In 2011, I co-founded a software startup called Buffer, which I left in 2017 to live in multiple Thich Nhat Hanh / Plum Village monasteries for almost 2 years. I felt completely disoriented at the time, uncovering the many delusions of money, tech and fame as the final life answers, alongside broken relationships and friendships and nowhere to turn. The monks and nuns took me in in a way that I will be forever grateful for and Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching was the beginning on a long journey of self-discovery, healing, relaxation and coming to terms with reality as it is, right now.
Thich Nhat Hanh taught me something very ordinary: That it is important to pause often, to reflect, to sit still or walk in silence and to observe and acknowledge what is happening around you, inside and out. And to then act from that place of stillness and quiet with calm and kindness to the people around you. And to keep practicing this over and over again, without fail or getting tired from it.
I feel tremendous gratitude to him and his teaching, as well as the monks and nuns that dedicate themselves to his many practices and insights.
May he rest in peace and may his intentions and practices live on for a long time!
Exactly the kind of comment I was anticipating...and I find it quite annoying, because it misses the point I was hoping to make. Which is that even when you have everything "picture perfect", it required me to find another way to relate to life. And I believe that is true for any kind of experience most people are having in the world day to day.
I see nothing useful in your article more than an excuse for side promotion of your coaching business and the social networking you are building. Its so slick, well made and with the correct sad and happy points introduced at the right times...That undermines the credibility of your message. I am sorry but this is like a Tony Robbins like pitch for Generation Z....
I wish every leader gets access to these frameworks and takeaways. The #1 issue I face with every single client I've worked with over the years as an executive coach is exactly what they are pointing out here: that dealing with our emotions and inner worlds is the biggest challenge of all. Learning to deal with that has the highest ROI on both success and fulfillment/happiness compared to any other activity for a leader imo.
Thanks Leo, we have you to thank for introducing us to the concept of 'emotional debt'. I totally agree that for the majority of us, navigating the inner-world + increasing self-awareness has an absurdly high ROI on success/fulfillment.
What I also find fascinating is how running a company or leading a team appear to be an incredibly efficient vehicle for surfacing one's own sh*t—and once this new perspective is adopted—it becomes more potent than any self-help program out there for one's own personal growth.
Another word someone brought up is "Geborgenheit", which translates to comfort or security. Briefly researching the origin it, it seems to come from the terminology around "Burg" (castle), and the feeling of safety and comfort we feel when we're inside one. In my understanding it also has a considerable amount of warmth next to the sense of safety and comfort. Overall, definitely one of my favorite words that I think belongs on this list too!
It comes from "bergen", meaning "in Sicherheit bringen" (to shelter), as in "ein Schiff bergen", "wir verbargen uns im Schrank". From this stem nouns like "Herberge" and also "Geborgenheit". However, it seems the word "Burg" simply comes from "Berg" (mountain).
Of course I don't know this by heart, I recommend looking this up in
Geborgenheit: I always think this is a how a kid feels while sleeping on a couch under a blanket along with loving parents at a warm home while it is snowing outside.
I'm touched by your vulnerability and openness. It reminds me of a client who had built a billion dollar company and wanted my help building his next one. My immediate sense was that that was not really why we were talking or why he was here. We kept going and eventually I challenged him asking whether he had really built a billion dollar fortress to never need to be vulnerable. He broke down and we went deep, uncovering some of the deepest trauma I'd seen someone go through when they were 4 years old. From there, everything shifted and things took a very different direction.
It's those kinds of insights, when as you say "as my healing journey has progressed, any ambitions I held to achieve business success on par with the Airbnb founders has faded, and been eclipsed by the realisation in order to anything really well – from running businesses and leading social/political movements, to simply having successful friendships/relationships, a healthy family life and a physiologically healthy body – a healthy emotional foundation is of prime importance.", once we really get in touch with our inner world, things shift dramatically and what has meaning to us changes. That doesn't mean that we don't want to to continue having a meaningful contribution to the world, but the sense of ego-striving that is often just a mask for our wounds can gently fall away and allow us to walk through life a little more freely.
My learning has been whether you get to the billion dollar level or not, the untouched wounding eventually comes through and takes its toll if it stays unaddressed. It's stories like yours and the one I've described that make coaching the most meaningful thing I've done in my life to date.
> the untouched wounding eventually comes through and takes its toll if it stays unaddressed
This nails it, and I think a lot about this in the context of the very public cases of "unicorn" CEO falls-from-grace in recent years.
> That doesn't mean that we don't want to to continue having a meaningful contribution to the world, but the sense of ego-striving that is often just a mask for our wounds can gently fall away and allow us to walk through life a little more freely.
Isn't this just essentially just a reflection of maslow’s hierarchy of needs? I mean, everybody has their demons, and the founder of the billion dollar company has the time and resources to face those demons by receiving top quality professional assistance, leading him/her closer to some kind of self-actualization. Whereas a large majority of the population (even in developed nations) are still struggling on much lower levels of the hierarchy, such as fulfilling their "safety needs" (e.g. employment, health, etc).
I would therefore argue that the "untouched wounding" remains buried for most people because they are never in a position to address it, and the "ego-striving" remains essential part of their survival toolkit. There is simply no "salvation" in this regard for most people and it's quite sad.
No. Emotional healing became my top priority when I was effectively broke and homeless. I mean, I was crashing at my parents and friends’ places, but it was a profoundly miserable (and low-Maslow) state of existence.
Founders of break-out successful companies don’t just voluntarily embark on emotional healing practices once they reach the pinnacle of business success. They generally do that when they suffer a humiliating fall from grace. E.g., Early-career Steve Jobs and Jack Dorsey.
Also, Maslow’s model isn’t really broadly accepted in mainstream psychology, certainly not in any linear sense.
There are a lot of rich people out there who have all of their Maslovian needs met but who are absolutely miserable. What happens is that they never really figured out what they wanted out of life, they just assumed that having money would allow them to get it, and they'd figure it out later. But then they get money, realize that they are still miserable (because they still don't really know what they want) and then sink into deep existential despair because if you have a billion dollars and you're still unhappy, now what the fuck do you do?
Ron's second law: the hardest part of getting what you want is figuring out what it is.
I tried to be clear that I wasn’t “homeless” in the sense of living on the street.
I just couldn’t make rent (ironically I had to Airbnb out my room) or easily afford food/bills, so needed to sleep at parents’/friends’ houses for a while as I worked to get back on my feet.
Plenty of people go through this, due to a business/career/relationship breakdown, and recover to a good life, and it’s very common for people to start focusing on their emotional/spiritual wellbeing when they hit rock bottom (e.g., join 12-step programs, counseling etc).
People who are chronically homeless are in a different category, but it’s widely accepted that chronic homelessness is usually linked to mental illness and/or addiction (which is a form/symptom of mental illness after all).
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how outcomes for chronically homeless people could be improved if they had access to the kinds of support and healing techniques I’ve used. Given the opportunity, I’d be very willing to support research into this in the future.
Invoking concepts like “survivorship bias” is unhelpful in a discussion like this; my story is obviously anecdotal, not an academic paper or claim of scientific evidence. But that aside, “survivorship bias” in this context would require the existence of a whole lot of people who attempted the same approach to emotional healing that I did but failed to improve their lives, and there’s no evidence for this.
I couldn’t disagree more. I think free healthcare, aides for rents, food, etc. when you can’t afford it should be a human right. Some people manage more than others, and we just blame this on mental illness.
> Some people manage more than others, and we just blame this on mental illness
I agree, but I don't accept that this has to be immutable, and it would be a very bleak world/future if it did.
Rather than a world in which a class of people just has to accept a disempowered existence with basic services and resources provided, I hope for a world where effectively everyone can have agency over their own life, and aspire to good health, good relationships, and a reasonable level of material wealth.
That hope is part of what keeps me determined to explore the possibilities in this field; to see what kinds of improvements I can attain in my own life, then think about how these approaches could benefit others, including those who are currently written off as "mentally ill" (which I have been at certain times in my life).
I think I understand what you mean with that and agree with it in principle.
However you should keep in mind that you are a person with a "business mindset".
There is plenty of people out there who may well have something valuable to contribute to this world, but have no chance of getting an economic return out of that. This can be due to a lack of economic mindset/understanding/education or also just due to the type of value one is able to provide not fitting any monetization model.
I believe that a modern society can and should afford to relieve their members from existential fear related to biological needs. That is not about taking away aspiration and agency.
The combination "something valuable to contribute to this world" and "have no chance of getting an economic return out of that" sounds like a market failure, and something that could/should be fixed, both for the benefit of the individual and for society.
There are indigenous Australians in remote communities, who grew up and remain living in cultures that have little familiarity with modern commerce, but who produce artworks that sell for thousands of dollars on international markets. The proceeds are invested back into those communities for their future benefit. This happens because systems have been established to make it happen.
So I'm not convinced that there is an immutable state in which a certain class of people, while providing valuable contributions to society, cannot reap any economic benefit or improve their own lot in life.
Can you describe an example of this situation that you've observed?
... in other words: based on personal observation, I believe that the correlation of personal wealth and value contributed to society is not strong enough (which doesn't mean there's none) to justify making one's existence dependent on it - in a sophisticated society which could easily afford otherwise.
To add to this, when your ego mind drivers lead you to success giving you potentially unlimited resources - money and time, it is easier to maintain coping mechanisms of distraction - unless there's some traumatic or stressful enough event that "cracks" someone, causing an impetus and necessity to explore change.
Western philosophy starting from Ancient Greeks has offered a variety of coherent life philosophies that both help with untouched wounding and ego-striving. The books provide cheap and accessible salvation which is just not in demand by most people and it is quite sad.
I'd like to reframe this, I think there's only one way to know if someone is a good fit for you - to have a proper, real, deep coaching session. As a software founder I have the idea of a "trial" baked into me, so I think this is no different here. I sometimes coach people for weeks at a time (there's no payment), so that both of us know whether this is right for us (I have the privilege that money is not an issue for me). So that I think is the most powerful, because at that point someone can truthfully commit and go all in and I think for a coaching partnership to be successful, that's the only way in my mind. When someone asks me I often say "let's coach and you can make up your mind after...", this really takes the pressure off, which can otherwise dilute a process that I think is honestly, holy in my book. In other words, if there's a coach you think could be helpful, ask them for a free, full-on coaching session so you can understand if there's a good fit.
And the most effective means to tune in in my experience are simply finding ways to slow down. Pausing, in talking, in walking, being in places that are less crowded. Tuning in during a walk in a park is much easier than in a busy restaurant. And pointing things out that you notice if someone is really charged about something, although that is a delicate process of course. But that's where I'd start.
I really loved your article. In software we are accustomed to constant progress, and we are sometimes on this perpetual hype train. Which creates this stress of the next thing you need to learn, stay ahead of the game, I wonder if in software we should more focus on calm as a counterbalance to hype. A recent HN article I liked for instance focussed on calm apps that instead of constantly bugging you, they quietly do their job.
Great point, I feel incredibly indebted to Stephen Porges', both for my own internal well-being and the lessons I've learned and can share with others.
Yes, I'm a big fan of Tara Brach's work too! My experience has been that many of us live in such a cognitively focused world that the sensations and feelings of our bodies take a huge back-seat.
Hi everyone, Leo here. I feel grateful for the HN community's response to this post. I only emerged recently to the "real world" again and feel still some hesitation and fear around showing a much more vulnerable part of myself with the work I do now. (Building marketing software was fun too!) So yeah, just want to say thanks and would love to discuss anything this sparks.
1) "80% of your body’s signals are sent to the brain from the body and only 20% the other way around."
This is pretty interesting. The idea of not attempt to "command" the body but work with the body and unconscious process is common in a wide variety of martial arts and healing art modalities (Alexander Technique, Qigong, hypnosis, etc).
2) "When your amygdala is active, you can’t have empathy for others"
Unfortunately, this statement seems to suffer from the weakness of popular psychology expositions - a series of fairly pat cause-and-effect statement when the causes of virtually all behavior is more complex and much less certain.
The human brain is fantastically complex thing. Neurologists and psychologists have done many experiments on it. The "replication crisis" is a good indicator how difficult is to go from experiments on a few particulars to a general understanding of how the brain works. I think the criticism of "functional areas" that Luria made in The Working Brain should be read carefully.
The thing about this is: neurological research is great to add if what you're looking for is "what might be", using methods that possibly have scientific and seem effective. But if you operate in terms of "how things absolutely are", then one risks going into the realm of pseudo-science. And there's a lot of supposedly neurologically based new age quackery out there - much of it based things that "the latest findings" whenever said quack happened to get their start.
There is some stuff in post that is somewhat useful, but the conviction of the statements is a bit much. Nothing in the brain is simple, and most of neuroscience is in it's infancy today. Dandy-Walker syndrome is an especially extreme, but illustrative, case of how strange the brain can be on the inside, yet present as normal on the outside[0].
In the majority of individuals with Dandy–Walker malformation, signs and symptoms caused by abnormal brain development are present at birth or develop within the first year of life
"The person was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant, leading an at least superficially normal life, despite having enlarged ventricles with a decreased volume of brain tissue. "What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life", commented Dr. Max Muenke, a pediatric brain-defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute. "If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side.""
2) I enjoy the truism that we cannot act lovingly when we are on the defensive. It's more abstracted from the biology, but perhaps that helps it capture the nuances of reality.
Its very interesting to me that you have achieved the financial success that many dream of, which could allow you to retire and do what the heck you like for the rest of your life. But somehow it didn't bring total happiness, so you have actively gone on a mission to seek that out.
Maybe that is a warning sign for many people aspiring to make money, that even fully loaded you still have to deal with your own brain. Knowing how your own brain works and how to make yourself happy is a very important skill.
Couldn't have said it better myself, that's exactly been my experience and what I'd like to share with others both experientially in sessions and through my writing. And I'm having a lot more fun just being with all aspects of life from a human connection perspective leaving the striving, money, etc., on the side (even though it's hard and creeps back in).
This post resonates a lot with me, in particular items 7 and 2. I subscribed to your newsletter and am looking forward to future content!
That being said: in my personal experience, having an intellectual understanding of something (like emotional triggers being unintegrated memories) provides some brief relief, but rarely helps me make behavioral or emotional changes in the long run.
From your point of view, what is the relation of knowing vs experiencing in making progress towards emotional resilience, and what techniques can you recommend for the experiencing aspect?
Yes, I try to strike a balance with that. To me, knowing about it brings me a lot of safety, so I know what I'm getting into when I'm doing a session, crying, contorting, reliving old memories, etc. Ultimately, I agree with you, we can talk about how to ride a bike with as much detail and scientific evidence as we want, eventually we need to ride one to see what its like.
The most effective methods I've experienced were Somatic Experiencing, a body-based psychotherapy practice I've also trained in as a therapist. There's also an empathy resonance approach by a woman called Sarah Peyton that I find very effective (her book "Your resonant self" is great). Of course I believe in my own methodology of emotional resilience which is sort of a mix of the two above, I'd be glad to offer a free session to you anytime to experience it.
Ultimately there're lots of methods, like meditation, yoga, therapy modalities that try to accomplish what we're intellectually talking about when we say emotional resilience or inner healing. In my experience this is only effective whenever the practitioner has studied and experienced this on their own body and nervous system to offer it to you effectively. And that's hard to know when it's the very thing you're looking for and you only know it intellectually. A bit of a catch 22. And it's not really a requirement when you go to therapy school for example. So it can be a mixed bag. Trial and error, which can be painful when you open yourself up to these aspects inside yourself is your friend too I believe (I tried talk therapy, various meditation practices and a few others and settled on what was both most effective in my personal experience and had the most scientific backing, like the methods I described above).
Finally, I think we're all equipped as humans to offer co-regulation and empathic presence to each other to heal from whatever difficult or stressful experience we've had. Most of us just have unlearned it very young or there's not enough emphasis in our environment to practice that with each other.
Hope some of that is helpful, let me know if you have any more questions!
thanks! Yeah, I tried my best to link throughout the post. I can see how having the citations neatly at the end may be helpful too if that's what you're saying!
> 80% of your body’s signals are sent to the brain from the body and only 20% the other way around.
So whenever we are afraid or anxious and we feel that thing in our bellies, is it the brain sending messages to the belly or the belly reacting and sending messages to the brain?
Most of the time its a mix, it creates a positive feedback loop, which isn't really so positive, but it can be! Say your gut is tight, it sends a signal to your brain saying "I'm tight", now the brain receives this and reinforces it (the other 20%) by saying, "the gut is tight, we need to keep it tight!", which makes it tighter and the cycle continues. Does that make sense?
If we're in a grounded, reflected and self-connected place (i.e. if we have empathy or warm accompaniment from ourselves or someone else), we can interrupt this cycle. The signal "the gut is tight" from the gut can be discerned "ah, interesting, I wonder if it needs to be tight or if I should change the topic or watch a different movie or leave this room", etc.,
Yes, this happens through a process that Porges calls "neuroception" (easy to google). Essentially the subconscious part of your nervous system, especially the brainstem constantly scans your environment for threats of any kind (it takes in incredible detail, some say 1000s of times per second without it ever bubbling up to your conscious mind).
Here's an example: You see a tiger in the forest. Your eyes send that signal through their nerves to the brainstem, which makes your stomach tight and activates your legs to run away. The tight stomach and running legs then send their signals of movement and clenching back up through to limbic system ("I'm scared!") and the neocortex (your conscious brain, "I'm running away from the tiger!") to tell it to run. Because all of this happens so fast, our experience is this: We saw the tiger and therefore we're scared and are running away. That's not really what's happening under the hood, we're scared BECAUSE we're running and have a tight gut, the tiger was just a trigger for the brainstem/gut/legs. Makes sense?
My current understanding of this, combining thoughts on subsumptive robotics and embodied cognition:
Emotional states aren't reified in the brain; they're reified in our physiology. When you're happy, or sad, or scared, or whatever else, that's not a fact about your brain; your brain is just perceiving a fact about your body. (A fact that it worked together with the body to create, but still.)
Think of the brain as the CPU and the body (muscular contraction levels, etc.) as RAM. The brain-as-CPU has registers (informational state held directly in the brain), but your emotions are not held directly in such registers. Emotional states are, instead, patterns of information in the body-as-RAM, that the brain-as-CPU (statelessly) perceives [loads from, polls] in an ongoing way. If the body-as-RAM is polled and shows a certain recognizable pattern of activations, then that is interpreted by the brain as a certain emotional state.
Both the brain-as-CPU and various body parts (devices on the bus) can write to the body-as-RAM. The brain-as-CPU will then notice that the "emotional state" that it reads from the body-as-RAM has changed, and may do something about it (reinforce the change, counteract it, etc.)
What you experience as the qualia of emotion, is the brain's perception of the body-as-RAM, the same one it uses to decide whether to "do something about it."
Hi LeonW, I was born in Bozen, I use your software, and I practice meditation every day. I work at a startup where we try to keep stress low in a friendly environment.
Wanted to say thanks, nice article, and you are very brave to open up that way ;)
Hi, not a neurologist here, but it doesn't take more than 5 seconds to realize that everything you wrote in here is wrong. Have you considered deleting it?
Edit: Specifically, vagus nerve as cause of emotion, amygdyla+empathy, synapses vs skills, everything about "feigning death", everything about "triggers"...
A few things that I realize now, we should have put into the post for full context:
> We replaced 1:1's with managers with peer 1:1's between people in equal positions. So it was true peer to peer mentoring on the same hierarchical level. This however didn't fulfill the need that people really want to hear from someone who might have more experience than them, or who can guide them onto the next step.
That makes a LOT more sense!
Enjoyed the article, thanks, and totally understand you not putting each and every detail in the original piece, its not an exhaustive study.
In 2011, I co-founded a software startup called Buffer, which I left in 2017 to live in multiple Thich Nhat Hanh / Plum Village monasteries for almost 2 years. I felt completely disoriented at the time, uncovering the many delusions of money, tech and fame as the final life answers, alongside broken relationships and friendships and nowhere to turn. The monks and nuns took me in in a way that I will be forever grateful for and Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching was the beginning on a long journey of self-discovery, healing, relaxation and coming to terms with reality as it is, right now.
Thich Nhat Hanh taught me something very ordinary: That it is important to pause often, to reflect, to sit still or walk in silence and to observe and acknowledge what is happening around you, inside and out. And to then act from that place of stillness and quiet with calm and kindness to the people around you. And to keep practicing this over and over again, without fail or getting tired from it.
I feel tremendous gratitude to him and his teaching, as well as the monks and nuns that dedicate themselves to his many practices and insights.
May he rest in peace and may his intentions and practices live on for a long time!