23 Lessons For Being Kinder To Yourself - Joe Hudson - #925

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
I love everything that you do. I can't believe, I genuinely can't believe it took me as long as it did to find your work. It's Charlie Hooper from Charisma on Command that said you'd been a gateway drug for him to a bunch of other stuff. And I get the sense you're kind of an underground hero in sort of the self-work world, who's now becoming increasingly less underground.

**Joe Hudson** (0:21)
Because of you.

**Chris Williamson** (0:23)
And OpenAI, you're now the head of what, OpenAI?

**Joe Hudson** (0:26)
No, not head. I'm working there maybe like 25 days this year, but I'm working with the compute and research teams. So basically the management of the folks who are creating the technology. Yeah, it's great work.
The cool thing is that when I think about generally like the creation of technology or the creation of art or the creation of this podcast, it's a reflection of the consciousness of the people who are creating it. And so to be able to be in there and work with consciousness and how the culture's consciousness is, and how the people interact with each other, and how they view themselves, to me, is a complete honor to be able to work there with them.

**Chris Williamson** (1:09)
Because you're further up than all of the things that are going to come after that, all of the products, the branding, the way that they deploy this stuff. Yeah, that's interesting.

**Joe Hudson** (1:17)
Yeah, and they're just sweethearts. I can't tell you, once that news came out, so many people came to me with a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear in the AI space. And I understand why people have the fear. Not both the people on the outside and the inside, like, oh, this is a revolutionary technology. What's going to happen? We don't actually know. So fear arises.
And I think what surprised me about it is just like, especially OpenAI, just the folks are just sweethearts. Like, they're just like such lovely humans. Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (1:51)
What drives you? What are you trying to achieve with your work?

**Joe Hudson** (1:57)
Yeah.
So what I would say is that generally, we have this epidemic of stress and lack of enjoyment in our society right now. And the thing about that is that it's corrosive both on an individual and on a societal level. So individually, it means that we do not learn as well. It means that we make bad decisions. It means that we don't get the world that we want. It means that we're uncomfortably living. It means we die faster. All those things because we're stressed and we're not enjoying life. But on a society level, if I'm stressed, I mean, the world is a threat. That's why we stress as mammals, right? So, oh my gosh, the world is a threat. And if I act like the world is a threat, then eventually I'm like, you're a threat, you're a threat, you're a threat. Eventually, you're gonna be a threat to me. If I treat you like an asshole, you're gonna act like an asshole eventually. If I treat you like a threat, you're gonna act like a threat eventually. So you're looking at our world right now and it's a whole bunch of stressed out people, treating everybody like threats and everybody's starting to act like a threat. Doesn't matter whether you're looking at politics or marriages or relationships. So to me, then the question is like, how do we work on that stress and increase the enjoyment? Typically, the way people look at that is, I'm too busy, the world is too complicated, the politics are doing this, there's a big unknown future, I have my phone and it's distracting me. So they put it all outside of themselves. They contribute, having a cell phone buzzing all the time is going to increase your stress, no doubt. But they're not the actual cause of the stress. The cause of the stress is three things, and then this is where I get, this is where I'm really like, this is where my work comes in. The first thing is repressed emotions, causes a shit ton of stress in humans. Second thing is lack of connection, causes a huge amount of stress. And the third thing, which I think is most relatable for people is the negative self-talk, causes a lot of stress. So if there's a voice in your head that is constantly criticizing you, you're constantly under attack. That's constant stress. That's like a war zone in your head. And so that's where my work is. My work is in changing the voice in the head. And the thing about the voice in the head is that I think most people, the way they think about it is I want it to stop or I'm going to be in self-improvement. I'm going to improve myself, I'm going to improve, but that's just more abuse. So, I flip from self-improvement to self-understanding.