Improve strategy, influence, and decision-making by understanding your brain | Evan LaPointe (founder of CORE Sciences)

**Joe Hudson** (0:00)
A lot of the people in my circles may have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try to arrange a life that they enjoy, and it doesn't fucking work.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:08)
What is holding people back?

**Joe Hudson** (0:09)
It's the fact that they have emotions, that they are not sitting, feeling or expressing. Whatever emotion that you're trying to avoid, you are inviting into your life in exactly the way that you're trying to avoid it.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:20)
What the hell? Why would, why does this happen? You have this really amazing insight. The voice in your head is often telling you bullshit.

**Joe Hudson** (0:27)
What most people try to do is they try to stop it, and that doesn't work very well. I think the best way to work with the voice in the head is to pick an experiment every day and respond to the voice in the head in a new way every day. One of my favorite responses is, oh, I see that you're really scared. Don't worry, I'm right here with you. I got you.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:42)
You're really big on helping people feel joy.

**Joe Hudson** (0:44)
It is such an important tool for productivity. If you say, I'm going to figure out how to enjoy what I do, 10% more, and you succeed, you are 10% more efficient. Not only that, usually the quality is going to get a lot better too.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:57)
Is there just like one thing you recommend that basically everyone try to experiment with?

**Joe Hudson** (1:02)
Yeah, it'll change your life dramatically really quickly.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:09)
Today my guest is Joe Hudson. Joe is one of the most sought after executive coaches amongst tech leaders, and has worked with folks from OpenAI, SpaceX, Apple, and other world-class companies. Joe's unique approach to coaching draws from his spiritual, psychological, and neurological practices. And in his intimate courses that he runs a few times a year, and in his podcast, he helps people create the life that they want with enjoyment and ease. In our conversation, Joe shares the two things that he finds most often keep people stuck in their life and in their job, and how to work on getting these things unstuck. Why the critical voice in your head is always wrong, contradictory, and telling you bullshit, and how to build a different relationship with that voice. Why falling in love with your emotions is so important and so powerful. Why you'd be better off focusing on what you want versus what you think you should do or think that you need to do. plus a bunch of amazing advice on how to make better decisions, help your team run more effectively, and why a seven-minute daily gratitude practice will change your life. This episode is basically for every single person. It will make your life and your work better. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Joe Hudson.
Joe, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

**Joe Hudson** (2:34)
Thanks. Good to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:36)
It's good to have you. I'm curious if there's any common themes that emerge often in terms of what is holding people back from success or just living the life that they want, especially ambitious tech people, which I know is a lot of the folks that you work with. Are there kind of like archetypes of like, here's the thing, often come up most often and hold people back?

**Joe Hudson** (2:57)
A non-specific answer to that question would be a critical voice in their head and a relationship with that critical voice that is not productive. So oftentimes, the critical voice in the head says, you need me to be productive, but it's usually a huge detriment to being able to really be successful. Even if you are successful with the really critical voice in your head, you never get to enjoy it. You might have the money, but then you're like, oh shit, I'm still miserable. Or I got the car, I got the house, I got the money, I got the successful career, and why am I unhappy all the time? So that would be, I would say, one of the biggest ones. Another really big one in a large category, I would say, is their relationship with emotions is all facada. They are either trying to pretend they don't have them, or compartmentalizing them, or trying to manage them rather than harnessing them and falling in love with them. So that would be another big place.