Ep. 50 Exploring All Things Self with Lincoln Stoller

[00:00:03] I'm Michele Simms and this is The Beauty in the Mess, a community where people who crave a shift in mindset, personal growth, and connection to like-minded people come together to start rewriting their stories. Through engaging, honest, and insightful conversations, the show will help you embrace the mess to

[00:00:23] recognize the meanings and the lessons it holds and discover its hidden treasures to help you start making a mindset shift. Let's listen, learn, and reclaim who we were meant to be. Hi friend, welcome to The Beauty in the Mess.

[00:00:38] For this episode I'm very excited to welcome Lincoln Stoller to the show. Lincoln has a PhD in physics, certifications in hypnotherapy, project management, and clinical psychology. He has 50 years of experience with personal development and a background in brain biofeedback training, artificial intelligence, spiritual learning, shamanic healing, and psychedelics.

[00:01:03] He works with clients who reinvent themselves personally, mentally, medically, professionally, and spiritually. His approach spans therapy, counseling, and transpersonal psychology in order to integrate past experiences with future strategies. In his writing he focuses on states of the mind and our need to develop many personalities, not just one.

[00:01:25] Hi, I am Michelle Sims, your host. I am just a regular person who along with my family have had our share of messes that we too have had to overcome. Along the way I got curious as to how others get through their messes and even triumph over them.

[00:01:41] Maybe there's a better way, a faster way, maybe we can accelerate our journeys by learning from someone else. That started my pursuit. I think we can all learn from each other through the sharing of our experiences, lessons, and knowledge.

[00:01:55] So join me for episode 50 of the Beauty and the Mess called Exploring All Things Self with Lincoln Stolar. Lincoln and I discuss everything from personality to self-love, to becoming enlightened, to connecting to your higher self.

[00:02:10] Combining wisdom of the body with the science of the brain, Lincoln helps people focus, perceive, create, integrate, and understand. These are learned skills with which you can create your own reality. When you realize it's not enough to believe what you've been taught, you can move into a

[00:02:27] greater chaos of opportunities. Life is just like running the rapids. If you don't want to stagnate, you must move to the center of the stream. When Lincoln isn't working with clients, you'll find him in British Columbia, Canada with his family.

[00:02:43] So without further ado, let's dive right into today's conversation. Hi Lincoln! Welcome to the Beauty and the Mess. I'm so grateful to have you with us today. Glad to be here. Thanks. I know we're going to talk about how we create our own personalities today, but I kind

[00:03:02] of wanted to ask you before we got into how we create it, how much of our personalities, if any, comes from genetics? I don't think it's the personality that comes from genetics.

[00:03:17] I think it's the abilities that come from it and the way you react and how, well, certainly some of that, your innate skills which have been enhanced or encouraged strongly. I mean, people talk about epigenetics, but I think it's more cultural, more obviously cultural, familial, environmental.

[00:03:47] If you're encouraged to do things or allowed to do things or forced to do things, it makes a tremendous difference in how you develop and react. And I think that's what personality largely is. It's a series of skills and aptitudes and inclinations for reacting to things, needs

[00:04:09] and wants and pressures. Okay. And on top of that, you lay a kind of costume of humor or whatever gets people going. Right. I was kind of thinking, I guess, like addictive personalities because I know some people are

[00:04:25] more and it seems like some people are more inclined to be addicted to something no matter what that thing is, whether it's sugar or gambling or whatever. But it's like they just keep replacing one addiction with another. Yeah.

[00:04:39] It does seem to be somewhat, I hesitate to say genetic, but a predisposition, put it that way. Exactly. Yeah. But I still think it's something that's learned and to some degree rewarded in somewhat not sometimes not directly, but sometimes secondarily because you may not like what

[00:05:02] you're doing, but if people reward you for doing it, you tend to get into a groove. I have a number of high performance clients and you can see that their habitual high performance is not entirely voluntary. They have to, they're always struggling to perform and excel.

[00:05:27] And at first it seems like they're just being rewarded, but after a while you get, you understand that they're being goaded, that the pressure comes from inside them. And that's what you have to do if you're going to really compete with yourself. Right.

[00:05:43] Is that because as a young child they were trained by their parents to perform or something coming from childhood? What happens as a young child isn't remembered accurately when you're older. It's a formative period and I do think a lot of it happens in your youth. Right.

[00:06:04] And as I work with has been an athlete his whole life. And so where did that start? Well it started early, but who started it? Not clear. Right. Was it his environment?

[00:06:15] Was it his, he had worked with college parents so that did something and as a youth you don't have a lot of avenues to be competitive except play or sports or activities or school, but school is not very rewarding for most people.

[00:06:33] It's more of a punishment than a reward. So yeah, I mean it happened, but then he's also a very fit large athletic person so that worked in his favor. You said something intriguing to me you said that most of us don't remember our childhood

[00:06:50] accurately, but I guess my question to that would be does it matter because perception is everything right? If we have a perception of how our childhood went then that's our reality so to speak. Is it not?

[00:07:05] I agree, but if you want to change it how do you get back to it? If it's no, if all you have is your memory of what you think it was which is not very

[00:07:16] accurate and it's not meant to be, it's your memory after all sort of kind of stained glass window of little episodes in your past. How might you change it? Where is it entrenched?

[00:07:31] So if your memory is poor and if it's revised the facts amplified the truth when distorted it what do you do? You've got to reverse distort it or else clarify it. If you can't remember how it was, how do you get to that truth?

[00:07:51] Is it through hypnotherapy or through some other tool? How do you find out what the truth is? Well most people do it is through crisis of some kind. Something large and forceful causes some reorientation.

[00:08:05] I mean the original if there was a trauma or original impetus might have been subtle and chronic and unaware you might have had parents who were always pressuring you or always ignoring you or siblings who were always confronting you and no one thing,

[00:08:27] although you may remember one or two things but probably it was the accumulation of things and the continuity of things that pushed you in a direction to feel needy or able or proud, weak or whatever.

[00:08:44] And so if you want to change that and that's a big question the want part what do you do? You usually encounter some strong force and it can be crisis or trauma or stress to some extent maybe to a large extent.

[00:09:04] You make these things happen for yourself by overindulging or going too far I mean if everything was fine you wouldn't want to change it. So we tend not to want to change until there's a really good reason and that sort of comes like a two by four.

[00:09:22] I think I've asked that question to other people on my podcast before but how do you affect change like that without the crisis? I mean like say you have a health crisis and you make a big change in your life

[00:09:36] versus the person who wants to make the big change but hasn't had the crisis yet. How does that person enact that kind of change or can you? Well good question I mean what can you do?

[00:09:49] It depends on who you are and what you're willing to put into it. So we live in a culture that's sort of built on scarcity and comfort and we're told we can buy our way out of most problems either with money or behavior.

[00:10:07] And so I think a lot of people try to do that and then like you say if it doesn't work problems just get bigger. And then if you're the kind of evasive type that we're encouraged to be

[00:10:23] we don't confront it until it takes a bite out of us and then we call it trauma or crisis. Right. I mean it could be accident too but accidents are a complete accident it is pretty rare.

[00:10:35] Usually there's some something you might have done or have done to put yourself in that position. So I think the answer is basically you work at it. You become attentive to the small cues and you don't ignore them.

[00:10:53] And then when you feel there's something to be done even if you're not sure and that's important because you're never quite sure. You take some action to find out. You are assertive, you are exploratory, you are curious.

[00:11:10] You endeavor to learn beyond what's required because you're trying to make a change. You're trying to lead yourself. Right. And you have to be have to have a certain amount of discipline and a certain amount of focus

[00:11:24] and all these sort of good things they can all be sort of used to bad effect too. But if you're attentive and you're reactive and you're I would say the big word emotional. I think that's really important. I think we'll talk about that. Right.

[00:11:46] You can make progress and there's a lot to it. There's a lot of things that can obstruct your progress anything from habits to abilities to obligations. And then the people you've surrounded yourself with generally will feel a disturbance if you decide to change your behavior.

[00:12:08] They may not reward you, understand you or support you. I'm like one of my high performance people. He's an investment banker and he keeps saying I hope they'll fire me. Oh wow. But he's so high performance that they're not going to fire him.

[00:12:26] But it annoys him how much work he does. And I'm sure he's appreciated for it, but he'd love to be fired because he can't really take the step to throw it away because it's too rewarding. But it's not entirely rewarding. It's sort of eats his life up. Right.

[00:12:43] Oh, he's kind of in a pickle. He'd have to violate some things he believes in like security and ability to provide for people and reliability in order to honor this sort of late growing feeling that life is not enough. So what happens to him?

[00:13:01] He's certainly willing to take action, but it sounds like there's a crisis brewing, which will come first. I don't know. I mean, that's my job as a therapist. I think therapy is a misunderstood term. I mean, you can practice it in a million ways.

[00:13:20] But the way I practice it is sort of as an agonist. I'm the little demon that sits on his shoulder and keeps tapping and says, well, maybe you're not paying a problem with my little pitchfork and say, why aren't you happier?

[00:13:36] Or what could you do that was better? What do you really want? And then to get into the hypnotherapy angle, I'll take him in a visualization and I'll say, here you are in your happy life. And now it falls apart. Is this enough to get you moving?

[00:13:53] And I'm always amazed at how strong these guided visualizations are. I mean, I'm just putting together sort of the broken glass that they've set out at my feet. But they really see in it a powerful image. Not surprisingly, it is all the things they don't want to touch.

[00:14:15] And I'm putting them together as if it's not going to cut me. Well, it won't cut me because I really can't really perceive the sharp edges, but they can. And so I can do that with a more robust and resilient person.

[00:14:31] I can bring them into a psychic space of threat, indecision or need without being too worried about their freaking out. But I wouldn't do that to a sensitive, weak or troubled person because they're already there. Right. But your question how to change.

[00:14:51] Right. So that's part of the answer. Right. That would be a very tough situation to, on one hand, you would violate, like you said, feeling secure or taking care of other people, which I think a lot of us are kind of in that situation.

[00:15:06] If you did what your heart desires, so to speak. But then to stay in the secured place, you're violating the other part of yourself, which is the part that wants to do whatever it is that they want to do. Does that make sense?

[00:15:22] Like follow your heart's desire, you would violate the security and taking care of others. Well, I think that's important what you just said. Does it make sense? Well, no, absolutely it doesn't make sense.

[00:15:34] And you can't get hung up on making sense because that's what keeps you doing what makes sense. Sense is whatever you written on the blackboard. Right. I need to do pay the mortgage, mow the lawn, take care of the kids, be responsible, earn a living.

[00:15:49] That was the role of things that make sense. Right. Although things don't make sense are the things that get swept under the rug and not attended to. I mean, they'll make sense in some other frame of reference, but not in the one that you've attached yourself to. Right.

[00:16:05] So I think it's very important to say, especially for these high performance people who are always so such sense makers, that you don't have to make sense, that you actually have to look at what doesn't make sense.

[00:16:16] I mean, some of it's garbage, of course, but among the garbage are the things that are under appreciated about you or under, under whatever under rewarded. Right. The things you need to take care of. Right.

[00:16:35] But I think you also have the external forces against you also like your spouse expects you to do certain things possibly or the children are dependent on you for that security or.

[00:16:46] So, I think in some regards you feel external pressures in one direction where you don't have as many external pressures in the other direction. What I think people should be doing always is balancing those and avoiding.

[00:17:04] I mean, this is why I don't like our Western culture in many ways because it is very exploitative. It's quick to give you what you want in the same way that a dealer will provide you with a drug that makes you feel better money being the.

[00:17:25] Typical reward and then people both culturally and maybe even genetically are attracted to the reward and become habituated to it. And after a while, it's the only thing that makes sense. And sense is useful. It's good.

[00:17:42] It puts two and two together and gets you forward safely and not making sense is naturally dangerous in many cases. And looked at with caution, my examples is we like great artists, but nobody would want your daughter married to one.

[00:18:06] I think that's fairly, that's fairly safe to say. And although we give sort of lip service to being creative, most of us are pretty hesitant to create because create means taking something apart and putting it together a different way. So I try to encourage people to be that.

[00:18:29] And but it's back to your question. How do you change? Well, you have to feel the need to change. You have to feel the opportunity to change. You have to feel some wisdom in changing wisdom, if not reason. The two are quite different. And that's what I do.

[00:18:45] I try to. Inject that because like you say, your spouse or your kids, they don't want you to change. Well, maybe they do if you're really screwed up, but it's never that simple. Right.

[00:18:59] Is it fair to say that you have to get leverage on yourself in some way? Well, I don't know what leverage means, but it sounds good. What do you mean?

[00:19:08] Like, like if you were trying to, I don't know, force yourself into change, I guess is what I was thinking. Like, say you have a health problem, you should be doing X, but you're doing Y.

[00:19:19] So you keep using the health against yourself, so to speak, to push you in that direction. I don't think that creates lasting change though, to be honest. But I think it could create temporary change.

[00:19:31] I think a good example is being overweight because I suspect many overweight people have a psychological relationship to food that is rewarding. Right. I mean, because if you want to lose weight, it's simple. Just stop eating.

[00:19:48] But there comes a point well before you starve that you feel the need to eat. And how much do you eat? So I notice myself, because I'm trying to keep my weight down, that I'm able to keep my weight down when my attitude to food is not attractive.

[00:20:07] I don't want to eat. And so I don't. And so I lose weight. And if I did eat and I'd like to eat, I'd like to eat ice cream. And I know exactly what that'll do. So I can see myself.

[00:20:20] And you could say, I like the idea that the Candida in your gut likes alcohol and it makes alcohol by digesting sugar. So it wants you to digest sugar. So it's like those, those fungus that grow out the heads of ants.

[00:20:36] It makes your brain want what it wants. And then you think it's what you want, but it's not really good for you. But you crave it. Right. And I do believe there's some truth to that, that your brain is hijacked by

[00:20:48] your gut or at least these invaders in your gut. And it's, it's hard to, hard to cope. You've got to be irrational. Right? You've got to do what doesn't make sense. It doesn't feel good. Right.

[00:21:03] And for a while you're going to be a, you're going to be out of sorts and feel bad and how, how is it going to work? I don't know how it's going to work. Well, for people who are chronically overweight, I guess it doesn't work, but very true.

[00:21:19] You know, that's the thing, man. Those are hard changes because that's your self fighting against itself. That gets into the interesting territory of autoimmune and mental disorders and mythological territory. Yeah. But I think there is some definitely truth to that they're adding

[00:21:46] so many chemicals to a lot of foods to make them addictive, to make, give your brain dopamine hits. And then I mean, it becomes a true addiction. You're fighting that on top of whatever emotional urges you have to that you've associated to food.

[00:22:02] Well, I think eating healthy is an easy way to start. I mean, you have to like eating celery. You have to like eating vegetables. I know you don't have to be a vegetarian, but you have to like eating simple, what are called prebiotics and avoiding packaged foods,

[00:22:28] both because of their toxic chemicals and because of the chemicals they add to make you want to eat more. I've got, I've got a 13 year old son and he likes potato chips. And I just know that they're evil in the sense that

[00:22:44] they're adding the salt and the sugar and the fat in just the purport. Exactly. They're like, they're like cigarettes. It's just that we don't associate them with causing cancer. They cause obesity and we accept obesity even though we reject cancer. I'm not sure. Okay.

[00:23:01] So maybe cancer is more dangerous than obesity, but I'm not sure over the long term. But I let him eat the potato chips because just because. I don't know. I don't know why. It's like, I guess it's not, it's not a battle I want to fight. Right.

[00:23:17] Among them, other ones that I do. So this is probably a crazy question, but with your extensive background, I want to ask it anyway. Do you feel like you have to have self love in order to make a big change?

[00:23:32] I mean, you have to love yourself enough to overcome these things that you don't want to do, right? That I mean, you have to put yourself first and then that's hard for a lot of people. I'm getting further away from that way of looking at things. Okay.

[00:23:53] No, I'm not saying no to what you're saying. I'm saying that I'm moving more toward the idea that we have to see ourselves as the combination of different people. We don't see ourselves. We're always like riding on the front of the locomotive and we

[00:24:11] don't see the mechanics of ourselves. We always think that whatever mood or idea or urge we have is ours. It's ours, and we're constantly rewriting the script to make it sound sensible, justifying our feelings and actions.

[00:24:31] In spite of the fact that we're kind of a swamp of emerging humors and loving yourself is one of them. I don't think it's well rewarded. I don't think people have a good grasp of it. I'm not sure it's easy to define.

[00:24:51] And it's certainly easily injured by, well, we're taught to feel obliged to engage other people's opinions and measure ourselves on external metrics and self-love is above or separate from those in ideal situations is not vulnerable to simple condemnation. And it's resilient, I would say.

[00:25:21] If you can blame yourself for your mistakes and you don't love yourself any less. And maybe love, see, I'm not even sure I love is the right word. It's the son of catch all term for self-respect. And we it's different when you love someone else.

[00:25:38] It's different when you love your dog. It's different when you love your life. So I'm not sure the word is all that useful. It sort of gets people running in different directions. But I've heard people say and I would agree and I do

[00:25:51] experience that the more I value myself, the more I'm willing to do things that are good for me. In the long term and sacrifice things on the short term like ice cream and whatever sex. Right. I think sex is an interesting thing to talk about, but it's

[00:26:12] sort of generational. It depends on how I listen to my 13 year old talk about sex and I just cringe. I'll never say that stuff when I was his age and I wouldn't listen to anyone saying now, but I don't open

[00:26:25] my mouth because then I just shut off the faucet and I'd be shut out of his life. And I'd rather know what's going on, even though it's painful to listen to. Very true. And it's probably normal these days. And I'm suspicious of it, of course, because it gets

[00:26:43] pathological. Sexuality is easily made pathological. And I want to know if he's going in that direction. So I listened to it. That's another example of a strong example of reward condemnation, encouragement and need. And he's only 13, so wait until he's 50. My experience is anything like it.

[00:27:07] Then the full rage of it hits. Sounds like carrying for quite an adventure. Well, and also men in limin are different. I've never had a daughter, so I don't know. Yeah, that is interesting because back to what we were talking about before, as far as valuing yourself,

[00:27:25] I think as a woman, at least as far as society's concerned, we're kind of programmed to value everybody else ahead of ourselves. Yeah, very bad, I think. Yeah. So you fight that because you feel like that's the truth, right? You should always value other people.

[00:27:44] And then you have a hard time. You know, it's like, like you said, the love for your dog. Well, we can love our dog. We can love our neighbor. Yeah, we can take care of everybody else, but we can't take care of ourselves.

[00:27:55] I think people take better care of their cars than they take care of themselves, for sure. I do too. The West Coast now it's interesting. I grew up on the East Coast and the West Coast really does have a car fixation. It really does.

[00:28:08] People will spend twice on the West Coast, what people will on the East Coast for their car, it seems. Seriously? I think so. Well, it's generalization. I think because the weather is the weather better. You're in Canada, correct? Yeah, well, yeah, it is.

[00:28:23] And so, but still they spend twice as much. It's just that they can. I'm thinking you get to use the car more or show it off. They can get these antique cars that won't have their life rusted out of them the way they will on the East Coast.

[00:28:38] Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I look at what's sold in the media and and I think like the wars that are going on in the world, I don't think they're unrelated to that whole material view. If if take your example of womanhood

[00:28:55] that judges itself according to other people's opinions and you match that to extremists that project onto other people, all their hatreds. And you get a sort of similar manipulation of personality through other other forces. But they're exploitative forces. I mean, I think I would think to generalize terrorists

[00:29:22] are very exploited people, very troubled people. I think your most injured female is also a very injured person. But they're obviously acting in different ways, reacting. Right. So how do you how do you get past? I mean, because I the older I get, I guess

[00:29:43] the more programming I see in society yeah that we've always been taught to be a certain way, whether it's correct and correct or otherwise. How do you get past all this to to find your true self or your true personality? Depends who you are.

[00:30:00] Are you 13 or are you 22 or are you 45 or are you 68? They think they're different answers. I asked that question in a slightly different form when I wrote my first book called The Learning Project. I wanted to go and ask people.

[00:30:17] I asked them how did they learn, but it's similar to asking how did you change or why did you change or what did you get out of changing? And I asked it to three groups of people, people who were teenagers, people who are in their middle age

[00:30:31] and people who were seniors. And that and I asked in a dozen different fields. Thinking I was kind of a scientific way at it. Which parameter showed some continuity? And it was mostly age, not the field that they were involved in,

[00:30:50] whether it was sports or science or literature. The older people were more reflective and expansive and the younger people were more flitty and energetic, uncertain and willing to change or in the process of changing. And then I wrote two more books on that basis

[00:31:09] from what I learned from that long. I interviewed 35 people and all those people have been very influential in my life. Some before I interviewed them and some I didn't know until I interviewed them. And I really like being a therapist more than my other professions

[00:31:33] because I get to go a few levels deeper. I've been a physicist and I've been a business consultant and a computer programmer. And all of those things are psychologically superficial. And then you wonder why are people such asses and I've wondered that myself.

[00:31:52] And you don't get an answer really, but with a therapy relationship, you get more of an answer. I mean, I'm still asking questions and the downside of being a therapist is when you succeed, then your clients leave. And so you're left wondering what happened? What did I do?

[00:32:13] Or did I do anything at all? On the answer is the best thing you can do feels like nothing at all because they took all the responsibility and initiative and they're not dependent on you anymore. Right, that's exactly what you want. And that's a good thing.

[00:32:26] It is, but not exactly what I want. Oh, OK. I also want reward. I also want feeling of insight and value. Those are the weaknesses that I have to avoid projecting on people. But they're real and it's also useful.

[00:32:44] I do want to know whether I did the right thing. You could retail for feedback, maybe. And I do, but you don't get the same feedback. You get sort of cursory. Then it becomes a social thing like, oh, nice to hear from you. Yes, I'm doing very well.

[00:33:01] And you really wonder, but how about your mother and stuff like that? Right. So you have to left to kind of infer. And it grows over time. I'm happy to say that a number of people have recently told me

[00:33:13] without me trying to, you know, pry it out of them, that I've helped them a lot. And I'm thinking, oh, wow, that must be authentic because I didn't ask for it. I probably is, but it still doesn't tell me why.

[00:33:25] The secret is that you never really know why. You're responding to people in real time and you're feeding back their important information and you're hoping that they'll find the needle in the haystack. And when they do, you wonder, gee, how did they find that?

[00:33:42] Did I show it to them? They're really the detective. I'm more like Dr. Watson and they're really Sherlock Holmes. And Dr. Watson never figures out Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes is crazy. I mean, there are all these wonderful mythological representatives. Sherlock Holmes is crazy, right?

[00:34:00] He's an addict and he's super human. And I think that's what it takes to answer your first question. How do you change? Well, you're addicted to your behavior and you somehow gain access to your superhuman abilities to change yourself. And until you do that, it doesn't happen.

[00:34:19] And that may be asking a lot, but I think that's pretty much what's required. And if you don't want to put that in or you're afraid to or you don't have the resources to, then things just get worse. How much is the reluctance to change based on fear?

[00:34:39] A lot. Well, there's that expression, there's nothing to fear but fear itself, which makes no sense when you drive off a cliff and there are real cliffs and there are real dangers. So there is real fear, but the question is how do you judge it?

[00:34:54] How do you titrate it? There are lions in the grass and it is safer to live in a tree, but they're not lions in most grass and we can't live in trees. So how do you deal with danger and fear? Right.

[00:35:11] And my answer is you have to be courageous. I think courage is one of these, so you mentioned self love. I think courage somehow fits in. You can be more courageous if you love yourself because then you, it's like you'd be more courageous

[00:35:25] to defend your child if you love your child or your dog or anyone. Right. And we think courage is sort of the flip side of foolishness and it may be, but it also is the source of meaningfulness. You defend what's meaningful.

[00:35:42] If you have no courage and you're indifferent, you could easily be a pretty bad person indifferent to the sufferings of everyone and concerned only with things that don't make a difference to people like material goods. So yeah, there is real danger and there is real fear.

[00:36:01] And I think courage, that's, I think what I do most is I encourage people. Encourage is a good word because it's got the word courage in it. I foster their courage. Maybe that's what encourage means to confront or to feel certain or resilient. And then I mostly,

[00:36:24] the two other metaphors I use are who was the man of La Mancha? The Sancho Ponsa and what was Cervantes's character there? Remember him? What's his name? I don't remember, I'm sorry. Oh, you do. You just don't, it's just not near. Oh, but the listeners will remember.

[00:36:42] Or like a card and a horse. I'm like the horse and you're driving the card. I don't know where to go except not to go off the cliff, but I don't know which turn to take. You have to make the turns. I just pull forward

[00:36:56] and have a certain insight into safety that you might not, but you have to be creative. Well, and the client is looking through their emotional filter, so to speak. And you don't have that as the therapist, you don't have that same emotional filter that for them.

[00:37:15] So you can see things more clearly, I would assume than they can at times. So you can kind of steer them like, okay, you're getting off the path a little bit here. Yeah. And I also to go back, I like hypnotherapy because it goes off the path.

[00:37:34] And I can, I mean, this is how I do hypnotherapy. I collect your triggers. I collect a record of your triggers, what's triggered you, what is triggering you. And a record of your goals or wants, wishes or things that would satisfy you. I don't experience them,

[00:37:55] but I have, I use my own experience to sort of infer how it, what it means for you. Right. And then I build these visualizations and I take you into them and I set them up like dominoes, the risks and fears and goals and rewards.

[00:38:12] And I create a story with your help that amplifies your situation. And people run with this. It's personal, it's meaningful, it's vivid, it has promise, it has fear and it has a measure of safety. So when I feel it's getting too much,

[00:38:36] I can stop it and so can they. Although I'm a little more cautious than they are sometimes. And that's interesting. That is. In contrast to just talking, like we're talking now, it's very sort of safe and nobody's freaking out.

[00:38:53] And we're not even going near the edge of that. It's sort of the nature of our conversation. It's intellectual. Right. But it's also very limited. It's the hamster wheel. We're going around the hamster wheel looking for details. But getting off the hamster wheel is full of potential

[00:39:12] and it's also emotionally dangerous. And to take it a step further, there's a big popularity in the use of psychedelics these days, at least in some quarters. And I think that does take it further. I discourage other people, but I discourage other people from jumping on that bandwagon

[00:39:33] and launching off the nearest cliff. Because I don't think it's that beneficial unless you're prepared. Just like all these other things. Just like hypnotherapies only as useful as if you're prepared. Right. Just like you have to be resilient, you have to be self-confident,

[00:39:49] you have to have a certain affection for yourself, you have to be honest, you have to be forgiving of yourself. And ultimately you have to have, I had told you that I think there's multiple parts to ourself. You have to have some connection with a higher self.

[00:40:08] And that's an interesting and I don't think sufficiently explored concept you can talk about wisdom, you can talk about God, you can talk about spirits, you can talk about your mentors or your grant, you can talk about, you can project this on all kinds of people

[00:40:24] or things or ideas. And I think in every case it comes back to not exactly self-love, but something higher. I think a higher, your higher, hmm, what? Higher self. I think there is, I think we do have higher selves buried, hidden, waiting.

[00:40:45] And that religion often has a lot of interesting things to say about the higher self, such as, you have to ask for help. It doesn't run after you and it doesn't save you from yourself, your higher self, doesn't waste time with your lower self as it were.

[00:41:05] It lets you screw your life up until you're ready to hear better guidance. Anyway, these are ideas that you'll hear in religious texts in some form or another. I wonder if that's in the context of you have to screw up to learn the lesson?

[00:41:23] Well, I do think the idea that you should learn from other people's mistakes is sort of wrong. I mean, it's nice to know where the danger signs are, but if you really want to understand something, you've got to do it. And you've got to be careful

[00:41:41] because the more you do it, the more danger you put yourself in, any kind of danger, emotional danger, physical danger, financial danger. And if you don't, and there's certainly good reasons not to engage in dangerous things, then you don't change much and you get what's delivered.

[00:42:00] You get what's in the package. And then, you, as many people I interviewed say, you get to the top of the ladder and you wonder why the hell you climbed it. And at that point, well, what are you gonna do? For the people that have climbed the ladder,

[00:42:18] I said, that's discouraging in a way. Once they get there, they wonder why they work so hard to get there. Well, whose ladder was it? Was it yours or someone else's? I mean, it's the same thing. People are, we're a little bit like dogs.

[00:42:33] We are attracted to the bone or the spell of meat or whatever it is. And we're told to be in a way, society tells us. We're trained? Yeah. Yeah, gold stars, high grades, bonuses. Yep. Those are all other people's ladders. Well, status, yeah, exactly. Sure. And attract appearance.

[00:42:56] Right. I mean, so you have to, so many of the things that we think are good deserve some doubt or at least questioning and humor. Humor is not so safe either, but nevertheless it can be pretty useful. Pretty, as you said, a lever.

[00:43:15] It can be quite a lever for change. Yeah, I think humor is great. It's funny, I was listening to Eddie Murphy and other people from the past 10 or 20 years. And they were great comedians and they had great followings. And it wasn't funny anymore. Oh, really? No.

[00:43:35] Eddie Murphy was all about homosexuals and... Oh, okay. Anal sex and it's like, ah, we're over that. Right. Or it's going on to something else. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to watch how these phases go and how people, so Jim Carrey's routine was all about sex

[00:43:53] and it was all exaggerated like he's exaggerated and people thought that was funny. Right. But again, it's like, hmm, maybe it's funny. Humor is kind of relevant to whatever's going on at the time, right? Yeah, I mean, sort of the potty mouth talk that made humorists funny

[00:44:11] is not what my son at 13 says all the time. There's no shock value anymore. Right. Which I'm entirely happy about, but here we are. So... So I have to ask when you were talking about there is a higher self, how do you, in your vast experience and knowledge,

[00:44:28] how do you connect to higher self? Is it through meditation? What avenue do you recommend for people to try to connect? Well, I think there's a surefire way and it's crisis. Yeah, that works, but I was hoping to avoid crisis. Of course, that's right.

[00:44:47] I know, and we're all hoping to avoid it. So there's a certain amount of courage that's involved. You want the crisis that is productive. Right. And it's gonna be the crisis of letting go of your fears and your sorrows, your repression

[00:45:09] and the things you blotted out of your memory. And psychedelics have been an antidote to some people because they throw you into the celestial realm of all connection and something or other. And it's true, you can have these feelings that you've never had before

[00:45:30] and you can vaguely remember them afterwards. But I haven't found anyone who's used psychedelics. And well, maybe that's not fair. I personally don't know people who've used psychedelics and been enlightened, but I think other people have, but they're usually people who were in crisis anyway.

[00:45:51] I mean, that's the ones we're hearing about, the use of psychedelics to remediate depression and suicide and terminal disease anxiety. I mean, these are people who were close to the end, dangling at the end of their rope anyway. But the people I know who weren't ready to change,

[00:46:07] in my opinion, haven't been motivated to change in spite of the fact that they may have met God in a psychedelic experience. Oh, wow. I mean, I'm not entirely fair because I know many people who are thoughtful and hardworking and courageous and they have been inspired.

[00:46:29] I mean, maybe I have, maybe you have through one way or another. And psychedelics are just an extreme way of doing what happens in a dozen different approaches anyhow. So it's not unique, it's just a pill. People love pills, silver bullets and such.

[00:46:48] And so a lot of people are attracted to it. And it gives them an easy way to enter crisis if that's where they wanna go. And I do know some very well adjusted people who got quite unadjusted by psychedelics. Wow. Cause I don't think it's entirely safe.

[00:47:06] And like I said, if you're interested in that kind of thing, then I'd say, are you serious? Are you gonna do your homework? Or are you just gonna play the lottery? Because the chances of the lottery are poor. And it's one of those sort of teaching things.

[00:47:25] And it's like you said, you're higher self or your wiser self and me to the extent that I have any wisdom. I don't pursue those people. I'll say once, I love the expression that you're, I'm misrepresenting but your higher self rings the doorbell once

[00:47:43] but temptation leans on the doorbell. So a lot of people just answer the doorbell because it keeps ringing. And they love my favorite evil people who are celebrity palliatives. Even the nice guy like Deepak Chopra, who everybody loves is a total fount of nonsense

[00:48:08] which I don't really think is helpful but it gives people hope and hope is not very story of Pandora's box. They couldn't help but opening this box of energies and it disturbed the world. And the last thing out of Pandora's box was hope.

[00:48:24] And so I'm not a hope is that can be the great deceiver. It hope means that you can continue doing what never worked and it'll work next time. I never really thought of that way. That's interesting. Yes, it's not the same as diligence and perseverance.

[00:48:42] It's not the same at all. So I don't know where are we going? We started off talking about the higher self. Right, how do you connect to the higher self? What way do you, I mean, is it meditation? Can that work?

[00:48:57] Well, how do you connect to it all? I don't know that to be honest. I mean, yeah. I mean, you always try. I mean, I don't know what that connection looks like so to speak. What does it look like? Well, have you met people who are

[00:49:17] that you felt connected in a kind of enlightened or otherwise? Yeah, I felt connection to other people. Yeah. But I mean special people. I've met a few special people. Yeah, I think so. Well, I think that's part of the answer to your question

[00:49:33] is you find your higher self by exploring. And I think that means you go out and do outreach or extension of yourself, education, challenge, you encounter resistance, you engage with trouble, either by making it, finding it, fixing it, or resolving it, any of those ways.

[00:50:04] I don't think very much of psychotherapy, the way it's taught. I think it's kind of thin. It's kind of more like boot camp for soldiers because there's a need for foot soldiers in that department. And all they really need to do is know how to advance

[00:50:21] and provide first aid. They're not really skilled surgeons and I don't think most psychotherapists are or need to be. And maybe most people don't need it. I'm constantly raising my rates and that's putting me out of the reach of people that could use my help.

[00:50:39] So there needs to be people who charge less and so you get less. So I'm saying that, where was I going with that idea? I think it was all aspects of our life kind of reveal pieces of our higher self to us.

[00:50:55] That's kind of what I get out of it, is that? Well, I also think that there are certain people who are role models and you don't find them in universities usually. So although I found a few, I found them in universities but you have to look for them.

[00:51:12] They don't advertise. Write down. I say that's one of the things I don't like about religion is that they always say the profits are advertised. They had a following. Well, all the profits I know are kind of reluctant. And I say profit loosely, people with foresight.

[00:51:31] And that's well known. I think Bertrand Russell was famous for saying that all the wise people are quiet and all the loud people are stupid. And that's true because if you're wise, you're concerned. You know that there's no simple way to state things

[00:51:43] and there's no easy sound bite that makes the right point. And so your circumspect and you expect to be considered carefully and with some attention. And that doesn't work for media and celebrity. Right. And we get a lot of celebrities who act like idiots.

[00:52:07] They weren't elected to the role because they were smart. They were elected because they were good actors. Very true. Anyway, but to get to the point how to find wisdom you have to go out and look for it. You have to develop discernment. You have to have courage.

[00:52:22] You have to make risks, take risks. You have to make mistakes and learn from them. And I think you have to want to make mistakes. You don't want to stay in the safe area. I was lucky, lucky to feel the need to go outside my circle

[00:52:44] when I was young. I started mountaineering, but I didn't get there immediately. Most of the day just started. Oh, first I started by being a sort of a criminal by being truent and being destructive and doing things that I to this day regret. Damaging mostly property.

[00:53:05] And what's interesting to reflect that, and we mentioned this before, how do you remember how you felt when you were young? I would shoplift and I would destroy cars. And it seems incomprehensible to me now. Right. But at the time it seemed, I don't know,

[00:53:24] was I even thinking? I thought I was thinking, but I can't make any sense of it now. And I can blame it on my parents to some extent in a very sort of unfair way that I was being neglected. So I was getting back, not very successful.

[00:53:44] And I could have been caught, but I was never caught, vandalizing. Wow, you're good at it then. You don't have to be very good because nobody's looking at breaking windows and stuff. You'd have to want to get caught. But was that necessary?

[00:53:59] That's the point I was trying to say. Was it necessary that I did that in order to go out and find wise people to inspire me, to find a higher purpose and a greater wisdom? I just don't know.

[00:54:13] I mean, you'd say I hope not, but I don't know. What do you think? All of that's kind of made you who you are today, hasn't it? I mean... People who've been through trouble often are enlightened. And then you'd say,

[00:54:27] gee, I sure didn't want that happen to me. I mean, look at the traditional wisdom of native elders. And those people were so abused as a race. And yet we consider them wise. And then so you ask, well, to be fair, were they wise before they confronted adversity?

[00:54:48] We'd like to think so, but that's kind of like the noble savage idea. And I've lived with some of these noble savages. And they're just people. I've lived in primitive cultures in the jungle and they're just people. They're great people.

[00:55:02] In fact, they're, I think better people than most of us because they have more responsibility and they need to be more aware as life isn't delivered to them. But they're not always enlightened and they don't necessarily have a broad view of the world.

[00:55:17] But part of that may be where experience meets personality in a way. I mean, if you have certain experiences and then your personality guides you to do something with that versus if you have a personality where I might be using the wrong word

[00:55:34] but you don't choose to pursue it or explore it. I really value my mountaineering years because I encountered crazy people. They weren't crazy because they were mountaineers. They were just crazy people who happened to be mountaineers because it delivered the kind of charge they were looking for.

[00:55:54] And it's interesting that I went through many experiences, did some safe things, some unsafe things, achieved some things, failed at others and got to the point where I felt I wanna take the best and use it without having to keep risking myself for more rewards.

[00:56:13] Then I went to sort of graduate school and that took me out of the opportunity. And then I had a family and that made me feel I couldn't put myself at risk. And now I look back on those times just like I talked about my vandal years

[00:56:29] which were probably when I was age 11 or 10. And I can't quite understand why I did those things, why I took those risks. And now I'm 67 and I couldn't take those risks. I mean, it's physically demanding stuff. I mean, I guess I could do stupid stuff, but it wouldn't.

[00:56:49] But it also in a way gives you insight for clients, doesn't it? I mean, people who are taking risks possibly, I mean, you can look back on your experience and have more insight than somebody who didn't perhaps. And yeah, well, mostly I feel empathy with people

[00:57:06] and feel I try to, I can only mirror them to some degree and relate to what they're doing in terms that I'm familiar with. Right. Even people who work really crazy, which I find very, I find them very endearing most of the time

[00:57:24] because they're not, well, at least not the violent and aggressive types because I haven't dealt with them. Right. I guess you could say I've dealt with the neurotic types and they're much more endearing. They want help, they appreciate help,

[00:57:36] you can help them, they feel good, you feel good. Everybody, I think you have to have self, I'm not gonna use the word self-love even though it's right there. You have to have wisdom, courage and confidence in yourself. And that's usually what you don't have in crisis.

[00:57:58] That's what's on offer. You get knocked down by situations and what you need is exactly what you don't have. So that's the focusing mechanism. It focuses you on just exactly what you don't have and need, which is strength, courage, confidence, love.

[00:58:20] I'll say, I don't know what it is, all the things that it is. Right, that's awesome. Well, I know I wanna be respectful of your time. I know we've been going, you are one person I feel like I could talk to for hours.

[00:58:34] So I appreciate all of your insight and wisdom. What can we end on? One thing I'd like to end on is that there's a distinction I don't agree with between therapy and coaching where both people who provided are trained and people who consume it are told

[00:58:54] that one deals with your dysfunction and the other deals with your function. So enhancing your greater functions or fixing your dysfunctions. And that makes it so that people are ashamed to get counseling or therapy because they feel it means they're sick and they're gonna be diagnosed

[00:59:14] and it's gonna be in their record or get in their record. And so they wanna be coached for all the things that they get rewarded for, which... So that whole equation, it doesn't add up to me. You have to do both.

[00:59:29] You have to address the stuff that doesn't work and enhance the stuff that does work. Absolutely. And not see it as a flaw if you're not going in the right direction, it's not an illness. Okay, maybe there's some illnesses that are chronic something or other.

[00:59:49] Maybe I'm not even sure there's... You have a role on them. Your intention has a role in almost everything. If it's eating, it's clear, but if it's multiple sclerosis, it may not be clear but there is a role of your tension and resilience and self-love or whatever.

[01:00:09] So I would encourage people to get a broader thinking that just because one thing happens under the surface like your rudder and your keel which changes your direction and the other thing happens above your surface like your sails which draw you forward, they're part of the same thing.

[01:00:29] You can't have a boat with half of those. It won't go anywhere or it won't go in the right direction. Right. So I think that it's worth getting wise counsel if you can find it. Absolutely. Because a lot of people who sell advice have crappy advice. Very true.

[01:00:50] Like you can sell luxuries. Yeah, that's very true. I would like, if you have a minute I would like you to talk about your books or your coaching whatever you want your focus to be but I'm kind of intrigued on your books as well

[01:01:05] because I'm wondering how that added to your journey and your life. I mean, you're investigating all these things but it had to sort of change the direction of your life in a way I would think or enhance it. I find them related.

[01:01:20] I mean, most people wouldn't find physics and Arctic exploration and psychedelics and computers related. They'd say, oh, that's all over the map but they all deal with the question of what's reasonable and what's unreasonable. So physics and computation are all reasonable and Arctic exploration and psychedelics

[01:01:49] are all unreasonable but that's the boundary that you wanna cross. You wanna extend what's reasonable into the unreasonable. You wanna be creative to create something that makes sense. So I explored from both sides but I'm still looking at the boundary. You don't wanna do crazy things

[01:02:09] without thinking what you're doing and you don't wanna do what only makes sense without thinking about the crazy things. So when you do physics, if you wanna do it well you have to think about all the things that don't make sense.

[01:02:22] You have to look at all the things that don't work and ask all the questions that nobody wants you to ask. And as a student, I didn't fully love myself enough at the time but I was able to get thrown out of a class pretty quickly.

[01:02:36] By just what's like little kids they ask but why? But why? But why? And parents think it's so cute and then they tell them to shut up. If you're a graduate student, they don't think it's so cute and they throw you out of class

[01:02:48] because they don't want you to ask but why? Because that just shows you that they don't know. And that is- I was gonna say it's probably cause they don't know the answer at some point. No, they won't. But that's exactly where you need to be

[01:03:00] if you're gonna do anything useful. So I wrote a book on sleep and sleep and dreams and dreams are great. We didn't talk about them but they're really complicated. They're really irrational. So that's why they're difficult. Do they really have any meaning?

[01:03:14] If I can ask a question real quick. Yeah, but chaos is their meaning. Chaos is their meaning, okay. They throw every- They take everything you know and mix it up in the blender nonsense. Oh God, I had a dream last night.

[01:03:29] I still can't imagine where these ideas came from. It was outrageous the stuff that happened in my dream. It was a long dream. And it's like I couldn't be this creative if I tried. I didn't even try. So there's a book on dreams and a book on sleep

[01:03:45] cause the two are sort of quite closely related. Right. Then like I said, this education project where I went and asked people how did they learn which turned into three books which I think are great. And then there was a book on COVID

[01:03:59] because I wanted to take the hypnotherapy and the self visualization and put it in the context of this prominent disease. And that went nowhere cause nobody looked, no one was willing to look at any alternatives throughout that whole adventure. That's sad.

[01:04:15] It is sad and it'll sit there as a useful addition. And now I've got a few more books on, they're not out yet, on transformative thinking and yet another version of my life as the son of an architectural photographer, a book is on my father's work

[01:04:32] in an attempt to bring that transformative and structured world into some focus. Architecture, creative art, engineering. Yeah, that's awesome. And a lot of the great architects were somewhat crazy people. They were sort of social renegades. So that's out there too, but it's not out there yet.

[01:04:55] So I have a counseling business and I have a lot of resources online and it's called Mind Strength Balance without any spaces.com. And I've got a free blog and it's, oh, you can talk to me for nothing for a short period.

[01:05:12] Anyway, that's the website and it's pretty big. Oh God, we didn't talk about games, neurofeedback, brain training. We wasted a whole hour talking about enlightenment and your higher self, but not unimportant. No, I think it is important, but I would have loved to touch on

[01:05:33] this is just not enough time, but well, if you're willing to come back sometime, maybe we could tackle another. Sure, love to. I'd love to hear what you have to say about healing, self-healing also. Well, thank you. I feel very blessed that I got to talk to you.

[01:05:52] So I appreciate it. It's my pleasure and makes me feel valuable. You're very valuable. I don't think I've ever met somebody with quite as many credentials. I mean, there's a whole, I clicked on the website. There's a whole page of, I don't know how you fit that all

[01:06:11] in your lifetime so far. It's amazing. Stein said this great thing. He said, there's nothing special about me. I'm just curious. And I thought, what nonsense? What a bunch of nonsense, but there's some truth to it. I don't know. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's great.

[01:06:30] Just keep going and you keep not wasting your time. Exactly, and I think everybody should be a lifelong learner. You should never quit learning. And I mean, it's also food for the brain in a way. It keeps your brain active and healthy.

[01:06:44] Yeah, mortality is another topic we can talk about. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you very much. You're welcome, very much. Look forward to it again. Yes. Yeah, yeah, I'd love that if you're willing. Okay, bye-bye. See you later. As we wrap up today's episode,

[01:07:07] I hope Lincoln sharing his journey experience and wisdom has helped you in some way. We covered so much that it is hard to narrow down to one or two things. However, I think the main takeaway for me is when Lincoln and I discuss self-love

[01:07:22] and what is it and the idea that it means different things to different people at different ages in their lives. But it boils down to really just self-respect or self-valuing of sorts. And that was really fascinating to me and maybe self-respect is the better term.

[01:07:39] I think we can all relate to that and what that means. So what stood out to you? I'd love to hear from you. As always, I hope this episode helps at least one person. And with that, I hope you have a blessed week, my friend.

[01:07:56] Thank you for listening to The Beauty and the Mess. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share it with a friend. And if you haven't already, please subscribe, rate and review this podcast on your favorite pod player. If you have any questions or comments,

[01:08:09] any topic ideas you would like to hear about or you think you would be a great guest on the show, you can reach me directly at thebeautyandthemess.com. Thanks for listening.