you are going to be asked to be less independent than you already are.
And you're going to be asked to be more open, receptive and available to help, to love, to wisdom, as much as anything to inspiration, to inspiration, to grace. So independence takes a bit of work.
it's good for us to see that it it's not bad or it's not good but it's more that there's

we're either healthy with it or unhealthy with it, is the way I would put it. We are, all of us, I think, raised to a certain point to be independent.
So again, you know, there's something good going on here, but at the same time, you could say there's such a thing as too much of a good thing and you will what i say to people um particularly in in the success intelligence mastermind which is an opportunity for us to come together and work more as it in in partnership than on our own i often say that the next level of success normally requires another level of partnership. So you'll hit a point where you just realize partnership is the next thing.
Now, partnership is finding a good coach, having a mentor, you know, talking to a friend. It can be all of that.
Or it could be working with a fellow teacher and saying, let's let's collaborate let's try something together that's the next level of success on on a spiritual level it might be collaborating more with your true self you know your soulful self more with the divine bringing that in but you will find that um often that next level of success requires another level of partnership. And that means being willing to give up the independence.
Yeah. And as you're talking, I just am hearing childhood.
So some of our conditioning and the ways that we were raised can have us harden or protect. And I love that you acknowledge the brilliance and the wisdom inside of being independent and self-reliant, but then also when it goes too far where it's hyper self-reliant out of a wound to really be with those parts of us that need the softening, need the trust so that we can partner with and feel more organic and natural.
And I think that's a great- It's a really big deal, this one. And do you know, it's...
I think I really looked at this really closely with a project called Lovability. And I would be working with people who would say, look, I've been looking for love.
And they hadn't been looking for love for two weeks. You know, it was like it was a year, two years, 10 years.
And I began to notice after a while that, you know, if you're looking for something and you haven't found it, the chances are it's that you're afraid to find it. Now, I'm not saying that's true every time, but I'm just saying it's something to check.
And sometimes why are we afraid to find it? Well, it's because we've been hurt in the past. And I would just notice that I was talking with a lot of very independent people who were looking for love.
and that's when we learn to address independence as being a defense against

feeling the pain of an old wound. So that's where that all I think really came from.
And again, by the way, this was an observation I didn't just find in someone else. I could connect with that.
I noticed that feeling too for me. Yeah.
I love that your work is really an expression of your own inquiry, your own self-exploration. Yeah.
I don't have to go too far for my research. Yeah.
I love that your work is really an expression of your own inquiry, your own self-exploration. Yeah.
I don't have to go too far for my research. I mean, that's the best way to do this work.
We enhance our own lives and we share the fruits of the labor with others. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think just being gentle and compassionate when we see these defenses that are just innocently trying to protect us.
You know, one question you can ask yourself is, what do I fear would happen if I got the thing I want, if I got love, if I made the money, you know, and just then listen inside and you will start hearing some subconscious programming that has been this push pull. I want it, but I'm scared of it.
And it's innocent, but once we see it, then we can shift it. Yeah.
Beautifully said. And you say that you can only be held back by your past if you use it to reject yourself in the present.
And so the past doesn't have any hold over us unless we believe it in the moment. So it's like reminding you of your power.
And one of the things, Robert, I mean, I love you so much and we've been connected for years. And one of the things I respect most about your work and you is that you really see success as a spiritual path.
For me, some of my work unfolds in work. Right now it's around team dynamics more than anything's my stuff doesn't really come up in relationship anymore i've kind of cleaned house around that so we have to project it somewhere and i love that you don't see them as separate unpack just so we can have some of your how you hold success spirituality as or success as a spiritual practice,

so that we can kind of get a taste of that.

Oh, great. Okay.
So, well, this is nice as well, because in a way, this inquiry was also

what led me to you and how I got to meet you. So the short story is, is I'm in my mid-30s, and i'm running along in life and on the whole everything's looking

you Um, so I'm, I'm, um, the short story is, is I'm in my mid thirties and I'm running along in life and on the whole, everything's looking pretty good. Things are going well.
And I develop, um, a little ache in my lower back. And, um, I tell myself, Oh, I'll look at it in a bit.
I'll go to the doctor soon, but not yet. I keep going.
And, um, the pain turns into a bit of a like a sting like a bee sting i still ignore it i tell myself i will look at it but not yet and then one day at the end of a lecture um it was a corporate thing leadership thing i bent down to pick my notes up and i couldn't stand back up again and my back had completely gone turned out I had um a prolapse disc two prolapse discs so I was stopped I couldn't couldn't chase the future anymore my my the destination whichever one it was at that time I couldn't I you know I was I was stopped absolutely stopped now I've since learned that stopping is a great spiritual practice but at the time I was stopped, absolutely stopped. Now, I've since learned that stopping is a great spiritual

practice. But at the time, I was hugely frustrated.
And for six months, I had to have a walking stick and I had to live in slow time. And during that time, I really began to address my relationship to success.
And I started to think about, well, what is success really? And it was around this time that I came up with the idea of success intelligence. I needed to apply more wisdom to my thinking about what success is.
I realized that my definition of success wasn't good for me. It was unhealthy.
It was toxic. And there was always this delayed reward involved in the whole thing.
I was never really successful now. I was hoping to be successful one day.
So I promised myself that I was going to look at this. And I did.
And I got a do that and soon after that experience by the way I had a chance to have surgery or to heal slowly and I decided to take the slow path which took a lot of courage but I did do that because I listened to that in a voice that said take the slow road here. But afterwards, I set up something called Success Intelligence.
And Success Intelligence was a really a boutique consultancy. I wasn't trying to be big.
I was actually just wanted to do something quietly, small steps. And just to put it out there that I was offering talks on success.

And really, the whole work of Success Intelligence started with this idea that your definition of success influences every other decision in your life. So what's your definition of success? now when I started to talk to people about this I realized that a lot of

people weren't working hard to be successful but they hadn't worked out

what success is yet. And so for that reason, we started to explore success.
Now, something I bumped into early on, Alyssa, was this sense that success isn't spiritual. So you shouldn't even try to be successful.
In fact, you should give up success and become more spiritual. But I thought to myself, wait a minute, in this lifetime, I don't want my spirituality to be this transcending spirituality.
I don't want my spirituality to be the thing where I live on a mountaintop or I retreat from the world and I live in the woods. I want to visit a mountaintop and I want to go on retreat in the woods, but I actually want to live in the mainstream.
I want to live in the world. I want to be here.
I want a spirituality that's not afraid of the news headlines. I want a spirituality that can support me in a career.
I want my spirituality to help me in my relationships, not put a bubble around me so that I don't have to do any of that. That was where I wanted to go.
And with success intelligence, I was trying, I was seeing how can we spiritualize success? How can we infuse success with so much love, so much joy that our success becomes our gift to others? That's what I was trying to do with success intelligence. And from there, I wrote a book called Authentic Success.
Somebody called Mary Holnick picked it up. Mary and Ron Holnick, the two directors of the University of santa monica um running of course this

extraordinary program on spiritual psychology and i think one of my rewards for taking that inquiry one of my rewards for writing that book was that mary did pick up the book and she showed me her copy of it is all complete every line was underlined with a you know with a marker pen it It was lovely.

But I began to meet kindred souls like Mary and very much like you, Alyssa, as well, where it was like, wait, come on, let's get, let's get involved in the world. Let's bring our spirituality into the world and let's see if we can, I say, spiritualize our purpose, spiritualize our success.
That's how all that happened. I love it.
That's how we're talking to each other now. Yeah.
And that's such a, I'm such a stand for that. I think I've done the monk thing before and this life is about discovering the divine in all of it and integrating.
And I love that you said, it's not afraid of the news headlines. It's like, it's here and now in all form and beyond.
So I'm so grateful for the work that you said. It's not afraid of the news headlines.
It's like it's here and now in all

form and beyond. So I'm so grateful for the work that you do and for the deepening that you take people through, through your projects, through your books.
And I'm just going to leave it at this quote, which I love because I think it's a powerful one. You say, one new perception, one fresh thought, one act of surrender, one change of heart, one leap of faith can change your life forever.
It's in, it's now it's this moment and you are just such a breath of fresh air. And I just, I love you so much.
You live in the embodiment of love. And I know my audience is going to want to stay connected.
Talk to us about what you're up to, where and how they can stay connected. Well, thank you.
I have a newsletter. That's a very good way to begin.
I write it once a week. So you can sign up there, robertholden.com.
And the offerings, you know, come thick and fast through there um the success intelligence mastermind in particular i do just want to say alissa you know i owe you a great thanks because you coached me and encouraged me to offer that mastermind all those years ago we are now entering into our ninth year with the success intelligence mastermind so that's amazing and it's you know it's so rich i only run it once a year um because it's so rich i mean i i love it but um that program i think is maybe something that uh people would maybe be interested in because that's that's the journey where we get to talk about all the things we talked about now and put that into practice. So I think that's a good place to start as much as anywhere.
Yeah. And we'll put all the links in the show notes.
You have courses and books as well. People can dive in because there's just so much wisdom that you've dedicated your life to sharing.
So I just want to say thank you because my life has been uplifted and inspired by your loving leadership and paving the way. And I'm so grateful to be able to share you with my audience.
Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world starting with yourself. It truly does make a difference.
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