Thank you mom and dad

The first most important insight I had was to start listening to my dad’s advice.

I think this was around middle school. I was really in awe with the clarity and precision of his words and wanted to have that experience. I opened up to him by sharing my crazy ideas that I had kept to myself and were hidden away in piles of notebooks. And guess what happened when I conquered my fear of sharing my ideas with another person?

They got much much better.

We had a pretty amazing connection over discussing inventions and ideas. So eventually I started trusting more of his advice.

But I didn’t really listen to my mom until my dad’s advice of “also listen to your mother” sunk in maybe 5–7 years later. I had posted an insight on Facebook around 3–4 years ago that I realized mothers are kind of like recommendation engines. Basically, I had stopped listening to my mom for so long that I immediately discredited everything she said.

And things were pretty good until around 17 where I started to feel very alone because my dad, the only human being on earth that I thought loved me, stopped understanding my ideas.

So I just started to feel very crazy because the ideas seemed very good, but no one at my high school or family understood them.

So I just isolated myself from everyone. Kept pouring out thoughts onto my notebooks.

But the thing is these ideas were complicated, but not actually that useful and good, because they had no basis in reality.

Then I went to Stanford and met Ben Holguin, the smartest and sharpest person that I know (still to today). He’s also incredibly kind and humble. Just being in the same place as Ben taught me so much more than what I was learning in my classes. This is not a hyperbole: I would have paid two years full tuition at Stanford just to spend 4 hours/day with Ben.

I no longer felt alone and had a teacher to help me think out my more complicated thoughts out loud and had met someone who I didn’t think I would ever out-evolve.

But we grew apart as I started working on black swan solar because neither of us are very good at keeping in touch with people and had relied on the physical proximity to keep our relationship strong.

When I was 21, my friend Luke took me to Alethia in Boulder Colorado.

There, amongst other things, I laid on the floor while 6 people held me and told me “I. Love. You.”

“I thank you not for what you’re doing in the world, but just for being a human being alive and with us here and now.”

And they kept repeating this while massaging and waking up my body (don’t worry, my clothes were on lol).

And they kept repeating, repeating

And then I started violently shaking and releasing an incredible amount of anger. I started crying while they kept holding me in my most vulnerable state- validating that my feelings were ok.

As I started to come back to reality, I looked at 6 people and for the first time since I was 17, FELT (in my body), love from other people.

I then realized how many people in my life actually loved and cared about me.

Especially my mom. My mom loved me so much that once I had this realization I started violently crying and releasing so much pain that i had been holding in my body for so long- I mean thinking that the woman that brought you into this world doesn’t love you is so so horrible.

And so I sent her a message of how much I thanked and loved her.

I had to spend a few days just breathing, eating food, and sleeping.

And after some time I started listening to my mom too.

When I made the decision to leave Stanford, I knew how much it would hurt my parents, but also knew it was the right decision in my heart. Every time they saw me suffer, they would subtlety (or not) recommend that I go back to school (safety), and even though they knew how much I was learning, they just wanted me to take care of myself.

Going to take a break and listen to this:

I still think sometimes that I’m losing my mind.

But I’ll never lose my heart again.