Lighthouse. It is, yeah.
It's pen drawing.
That's awesome. I'm a big fan.
The symbolism of lighthouses, that's kind of my goal as a leader
is to be a lighthouse for others.
Yeah, I like that, too.
Definitely.
So as we get ready to talk about the hidden relationship between peace,
happiness and of all things, suffering,
right, and drawing certain perspectives for people,
what three resources, books come to mind
to help entrepreneurs or visionary leaders
move their visions forward?
So I'm going to take a unique approach to this question
in that there's a singular person over the years
who has been of significant influence to me in doing this work.
And so I'm going to give a shout out to him.
His name is Rupert Spiral.
And he is a speaker of all things very similar to me.
His focus is on something called non-duality,
which is a perspective of the world, reality, ourselves
that focuses on the relationships
and kind of the correlations between the distinctions that we see.
And so I think it gives a really beautiful way
of exploring kind of the big picture of things
in a very practical way.
And so I would suggest anyone, anyone that qualifies themselves
as a visionary or a business leader or someone that is unhappy
or looking for happiness to explore what he has to say.
Because a lot of what I have to say is certainly inspired by him
and other people, but I think he does a really great job
of clearly, concisely, practically talking about these things.
Yeah, exactly.
So he's got several books out,
does a lot of in-person stuff
and thousands of hours of video content on YouTube.
And I constantly refer back to that myself.
That's awesome.
You have two others you want to share?
I really don't.
It like, it came down to him.
It was what he said resonated and it was as simple as that.
I love that. I'm totally cool with that.
You'll notice anybody who's watching on the screen
that I opted into Rupert's email,
or rather newsletter sequence.
That is one of my great secrets to success
is when somebody provides me with a resource,
especially one that matters to them,
I often, I go and study that, I put that on my list.
And what happens is, yes, I end up with,
by this point, several thousand newsletters and funnels
that are there, but all of those get filtered as well
to a specific folder.
And then when I do have some time, I can go in and look at them.
Or when I have a team member who needs something specific,
I can remember it. I don't just do it just to do it.
I do it because of a lot of beneficial reasons.
But having access to the sources and knowing who to go back to
and knowing as well, do multiple mentors of mine
mention these individuals, that can be a big thing.
Or the quality of the mentor can also have an effect on that.
So I highly recommend for anybody who's listening in
to consider taking that approach of harboring these resources
just like you would any type of favorite song library
or favorite video library.
That's an awesome opportunity to expand the depth of your wisdom.
So before we dive into your vision and all things about
peace, happiness and suffering as well, we'll take a quick break
and then we'll jump right in.
We'll be back, everybody.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome in to another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
Today, I've got Jarrett Button on the show with me today.
Philosopher, maybe, you know, deep thinker.
Absolutely. Somebody whose demeanor really caught my attention.
And I was like, man, if the world needs more of something,
I think it's this guy.
So I'm excited to interview him, talk to him about peace, happiness
and suffering as well and the connection between the three
and how they ultimately may foster greater happiness together.
So we'll be talking about that from different angles,
both our perspectives.
And in addition to that, I always want to give you some resources
that are super helpful in the case of the sponsorships.
One of them is a paid client.
One of them is not.
Both are equally super valuable to me.
So the first one is Melissa Gray from the Law Spot.
Melissa Gray came on our show,
and I had some trepidation about putting a lawyer on our show.
You know, I know that most lawyers I've met are kind of condescending.
They're rude.
They don't have a lot of time for people.
They don't listen unless they're paid a lot of money.
That's not the case with Melissa.
Melissa believes that law doesn't have to be complicated
and she's here to help protect businesses.
And I know how important it is as a business owner
to be a wise steward of my brand
and anybody else who is thinking about that.
One of the challenges I've seen in most business owners
is they don't do a lot of research
before choosing their legal counsel,
if they even ever choose somebody to be their legal counsel.
And at Restaurant Connect, we suffered from that.
We had a trademark lawsuit.
It cost us $20,000.
We also experienced Apple patenting our software,
and we were kind of victims of the circumstance
by our own lack of diligence in preparing for those scenarios.
So I would recommend that you interview Melissa
in addition to whoever else you might be considering
for your options out there.
And just know that she's got a very strong vote of confidence from me,
whatever that's worth to you.
And then there's Andrew Sosin of Recovery Unplugged.
Recovery Unplugged is an organization that helps with addiction recovery.
And while they focus primarily on helping people
who have what might be considered a severe addiction of drugs and alcohol,
I would say that some of the also equally scary addictions out there
are the ones that rob you of your life very slowly over time.
That could come in the form of apps
that you spend hours on and on for years.
That could come in the form of Netflix
and the form of binge watching YouTube.
There's lots of things that can rob us of living our life
and being present and where we're at
because we're trying to escape some type of emotion.
Now, maybe you're like, man, this doesn't apply to me.
Who in your family might it apply to?
The cool thing about Recovery Unplugged is they've got a 24-7 hotline
where they can also coach you on how to help somebody through this process
and how to get somebody interacting with them
while COVID hurt a lot of businesses.
I think in terms of helping programs like this, rather helping,
I think it did impact in a positive way programs like this
where Andrew had five physical locations but no online support.
They then shifted to an online program.
They have over 400 employees
and they're now able to provide these services virtually
and they incorporate music and what they do too.
And as a musician myself, I'm a big fan of that direction, what they're up to.
I also happen to be a big fan of Tony Robbins
and Andrew's been to that conference 22 years in a row,
which tells me that they probably learned a few things
about that particular methodologies of coaching and moving life forward.
So if you're in line with that and you're in need of a recovery expert,
then I highly recommend checking this program out
and seeing what it's all about.
Couldn't hurt, just give them a call and see.
Then there's the Water Project.
The Water Project is something that, you know,
I always struggle to figure out how I'm going to introduce this,
but the simplicity, the simple reality is I've never had to struggle for water ever.
And there's millions of people out there who do
and I don't ever want to forget that.
So I hope you don't either.
I hope that we can come together and do something to help the Water Project.
If that means giving back to this, that's fantastic.
If you're in a financial position to give five to ten dollars,
the really cool thing about the Water Project is they show you
the outcome of the effort that you support.
So you actually get to choose the community
and you get to see how many people in the community
are going to be affected by your donation.
Once it gets funded, then they do before and after pictures.
You get to hear about the story.
They might build a sand dam. They might build a borehole well.
They might build something else, but they educate you about the process.
And again, you get to see the outcome of the result of having contributed to that community.
And I think that's just amazing.
And I hope that you take the time to ponder and meditate on the generational impact
that it has to provide a source of water to an entire tribe, nation, or city of people,
whatever you want to call it, town. You can use that word too.
If you're not in a position to give back financially,
my request is that you simply share this message with people who maybe are.
And when I say maybe are, try not to judge.
Just share it and allow people to make their own decisions
about whether they want to help or not.
And my other request would be if this isn't the cause that moves you,
share with us the cause that does because we will take a look at that.
And we will take interest in it. We might even put it on the show here.
And again, we never know the ripple effect of our positive or negative actions.
In this case, I would deem this a positive action,
giving back to those who may not be as fortunate as all of us
who get to either rock the mic or listen to a podcast episode.
So without further ado, I'm going to bring Jared Button on.
We're going to be talking about his philosophies,
where they come from, his vision, and we'll go from there.
Jared, thank you for being my guest on Vision Pros Live.
Thank you for having me.
Absolutely. So the Button Coaching and Consulting Firm,
real quick before we dive in, I'd love for you to define for us,
what type of coaching and consulting do you do?
And yeah, let's just start with that for now.
So the focus is really on personal and professional development.
That's kind of the elevator pitch, I guess, if you will.
But it's much more simple than that.
And I don't know if we got into this last time we spoke, Jackson,
but I love asking people the question of what do you want most in life?
So personally for yourself, what do you want most?
And if you can answer that question for me, Jackson,
that would help me to then kind of frame the kind of coaching work,
consulting work that I do.
That's awesome. Did you want me to answer that now?
Yeah, go for it.
Oh, very cool. What do I want most?
Probably time to think about that question.
I'm going to be doing my walk tonight.
As I'm walking, I'm going to think through that thoroughly.
There's no wrong answers here, just what comes to mind.
Oh, yeah. I know.
I think that what I want most is to belong,
you know, and to belong in my God's hands,
you know, to know that I'm secure and safe in that reality
and to learn to just trust in His will, not mine.
I love that. That's beautiful.
That's what I do.
But anytime I get outside of that, life doesn't go as well.
When I stay right there in that, I can be at peace.
That's fantastic. That's a beautiful answer.
And honestly, that answer is,
well, not an answer that is commonly given.
No, it's not.
But it does highlight one point that there's a driving force
of peace and happiness in your life.
There's this pursuit of peace and acceptance and happiness.
And I think that that highlights a common point in people's lives
is that we might want things.
We might want relationships.
We might want states of mind.
We might want personal, professional circumstances to go a certain way.
And we might have expectations about that.
But deep down, if we really look close and are honest with ourselves,
there's a driving force or a desire for happiness and peace in our lives.
I think that's on a personal level,
that's really what it comes down to is just being at peace.
And that's the kind of coaching I do is I work with people,
collaborate with people, and talk about the ways in which
we are pursuing happiness and peace in our lives,
as well as the ways in which our pursuit for that peace and happiness
actually, most times, contributes to the unhappiness that we experience.
So there's a lot of ways in which, at the surface,
we might feel like we're going in the right direction.
But if we kind of peel back some of the layers
and explore some of the distinctions with ourselves and are honest,
it can be seen and recognized that, oh, wait, I'm actually
contributing to a lot of the suffering that I'm experiencing
in a very direct and practical way.
So that's what the coaching is about.
And that's, like you said, I know how uncommon the answer was that I gave.
It was a beautiful answer.
Oh, I agree.
I've had deep level conversations with people for many, many years now
and followed that same type of philosophy.
But it would be really fun to get to shadow your conversations with people
who say, man, I really want this sports car,
or somebody else who's like, I just want my wife to do X, Y, or Z.
If she would just do that, I would be happy.
There's a different conversation you have with somebody who's
so focused on the externals.
I'll share a second layer on that, though.
Peace is something that I don't have a very hard time moving into
and being surrounded by.
What is probably the secondary on that challenge, the opportunity,
is that in my beliefs, I don't believe that happiness is something
we're guaranteed on this earth and it's something that we are entitled to.
And so, but I spent most of my years between probably six years old
and 20-something years old not really knowing how to connect with happiness,
getting kind of emotionally blocked from it, and finally coming to realize,
like, oh, that would be kind of a nice thing to feel in half.
So that's still something that I feel like I'm a rookie in,
is how do I harness the opportunity to experience
and truly feel happy more often and with more authenticity or conviction,
more depth maybe.
So that would be something that I think would be a lot of fun to talk about
or perhaps peaceful to talk about.
What are your thoughts on that?
What does somebody do to unlock happiness in their life?
I think you hit on in an interesting way a really important point,
which is how often we focus on the story of the suffering,
how often we focus on the why, the how, the narrative that gets built up
on top of the suffering.
So oftentimes there's this initial experience of I am upset
and the conventional approach that is expressed in many different practices
or ways of exploring suffering is to look for a reason why.
I'm unhappy because of X, Y, and Z.
I'm unhappy because of whatever.
And so the narrative, it spans.
So it starts out as I'm unhappy.
Then there's some recognition that I'm unhappy
because of this relationship that I'm in.
And then maybe I work with a coach or a therapist or someone
or maybe I just come to the conclusion myself that there's a correlation
between the unhappiness I'm experiencing in this relationship
and something that had to do with my parents and how they treated me as a child.
And so there's this belief that if I understand the correlation
between my specific conditioning as a child,
my specific conditioning of the circumstances of my life,
and my specific brand of suffering, if you will,
that I'm going to suffer less or there's going to be something that happens
in which I don't suffer anymore, which is not true.
There's certainly something to be said for exploring the relationship
between our suffering and our circumstances.
But the happiness that we're looking for is not found there.
It's like if you break the law because you rob a bank or you run a red light.
It doesn't matter if it was the bank or the red light, you broke the law.
It doesn't matter, I say in quotes, because it doesn't matter
that I'm suffering because of a relationship or I'm suffering because of financial circumstances.
When we focus on the specifics of the narrative, we're just building on top of the suffering.
We're giving the suffering a backstory, which then just makes it more present in our lives,
because now I'm not just suffering. I don't just have the experience of suffering.
I have the experience of suffering because of my relationship, because of my childhood,
because of all of this stuff that then just builds on top of the suffering.
It reminds me of ignoring the principles of math, actually.
What if you were to take a math formula and instead of doing,
you're trying to solve a particular problem based on a test,
but instead of subtracting, when you're supposed to subtract, you add,
when you're supposed to subtract, or instead of dividing, when you're supposed to multiply.
You would have a completely different outcome.
All the elements are still the same, but because you've chosen to ignore the formula,
you're going to come out with a completely different answer.
As much as we want to pretend or feel like our life is unique, our story is ours,
don't touch it. Keep your hand off of it, Jared.
We can very much end up using our narrative and story against ourselves,
is what I'm catching in this. I can see how, yes, you could very well become a self-fulfilling prophecy,
or you could sit there and be so mad at that red light for the rest of your life,
and use that object that you could miss the opportunity to move away from that one variable,
move into other aspects that perhaps contributed to the reality.
There's, I guess, one of the things that you said, I'm trying to remember exactly what it was,
about driving toward, that's not the best approach to unlocking happiness.
Is there a positive flip to that? What would be one of the greater approaches to unlocking it?
Yeah, and the point that you made actually highlights that perfectly, or at least opens up a segue,
which is that it's kind of like the plant that gets watered is the plant that grows.
And the more that our attention is focused on the story of the suffering, the more the suffering grows,
because that's what we're looking at. That's what we're paying attention to. That's what expands in our experience.
So then the question appears of, okay, well, where do I look then?
And if we go back to the previous point that I was making about, we start with the narrative of, I am upset, I am suffering.
Instead of building in this direction and looking that direction towards explaining the suffering,
we rather went the other direction, which is, in essence, what I think, or in my experience,
what therapy and what a lot of these practices are intending to do is to kind of, how do we get ahead of the suffering?
How do we go before the suffering so that I can see a truth that's going to tell me something
that can kind of interrupt the momentum of whatever that suffering is?
And that seems to me what the intent is, but oftentimes it winds up contributing in the way that I just said.
So the way that we practically do that in our lives is right here, right now, if I'm experiencing suffering,
rather than exploring the narrative of the suffering, I look to who is the one that is suffering.
I look to the I that is suffering and I explore, what do I find there?
So what often happens is there's this, it's an assumption, it's an assumption to be questioned.
I am suffering. Who is the I that is suffering? What do you find when you look for that I?
And most people, if given, well, I'll give you the opportunity now.
When you are saying, referring to yourself as I in conversation, whether it's to yourself or to other people in conversation throughout the day,
what are you referring to in those situations?
I would think your own perspective, how you think and how you feel.
Yeah. It's like a cluster of thoughts and feelings and beliefs, essentially, right?
Right.
And that's how most people define themselves, is this cluster, this locus of thoughts and feelings.
And so that begs the question of, OK, is what I essentially am a thought or a feeling?
Is what I essentially am actually defined by the thoughts and feelings that I experience?
And so take a little step deeper and take a look at what is the nature of a thought?
What is the nature of a feeling?
And you close your eyes, you look at your thoughts, and sure enough, thoughts are constantly arising and disappearing,
and feelings in a maybe different way are arising and disappearing.
And yet, whatever I am remains present before, during, and after the thought appeared and disappeared.
And yet, I never have the experience of a part of myself disappearing.
I remain whole and intact even when every thought has arisen and disappeared.
When the thought of a purple elephant appears, that image, it disappears in no time, and yet here I am, unchanged.
So what I essentially am can't be a thought.
It's not a thought because in my direct experience, in anyone's direct experience,
all we know of thoughts and feelings is that they are constantly coming and going.
And yet we remain present always.
And it's that mixing of what we essentially are, that which is aware of and knows thoughts and feelings.
When that gets mixed with experience, with thoughts and feelings,
there's this identification and what we essentially are appears to clothe itself in the defining qualities of thoughts.
And so the experience of I am aware of the feeling of anger turns into I am angry.
What I am is defined by a feeling and limited by that feeling because there's this identification with the feeling.
And the word itself, which I think adds some extra clarity to this,
the word identification comes from two Latin words, idio and ficcio, which mean to make the same.
So when there's identification with experience, there's the belief that experience defines what we literally are.
And so that identification lies at the core of our suffering.
It's the belief that what I am is defined by something that is limited and temporary.
And so in that belief, we go out into the world and we try to satiate that feeling of incompleteness,
that feeling of lack with things and relationships and activities.
And we try to satiate it to find happiness.
But the search for happiness is literally suffering.
Suffering is literally the search for happiness,
which only happens because we believe that happiness is something else.
It comes from somewhere else.
So that's a little bit of kind of the story there, where to look in the other direction.
I got to dive one level deeper.
We are so off topic on the show's typical route that I'm like drawn back, but I'm like, no, I got to think about this.
This is you're like talking to a patient version of Jordan Peterson, which I enjoy listening to.
So you just don't interrupt as much and you don't get as riled up.
So with happiness and the suffering concept, let's dive one level deeper into that.
So you said that suffering is the I'm going to paraphrase, but the kind of route to figuring out happiness.
It's kind of the path through and to.
Can you help us see that clear a little more clearly?
Because I'm munching on that. I'm like, cool, I got to get to the depths of this.
Yeah. So there's there's kind of two ways of looking at this.
One of them is this this path of, like you said, looking at the suffering and where we.
You essentially bring it as close as you can to yourself rather than pushing it away,
because often there's this this want to I'm unhappy and I want to get rid of it as fast as possible.
And so rather than being with the unhappiness, there's this immediate turning our attention towards, you know,
picking up the phone or turning on the television or opening the fridge or doing whatever to distract us
from the reality of the suffering that is being experienced.
And what happens if we give the suffering.
The space to simply be if we give ourselves the space to simply be with the suffering.
If it gets close enough, we see that it's not what we are.
It's not what defines us. It is simply experience.
And this is challenging because it requires us to be honest with ourselves about our relationship to the suffering,
because there's this question to ask to really test whether or not there's acceptance of the suffering,
if there's acceptance of whatever the situation is.
And it's the question of can I be with this experience for the rest of my life?
And if your answer to that is no, then you don't accept it, which means there's something deeper.
It means it's not brought in close enough.
And that kind of raises the second approach here, which is what I was getting to previously,
which is questioning the one who doesn't accept the suffering.
Who is it that is resisting the suffering?
Just like who is it that is suffering? Who is the one, the I, that is suffering?
And when we follow that path, like I was kind of speaking to before,
we recognize that the suffering is essentially an identification that we have with the person we think we are.
It's a mixing of what we essentially are with the person we think we are.
It's a mixing of being aware of thoughts and feelings with what the thoughts and feelings are saying.
So if a thought says, I'm upset, and if I believe that what that thought is saying is what defines me, then what I am is upset.
So there's kind of two directions that wind up in the same place,
but it comes back to recognizing what you essentially are and the nature of what you essentially are as not being defined or limited in any way
by the experience, by the circumstances, by the thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions
that you are aware of.
The brilliance and genius in your coaching is amazing, Jared.
I have learned so much in the last 10 minutes that I plan on diving very deep into for many months, if not years, and of course, falling up on.
I really hope more and more people find this.
One of the correlations that your path has reminded me of is some of the changes that have existed in the world.
I'm not of the mindset and belief that the world has gotten worse.
I'm of the mindset that it has gotten better and worse.
In many respects, there's lots of things that don't happen today that used to happen a lot in the past,
a lot more in the past in different societies that we don't have to suffer with and worry about today.
That said, one of the big concerns out there is the amount of suicide that is happening and the growth rate of suicide.
What it really reminds me of is this conversation you talked about of the story and the narrative and getting involved in that.
If I look back a few thousand years, based on history and what I've seen from history or a few hundred years,
there was a lot less people who could journal and who had time to self-consume in their own story and their own narrative.
It's making me realize, wow, while yes, I do believe it's important to write certain things,
you can create such a vicious storm around yourself of retelling yourself that narrative over and over and over and really cultivating the negativity that has occurred in your life.
There is a great power and responsibility that comes with utilizing that mechanism as a means to understand who we are.
I'm going to leave it right there where it's at. We're going to move into some of the core questions.
I can see a direct correlation between my own, especially teenage-year anger and the fact that I was constantly reliving that narrative and not figuring out the ways to escape it.
If I could have just moved forward, moved on with the next part of my life rather than reliving all of the pain that I was going through and constantly nurturing that,
yeah, life would not have felt so stuck in the here and now.
There's almost so much brilliance in what you're talking about that also goes against the grains of what is taught in traditional psychology and therapy.
It's like, wow, it makes me want to take a torch to traditional psychology rather than be like, let's fix the formula the right way.
Again, I'll leave that where it's at. We'll dive right into your vision.
What is your vision, Jared, for those that you serve?
Well, it's for people to recognize that the happiness, the peace for which they are seeking in their lives is the nature of their very being.
That it's not something that comes at the end of a long journey of changing myself, of changing my circumstances, of changing the world, but rather it's the first step.
And when that recognition happens in time, naturally, our circumstances, our behaviors, our activities, our relationships, our lives, naturally fall into alignment with this new recognition.
And if I can add a little additional context to that, it's similar to the illusion of a mirage in the desert.
Oftentimes you hear people say, you know, I am an illusion, the world is an illusion, suffering is an illusion, and think that there's a truth to that.
But what often is misunderstood is the word, the definition of the word illusion, what is being meant in those, those wisdoms, which is people interpreted as them saying that the world isn't real, or your suffering isn't real, or you are not real, which is not the case.
An illusion is real. A mirage in the desert is a real mirage. The nuance is that an illusion, what is real about an illusion is not what it appears to be.
So the world, what is real about the world, what is real about our suffering, what is real about what we essentially are is not what it appears to be. And recognizing that distinction for ourselves is the driving force behind our recognition of happiness and peace in our lives.
And the point that I was making about the mirage was that the way that you see the truth of the mirage is not by changing the water that you see in the distance, it's by going up and looking at what the water really is, which is just the play of light across the heat of the sand.
You don't have to do anything with the water. We don't have to do anything with our suffering. We just have to recognize the truth of what is really there.
Just like when you walk up to, if you stay at a distance and you keep looking at the mirage, it's always going to look like water. It's always going to look like a pool off in the distance. But the closer and closer you get, the closer and closer you get to the truth, the clearer and clearer it appears to you.
And it stops looking like water. But of course, the second you go back away from it and you turn around, it's still going to look like a pool of water. So it's not the appearance of the illusion that disappears, it's our ignorance of the truth which disappears.
And ignorance, ignorance not in the sense of like pejorative, like unintelligent. I mean literally the ignoring of the truth. We can't ignore it when we experience it. So experience it.
I love that.
What about your vision for yourself? What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
The extension of the vision for others, I mean I've always seen myself as like patient zero, right? Like if something doesn't work for me, I'm not going to suggest it to someone else.
So what I've recognized in my own life is that more and more my relationships, my experiences, my activities, and my life is expressing this happiness and this peace.
And the more that that happens, the more I feel empowered to speak to it, to respond when people question these things. Because I'm just speaking from experience.
It's not my truth, it's the truth of experience. It's just we're not used to looking to experience this way. And so we're not used to seeing things this way. I don't claim it.
And going back to Rupert, Rupert doesn't claim it either. It's a truth that anyone has access to. It's just whether or not it's communicated clearly, it resonates with a person, and that's really all it is.
That's amazing.
We're running low on time today, which is not a bad problem.
I think I'm going to dive into the leadership questions a bit. What's the worst leadership experience that you've ever had?
It's really tough to narrow down one situation, but there's absolutely an overarching theme, which is
any time that I have confused the pursuit of control or power over the recognition that leadership is. And what I mean by that is that
leadership is what is bestowed upon us by those who follow. It's not for us to decide. And so any time I found myself thinking that I was the one in control, the one deciding for someone else, I wasn't leading.
The times, and there have been very challenging experiences, particularly the beginning of my career when I thought that it was my job to tell people what to do.
When I thought that it was my job to find some psychological back door entrance into people and trick them into doing something or finding some point of leverage. That's not leading.
Those are good followers, good listeners. That's what makes a good leader. And the times that I haven't done that have been the worst leadership experiences, to say the least.
I would concur completely. On that note, is there a place for procedures, resources and templates, or would a leader best lead by allowing people to simply figure it out?
It's a mix of both.
There's a balance there. Absolutely.
One of the fun things about this podcast, everybody is like, I want to dive in deep and get everything about Jared's perspective. And at the same time, we're going to be moving on to life. And in life, we're going to have the opportunity for trial and error.
And that's part of what leads to the peace, happiness, and of course, the suffering, all of which contributes to our growth. And so we're not here to, Jared's not here to spoon feed me everything.
As much as I'm doing, the spoon bolts are giving me.
We will keep moving. How would you define your best leadership experience? What does that look like?
Best leadership experience.
At least in my line of work, I think this simple
seeing someone like recognizing when someone sees their own freedom, their own power, their own potential.
Each time someone takes a step closer to that each time someone sees something from a new perspective that opens up a new door for them.
That's that's the best thing for me. I love that.
And I never see that as something that I did.
I see it as something that someone does for themselves. And when people do that for themselves and people grab a hold of the reins of their own freedom and potential in their lives.
That and connect with the truth. I mean, that's that's what it is for me. That's the best experience.
Man, once again, a lot of positive reflections and happy memories on that. A lot of recent months.
One, I got to give a major shout out to Cynthia, who's helping us in the back end.
Cynthia is now running our Spanish podcast and stepping into that, owning that and then coming back and she did.
She wants to give me the credit and no, it has nothing to do with me.
You know, sure, I certainly was excited to see her step into that, but she had to do that.
Right. She had to be the one to step up for it. She had to want it.
You know, she had to go after it if she was going to do it. And she did.
And seeing her light up and seeing hearing her talk, you know, from her soul's depth, you know, about the value of that experience, the importance of it.
You're 100 percent right. It's one of the most amazing experiences to have.
And we're trying to unlock that with when I say trying, you know, it's it's not a forceful thing.
It's just an opportunity. How do we inspire people to to have those types of experiences?
And who is my executive assistant has come up with a genius level management system that she is for herself just to manage her own time.
And as we saw it, we were like, oh, if we applied this for everybody, then everybody would have like we would know how to delegate better, how to know what people's bandwidths are, also how to take some of these assignments and assign them to other people with like I've never seen a system more geniusly designed.
And I'm hoping that over time, she will also come to that realization that, you know, I was the creator of this experience.
I mean, I'll really just own the value of, wow, I can continue to contribute at this level and unlock myself, you know, to to.
And again, it's not about what they give. It's just about that feeling right.
It's about having that feeling with people. That is the coolest part of it is feeling that fullness of self appreciation that that to me is I think that's what you're what you're getting at and what you're talking about is watching people unlock that right.
It's this.
It's what it is.
Oh, you're like Jordan Peterson, man. You don't watch him. Yeah, who is.
I know who he is. Yeah, I don't I don't follow him too much.
You know, YouTube algorithm keeps hitting me and probably going to end up with Mr. Rupert on my YouTube for a while now.
So that'll be fun.
All right. Last lesson.
And literally, if this were the last lesson, the last opportunity to share a powerful lesson with other visionaries, what can they learn from your experience?
One simple word comes to mind.
And I don't mean it in a cheesy way.
But the word is love.
As well, you can't.
Maybe just add like one thing on that.
Love is what we recognize as what unites us.
Same with truth.
Truth is where our experiences meet.
Love is where the differences between us dissolve.
And so any visionary that uses love and truth as their foundation is is building something on solid rock is building something that will stand the test of time.
That would be my suggestion.
I'm a big fan.
Our foundation for first class businesses very much built on love.
And it is something we're constantly gravitating towards.
I'll add to that.
I knew you were going to say love, dude.
I didn't know, but I was so excited for you to say it.
I was like, yes, he's going to hate love.
And the one of the greatest weaknesses, in my opinion, of our modern world that is driven predominantly, at least our portion of the world, by the English language, is the reality that love has no conjugation.
For those who don't speak a foreign language, what that means is the format of the word love does not change based on the context of how we use it.
And maybe I'm just ultra ignorant and the one who took a long time to realize it, even though I did very well in English class, even though I became a very good writer, I did not realize that love was a verb until I was in my 30s.
That is scary to me.
With the amount I've studied it, with the amount that I've loved to talk about it and have tried to build my life around it, the fact that it took that long, and it was the Spanish language that unlocked that for me.
I've spoken Spanish since 19 years old.
So, you know, it wasn't even a quick realization either.
Again, it took another 11 years to really grasp that.
And a lot of what prevented it was just how ignorant I was to how to apply love as a verb.
Granted, there's probably a lot of selfishness driven behind that too.
You know, there's probably a lot of things that contributed to it.
But I realized how much easier it is to realize that we can take actions with love in the service of others once I finally understood the core nature of the word and it wasn't just something that I received.
Right. It wasn't something that just made me feel or a feeling that I wanted.
It's literally the core of the actions that we take to, I don't know, bring light, manifest goodness to others.
It was a profound realization. And, you know, I'm constantly trying to study what is it about life and our society and our cultures and I live in multiple cultures.
You know, I teach predominantly and talk to predominantly a team of Latinos and that constantly influences my life.
And then I go and I meet my American counterparts and there's a totally different feeling and set of practices and beliefs and beyond.
So, man, I just got to say thank you, Mike, from the bottom of my heart.
This was such an amazing interview.
Those visionaries who are listening in, I hope you go back and I hope you took notes.
Hope you get the chance to go back and listen to this.
We'll put Jared's information in the action steps below the show on the landing page.
I highly recommend expanding your relationship and conversation with him.
For those of you listening, you know that.
I mean, you caught the essence of that while we talked.
If you have a vision you'd like to share in the top right corner, be our guest.
You do not have to be as profoundly deep as Jared to be on the show.
And you don't have to be world famous either.
We're looking for people who have visions that are uplifting others, people who are fantastic leaders, people who lean into wanting to serve those around them.
And if that's you and you've got a vision to share, then definitely apply to come on our stage and do that.
Knowing that we're also searching for the type of leader who's creating a path for people to seek beyond the vision.
That is very important as leaders, I feel, is our duty and responsibility not just to drop a tiny bit of wisdom, but to also be prepared for those who come after that and say, hey, where do we go from here?
It's important to be able to serve the sphere of influence that we've created our life around attracting.
And that goes very strongly back to what Jared said about the worst and the best leadership experiences.
That's how I hope our leaders continue to show up.
So thank you for showing up and doing that in fantastic fashion, Jared.
I'm so happy with the present and I look forward to the future as it pertains to our relationship as well as to your success of helping others, man.
Thank you for having me, Jackson. It's been a great experience speaking with you and working with your team.
Absolutely. And I appreciate you going over with me a little bit too.
Vision Pros, you all have a fantastic rest of your day and we will see you on the next episode.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm really looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
I want to invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out.