Embracing Uncertainty & Radical Curiosity with Leo Babauta 👊

Listen to the conversation in full on Spotify, Castro or iTunes below:

‎Curious Humans with Jonny Miller on Apple Podcasts

Leo Babauta is the prolific writer of Zen Habits who joined me from the distant island of Guam 7,400 miles away. Here are a few tasters for what to expect in this wide-ranging conversation

😨 How Zen Habits evolved into his mission to help others push into their uncertainty.

👨‍🎓 How Leo unschooled and de-programmed his kids to facilitate their own natural state of curiosity.

🚀 Leo’s compelling case for why a fully-optimised life would actually suck and risks being the most controlled boring thing possible.

💪 Developing and training ‘radical curiosity’ to dive inwards even when you don’t like what you’re seeing — how to hold the pose when you’re entire body wants to shut down and run.

🤼 What he’s learned about learning and his no-holds-barred debate with Tim Ferriss on the idea of abandoning goals.

🧘‍♂️ The incredible Zen Habits origin story — his path from being in debt, overweight, a smoker and feeling miserable to escaping debt, gaining a following of over a million readers, publishing books on habit-change, finding joy and even running an ultra-marathon!

Jonny: It’s working as well okay perfect. So I’m here with Leo Babauta the prolific writer of Zen habits who is joining me from the island of Guam which is I believe 7400 miles away. We met a few months ago in Portland and Leo was running a really powerful workshop on fearless training at the world domination summit. And I’m sure we’ll get into that but first let’s kick off with a question that I always love to start these conversations with and the question is where you exceptionally curious as a child and could you maybe tell me a story about something that you were curious about?

Leo: Yeah it’s interesting I think I was, was I exceptionally curious of the child? I think I was you know one thing that I remember I remember exploring actually lived here in Guam for a lot of my childhood and exploring the jungles climbing these huge banyan trees and just loving the idea of exploring and I would create my own worlds and so in that way I was kind of just projecting my imagination onto the world and not necessarily. That wouldn’t be an example of curiosity but I remember when I realized that other people had imagination.

It wasn’t just my imagination but there were other people who were lost in theirs and then one thing that would really catch my curiosity was how we could create a world of imagination together and so I would lead them on adventures through the jungles. We climbed the tree and play like some kind of world up there and leading people into a shared space of imagination was I think a great source of curiosity for me.

I also remember when I discovered that the imagination of authors and books I just like became just like just devoured books like we’d go to the library and take out a stack and then come back a few days later and replace it with another stack.

So it was just like a mind-blowing realization that there was like all these worlds of imagination out there, so yeah thanks for taking me back to that wonderful time.

Jonny: that’s amazing and it’s funny how books seem to be the catalyst for a lot of these conversations that I’ve had from people like yourself and I think that absolutely is almost like the gateway to I’m it gives you more things to be curious about because you realize that there are all these other worlds and books are almost like a gateway to that and that makes so much sense and I had a thought I remember during the workshop you mentioned that you’ve got I think six kids yeah that was wondering what have they taught you about curiosity in the last year?

Leo: that’s a good question you know I think one thing I really love is just seeing the natural curiosity that kids have. And I think that we as adults just as a system tend to drive it out of them so that we like yeah pound learning into them the things that we think that they should learn and until they just become so bored that they like okay like I don’t like learning anymore.

I’m not saying every kids like that I think that’s a very common thing I mean one thing that I’ve seen is people who rediscover their curiosity as adults after having it driven out of them. Because like as a teacher like imagine having a classroom full of 25, 30 kids who are all asking you like endless questions like eventually you’re just going to like tell them not to ask questions just you know do what you’re told.

I mean just like much more efficient right yeah and so I think our school system I don’t know what it’s like where you live but I know in in the US our system very much like drill them tell them what they need to know and not have them ask questions as much. And so one thing I’ve really discovered I started out with my kids going to school but I actually took them out of school and started unschooling them.

Jonny: that’s amazing.

Leo: the whole journey of unschooling is like deprogram what we teach them in school and allow them to just start to get into the natural state of their own curiosity and like what do they want to learn about what are they interested in and then let that drive them.

And then as a parent you’re only or as a teacher your only real role is to facilitate that natural curiosity and say like how didn’t we like explore together how can we create a shared space together or how can you just like let them go out and explore on their own whether that’s like out in the jungles or like in a book or on the internet or whatever it is that they’re really curious about.

And I see times when like their curiosity isn’t being sparked and so then I try and like find ways to just get a discussion going that sparks it but you can’t force it. So it’s a really interesting thing to explore is like how to spark curiosity how to like it’s like a little tiny spark that you can like nurture and grow into a flame.

That’s the whole area of parenting that I’m like I totally don’t know what I’m doing but it’s a lot of fun to explore.

Jonny: I absolutely love that and particularly and I mean I completely agree with you I think that our schooling system in it is the same in the UK unfortunately. It’s painful how you said the learning gets jammed in you but it almost gets Jammed out of you I think kids are natural. They loved to learn and I think because we get taught to prioritize and giving the right answers over like you say asking really good questions and I think that we almost have this idea that when we get to 18 or 21 and we leave the education system that we just stopped learning. And it’s like our learning period in life is over and we now go into like doing in working mode and I think that we need to exactly as it sounds like you’ve been doing almost deprogram ourselves and kids and the system to just ignite that natural inherent spark of learning and just like pour fuel on the fire if their own curiosity which I think kids have. And your daughter’s in Tokyo Japan at the moment as well. So you must have kind of poured enough curiosity on that part.

Leo: She was one of our unschooled kids since basically elementary school we took her out of elementary school she’s now 18 she just turned 19 and she really wanted to get into like she’s into Japanese anime and manga and she really wanted to be an artist and like explore Japan.

And so it’s like a huge world of uncertainty for her and so we just kept encouraging her go go. And do it and we took her over there to kind of help guide her into that because it’s always helpful to have someone holding your hand at first but then just like shoved her away and like and you can do this.

And of course it’s like incredibly scary but yeah she’s absolutely exploring her own journey right now and her own path into like Who am I what I want to do in this world what makes me passionate what drives me what gets me up in the morning like how do I like manage my finances.

It’s like just a lot of exploring to do. One little real quick thing just because I want to be fair to like teachers I kind of like dissed on teachers a little bit. But I know a lot of really great teachers who actually do spark curiosity but I really believe that the system is geared against those kinds of teachers and they have to kind of rebel against the system like you know drilling in and driving. And so they yeah they find their own ways to explore how to do that in in the school system but it’s not set up for that.

Jonny: yeah I completely agree and I think there’s some interesting movements with I had a tour of the Green School in Bali and they have this really interesting system where they theme each term or each year around something like trees. And they look trees and from the perspective of biology from geography from physics and all these different perspectives and it’s like something that kids already love and they just they’re taught to be curious about this one thing and do projects and think you’ve talked about it and it’s such a just a more natural and fluid way of learning and I feel like it’s catching on in lots of little small pockets but it’s going to be a while before like the mainstream schooling education system catches up because it’s just so big and the so much bureaucracy. But anyway I feel like we talked about this quite a long time I’m I’d love to just any of the readers or the readers the listeners you aren’t familiar with your work and your amazing story of pretty much turning your life around from quitting smoking and getting out of debt and running ultra-marathons.

Leo: So for those who haven’t, aren’t familiar with it you can imagine yourself as me more than ten years ago this is in 2005 on Guam. I had a job in the government a job that I did not like unfulfilled I was also deeply in debt and with lots of really bad spending habits.

Lots of bad health habits I was a lot heavier about 60, 70 pounds heavier I don’t know how many stones that is. But it was definitely like another small person heavier than I am now and just addicted to junk food.

I couldn’t start exercising I was a smoker and so just a lot a lot of stuff that I want to change and one thing at the core of it all was I was deeply unhappy with myself and how I was conducting my life.

And so I felt stuck I didn’t know how to change I kept trying to like stick to an exercise program I started a whole bunch of diets did everything from Atkins to the you know South Beach diet to a whole bunch of our wits and nothing stuck I couldn’t stick to anything and so it was like well these are all successful plans so the common factor is me like I am failing and so I just kept feeling really bad about myself and that was like a really dark place for me.

Where I just was failing personally failing as a father, not providing for my family, deeply in debt hiding from creditors I would like wasn’t answering my phone and stuffing the mail into a drawer not looking at it. So that’s where I was and the turning point came of course it’s always like a dark turning point where I like realize I was killing myself, I was like letting my family down and a turning point came when I decided I had to change just one thing and I decided to quit smoking I made a promise to my wife and daughter and poured my entire being into that one change.

I said I’ll do all the other ones later but this is one thing I try and do I did all the research follow every single plan that I could think of joined a group online and committed to them as well and learned from them.

And so social accountability became a big part of it I meditated as a way to like relieve stress and deal with stress and urges. I learned about triggers and I journaled and I just did everything that I could and it worked. And it was just like I felt so amazing that I like made that one change and I started to apply some of the same things towards running where I couldn’t even run for 10 minutes.

Eventually I ran a 5k likes just slowly one step at a time started going longer at the end of the 5k I said oh I’m going to run my first marathon. Like obviously I can run a marathon if I can 5k right I didn’t realize how hard it would be and how dumb it would be to commit to doing it a year later. It’s not it’s not enough time to be running to run a marathon but I said oh I can do it and so that was a the first and a mini series of over-optimistic commitments that I’ve made I still make them today. So that was the marathon I started changing my diet I became a vegetarian for health reasons and then eventually ethical reasons and now I’m a vegan.

I started getting out of debt and I had to get my wife’s help in this one and we started to slowly change our financial habits and get out of debt one step at a time started waking earlier started writing stopped procrastinating as much. I eventually quit that job started a blog after running my first marathon and the blog took off I like poured myself into the blog series of there was another of a series of things that I’ve poured myself into one at a time.

Wrote an e-book that helped me to finish getting out of debt quit my day job and sold a book at the end of the first year of Zen habits the blog I had gained a massive following 27,000 subscribers at the end of the first year eventually a lot more than that. And so yeah it’s just a massive ride of success but it all started was changing one habit at a time and I had lost a whole bunch of weight changed pretty much everything about myself and at the center of all of it I decluttered my life started simplifying.

At the center of all of it has been mindfulness so that I just happened to stumble upon meditation and Zen and when I started Zen habits I titled a Zen I didn’t knew nothing about Zen at the time. It was just like a full name that I thought like let’s try and pick habits and simplicity and mindfulness together and but at the center of all of it has been mindfulness even when I was running when I was quitting smoking when I was getting out of debt it was a lot of learning about myself learning about the self-doubt the beating myself all the stories that I have about myself all of the habits of running to distractions of lashing out at my you know people that I know that I love.

All of these things I started to learn more myself and this is where curiosity comes in. It was developing a deep sense of curiosity about what was going on inside rather than completely ignoring it and trying to go like everywhere outside and that’s to me the real story of Zen habit isn’t like all these successes along the way but really the successes of continuing to go inside even when I didn’t like what I was seeing right yeah so that’s that’s been a profound transformation for me it’s just the courage and willingness and curiosity to go inward and stay there and continue to explore there like there’s just vast worlds in there that I’m still discovering it and still a lot of changes to be made but really loving that exploration.

Jonny: that’s so powerful and I was I was reading one of your recent blog posts and there was there was a quote that was just I’ve written down heads when you’re feeling fear instead of turning away from it or trying to escape and avoid it try turning towards it and actually allow yourself to feel the fear. We don’t often want to feel it but we have a greater capacity to feel fear than we give ourselves credit for and I’ve been thinking about this idea. I think I may be mentioned in your workshop as well as a radical curiosity. For me is this this idea of like having the courage to be curious amidst this great discomfort and does that kind of ring true to you that sounds a lot like kind of what you’ve been describing along your path.

Leo: yeah I love that you’ve discovered that independently and are bringing that to whatever I offer. Yeah that’s just perfectly put it’s just I think I think part of the not willing to turn towards is part the part of it is assuming we already know right like I already know everything that’s going on I know what’s going on so I just need to you know basically you don’t need to pay attention to something if you already know it.

So we categorize ourselves as known and we have to like go out and explore everything outside of ourselves. But acts there’s so much inside of us that we don’t know and fear is one of those like okay fear fear is bad I need to get away from it I don’t like it fear is bad no that’s categorize as known but actually there’s so much more to fear and everything else that goes inside of us but fear is just like this really interesting phenomenon that you know like it’s natural it’s evolutionary you can’t escape it you can’t like shut it off.

And it controls so much of what we do that turning towards it with curiosity this radical curiosity that you’re proposing I love it because it’s not just like turning towards something we hate and just like punishing ourselves by like being with it like they I think that’s what a lot of us feels when we turn towards something like fear or anger that is just like this is something we don’t want we want to get away from just like this distaste that’s like really huge discomfort but curiosity a radical curiosity of turning towards it’s actually a really positive connotation that you’re adding to it that you like you really want to know more about it. And curiosity is a beautiful positive thing that we can we can explore the world around us and in us and really just want to know more just want to be open to not.

To the idea of not knowing I don’t know everything about fear about what’s going on inside of me and I can just say I don’t know what is this you know like and that’s you can do that with a smile when you’re curious. When you like don’t want to face something you can like have this attitude of like shirking away from it and I know people might not be watching the video of this. But I’m like turning away like with a face of my I mean like a face of distaste on my face.

And it’s just like that’s kind of the attitude that we take it’s like we don’t want to look at something because it’s just tasteful and it’s like uncomfortable but curiosity is like turning towards it with like an open body an open mind and open heart and just be like I really want I know more about you and that I think is a friendliness towards our experience that we don’t offer towards it.

Just imagine if you had a friend in front of you who was giving you something that you didn’t necessarily wasn’t the way that you normally would do things right. And you turned away from them and said I don’t like that like that wouldn’t be a good relationship you wouldn’t have a good friendship there. But if you turn toward them and be like okay well what’s going on here I’m curious to know more about you.

All of a sudden that person would feel more accepted they would be willing to share more they would feel more connected to you and that would be a much better relationship and I think it’s the same thing that we have with ourselves and with our experience is that we don’t have a good relationship with ourselves and our experience most of the time I’m generalizing of course. But we turn away from it we don’t want to see it we don’t want to experience it.

We’re rejecting it and turning towards it with that curiosity is a friendliness it’s a willingness to be with. It’s a willingness to doesn’t be like I don’t know everything about you just tell me more just like you would with a good friend. And I like that curiosity also has a gentleness as a warmth and it has just this genuineness that is this is like perfectly encapsulates the attitude that we can have towards our fear and pretty much everything in our experience so yeah well put.

Jonny: yeah I absolutely love that and something that you said about and we think of our own selves and our bodies as sticks like known entity I think that’s so true and something that I’ve had a fairly kind of fairly intense year. And I’ve done a couple of and ten days silence for passing and meditation retreats yeah and when you’re sitting in silence for that period of time and you’re kind of looking inwards you’re like holy crap like there is so much going on inside our brains and our bodies and our minds that we’re just not aware of 99% because we don’t we don’t make the time to listen and we don’t pay attention to it. And for me that was such it was almost like the portal into a deeper curiosity because I’m like if I can spend a few days sitting like this much comes up like what else what else is there and it’s so so interesting. So I guess kind of leading on from when from then habits how did this community of readers that you built evolve into what I guess is now your current mission of helping others push into that uncertainty and embrace this kind of and approach to life and do you still feel like uncertainty it’s a routing a little bit as well?

Leo: absolutely yeah it’s definitely I would say the root of what I do so then habits at the beginning was a lot about productivity and simplifying your life and changing your habits and so I wrote a lot of books and did courses on those things and I also did a program this was actually the start of the new path was a program where I still do it where I’m helping people change their habits one at a time and it’s called see change.

And it’s slow one chain one habit change at a time where I’ll give you a set of instructions and if you follow those instructions you’ll have a new habit. And that sounds like certain and easy and doable and it is a lot of people have actually succeeded at but there are also a larger number who didn’t and so though I actually get really curious about why they didn’t I’m like well here’s the instructions I did it.

It worked this person did it, it worked why did it work for you guys right. And so I was really curious I started asking them I started working with them on a closer you know one-on-one basis coaching some of them just because I really wanted to dive into this and as I would give them what likely you didn’t that didn’t work let’s try this I give them some new instructions didn’t work. And sometimes they start to ghost me because they didn’t want to face the coach who was like you know get you know like who was the source and the witness of their failure.

So yeah they would just ghost me and like not even talk to me and the worst this with them I really started to understand that there were some deep uncertainties that we have about ourselves. Pretty much all of us have deep uncertainties about ourselves do you uncertainties that we have about our ability to relate to others, to be able to stick to something to be able to handle anything whether we’re going to fail at anything and it’s the really the source of why we procrastinate.

It’s the source of why we don’t stick to a habit or if we fall off the wagon of a habit why do we don’t just start again which is like the simple answer like I was doing it for 21 straight days then I missed a couple days because of whatever reason why don’t you just start again right. That’s a simple solution but there is a deeper answer to why we don’t do that and it’s because we have a lot of uncertainty about ourselves and so I started to look into this like I have it it’s not that I’m judging them and that I’m free of it.

I have a lot of uncertainty and you know there’s a lot of messiness behind the scenes that you know people don’t realize about my journey that I shared with you guys like it sounds really great because I did all these things. No it was actually way messier than that and I have a lot of uncertainty about myself when it comes to being able to stick to things or deal with challenges and so I can see that it was still in me and it was in others and so I started to explore ways to deal with and to work with this uncertainty about ourselves. And I really the more that I worked with it and I started bringing mindfulness techniques to it the more I work with it the more I realize it was at the core of like everything that I was trying to do when it whether you want us like simplify your life.

If you want to travel if you want to get healthy and fit if you want to like work on your finances be more productive whatever it is that you want to do uncertainty sits at the heart of it and if you can work with that you’ve now unlocked a way of working that will help you to deal with like everything in your life. And so I’m like okay well this is really the key but how do you work with it and I felt uncertainty about how to do that ironically of course and about my ability to help people to do that. Because this is not I you know I have some set ways of working with people this is not it and so I started to explore different as I started doing in-person things like the workshop that you went to and that became like a powerful thing like whoa working with people in person was way more powerful than like writing over the Internet you know like who would a guessed right.

Like working with video working with people in small groups like online groups one on one coaching. All of this stuff started to be reveal itself as like different modalities that I can explore from dealing with uncertainty and of course there’s still books and online courses that you take without any kind of personal one-on-one or group kind of stuff but I really believe that the power of like the interpersonal dynamic is the way that we deal with uncertainty. Because that right there is filled with uncertainty so is just stepping into a conversation with someone like you and I are doing right now is filled with uncertainty and being willing to do that already shows like a courage to turn towards with radical curiosity.

I believe at least a little bit right like it’s just like a slight opening and that slight opening is where someone like me can just like dive in like okay let’s get in there and get messy but if you’re not willing to even engage with someone you already have you already know everything you already know all the things that are wrong with the world and everybody else and you’re not willing to come into a conversation then you’re not going to be able to do any of this work so if you come into a conversation you’re ready and that’s the people who are doing that people like you we’re not only doing this conversation went along with me. But going to places like Portland, Oregon and like this surrender into some crazy guy’s meditations and exercises that those are the people who I love working with and so that’s how I find my people.

Jonny: this really touches on something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently and I’ve just started almost midway through now leading a 10-week course called the startup tribe in London Sports aspiring founders so it’s really exciting but something that I’ve been thinking about a lot as we kind of deliver this deliver this content on this on this curriculum is there’s a quote from a Papua New Guinea tribe that is knowledge is only a rumor and to let lives in the muscle. And this is this I think we have all of these kind of intellectual ideas which might be right but the challenge is like how can you how can you put them into practice how can you go from the head to the heart and how can you actually live these ideas and have it all have live in the muscle. And so I’d love to ask you how have you approached training people’s uncertainty muscles and what have you noticed kind of in the process or what advice might you give other people who are trying to take some of these like intellectual ideas that they get but haven’t quite been able to?

Leo: Yeah it’s funny I mean that’s quote is so right on there’s also another side of it that I disagree with but the main part of the quote which is yeah you have to you have to live it you have to practice it right and you won’t know it until then.

And I think a lot of people like they can listen to this podcast and they were like intellectually understand curiosity and uncertainty and mindfulness but until you actually do it and so this is something that I learned about learning I got really curious about learning at one point and we learned best not just by like reading or receiving information, but first by testing ourselves before we get the information.

So you’re creating like kind of holes to put the information into like I don’t know anything about Papua New Guinea I’d like to go find that right so then you read or watch something about Papua New Guinea and it starts to fill in the holes then you retest yourself afterward and you see where the new holes are right. And I think that’s true of things like curiosity and uncertainty is that when you practice something you think Oh Leo gave me all the information about uncertainty and I’m practicing with it.

But then as I practice I start to see things that come up that I didn’t realize some issues that will come up didn’t realize we’re issues and so then you’re like oh there’s something new that I have to like answer here and that’s when you might come back to Toledo. And say hey I’m having trouble here I’m struggling with this and then I might give you a new practice to do and so you’re going to do this practice to deal with that new thing and then something else comes up and so until you start to walk the walk. Walk down this path you’re not going to see like all of the little details all of the little pitfalls and wonderful things about it as well.

So you have to practice right so what I’ve learned I started a new program called Fearless Training on Patreon where you can join me and I’ll give you some steps to do. Is first of all you have to commit yourself to something right and I like it when you commit yourself to like a group of people like first of all these are people who you want to help you want to serve in this world so you’re helping these people who are starting doing startups in in the UK and they’re like one of your tribes right there are the people that you’re trying to serve and you’re doing it out of love for them and so you feel this deep love and that’s our why right.

So you have to have a why when you’re going to put yourself into the fire that might not be the right metaphor because it feels really bad but if you’re going to put yourself into the fire of training you have to have a deep reason to do that so that would be the first one is have a why commit yourself to the training, commit yourself to others it could be done to that same group of people or maybe some other people who are doing this training with you. Maybe it’s just one best friend who’s going to like do the training with you commit yourself to others because if you don’t you’re just going to let yourself off the hook.

Training on your own is actually an advanced practice that I don’t recommend people like go to the like the world series or the Super Bowl to use American sports as the real cup without ever having played like youth soccer you know or the youth football like start at the beginning with other people holding you in the space so that would be another one and then commit yourself to doing something every single day and there is where you’re going to start to see the rubber meeting the road that’s where you’re going to start to get the muscle memory but you’re also going to see where your patterns are like it in the way. We all have patterns that get in the way of this training.

So there’ll be self-doubts there will be like the rebel in you who doesn’t want to stick to something every single day and wants to go and do something else and be free. There’ll be the prison who like is meticulous and controlling but then when things go off track then they’re like the meticulous and controlling thing starts to become get in the way.

So there’s all these patterns that we all have some of them are stronger for others and they will come up for you in this training as you start doing the training every single day something will come up you’ll like, like not want to do it and delay it and go and do Facebook and Instagram instead. And so all of these things will come up and when that comes up your patterns are starting to emerge and so imagine you’re like doing a yoga pose and like all of a sudden like it starts to feel really uncomfortable and you don’t want to do it anymore right. You’re in this pose and your mind the patterns that your mind start to come up where you want to get out of it you want to run away from you want to shut your heart down to it.

You don’t want to be curious anymore right you don’t want to be this uncertainty anymore because it’s so uncomfortable so in that moment you have an opportunity to change your patterns from what you normally do which is run, avoid, complain, lash out procrastinate all of these things distract yourself comfort yourself with food and porn and video games and YouTube those are your usual patterns.

In this moment you have an opportunity to be curious about what it’s like to stay in the discomfort and uncertainty. And you practice this with me in the workshop where we held our hands over our heads and you’re actually discomfort and you’re actually staring into the eyes of someone else and so there might you have discomfort there as well and in that moment I invite you to stay and be curious about what it’s like to not run to not shut your heart down to stay open out of love out of curiosity and to hold the pose. And that is actually radical curiosity holding the pose when you want to shut down and run and so I think that is the magic moment when we can start to shift.

So that’s what I’ve learned and I am still exploring that with curiosity on my own and with others and I actually really, really love learning about this so that magic moment of starting to shift of being able to be curious in that moment I know nothing about it and I can’t wait to find out more.

Jonny: it’s so much that I want to implement and the phrase hold the page is something that I’ve woman best kept is like a little mantra since that workshop but knowing so many times when I’ve just yeah it’s just kind of come up. And it’s like stay there hold the pose don’t don’t run away and there was something that you mentioned about your approach to learning that I absolutely loved you kind of said how you would almost create these curiosity or these holes of your own ignorance or I think about it sometimes in terms of expanding my own kind of circles of ignorance. And you’re talking about yourself in the third person Leo and it made me thank you from I’m reading Leonardo DaVinci’s Autobiography and he kept a journal of all of the things that he didn’t know and he would write them down as questions in pages and pages and then just like he would want to go out and seek people out to try and find out the answers and to me that’s such a powerful thing like we think if we if you want to learn something we need to go and take the course immediately. But maybe it’s a case of like really getting clear on all the things that we don’t know and finding out where our like where our epistemic curiosity kind of pulls us towards the stronger that’s so that’s so interesting.

Leo: can I pause you on that one for a second yeah sure I see myself and I’m actually named after da Vinci so my plans Leonardo? So yeah so you can imagine we if we all did that like had this list of all the things we don’t know and that we want to know more about there is a part of us that will take that curiosity and this not knowing which can also bring up anxiety of the anxiety of not knowing and wanting to go out and just know it all.

And so we can go out and try and fill ourselves with information and just get all the books we can do all the research online that we can sign up for courses but you know order things on Amazon. And so all of a sudden we have like all of this reading and watching to do and then we’re like pouring ourselves into it and there’s nothing wrong with that at all I’ve done it many many times.

But that isn’t the only way to react to that feeling so I wanted to invite people to a radical curiosity about not knowing of just stopping for even a few moments of just saying okay there’s all this stuff that I want to know about and we can when you get into a new subject like as you start to realize how much you don’t know it can be overwhelming and another reaction is to shut down to that and say it’s too much I’ll never learn at all I don’t want to know it and then you move on.

Or and the other very common reaction is just trying to know everything and just trying to like for you know fill in that list of all the things you don’t know about right. But the other one is just to stay there in this radical curiosity of just like what does it feel like to not know and just to admit I don’t know something and it can feel groundless and it can feel very uncertain and unstable.

And it’s just like oh I don’t know everything and it’s the same thing if you let’s say you don’t know how to dance and you walk into a dance class and you have to start dancing like all of a sudden like everyone else around you knows everything and you’re the newbie.

Anytime where you had to be a newbie and just like walk in and show your complete ignorance if you just stopped there and that’s not knowing again you can shut down and walk out of the class you can like trying to know everything and really control it or you can just stay there and just be like what is it like to not know. I think there’s something magical in that of just staying and that’s “not knowing” accepting that we actually will always have a state of not-knowing.

Even if we acquire and acquire acquired knowledge, we’ll still be in a huge state of not knowing there will always be way more out there to learn that we can learn and so this is a permanent state actually is not knowing. And if we can just accept it and be with it and be friendly with it and be curious about not knowing I think that is a change in our relationship with that that doesn’t mean we can’t we don’t go out and acquire knowledge like of course we’re curious we’re going to explore. But also we don’t have to get rid of the feeling we don’t have to feel anxiety about it and we don’t have to shut down when we feel overwhelmed by that feeling. So I’m just giving an invitation people just to pause there if you ever get into that state which we all do I think on a regular basis.

Jonny: yeah that’s so powerful and I think for me kind of it’s an act of vulnerability to say especially in a group of other people to say like I don’t know and to not be sure about something or I think I’ve seen it from the startup tribe as well. People are terrified of asking what they feel like might be silly questions and therefore kind of looking just looking foolish in front of other people and this reminds me of one of the things that that Leonardo da Vinci wrote down in his like Journal of questions was why doesn’t a woodpecker get a headache when it’s banging its head on a tree right which you just think is such a ridiculous question right.

Leo: no I love it.

Jonny: write down a completely stupid question.

Leo: it’s a childlike question.

Jonny: it’s a childlike question exactly and it turns out that and biologists later figured out that the woodpeckers tongue wraps its wraps itself around the brain as like a protective shield to kind of protect the woodpecker’s brain and so he actually came to this amazing insight just through asking a silly question. And I think that most of my kind of more interesting insights from asking those questions that feel silly to voice whether that’s with other people or to my journal or things like that. So yeah I just thought I was super interest.

Leo: Yea I love that just admit you don’t know there’s like a big uncertainty about yourself that you might feel when you admit to others that you don’t know and I actually though and other invitations go in front of a group of other people like at that startup a group that you’ve formed just go there and just admit like there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know and you know I I’m just going to admit that to you guys.

Because it’s like we have this side that we try and present or to each other right like oh I’m this like startup founder I’m doing all these great things you know here’s all my accomplishments and my resume but honestly that’s just a front right like just to drop that front and say be radically honest where you’re just saying honestly I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing I don’t know if I can do this I don’t know how this is going to turn out but the ironic thing is that these startup founders who are doing that actually already have taken a leap into great uncertainty.

Anyone who’s doing a startup anyone who’s writing a book or a blog anyone has done a YouTube channel or is starting a nonprofit organization. Running anything putting themselves in any kind of new situation is already taking a leap of radical curiosity leap into radical uncertainty of groundlessness.

They’ve already done that at least once and probably many, many times probably every single day they’ve done that and then in another situation they shut themselves down right they don’t admit they don’t know and that’s normal that’s natural not judging because I do it as well. But we can look at ourselves there and be like oh actually I’ve done it all these other times why not do it as well here all these things that worked for me here like when I started a start-up I decided to leap into the great unknown.

When I’m in this group why not do the same thing right just admit that I don’t know which is a courageous thing to do for sure sorry go ahead.

Jonny: absolutely and I know just what I came into my mind was almost the other side of the coin I think is that when we do sit with those questions and sit with the uncertainty. I think that some part of our subconscious knows more than we give it credit for and whenever I’ve kind of had decisions to make or if there’s questions that I’m unsure about if I’m able to almost sit with a question like I’m kind of dropping it into a well and then paying attention to work come to the surface sometimes thoughts or answers arise. Or even maybe I realize that I’m asking the wrong question and it’s like reframing that question but I think that um I know that I spend a lot of my 20s I’m 30 now so I can say that in my twenties. I’m kind of seeking out these mentors and these gurus and always looking for the answers for things without appreciating that often a lot of the answers to the real questions I kind of already had insight to some extent and it just requires like you say sitting with the question and sitting with that uncertainty and paying attention to what arises.

Leo: yeah you gave yourself space I think that’s a key element there that a lot of people don’t do it’s like giving yourself a little bit of space to just sit there without it without the answer I mean like you said it’s in you already maybe.

That’s not a 100 percent of the time but there it could be in you and you could just give yourself space to sit there and just like in the space I’m not knowing space of curiosity and just see what comes up and sometimes you’ll have a moment of clarity and you’ll be like oh had the answer all along. And then sometimes it’ll just be a question that comes up and you were like okay now I need to pursue that question and that’s where the answer will come up right and then sometimes you you’ll just be completely blank.

But I think what you just demonstrated like is this great trust in yourself and whatever comes up there’s an intuition there maybe is this intuitive knowing maybe there’s knowledge that you’ve gained just from collectively soaking all the gurus and books that you’ve talked about and it just needs to like you know adjusted like bubble up and then finally something the wisdom that’s like the collective wisdom of everybody else plus the inherent wisdom that’s you will come up. But whatever it is whatever is because we don’t know what’s going on in there.

Whatever that comes up you have like a trust that something will come up even if it’s just a question even if it’s a blankness but a lot of times it’s actually an answer right and that trust is something that most of us don’t afford to ourselves. And I think it’s amazing that you’re demonstrating that.

Jonny: so there’s a couple of other things that I was super curious to touch on and one of them was I remember watching a and I think it was cool a no-holds-barred debate with you and Tim Ferriss on the idea of abandoning goals which I feel in my opinion I feel like you clearly won. I think yeah I think it was obvious, I think people kind of myself included feel that letting go of goals is certainly a scary and uncomfortable thing and it’s completely against the mainstream culture and a lot of people are like why would you even want to let go of goals that great. Goals give me this like reason to get up in the morning and so what in your like firstly kind of why did you come to this idea and what would be a potential upsides like ditching the 5 step plans and fixating on these 12 month goals what kind of brought you to this.

Leo: yeah I think first of all just in fairness to Tim I think we’ve found in that conversation a lot of common ground it was just like different ways of coming at it. Yeah we didn’t we didn’t have enough disagreement in the end but yeah how I came about it was I used to be really the goals I mastered a lot of systems where it came to goals and what I did was I planned out this year like all these things I was going to achieve. And then everything that I was going to do each month and then everything I was going to do break it down by a week and then just what I was interested a to further my weekly goals.

Right and so I started doing that I really like I was really on top of it I was like nailing this plan and then things would come up that just disrupted it like out of my control completely out of my control be like waking me up to the fact that I’m not in control of the world.

That would be one and that other things would come up that would be like an incredible opportunity and I realized through that just happen over and over that if I followed, stuck rigidly to my plan I mean passing up every single opportunity that came my way that you can’t know what’s going to come up when doors are going to open who you’re going to meet in the conversations you’re going to have what ideas are going to bubble up through the course of your learning.

And as you start to walk the path you can’t know what other path will start to open up right and so as I walk this like I was rigidly trying to stick to this plan I started realizing I was ignoring everything else in favor of this thing that I had come up with way back when I didn’t know anything. Like I knew any of this stuff and yet right I under some kind of illusion that this plan is still the best plan for me.

And so like I started to realize that halfway through the year and I’m like okay why am I sticking to this plan when it’s obviously not the best plan anymore and it totally ignores everything that I’ve learned all these new opportunities all these disruptions that have come up and I just decide to go with the flow of it. And so I started going with what I was passionate about what I was curious about all of these things I started opportunities that came up new people that I met and so I just started to flow with that and I would started making plans around that.

And all those plans started getting disrupted anyway by the end of the year I just like had to surrender to life because it was like I can’t control any of the stuff. I can’t even control myself on a day to day basis let’s surrender and if this doesn’t work and I’m the master of like putting things into action. If I can’t do it like I can’t expect anyone else to do it and I’m writing about goals and productivity systems and it’s total bullshit and I don’t believe it anymore and so what else is there and that gave me this basically the woodpecker question like this isn’t working what does work?

And it was just a childlike question for me that I was like oh like actually I don’t know I don’t know what works and so I started to explore it like what happens if I don’t have goals okay could try that I can try this.

And honestly I’m still exploring without knowing the answer I still use, what I found as goals can still be useful more as like okay here’s something to shoot for like here’s a target down the road. It’s like let’s try going to down this path towards that mountain but it’s just like an initial destination that you choose and sometimes you can rigidly stick to that destination and get there and that can be awesome.

And other times you can be like you know what if you’re chucking in and you’re honest with yourself and you’re curious if you’re checking in and you say you know what this is no longer the destination that I really want to go to it I’m just going to like kill myself going there and I don’t even care about that anymore and so allowing yourself to be fluid and flow moment to moment day by day month to month is just constantly checking in with yourself and saying what does my inner wisdom the thing that you talked about tell me is best right now?

And it’s just course adjustment it’s new iterations of those goals and I think there is lots of ways to incorporate goals that would allow for that course adjustment so I’m not saying you have to abandon goals but

I actually think it’s a really useful exercise in radical curiosity and uncertainty to let goals go for a little while at least and see what it’s like just to go a month without goals.

And so challenge yourself to that, if you say like Leo’s totally full of it like you then you know the answer right and so you shouldn’t even be listening to this podcast but if you can admit that you know the answers to everything like try this out and see what it’s like be curious but at the end of it maybe you’ll have learned some new things about yourself about going with the flow of things about opening each day and setting a new intention and seeing where that leads you.

And I think that’s actually an incredible use of radical curiosity is just allowing yourself to be more open to what comes up.

Jonny: so much of that resonates with me and I feel like maybe one of the reasons that I loved Zen habits like a few years ago was because I was so I was also in that very goal obsessed driven kind of mindset. And I think that one of the one of the realizations for me recently has been like asking the question to what extent does grasping hold of these specific goals lack a sense of surprise and the miraculous.

And I love this idea of now that I’ve turned 30 I’m like what intentions can I set or can I set the intention to be living a life that’s almost more wondrous than my current self can conceive in like six months’ time or like a year’s time. And one of the one of the insights that came to me was through reading the Gita and I wrestled with this idea of kind of ambition and success for a while and there’s a story there where Krishna talks to the kind of protagonist worried Arjuna about the idea of ambition and separating ambition into on the one hand having these like noble aspirations which I feel like there may be these kind of positive goals that you can set yourself. But separating that from the grasping and from the like attaching yourself onto the outcome. And that has been so interesting for me and like looking at the different intentions that I’ve set and whenever I do start to grasp hold of something it’s usually a sign that there’s going to be some kind of like suffering down the line quite shortly. Have you noticed yourself going into kind of like a goal grasping wine set and like how do you react when that pops up?

Leo: yeah I do it all the time honestly I grasp and I attach all the time it is absolutely a good sign for me that I need to like pause and get curious. Yea, so I don’t have like a system or anything like that for noticing but meditation really helps and also checking in with myself during the day.

Something I’ve been doing more often is just noticing what’s going on inside of me so there’s just kind of like even closing my eyes turning inward and just noticing like am I tense right now am I really agitated am I frustrated am I feeling a lot of groundlessness a lot of uncertainty what’s going on.

And a lot of times I can notice okay oh I’ve just got become fixated with something I just like picked up a book and all of a sudden like whatever the book like instilled in me some kind of image that I need to like attain all of a sudden I’ve become obsessed with obtaining that image that wasn’t even in my head like you know before I took that book up.

All of a sudden it’s like my whole life all right and I’ve always had grasped and fixated on that and so that’s like a good like oh I’ve become fixated on this. Yeah absolutely it’s good to check in with myself and just notice like when that’s happening and how that’s manifesting in my body and what actions I’ve been taking what effects it’s having on my life sometimes it’s actually positive.

So like fixating on something for a little while I can actually move towards something I just opened up a book yesterday I’ll just share it with you called desk-bound. People are going to be watching the video but it’s by Dr. Kelly Starrett who’s the founder of mobility workout of the day with mobility wide. Anyway it’s all about sitting and standing up to a sitting world is the subtitle.

And it’s all about you know it’s basically about our body mechanics and how we’re ruining that and so all of a sudden I’ve become fixated on like getting the right routine for body mechanics and I’m way off for that right now. It’s long ago but that’s a little bit of a fixation right now but i’ve gotten since yesterday but actually I think it’s a helpful fixation right now as I check in with myself.

Actually it’s good to move towards this so a little bit of a fixation here is good if I allowed it to grasp so tightly that it would cause suffering and like also take me off track of my work that I’m doing in the world I think that would be a problem. So just looking and seeing how this is showing up in the world but also I can as you reminded me with the with the Gita I can see is this more of an intention to try and move my body in a way that’s more in alignment with health. Is it an intention for health and love or is it a fixation on the outcome of having this perfect body, perfect health perfect everything right?

And honestly I don’t know what that outcome looks like and I’m not fixated on that I’m not attach to the outcome. I am a little bit fixated on the moving on doing the actions to like find out more I’m walking the path sure so yeah there’s definitely a strong intention here and so just exploring that I don’t really know the best way to move through it. But I feel like it’s okay right now and I haven’t learned to recognize signs when it is becoming more harmful and destructive usually when I start beating myself up that’s one good sign or lashing out at someone else if like I if I’m really hard on other people judging other people.

That’s often a sign that I’m clinging too much in a harmful way so harm for myself and harm for others harm for the work that I’m doing in the world those are good signs. And that I need to like okay check in with myself and be a little less attached to the outcome yeah.

Jonny: yeah well I think that’s a really interesting segue into kind of the last a question that I had which around them you’ve written some a really interesting place around the case against optimizing your life and you wrote that such a perfect life would suck which I thought is hilarious.

I literally laughed out loud when I read that and this idea that optimizing is a distraction and to me when I first read it, it almost feels a little bit counterintuitive given kind of a story that you just shared about the last you know decade of your life. So could you maybe clarify a little what your insight around life optimization and life hacking was and you know what push back did you get from people about this which I imagine they were probably was some.

Leo: No, you know what actually I thought there would be pushback because I thought people would see I thought people get defensive about the what they’re doing and maybe they’re they did and they just didn’t reach out to me. But the feedback I’ve gotten is all been positive so yeah I mean absolutely I’ve spent a decade of my life doing a lot of things around optimization and you might put me in the same category as people like Tim Ferriss and all of the people who have done like you know the quantum self-movement.

And all of the self-improvement all the life optimization people you could definitely put me in that camp because I’ve done a lot of the same thing that outwardly I think it looks a lot like that and inwardly sometimes too I’m not trying to like say I’m not like that.

But I have seen we’re trying to optimize all the time it’s like you start to create systems for optimizing your health, your productivity and everything else about your life right. And then those systems have to include something that to measure it and some kind of metrics and it has to have some kind of reporting.

So there’s a lot of actually overhead and admin work that goes with it right and so you’re constantly looking for the best tools the best apps and that comes actually a huge part of your focus is just focusing on all of the things that are going to actually manage the optimization rather than the optimization itself right and I like for my website for example when I first started Zen habits I was like really wanted to grow my audience.

Like that’s a great thing I want to spread a good message in the world right and so how do you do that so you have to like get some kind of tracker and you have to look at those stats every day and you just see what you’re doing to optimize growth right. And then all of the things that you’re doing to optimize growth become the focus rather than trying to spread a good message in the world right.

And so there’s a lot of overhead and Admin stuff to that and all of a sudden all of the things to grow all of the activities for growing become what fills my head and the focus of what I’m doing and my heart now all of a sudden because I’m fixated on the outcome and not focused on the intention my heart all of a sudden is now away from the people that I care about on to the metrics that I care about on all these other things.

But yeah like imagine like you could optimize everything like you could optimize your health like I could eat the perfect food every single day right okay. So I’m going to eat these greens and protein every single day and that’s going to be my optimized help and I can eat them at exactly the right time so that I can interment it fast for you know 16 hours a day.

And I’m going to have the perfect setup for my work and I’m going to have the perfect routine for my work the perfect meditation that you in the morning and in fact I’m going to have everything like my relationship. I’m going to have here’s my wife time here’s my kid while I’m there I’m going to do the exact perfect thing with them all of a sudden I’m going to be like a robot like walking through the light world doing everything exactly right and in fact I think that’s not optimized and you could say well then optimization isn’t that it’s actually this.

And it’s like okay I’m going to have day A be this day B be this day C and then it’s going to be optimized with variety right. And I think that would be like the most controlled boring thing possible and so like what’s the alternative radical curiosity to be honest.

It’s like walk through the world like of course I want to be healthy, of course I want to be productive and of course I wanna have good relationships and I want to do all of these great things uh well how do you walk through the world not knowing what’s the best way to be productive because the best way to be productive today isn’t necessarily the best way to be productive tomorrow and right honestly then I can also ask myself is productive the goal or is that just a tool to get me to the think that I deeply care about and so that like all the optimization is actually just a tool for something at the end and what’s this something at the end.

And that’s the thing that I think we need to start to focus more on is that it’s that loving intention that you talked about that the Gita talks about it’s actually the one of the words that use is devotion like devotion to a god if you want to put it that way.

But really devotion to something that you care deeply about I don’t know if the connection is breaking up but it’s about caring deeply about something and that cannot be optimized the thing that matters the most in the world can’t be optimized and all we can do is pour ourselves into it and ask ourselves what is it like to go into this thing that that matters the most which is really love for ourselves for others for the work that we’re doing for the world for this miracle that we call life and just completely being in love with all of it. That can’t be optimized and so yeah I really believe that optimization is completely just Derailing us from what really matters.

Jonny: I absolutely love that and for me what comes up is when we have this kind of what we think is this optimal life it lacks surprise and it lacks gratitude often as well. And for me I’ve been kind of going through some of this process as well and it feels like to be the the neat optimize for me kind of comes from the place of fear and I think it comes from a place of control.

And it’s like it’s almost like afraid of what might happen if I let things come if I open myself up to the conversation it’s like having a conversation with the world but you’re doing all the talking you’re not listening to what’s coming back to you. So peaceful and that makes so much sense so I’m um I’m conscious of time so just kind of a couple of questions to wrap up firstly where can people find you find you online on patreon and could you just give them a little very brief bit about the mission there and why they should come in and join the Fearless training program.

Leo: yeah so you know the website is Zenhabits.net that’s the main place and then patreon the program there is called fearless training program and it’s on patreon.com/Zen habits and the whole thing is that if you’re again. If you’re doing a start-up if you’re an entrepreneur if you’re a creative type of any kind if you’re anyone who’s who is putting themselves out there in the world is starting up anything an organization you are putting yourself into great uncertainty out of love for something that really means a lot to you otherwise you wouldn’t do it you just do what everyone else does right.

And so you’re putting yourself into this place and then what happens in this place a tremendous uncertainty that we’ve chosen to put ourselves in is our patterns start to come up patterns again a procrastination of complaining of lashing out of people of trying to control everything which is the optimization part of it. Of yeah comforting ourselves with all of our distractions and unhealthy things all of these patterns and many more come up and they get in the way of us putting ourselves mindfully and joyfully and gratefully in this space of uncertainty.

And being there enjoy which is really what we’re looking for right, so how then when these patterns come up do we start to shift them and so I’m offering a training program for shifting those patterns. Because I found it’s actually really hard and it’s basically the short answer is holding the pose, but I’m starting to figure out what’s the you know optimal what’s the best way to help people to stay in that training of holding them. Creating a container where we can hold each other because we’re all doing it together hold each other in this space and you’re doing it with your startup community you guys have come into a space together. Where you’re holding each other in uncertainty and curiosity and that is a powerful thing. Doing it on your own is possible but again that’s the world cup you know that’s like okay let’s get there after we’ve done the training together at the earlier stages right. So and so that’s what we’re doing together and I found some things that are working and as I work with people again with a radical curiosity honestly I don’t know the optimal way to do any of this stuff and so as I’m doing this actually all kinds of questions come up for me questions come up for them and we’re exploring this together in not knowing in uncertainty.

And I’m learning a lot actually I’m and I’m stretching myself as well this is a whole way for me to stretch and everyone in the program is stretching themselves. It’s a way to like the cave I’m fearful to be in a program like this with people I’m a fearful to join a small group I’m fearful to put myself out there I’m fearful to get on a call with people. All of these things are when you notice that there’s something that’s fearful about you that’s the time to like go into it dive into it and hold the pose a little bit. And you’re going to stretch yourself and you are going to find your patterns and they will come up in ways that you might not like. And that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing and so yeah this is this is like a group of a hundred and I’ve like 60 some people who already have committed to putting themselves into this space. And I think it’s such an incredible thing that people are doing that and the answer is at the end of it we will have stretched ourselves. We would have shifted some of these patterns and we will be able to put ourselves into this uncertainty with gratitude mindfulness and joy which I absolutely loved. So yeah if you can do that with this kind of training you’ll be able to bring that to all areas of your life.

Jonny: yeah it’s absolutely fantastic so I spent some time kind of reading through your pipes and the Q&A is in the videos I think it’s just so wonderful what you’re doing. And I’ve really drawn some inspiration from it for from the someof tribe as well and it’s funny what you were saying about like feeling fit as a someone leading this as well I’ve definitely felt that leading the Startup tribe like I turned up with this group full of full of 40 strangers and I was so, so nervous like I was really, really quite it’s good but I think kind of going into it at some point during the first weekend seeing their excitement and their eagerness it almost the fear kind of alkalized into excitement and I realize this it’s the same energy it’s just like the story that I’m telling myself about the feeling. And yeah so it’s so so great and this is also quite a nice well this whole conversation is and I said great today the final question that I’d like to try and wrap up these interviews with.

Which is a quote from Rilke but has been I’ve just thought about a lot and the quote is be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Live the questions now perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it live along some distant day into the answer. And so with that in mind what is the question that you’re living yourself right now and what question might you leave our listeners with.

Leo: that’s so good and I’m feeling uncertainty about choosing one question. There’s so many questions that that have been coming up for me. So I talked about that magic kind of moment where you are facing like tremendous difficulty uncertainty and discomfort and you really want to shut down.

So this is a lifelong pattern for me is shutting down my heart to the moment to the person in front of me to my wife, to my kids to new friends when I hit this spot of resistance of discomfort like when I hit my limit right. And we all have our edge so I shut down my heart and I don’t want to do it anymore I want to quit I want to go away I want to like this is stupid right.

So my question then is like at that moment what is it like to just stay keep your heart open a little bit longer yeah just keep your heart open.

This is about not having the barriers that we have and you you’re doing it with the Startup Tribe you. You go out there and lead in the middle of fear and keeping your heart open to that and you haven’t shut down to it and there’s a way where you could go and be in his meetings and still be shut down but knowing what I know about you I believe you’re going there with an open heart and just being open and curious about the people there and that is keeping your heart open that’s not shutting down.

And there will be other places where like it’s too much for you and you’re going to want to shut down like maybe there’s going to be someone who comes there and they’re triggering you in different ways we always have people who trigger us in different ways.

That moment like you want to shut down to this person there will always be edges in different areas of our lives so the question then is what is it like to keep your heart open for a little longer and not shut down.

Jonny: that’s beautiful thank you thank you so much so yeah this was a really incredible thank you so much for taking your time and we will wrap the show with that thank you so much.

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