October 2, 2025 • 43 mins
"I can't say that in 34 years I have enjoyed my life in the way that I do now. That is the shift. That's the shift post-Hoffman. It's the shift of doing this work. It's the shift of my life."
Madison Utendahl
Six months before Madison Utendahl arrived at the Hoffman Process, she closed her business. The immediate question that came to her in the wake of closing it was, Who am I without this job? She'd realized that her company and her work had become part of her identity. Feeling a complete disconnect from herself without this company she'd worked so hard to build, Madison realized she needed to do something different. Therapy, something she'd done a lot of, wasn't going to cut it. She needed a serious change. She turned to Hoffman.
In this engaging and spirited conversation, Madison leads us through the before, during, and after periods of her Hoffman Process experience. As we listen in, we're able to glimpse not only her journey, but some of the Process journey itself as seen through Madison's eyes.
One of the significant negative patterns that Madison transformed was "control," one that plagues so many of us. In her brilliant words, she shares the big Aha! she had behind the transformation of this pattern, wisdom that's true for many patterns. Madison explains, "I learned at Hoffman that control was a survival instinct. If it was a survival instinct that meant I could unlearn it. ... I learned that young Madison, to no fault of her own, developed control to deal with her childhood."
A major takeaway from Madison's Process transformation is the realization that the Universe, or whatever you want to call it, has your back. As she says, "the unlock for me, post-Hoffman, is like realizing that God, the universe, whomever, has your back." So, go enjoy your life!
More about Madison Utendahl:
Madison Utendahl is a multi-hyphenate: founder, CCO, writer, and creative director who, above all, is tired of faking fine. She’s the Founder of Utendahl Creative, a Brooklyn-based creative agency that has built brands for a lot of cool people. She’s also the creator of BURNT, her popular Substack where she writes about burnout with equal parts humor and truth-telling. Madison is a two-time Webby Award winner, AdWeek 100, and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, and has been on the founding teams of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Refinery29’s 29Rooms, and Museum of Ice Cream.
These days, she’s less about chasing accolades and more about dismantling hustle culture’s nonsense, one candid essay, brand, or conversation at a time. She lives in New York City with her husband, two dogs, and a cat who runs the household.
Follow Madison on Instagram. Read her writing at Burnt on Substack. Find out more at madisonutendahl.com.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
As mentioned in this episode:
Madison's IG post about the closing of Utendahl Creative.
April McDaniel - Listen to April on the Hoffman Podcast: Being Real With Yourself
Hoffman Retreat Site in Connecticut - Guest House
Hoffman Faculty:
• Claus Radlberger
• Marc Kaplan
Ketamine Therapy
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Somatic Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
The Quadrinity...
...is a simple yet powerful model for understanding ourselves and our behavior, encompassing all four aspects of self: body, emotions, intellect, and spiritual self. The Quadrinity is our whole, integrated, balanced self, embodying all four aspects.
Madison mentions the "Hoffman Questionnaire."
This is the pre-Process assignment, required homework for attending Process. Our pre-Process assignment is due three weeks before the start of your scheduled Process. The assignment materials take approximately 10 hours to complete.
Listen to Blake Mycoskie, Toms Founder, on the Hoffman Podcast: A Deep Surrender to Spirit
Quad Check:
A practice to support you in checking in with all four ...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Yeah.
That's the unlock for me post Hoffman is,
like, realizing that
God, the universe, whomever
has your back, go enjoy your life, Madison.
Do this work,
commit to this process, and enjoy your life.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
(00:22):
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute,
and it's stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process
and how it lives in the world radiating
love.
(00:47):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Hoffman podcast.
Madison Uttendahl is with us. Welcome, Madison. Thank
you, Drew. Good to see you. How are
you feeling?
In this moment,
I I'm feeling really excited. I'm it's so
good to see you. I feel that deeply
in my body. It's it's enthusiasm.
Takes you back to your process a little
(01:07):
bit, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, I don't
know if I look back I think of
that specifically, but I I think of what
has come out of the process and what
I learned from you, and I'm so grateful.
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you.
Where do we start this story?
Yeah.
I think this story makes the most sense
(01:28):
to start, I guess, six months before I
went to Hoffman.
But I think even before that,
I have
identified or spent the majority
of my adult life
feeling deeply enmeshed
in my career
and
feeling that my identity and my career were
one thing.
(01:49):
And six months before Hoffman, I had actually
closed my business,
And it was the first time in my
life where I was like, wait.
Who am I without
this business and this career?
And how am I gonna start over? Do
I need to attach to something? Do I
need to, you know, build another company?
(02:09):
And
I don't know specifically
why this
time of my life led me to be
like, okay, now's the time to do Hoffman,
but I made a a subconscious decision in
that moment of being like, who am I?
That going about it in the way I
traditionally would have, like, therapy once a week
was not gonna cut it. But if I
really wanted to see change, I had to
(02:30):
take a much bigger step.
And then, you know, here we
are.
So you had that moment in time
when
identity and
job and career
began to crumble a little bit. The connection
wasn't as strong.
Yeah.
(02:51):
And completely
by my own choice. That was also really
interesting. I chose to close my company.
I didn't need to.
And
that's a rare, also very privileged place where
I had decided that I don't wanna do
this anymore.
And I realized that I could either
close this company now and be grateful for
what I had built,
(03:12):
or I could push it along with a
lack of values alignment and no enthusiasm.
It's and over time, it ultimately probably would
have started to fail because I don't think
when you're when you can't build successful things
if you're if you hate it, in my
opinion. So that was the intersection that I
was at, and I was like, okay. I'm
closing it. But I didn't think about the
emotional
toll of what it would mean to not
have it. That was the
(03:34):
the shock for me. And what was that
toll?
Just complete disconnection
of self.
I didn't know who I was without my
job.
I didn't know how to have to spend
my time. I didn't know I found that
I ended up just occupying and creating a
schedule that was as full, but with bullshit.
You know what I mean? It was like,
(03:55):
coffee with this person, and then go do
this workout, and then go do this. And
I was like, wait a minute. This is
the first time in my damn life that,
like, I actually have the space to think,
and I'm just feeling it. And then Hoffman
sounded like a pretty good idea.
Yeah. It did. And I honestly drew to
this day. I have no idea
why in January 25, I thought about Hoffman.
(04:18):
My college roommate went to Hoffman.
And so it had been
over a decade. I mean, I I'm 34.
Right? So I've been out of college for
thirteen years,
but
I'm sitting in the dead of winter in
New York and Upstate, and I'm like,
boom.
Emma went. Emma went to this thing. Why
don't you look that thing up? Wow.
(04:41):
You hadn't thought of Emma or maybe Emma
going to Hoffman in a long time, and
all of a sudden, that came to you.
Thirteen years.
Yeah.
I had a moment about two or three
years ago. I had coffee with my friend,
April McDaniel, who who you know. She's also
been on this show and has done the
process.
And she mentioned how much Hoffman had changed
(05:03):
her life. And that was the second time
I met or been around somebody, became friends
with someone where Hoffman process had really impacted
them. But outside of these two period, like,
windows of my life and two individuals, like,
this wasn't I'm not in a Hoffman community.
Right? So it was shocking
that I just my brain brought it all
together, and it was time. It was time.
(05:26):
Wow. So you sign up and you find
yourself in Connecticut
on-site.
Yeah. Nervous as all hell. I contemplated
not going
so many times.
And
I say this because I think a lot
of people
will feel this way or feel this way
going to Hoffman. I, pre Hoffman, had done
(05:47):
all of the things.
Any kind of damn therapy that exists, I
have done it. Ketamine therapy, DBT, CBT,
somatic,
EMDR. Like, if there's a therapy modality out
there,
I have tried at least one session. And
so there was a part of me
that had convinced myself,
(06:07):
really, I would say the two weeks before
going that I didn't need to go.
You know, I had been in therapy since
I was 15.
I am grateful. My parents when my parents
got divorced,
we had no choice. They put us in
therapy. So my siblings and I have all
been in therapy for a very long time,
and I'm so grateful for my parents. Keep
in mind, those are two people who have
never been to therapy. So I don't know
(06:29):
why they were so insistent, but I'm grateful.
So I I didn't think I needed it.
I was like, oh, I'm past I'm past
this, like, who am I part? It's six
months after I had that existential crisis. I
know who I am. I don't need to
go.
And
I was so wrong.
The brain can do all kinds of tricks.
Like, that moment you had that got you
(06:51):
to sign up months before,
all of a sudden felt kinda distant, and
you're like, wait a minute. I I have
done a lot of work. And
now your mind is telling you, do you
really need this thing? Do I really need
it? But I also had this you know,
now I know deeply that as my spiritual
self was telling me
(07:11):
I needed it and that my intellect was
the one who was procrastinating.
So I famously got in my questionnaire
super late. I mean, y'all were hitting me
up every second. You were like, you need
to fill out this questionnaire, and I was
like, I'll get to it. I'll get to
it. That's very unlike me. I'm a type
a person. And then also the other thing
(07:33):
is the booking the hotel after Hoffman. I
didn't book the hotel. There was a rebellious
part of me that was like, you are
not gonna do this, and we are gonna
sabotage and prevent you from doing this the
right way.
That
resistance is also what drove me because I
was like, there's something I'm not choosing to
look at. Why am I not sending in
this questionnaire? Why didn't I book the hotel?
(07:55):
Why am I resisting these things? Why am
I the last person? That's never me.
What am I trying not to unpack? And
so
I went.
So take us into your week. What happens
as it unfolds?
Gosh.
So I
locked in pretty quick.
I had a lot of anger. So anger
(08:16):
being one of the first emotions that you
confront at Hoffman,
was very conducive to where I was
subconsciously and consciously.
So it allowed for me to lock into
the process day one. I had no idea
the level of ferocity or anger that I
had within my body as somebody who's very
physically connected to my body, who is an
(08:37):
avid runner, who works out regularly, I I
just felt like I had
regular ways of or modalities in my life
were expressed physically.
So I was I was very surprised by
myself in the beginning of Hoffman. I was
like, who is this person that is holding
on to all of these things? And the
other thing that I, you know, was
(08:57):
very surprised by is my anger was very
much I thought I would go in fifty
fifty with both of my parents, but my
anger was very over indexed to my mother.
I had way less anger to my dad
actually than I thought going into Hoffman. I
very quickly realized that I had way more
compassion and understanding and connection to him than
I gave myself credit for. But the anger
(09:19):
towards my mother was, wow, that that was
their present.
And it came out very quickly and very
early.
So you engage in some of the early
cathartic work at Hoffman.
And then what happens next as a result
of that cathartic work? Did it
support you in feeling differently? What emerged next?
(09:41):
Yeah. I mean, it definitely allowed for me
to
settle myself
and to become grounded
and less anxious and worried and overwhelmed.
But I do think, you know, if I
think about my journey, I catapulted into the
emotions. And then by day four, I was
like, I gotta get out of here.
(10:02):
That was this interesting experience for me where
I really oh, I committed. I don't wanna
say over committed, but I was leaned in
day one to day four. And day four,
I went to my coach and was like,
I think I think I've done it. I've
got it.
I don't need to stay.
I was feeling better, and I also was
feeling just complete exhaustion,
(10:24):
to be honest. There was part of me
that was like, I don't know if I
can continue from an emotional exhaustion level
because I had committed and given so much.
So I genuinely was like, this tank is
empty.
I was like, I think I'm good. It
wasn't in a protest.
It was very much in, like, this work.
This was worth the money. Thank you very
(10:44):
much.
Alright. I'm gonna start packing my things.
I love my coach. I had a very
special connection with him. He's wonderful.
Klaus,
he was like, no. You you if he's
like, there's more to this. There's more to
uncover. And he also shared, which I appreciate
that, like, it gets lighter,
and you will experience
(11:04):
more emotions that are rooted in joy. And
I found that very hard to believe, but
he was right. And I was so grateful
because as Mark says, like, day five is
magic, and that is the truest statement.
I thrived on day five, and I'm so
happy I stayed.
But day four was definitely
a rough breaking point for me, very much
(11:26):
so. So you went back in. You had
a beautiful
connection to more joy and magic.
And then the process
comes to a close. What was the end
like for you after those few days?
The end of the process was deeply emotional.
There was a sense of sadness that I
felt at the end,
(11:48):
the experience and the people and this profound
connection
of the individuals that you meet. I don't
know if it's just my particular cohort, but
we have
all very much stayed in touch. We do
do dinners. We're doing it. There's 15 of
us having dinner on October 4. So it
did feel like this very deep connected group
of individuals.
So it's very sad to leave that. And
(12:09):
I found myself just overwhelmed with so much
emotion upon leaving. I sobbed my whole drive
back to the hotel after
just wept.
You didn't have a hotel, so how how
did you Oh, yeah. That was actually a
really fascinating moment for me to realize that
one of my patterns that I worked on
throughout Hoffman was control.
(12:29):
Like, when people tell me they use hotels
tonight to figure out where they're gonna stay,
I'm like, you're crazy. Like, that would I
would never decide day of where I'm staying
anywhere.
That's just not how my personality works.
But here I was, and I really do
do believe in divine timing, and I believe
in the universe, and I believe everything happens
for a reason.
There was something
(12:49):
subconscious that led me not to book a
hotel
and the work of Hoffman Hoffman and releasing
control and realizing that control was not keeping
me safe
led me to this moment right after Hoffman
where I had to confront
the very pattern
that I was predominantly working through, which was
I had no control of where I was
(13:10):
going to stay. And it was a beautiful
weekend in June in Connecticut, which meant most
of the hotels that I would have chosen
to stay were booked.
So I had to go and held hotels
tonight,
and
I found a motel on the beach
in a random ass town
an hour and fifteen minutes away.
(13:32):
And I was like, wow. Okay. Here I
go. I'm getting in the car, and I
drove. And I pulled up, and they were
like, who's this lady? Because it was that
random of a place.
But I was fine.
And it was fine. And everything was okay.
And I had a lovely
integration weekend.
I left that weekend feeling more than ever
(13:54):
this sense of
deep trust
and that not having
control over everything
was actually an opportunity for me to realize
that, like,
I am safe.
Life is working in my favor. There's nothing
I cannot handle.
I'm doing just fine in this motel in
Connecticut.
(14:15):
That was all part of the plan, apparently.
It is this wild thing about patterns and
control in particular,
but that the reason
we do them is because we have a
need for certainty and control.
But one of the things about patterns and
control in particular is that it never really
(14:35):
gives you the thing
you're seeking as you do it. Control doesn't
help. It's it doesn't support.
No. It doesn't. And
I have so much compassion.
And what I think the process did very
well for me was help me understand that
that pattern came honestly.
I think what has been mislabeled
(14:57):
or something I feel that I had been
mislabeled by with people is that control was
a personality trait,
and I learned at Hoffman that control was
a survival instinct.
If it was a survival instinct, that mean
I could unlearn it versus a personality trait,
you know, felt very much ingrained in who
I was as a human being.
And I learned that young Madison,
(15:20):
to no fault of her own,
developed control to deal with her childhood.
When you say come by it honestly, that's
part of what you're talking about. Exactly. That
and it was liberating for me to know
that this wasn't a personality trait. I am
not a controlling person that this younger
version of me
needed to do that and needed to adopt
(15:42):
that. From everything, my birth order and my
family to, you know, Gabor Mate talks about,
like, the misconception is that siblings have the
same parents. Like, you don't. You maybe have
the same biological parents by blood, but,
like, where your parents are in their life
journey
according to when you are born, you don't
have the same parents. You're not raised by
the same people. So both of my siblings
(16:03):
are significantly
more relaxed than I am. And I'm like,
well,
I was the first. You know what I
mean? Like, my
dynamic with our parents was very different,
and this came honestly. But I don't feel
that. I what's so cool is that I
really have released control in so many ways
in my life. I mean, you know, I
(16:24):
almost went too extreme. Like, I went to
Spain
a month after Hoffman, and I was like,
I don't need to book a hotel
because it works out for me, and it
didn't. Like, I was there's certain parts of
my
personality. Like, planning a trip is still a
good pattern. Right? Like, I don't have to
release control
(16:45):
entirely. I didn't end up staying at a
hotel that I would prefer to stay at
in Spain.
But I now have context
of when it is appropriate
to apply
control versus before it was in
every moment,
and that's liberating. And for anyone listening that
has control as a pattern,
(17:06):
often doesn't mean that you're just never gonna
organize things and plan things. No. It's just
you learn that there is a time and
place for that pattern
to serve you. Especially if it's not a
pattern that is positive, you absolutely don't need
to keep it going all the time. It's
not keeping you safe. It's actually preventing you
from living a rich life. Yeah. The power
of choice and the agency to choose when
(17:29):
to engage control and when not to. Yes.
I didn't know I had that. So this
is great. I love you and the motel
there and making the best of it. Then
you go back to your life, and you
and I talked at the beginning here because
you had a different integration experience
after that
that wasn't all roses and wonder. There were
(17:50):
some struggles.
Share a little bit about how hard things
were. My integration
from Hoffman
was
not what I was expecting.
At first, I was very worried. I thought
to myself, like, did I not integrate correctly?
I remember, like, I would reread the booklet
that you gave us and the
(18:11):
binder, and I was like, am I, like,
missing something? Because this sucks.
With an old transparency.
I really had a hard month
back in my first month.
I had a great first week,
but I wasn't prepared emotionally
for the exhaustion.
I was
(18:32):
physically and emotionally
the most exhausted I've ever been in my
whole life coming back from Hoffman. I was
sleeping twelve hours.
I mean, really, really, really
debilitated by fatigue.
And my body started to respond in in
very weird ways. Like, I developed
plantar fasciitis in my foot. Like, these very
(18:54):
weird ailments that I'd never ever had, I
developed. I had a stye in my eye,
and it was almost like I was physically
purging
what I had done at Hoffman, and that
was what I wasn't prepared for. I mean,
I listened to an episode of, Rick Rubin's
podcast. I'm I believe it was the founder
of Tom's, talks about how he lost, like,
20 or 30 pounds when he got back
(19:15):
from Hoffman without trying.
That was me in, like, a physical purging.
My body was, like, breaking down all over
the place in ways that it never had.
I mean, my sister would be like, what
is happening? I don't know. I run marathons.
Like, I'm somebody who's very physically
connected, and I was falling apart all over
the place. It was truly my body. Like,
(19:36):
I would start profusely sweating, and I'm not
a sweater famously. Like, out of nowhere. I
was like, am I going through menopause? I'm
30, 40 years old. Like, what is happening?
But it made my first month really tough.
I also struggled
with
the line of how much I wanted to
share
(19:57):
with people.
I
feel so blessed and grateful that I have
so many people in my life that are
very engaged,
that wanted to know how it went, that
were checking in on me. But I had
to learn that I actually am not responsible
for making
them feel better about my process.
And that's a really interesting experience with people.
(20:19):
I mean, even my dad, we've had very
honest conversations. He knows that I'm doing the
podcast. My dad had this fear that I
would hate him after Hoffman.
So he was checking in on me over
and over and over and over again
to see
if I still liked him. And that was
exhausting
for me, actually, to have to manage someone
else's emotions about my process.
(20:41):
And same with friends, friends who were like
my husband. Everyone was like, what is she
gonna be like? Like, how do we
and that was
so exhausting. It was actually very suffocating. I
felt really
trapped
and unable
to
settle into the work.
One of the things I worked on in
Hoffman was boundaries. Right? Saying to people, I
(21:02):
actually don't have to hold how you feel
about my process.
I'll tell you the story once. I'm never
gonna talk about it again. It's what I
would say to one of my girlfriends. I
was like
I had at one point, I said, let's
all do dinner and a bunch of girlfriends.
We got together, and I was like, I'm
telling you about my hotbed process one time.
All six of you at once.
And that felt important to you. Right? So
(21:23):
you wouldn't have to repeat the story setting
that boundary?
Exactly.
Exactly. And I and until I started doing
that, it just felt like I was getting
pulled in a million directions, and I didn't
have the energy. Right? I as I just
shared, I was so exhausted.
So the combination of feeling like I needed
to share
and then not having the capacity to share
(21:44):
made month one for me really hard.
It was at the end of month one
when I really was like, alright, Madison. Like,
one of the things you've learned was boundaries
and
set them.
Does it mean anything to have learned something
if you're not gonna apply it? Set it.
Set the boundaries of people. And I did.
And everyone
very much respected it. There was no one
(22:05):
who
didn't, to be honest, after the boundaries were
set. I wanna slow it down here because
I think you're speaking to something that is
super important when it comes to change.
And that is this, we can
learn the lesson of something. We can understand
the importance of it.
But then, I think life offers us
(22:28):
a few more opportunities
to see the cost of it.
And so sometimes people think, oh, I've regressed.
I've lost it. No. No. That's just life
and your spirit in a way showing you
the cost of not setting those boundaries
so that then you can really make the
decision
wholeheartedly.
Yeah. Absolutely.
(22:49):
And, also,
why aren't you setting that boundary?
You know, the way we talk about boundary
setting, especially in this country, Christian, like a
western world, it's like, set the boundary you
hear all the time. And you're like, what
the fuck does that mean?
Not only, like, how do I do it,
but why?
Why do I need to set this boundary
is something that I never really asked myself.
(23:10):
I put a lot on my pressure to
set the boundary, set the boundary. How do
you set the boundary? But I was gonna
send the text message that says, don't I'll
tell you about Hoffman one time. Right? Like,
that's the
the formula.
But the why is
the unlock for me was getting to the
point of the thirty day mark and being
like,
why I need to set the boundaries is
(23:31):
so that I can recuperate and heal from
this experience. Why I have to set the
boundaries? Because I don't owe
anyone anything. I don't have to hold someone
else's emotions about my experience.
Why do I set this boundary? Because I
want to. Goddamn it. You know what I
mean? Like,
that's also more than enough.
(23:52):
But it took me thirty days to get
to that awareness of asking myself
why.
I think I also felt in my group
chat,
you know, people were having these, like, beautiful
months back,
and
some people weren't. Right? There there were one
there are a lot of people out of
my 28 who were struggling month one. And
(24:12):
there are people who are doing so well
month one.
It's just been also interesting to see how,
like, that's also shifted. So I've had very
I'm now I'm three months at four months
at a Hoffman,
and
the past two months have been amazing.
I feel wonderful. It's been the work feels
like it's set in. I do my quad
(24:33):
check every single day. To my right, I
actually have, like, a Hoffman Shrine where I
even have my damn rucalas.
I
saved the pop drops. I saved a couple
of them. And I have this, like, little
Hoffman shrine that I go to every morning
because it's a visual reminder for me to
do the practice. So I'm a visual learner,
and seeing this Hoffman Shrine every day is,
(24:54):
like, quad check for me. So it's the
unlock I need to make sure I do
it. I don't just rely on memory to
do it.
But, yeah, it took it took time. It
took time to get here, but it's there.
The work just because you have a rocky
return
doesn't mean it didn't work.
I feel like that's a really important
note for people.
Yeah. What meaning do we make of a
(25:16):
rocky return? And can we just normalize
that that rocky return is part of what
it means to learn and grow post process?
What's it like to sit here having
navigated this thread, your journey,
preprocess,
all the ups and downs in the process,
(25:38):
and then this kind of exhaustion
postprocess,
and then the clarity that came kind of
as a result of the exhaustion and the
connecting
of the dots that that relates to boundaries
and why
you even need to set boundaries in the
first place. And then to be on the
other side of that part of being human
is having other experiences where you learn
(26:00):
different
things. But in a way, you navigated
one big, huge thing,
and it has a through line to childhood.
What's it like to sit in this place
four months out and have the serenity, the
peace?
That's a big question.
And
one I really appreciate. Thank you.
(26:22):
I recently have
come to this,
I guess, you could say, like, a life
because I've truly never felt
better. I've never felt more confident, more self
sufficient, more secure.
But more than anything, just like the depth
of trust I have
in life working in my favor has really
(26:44):
clicked
for the first time.
The depth of trust you have that life
will work in your favor.
Yes. I've known that
spiritually, intellectually, emotionally my whole life.
Both my my mom. My dad is a
very spiritual person. Very, very, very spiritual person.
So
that
(27:05):
belief system has been
shared and ingrained
in my mind
since childhood,
but it did not click
until
post Hoffman in the past couple months. It's
like a physical, emotional shift of settling of,
like,
ah, that's what my dad has always meant.
(27:25):
Is that
God, the universe, whomever,
whatever your belief system is, will not take
you places
unless there is another side of it. Right?
Like, I realized at a young age, I
had to make a lot of life sacrifices
that young people normally don't have to do.
I'm very open about this. I had a
very severe eating disorder when I was in
(27:45):
high school and in college,
which meant my
early twenties were spent in recovery
and,
you know, being sober, curious,
and
really dedicating
myself
to healing my mind, body, and spirit. And
while I watched so many people in their
early twenties
party and go off and have the best
(28:07):
time, I had to be a very serious
adult.
And I didn't understand
why I went through all of that. I
true I truly didn't.
But now I do because I know that
if I had not started that work, then
I would never be here
ever.
And I had a friend who said something
to me a couple weeks ago that really
(28:30):
I've been thinking about a lot. He said
that
he always tells his kids,
go enjoy your life. I've got your back.
Go enjoy your life. I've got your back.
And his kids say, thanks, dad. Of course.
And he said it wasn't until he realized,
like, that's what the universe or God says
to him.
Go enjoy your life. I've got your back.
(28:52):
He can say it to his kids because
he realized the universe is saying it to
him. Yes. That shift of, like, wait. Why
didn't I think the universe was doing that
for me? When he told me that, I
was like, holy fuck.
Yeah.
That's the unlock for me post Hoffman. It's
like realizing
that,
(29:13):
god, the universe, whomever
has your back, go enjoy your life, Madison.
Do this work.
Commit to this process and enjoy your life.
I can't say in thirty four years,
I have enjoyed my life in the way
that I do now.
That is the shift. That's the shift post
(29:34):
Hoffman.
It's the shift of doing this work. It's
the shift of my life. It's not just
a mindset. There's a cellular sense of it.
As you talk about, I can feel it
in your body. Yes.
Enjoy your life, Madison. That's
all it's why everything
has led up to this moment.
If some people listening are saying, yeah, I
wish I could enjoy it, but I have
(29:56):
so much stress and work and she doesn't
understand if only she had my life. What's
what's your reaction
to
circumstances
getting in the way of really enjoying your
life?
Probably, the first thing I would say is,
like, I exist as a black woman in
America. So, please, let me tell you. I'm
enjoying my life, and I also have a
(30:17):
lot of systemic barriers that I have to
face
every single damn day.
That's just the truth. So
I think that pain and suffering is relative,
and
I think we can hold two truths at
the same time. I can hold the reality
that exists as a black woman
in America, and there's systemic barriers and pains
(30:39):
and challenges and discrimination and prejudice that I
will experience. I do experience.
And, also,
I can enjoy my life.
These two things can exist at the same
time. And I think for anyone struggling
with whatever, systemic barrier or getting a divorce
or a new parent or hating your job,
like, that nuance that two things can exist
(31:00):
at once is so damn important. Is that
you can be struggling with something very real
to you and don't measure it against whatever
anyone else is struggling with.
And
there is a path that you can choose
through work, not overnight,
where you can learn and begin to try
to find ways to enjoy your life. That's
(31:21):
what I would say back.
So good. I have to ask about your
dad for a second
because I'm thinking about him worrying about whether
you're gonna hate him. As the spiritual
guy who gave you that,
did you ever get a chance to go
back and reconnect with him, and has he
been
transformed as a result of the work you
(31:41):
did?
He said he was really
taken aback
by
me
saying
you know, following the script in my own
way of of apologizing.
That's one of the instructions, right, that you're
given in when you call your parents is
to take ownership and say I'm sorry.
And
he was shocked.
(32:03):
I mean, my dad's the best, and he
was like, oh, you don't owe me any
apology,
any at all. He didn't feel
that it was warranted or needed, but he
was if anything, he just said he felt
an enormous sense of pride and that I
had reached a place of selflessness where I
could apologize
(32:24):
without an if, and, and but.
And so while the he didn't think the
apology was necessary as a parent, he said
he was a very proud moment that his
kid had learned and developed the capacity to
apologize
without
anything
after. And that for him was, like,
enormously grateful for the process for for that
specifically.
And he said he was very a very
(32:45):
proud dad in that moment.
That is so touching.
I I might just feel my heart open
to that moment between you and he post
process.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was very emotionally different.
Right? Like, I was
I wasn't expecting it to impact him so
much. I'm not a parent. I don't have
kids yet. So I don't know what that
must feel like to instill a value in
(33:07):
your child
and then see it expressed
at some point. I'm sure it's transformative.
But he was just like, wow. How cool.
I love the way you frame that, to
instill a value in your child.
And then as they grow up to be
an adult, see it expressed back to you.
That's such a good way of framing what
(33:28):
he experienced.
Yeah. And and also,
he has also shared that there are things
you know, he's very Christian. Neither of us
are particularly religious people. We're spiritual. We but,
no, we don't go to church where none
of us have grasped onto Christianity.
And that's an example for him of, like,
values of value. He wanted his children to
(33:48):
adopt, and they didn't. We were raised Christian,
but once we became adults, we all were
like, yeah, whatever.
And that's you know, he's like, sometimes that
sticks with your kids and sometimes it doesn't.
And he's like, that's, you know, one of
the examples for him. So this value in
particular, the value to be able to apologize,
to take responsibility
for him, you know, that's something he has
very much instilled in us, and that was
(34:10):
one that he got to experience and see
expressed.
You know, now he's, like, calling my siblings,
and he's like, you guys gotta go to
Hoffman. What are you guys going on?
Madison, you have so much aliveness,
so much life force coursing through you. What's
next for you, like, as you step forward
into your life? Where's it where's all this
(34:31):
energy going?
Oh my gosh. So many things. So many
things.
I'm doing a lot of the work that
I stopped doing.
The company I closed, I had a creative
agency.
I am a writer. I'm a creative director.
I'm a strategist, and I built this company
that had 15 people and I became an
operator. And I was no longer
doing the work that I loved, and that
(34:51):
was one of the reasons why I closed
it. It's because I felt that my days
were managing people and talking to lawyers and
dealing with health insurance and all of this
bullshit that I
hated.
What's been amazing is that in now being
an individual
and going back out into being a creative
director again, I've had to reintroduce myself to
people. I've had to, you know, inform people
(35:14):
that I no longer have a 15 person
team. Like, I'm now producing and creative directing
the shoots on my own.
And the response back has been profound and
people are like, welcome back. We missed you.
Like, isn't it so much better not having
all these people work for you? And I'm
like, yes. Then no one talks about the
bullshit of having employees. I mean, I love
it, but, like, jeez. It's it's so
(35:35):
much work.
And so the energy right now is, like,
back into the creative work as an individual.
And that has been, as you can see
and hear in my voice, like, healing, rewarding.
I just got back from
a shoot in LA yesterday. Like, it just
feels good to be back into doing what
I enjoy
(35:56):
and no longer doing what the world expected
of me
because, you know, here I was super successful
and,
you know, I was like,
I god. I mean, I achieved
I look back on my twenties, and I'm
like, oh my gosh.
I just worked so hard.
You know, I got every damn award that
you could possibly get in marketing and design
(36:17):
by the age of 29, and I was
miserable.
Now I don't care about these awards at
all,
and I'm so much happier. It's so much
better. I tell people all the time because
I get a lot of people who reach
out to me. This is for
anyone listening under 30 because I got 30
under 30, the Forbes list when I was,
like, 28.
I get these emails a couple times a
(36:37):
year, and people are like, oh, Madison, like,
what did you do to get on 30
under 30? Like, how did you do it?
What did it feel like? And I always
respond with the same thing, which is that
it doesn't come with a million dollars. Like,
don't waste your time.
Just don't waste your time. It's just a
damn award.
It means nothing, truly. It means it feels
(36:57):
validating for the moment, and you get to
have, like, a couple days of bliss
and acknowledgment and affirmation.
And then you go right back to the
bullshit,
and nothing really changes.
I just want people to know that. And
this is the other caveat is that most
people in this world don't get the privilege
(37:17):
to experience or try to figure out what
they want and love to do. If you
are a part of the small percentage of
people in this world that has even the
capacity to think about this,
Please recognize that privilege.
Most people don't ever it's not even an
option for people to even think about. What
do I want to do with my life?
That to me is
(37:38):
something that I'm trying to get people to
recognize in the work that I'm doing now
is that, like, if you can think about
it,
you are a part of a small subset.
What are you gonna do about it then?
Seize the day on that privilege.
Don't waste it. Wow.
Have you thought about taking these insights
(37:58):
and helping others digest them so they don't
have to suffer the same pain?
I write about them in my substack.
So I have a public facing substack called
BERT.
I've been writing it for over a year
now, and the subject is for anyone tired
of faking fine.
And it's really about confronting
(38:18):
professional
burnout
and challenging
modern work and the systems that we all
operate within
that, especially in The United States, that force
us to fall into these traps of the
one that I fell into, which is total
enmeshment and identity
conflict with your job. And so that's where
I really
talk about this and encourage people
(38:40):
to look at these systems and look at
themselves. And and unlock for me was that,
yes, it's the system. It's American capitalism,
but I'm also, like, an active participant in
this.
You know? Like,
hello. Like, Madison, like, you are fully, like,
fully a consumerist capitalist
whether or not you want to acknowledge it
or not. Like, there was a role that
(39:02):
I was playing in how I kept getting
burnt out
until I recognized that role. And it's behavioral
as much as it is psychological.
Our phones,
I think, really drive a lot of this
overwork and addiction. You know, people have, like,
a five minute coffee break, and they're on
Instagram on the damn toilet. I'm like, you're
not helping yourself in that moment.
(39:23):
Right? Like, there's things that we are responsible
for as an individual within these systems
that we can change. And so that's what
the sub stack really addresses and confronts.
I love that. And as you continue to
push forward
with this values alignment and not faking fine,
I love that, by the way,
send missives back from the front lines
(39:45):
so that people can continue to learn from
your
felt experiences. You have such a a beautiful
way of embodying
the words you're using.
Thank you, Drew.
What's it like to kind of reflect on
all of this, Madison, and remember your Hoffman
journey?
It's fresh.
I'm only a couple months out, so it's
(40:06):
still very much felt physically, emotionally, and spiritually
felt. But the overwhelming sense I feel is
gratitude.
That's truly what I feel more than anything
else when I look about at my process.
The process is not fun. Right?
I'm not like, oh, I wish I was
back there. No. There's part of me that's
happy that it's done.
(40:27):
But I am super grateful.
I've said this a thousand times to people
in my life, but it is the most
important thing I've ever done,
ever.
Nothing comes close. Nothing.
And I went to rehab for an eating
disorder at 19 years old, And I will
still say the Hoffman experience, the Hoffman process
was the most important thing I've ever done
by far. Oh, wow. Did you ever get
(40:49):
in touch with April or your college roommate?
Oh, yeah. I talked to April all the
time.
April
sent me a card
when I was at the Hoffman process, and
it said, I love you and I see
you,
April.
I can get emotionally when thinking about it.
I got it on, like, day four or
day five.
Just an amazing human being. Just to feel
(41:11):
so seen in the moment by somebody who'd
gone through that process.
She didn't even know I was in
the Connecticut one. She called to find out
which location I was in.
But, wow, like, that's also one of the
greatest gifts of Hoffman is that I've met
people who
I've instantly connect with on a just soul
level who've gone to Hoffman.
(41:33):
My sister was in a work meeting, and
a guy in her work meeting who she
barely knew
had said that he'd gone to Hoffman years
ago, but I'll call him Tom for the
sake of his privacy. She was like, this
guy Tom in my meeting says he loves
you and he sees you?
And I was like, I'll tell Tom I
(41:54):
love him and I see you
too. Literally have never met. But that's what
I mean gratitude. Like, that's this community, this
safety, this sense of, like, there's just an
whole world of people out there that
instantly
understand.
What a gift.
Madison, so grateful.
True.
So thank you for having me. Yeah. Thank
(42:15):
you for coming on and just letting it
rip. Letting it rip.
Yeah,
man. Why not?
As my dad would say, fuck it. One
Life.
Thank Thank you for listening to our podcast.
(42:36):
My name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO
and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Razi Ingrassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other and in the world.
To find out more, please go to hoffmaninstitute.org.
Yeah.
That's the unlock for me post Hoffman is,
like, realizing that
God, the universe, whomever
has your back, go enjoy your life, Madison.
Do this work,
commit to this process, and enjoy your life.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
(00:22):
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute,
and it's stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process
and how it lives in the world radiating
love.
(00:47):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Hoffman podcast.
Madison Uttendahl is with us. Welcome, Madison. Thank
you, Drew. Good to see you. How are
you feeling?
In this moment,
I I'm feeling really excited. I'm it's so
good to see you. I feel that deeply
in my body. It's it's enthusiasm.
Takes you back to your process a little
(01:07):
bit, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, I don't
know if I look back I think of
that specifically, but I I think of what
has come out of the process and what
I learned from you, and I'm so grateful.
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you.
Where do we start this story?
Yeah.
I think this story makes the most sense
(01:28):
to start, I guess, six months before I
went to Hoffman.
But I think even before that,
I have
identified or spent the majority
of my adult life
feeling deeply enmeshed
in my career
and
feeling that my identity and my career were
one thing.
(01:49):
And six months before Hoffman, I had actually
closed my business,
And it was the first time in my
life where I was like, wait.
Who am I without
this business and this career?
And how am I gonna start over? Do
I need to attach to something? Do I
need to, you know, build another company?
(02:09):
And
I don't know specifically
why this
time of my life led me to be
like, okay, now's the time to do Hoffman,
but I made a a subconscious decision in
that moment of being like, who am I?
That going about it in the way I
traditionally would have, like, therapy once a week
was not gonna cut it. But if I
really wanted to see change, I had to
(02:30):
take a much bigger step.
And then, you know, here we
are.
So you had that moment in time
when
identity and
job and career
began to crumble a little bit. The connection
wasn't as strong.
Yeah.
(02:51):
And completely
by my own choice. That was also really
interesting. I chose to close my company.
I didn't need to.
And
that's a rare, also very privileged place where
I had decided that I don't wanna do
this anymore.
And I realized that I could either
close this company now and be grateful for
what I had built,
(03:12):
or I could push it along with a
lack of values alignment and no enthusiasm.
It's and over time, it ultimately probably would
have started to fail because I don't think
when you're when you can't build successful things
if you're if you hate it, in my
opinion. So that was the intersection that I
was at, and I was like, okay. I'm
closing it. But I didn't think about the
emotional
toll of what it would mean to not
have it. That was the
(03:34):
the shock for me. And what was that
toll?
Just complete disconnection
of self.
I didn't know who I was without my
job.
I didn't know how to have to spend
my time. I didn't know I found that
I ended up just occupying and creating a
schedule that was as full, but with bullshit.
You know what I mean? It was like,
(03:55):
coffee with this person, and then go do
this workout, and then go do this. And
I was like, wait a minute. This is
the first time in my damn life that,
like, I actually have the space to think,
and I'm just feeling it. And then Hoffman
sounded like a pretty good idea.
Yeah. It did. And I honestly drew to
this day. I have no idea
why in January 25, I thought about Hoffman.
(04:18):
My college roommate went to Hoffman.
And so it had been
over a decade. I mean, I I'm 34.
Right? So I've been out of college for
thirteen years,
but
I'm sitting in the dead of winter in
New York and Upstate, and I'm like,
boom.
Emma went. Emma went to this thing. Why
don't you look that thing up? Wow.
(04:41):
You hadn't thought of Emma or maybe Emma
going to Hoffman in a long time, and
all of a sudden, that came to you.
Thirteen years.
Yeah.
I had a moment about two or three
years ago. I had coffee with my friend,
April McDaniel, who who you know. She's also
been on this show and has done the
process.
And she mentioned how much Hoffman had changed
(05:03):
her life. And that was the second time
I met or been around somebody, became friends
with someone where Hoffman process had really impacted
them. But outside of these two period, like,
windows of my life and two individuals, like,
this wasn't I'm not in a Hoffman community.
Right? So it was shocking
that I just my brain brought it all
together, and it was time. It was time.
(05:26):
Wow. So you sign up and you find
yourself in Connecticut
on-site.
Yeah. Nervous as all hell. I contemplated
not going
so many times.
And
I say this because I think a lot
of people
will feel this way or feel this way
going to Hoffman. I, pre Hoffman, had done
(05:47):
all of the things.
Any kind of damn therapy that exists, I
have done it. Ketamine therapy, DBT, CBT,
somatic,
EMDR. Like, if there's a therapy modality out
there,
I have tried at least one session. And
so there was a part of me
that had convinced myself,
(06:07):
really, I would say the two weeks before
going that I didn't need to go.
You know, I had been in therapy since
I was 15.
I am grateful. My parents when my parents
got divorced,
we had no choice. They put us in
therapy. So my siblings and I have all
been in therapy for a very long time,
and I'm so grateful for my parents. Keep
in mind, those are two people who have
never been to therapy. So I don't know
(06:29):
why they were so insistent, but I'm grateful.
So I I didn't think I needed it.
I was like, oh, I'm past I'm past
this, like, who am I part? It's six
months after I had that existential crisis. I
know who I am. I don't need to
go.
And
I was so wrong.
The brain can do all kinds of tricks.
Like, that moment you had that got you
(06:51):
to sign up months before,
all of a sudden felt kinda distant, and
you're like, wait a minute. I I have
done a lot of work. And
now your mind is telling you, do you
really need this thing? Do I really need
it? But I also had this you know,
now I know deeply that as my spiritual
self was telling me
(07:11):
I needed it and that my intellect was
the one who was procrastinating.
So I famously got in my questionnaire
super late. I mean, y'all were hitting me
up every second. You were like, you need
to fill out this questionnaire, and I was
like, I'll get to it. I'll get to
it. That's very unlike me. I'm a type
a person. And then also the other thing
(07:33):
is the booking the hotel after Hoffman. I
didn't book the hotel. There was a rebellious
part of me that was like, you are
not gonna do this, and we are gonna
sabotage and prevent you from doing this the
right way.
That
resistance is also what drove me because I
was like, there's something I'm not choosing to
look at. Why am I not sending in
this questionnaire? Why didn't I book the hotel?
(07:55):
Why am I resisting these things? Why am
I the last person? That's never me.
What am I trying not to unpack? And
so
I went.
So take us into your week. What happens
as it unfolds?
Gosh.
So I
locked in pretty quick.
I had a lot of anger. So anger
(08:16):
being one of the first emotions that you
confront at Hoffman,
was very conducive to where I was
subconsciously and consciously.
So it allowed for me to lock into
the process day one. I had no idea
the level of ferocity or anger that I
had within my body as somebody who's very
physically connected to my body, who is an
(08:37):
avid runner, who works out regularly, I I
just felt like I had
regular ways of or modalities in my life
were expressed physically.
So I was I was very surprised by
myself in the beginning of Hoffman. I was
like, who is this person that is holding
on to all of these things? And the
other thing that I, you know, was
(08:57):
very surprised by is my anger was very
much I thought I would go in fifty
fifty with both of my parents, but my
anger was very over indexed to my mother.
I had way less anger to my dad
actually than I thought going into Hoffman. I
very quickly realized that I had way more
compassion and understanding and connection to him than
I gave myself credit for. But the anger
(09:19):
towards my mother was, wow, that that was
their present.
And it came out very quickly and very
early.
So you engage in some of the early
cathartic work at Hoffman.
And then what happens next as a result
of that cathartic work? Did it
support you in feeling differently? What emerged next?
(09:41):
Yeah. I mean, it definitely allowed for me
to
settle myself
and to become grounded
and less anxious and worried and overwhelmed.
But I do think, you know, if I
think about my journey, I catapulted into the
emotions. And then by day four, I was
like, I gotta get out of here.
(10:02):
That was this interesting experience for me where
I really oh, I committed. I don't wanna
say over committed, but I was leaned in
day one to day four. And day four,
I went to my coach and was like,
I think I think I've done it. I've
got it.
I don't need to stay.
I was feeling better, and I also was
feeling just complete exhaustion,
(10:24):
to be honest. There was part of me
that was like, I don't know if I
can continue from an emotional exhaustion level
because I had committed and given so much.
So I genuinely was like, this tank is
empty.
I was like, I think I'm good. It
wasn't in a protest.
It was very much in, like, this work.
This was worth the money. Thank you very
(10:44):
much.
Alright. I'm gonna start packing my things.
I love my coach. I had a very
special connection with him. He's wonderful.
Klaus,
he was like, no. You you if he's
like, there's more to this. There's more to
uncover. And he also shared, which I appreciate
that, like, it gets lighter,
and you will experience
(11:04):
more emotions that are rooted in joy. And
I found that very hard to believe, but
he was right. And I was so grateful
because as Mark says, like, day five is
magic, and that is the truest statement.
I thrived on day five, and I'm so
happy I stayed.
But day four was definitely
a rough breaking point for me, very much
(11:26):
so. So you went back in. You had
a beautiful
connection to more joy and magic.
And then the process
comes to a close. What was the end
like for you after those few days?
The end of the process was deeply emotional.
There was a sense of sadness that I
felt at the end,
(11:48):
the experience and the people and this profound
connection
of the individuals that you meet. I don't
know if it's just my particular cohort, but
we have
all very much stayed in touch. We do
do dinners. We're doing it. There's 15 of
us having dinner on October 4. So it
did feel like this very deep connected group
of individuals.
So it's very sad to leave that. And
(12:09):
I found myself just overwhelmed with so much
emotion upon leaving. I sobbed my whole drive
back to the hotel after
just wept.
You didn't have a hotel, so how how
did you Oh, yeah. That was actually a
really fascinating moment for me to realize that
one of my patterns that I worked on
throughout Hoffman was control.
(12:29):
Like, when people tell me they use hotels
tonight to figure out where they're gonna stay,
I'm like, you're crazy. Like, that would I
would never decide day of where I'm staying
anywhere.
That's just not how my personality works.
But here I was, and I really do
do believe in divine timing, and I believe
in the universe, and I believe everything happens
for a reason.
There was something
(12:49):
subconscious that led me not to book a
hotel
and the work of Hoffman Hoffman and releasing
control and realizing that control was not keeping
me safe
led me to this moment right after Hoffman
where I had to confront
the very pattern
that I was predominantly working through, which was
I had no control of where I was
(13:10):
going to stay. And it was a beautiful
weekend in June in Connecticut, which meant most
of the hotels that I would have chosen
to stay were booked.
So I had to go and held hotels
tonight,
and
I found a motel on the beach
in a random ass town
an hour and fifteen minutes away.
(13:32):
And I was like, wow. Okay. Here I
go. I'm getting in the car, and I
drove. And I pulled up, and they were
like, who's this lady? Because it was that
random of a place.
But I was fine.
And it was fine. And everything was okay.
And I had a lovely
integration weekend.
I left that weekend feeling more than ever
(13:54):
this sense of
deep trust
and that not having
control over everything
was actually an opportunity for me to realize
that, like,
I am safe.
Life is working in my favor. There's nothing
I cannot handle.
I'm doing just fine in this motel in
Connecticut.
(14:15):
That was all part of the plan, apparently.
It is this wild thing about patterns and
control in particular,
but that the reason
we do them is because we have a
need for certainty and control.
But one of the things about patterns and
control in particular is that it never really
(14:35):
gives you the thing
you're seeking as you do it. Control doesn't
help. It's it doesn't support.
No. It doesn't. And
I have so much compassion.
And what I think the process did very
well for me was help me understand that
that pattern came honestly.
I think what has been mislabeled
(14:57):
or something I feel that I had been
mislabeled by with people is that control was
a personality trait,
and I learned at Hoffman that control was
a survival instinct.
If it was a survival instinct, that mean
I could unlearn it versus a personality trait,
you know, felt very much ingrained in who
I was as a human being.
And I learned that young Madison,
(15:20):
to no fault of her own,
developed control to deal with her childhood.
When you say come by it honestly, that's
part of what you're talking about. Exactly. That
and it was liberating for me to know
that this wasn't a personality trait. I am
not a controlling person that this younger
version of me
needed to do that and needed to adopt
(15:42):
that. From everything, my birth order and my
family to, you know, Gabor Mate talks about,
like, the misconception is that siblings have the
same parents. Like, you don't. You maybe have
the same biological parents by blood, but,
like, where your parents are in their life
journey
according to when you are born, you don't
have the same parents. You're not raised by
the same people. So both of my siblings
(16:03):
are significantly
more relaxed than I am. And I'm like,
well,
I was the first. You know what I
mean? Like, my
dynamic with our parents was very different,
and this came honestly. But I don't feel
that. I what's so cool is that I
really have released control in so many ways
in my life. I mean, you know, I
(16:24):
almost went too extreme. Like, I went to
Spain
a month after Hoffman, and I was like,
I don't need to book a hotel
because it works out for me, and it
didn't. Like, I was there's certain parts of
my
personality. Like, planning a trip is still a
good pattern. Right? Like, I don't have to
release control
(16:45):
entirely. I didn't end up staying at a
hotel that I would prefer to stay at
in Spain.
But I now have context
of when it is appropriate
to apply
control versus before it was in
every moment,
and that's liberating. And for anyone listening that
has control as a pattern,
(17:06):
often doesn't mean that you're just never gonna
organize things and plan things. No. It's just
you learn that there is a time and
place for that pattern
to serve you. Especially if it's not a
pattern that is positive, you absolutely don't need
to keep it going all the time. It's
not keeping you safe. It's actually preventing you
from living a rich life. Yeah. The power
of choice and the agency to choose when
(17:29):
to engage control and when not to. Yes.
I didn't know I had that. So this
is great. I love you and the motel
there and making the best of it. Then
you go back to your life, and you
and I talked at the beginning here because
you had a different integration experience
after that
that wasn't all roses and wonder. There were
(17:50):
some struggles.
Share a little bit about how hard things
were. My integration
from Hoffman
was
not what I was expecting.
At first, I was very worried. I thought
to myself, like, did I not integrate correctly?
I remember, like, I would reread the booklet
that you gave us and the
(18:11):
binder, and I was like, am I, like,
missing something? Because this sucks.
With an old transparency.
I really had a hard month
back in my first month.
I had a great first week,
but I wasn't prepared emotionally
for the exhaustion.
I was
(18:32):
physically and emotionally
the most exhausted I've ever been in my
whole life coming back from Hoffman. I was
sleeping twelve hours.
I mean, really, really, really
debilitated by fatigue.
And my body started to respond in in
very weird ways. Like, I developed
plantar fasciitis in my foot. Like, these very
(18:54):
weird ailments that I'd never ever had, I
developed. I had a stye in my eye,
and it was almost like I was physically
purging
what I had done at Hoffman, and that
was what I wasn't prepared for. I mean,
I listened to an episode of, Rick Rubin's
podcast. I'm I believe it was the founder
of Tom's, talks about how he lost, like,
20 or 30 pounds when he got back
(19:15):
from Hoffman without trying.
That was me in, like, a physical purging.
My body was, like, breaking down all over
the place in ways that it never had.
I mean, my sister would be like, what
is happening? I don't know. I run marathons.
Like, I'm somebody who's very physically
connected, and I was falling apart all over
the place. It was truly my body. Like,
(19:36):
I would start profusely sweating, and I'm not
a sweater famously. Like, out of nowhere. I
was like, am I going through menopause? I'm
30, 40 years old. Like, what is happening?
But it made my first month really tough.
I also struggled
with
the line of how much I wanted to
share
(19:57):
with people.
I
feel so blessed and grateful that I have
so many people in my life that are
very engaged,
that wanted to know how it went, that
were checking in on me. But I had
to learn that I actually am not responsible
for making
them feel better about my process.
And that's a really interesting experience with people.
(20:19):
I mean, even my dad, we've had very
honest conversations. He knows that I'm doing the
podcast. My dad had this fear that I
would hate him after Hoffman.
So he was checking in on me over
and over and over and over again
to see
if I still liked him. And that was
exhausting
for me, actually, to have to manage someone
else's emotions about my process.
(20:41):
And same with friends, friends who were like
my husband. Everyone was like, what is she
gonna be like? Like, how do we
and that was
so exhausting. It was actually very suffocating. I
felt really
trapped
and unable
to
settle into the work.
One of the things I worked on in
Hoffman was boundaries. Right? Saying to people, I
(21:02):
actually don't have to hold how you feel
about my process.
I'll tell you the story once. I'm never
gonna talk about it again. It's what I
would say to one of my girlfriends. I
was like
I had at one point, I said, let's
all do dinner and a bunch of girlfriends.
We got together, and I was like, I'm
telling you about my hotbed process one time.
All six of you at once.
And that felt important to you. Right? So
(21:23):
you wouldn't have to repeat the story setting
that boundary?
Exactly.
Exactly. And I and until I started doing
that, it just felt like I was getting
pulled in a million directions, and I didn't
have the energy. Right? I as I just
shared, I was so exhausted.
So the combination of feeling like I needed
to share
and then not having the capacity to share
(21:44):
made month one for me really hard.
It was at the end of month one
when I really was like, alright, Madison. Like,
one of the things you've learned was boundaries
and
set them.
Does it mean anything to have learned something
if you're not gonna apply it? Set it.
Set the boundaries of people. And I did.
And everyone
very much respected it. There was no one
(22:05):
who
didn't, to be honest, after the boundaries were
set. I wanna slow it down here because
I think you're speaking to something that is
super important when it comes to change.
And that is this, we can
learn the lesson of something. We can understand
the importance of it.
But then, I think life offers us
(22:28):
a few more opportunities
to see the cost of it.
And so sometimes people think, oh, I've regressed.
I've lost it. No. No. That's just life
and your spirit in a way showing you
the cost of not setting those boundaries
so that then you can really make the
decision
wholeheartedly.
Yeah. Absolutely.
(22:49):
And, also,
why aren't you setting that boundary?
You know, the way we talk about boundary
setting, especially in this country, Christian, like a
western world, it's like, set the boundary you
hear all the time. And you're like, what
the fuck does that mean?
Not only, like, how do I do it,
but why?
Why do I need to set this boundary
is something that I never really asked myself.
(23:10):
I put a lot on my pressure to
set the boundary, set the boundary. How do
you set the boundary? But I was gonna
send the text message that says, don't I'll
tell you about Hoffman one time. Right? Like,
that's the
the formula.
But the why is
the unlock for me was getting to the
point of the thirty day mark and being
like,
why I need to set the boundaries is
(23:31):
so that I can recuperate and heal from
this experience. Why I have to set the
boundaries? Because I don't owe
anyone anything. I don't have to hold someone
else's emotions about my experience.
Why do I set this boundary? Because I
want to. Goddamn it. You know what I
mean? Like,
that's also more than enough.
(23:52):
But it took me thirty days to get
to that awareness of asking myself
why.
I think I also felt in my group
chat,
you know, people were having these, like, beautiful
months back,
and
some people weren't. Right? There there were one
there are a lot of people out of
my 28 who were struggling month one. And
(24:12):
there are people who are doing so well
month one.
It's just been also interesting to see how,
like, that's also shifted. So I've had very
I'm now I'm three months at four months
at a Hoffman,
and
the past two months have been amazing.
I feel wonderful. It's been the work feels
like it's set in. I do my quad
(24:33):
check every single day. To my right, I
actually have, like, a Hoffman Shrine where I
even have my damn rucalas.
I
saved the pop drops. I saved a couple
of them. And I have this, like, little
Hoffman shrine that I go to every morning
because it's a visual reminder for me to
do the practice. So I'm a visual learner,
and seeing this Hoffman Shrine every day is,
(24:54):
like, quad check for me. So it's the
unlock I need to make sure I do
it. I don't just rely on memory to
do it.
But, yeah, it took it took time. It
took time to get here, but it's there.
The work just because you have a rocky
return
doesn't mean it didn't work.
I feel like that's a really important
note for people.
Yeah. What meaning do we make of a
(25:16):
rocky return? And can we just normalize
that that rocky return is part of what
it means to learn and grow post process?
What's it like to sit here having
navigated this thread, your journey,
preprocess,
all the ups and downs in the process,
(25:38):
and then this kind of exhaustion
postprocess,
and then the clarity that came kind of
as a result of the exhaustion and the
connecting
of the dots that that relates to boundaries
and why
you even need to set boundaries in the
first place. And then to be on the
other side of that part of being human
is having other experiences where you learn
(26:00):
different
things. But in a way, you navigated
one big, huge thing,
and it has a through line to childhood.
What's it like to sit in this place
four months out and have the serenity, the
peace?
That's a big question.
And
one I really appreciate. Thank you.
(26:22):
I recently have
come to this,
I guess, you could say, like, a life
because I've truly never felt
better. I've never felt more confident, more self
sufficient, more secure.
But more than anything, just like the depth
of trust I have
in life working in my favor has really
(26:44):
clicked
for the first time.
The depth of trust you have that life
will work in your favor.
Yes. I've known that
spiritually, intellectually, emotionally my whole life.
Both my my mom. My dad is a
very spiritual person. Very, very, very spiritual person.
So
that
(27:05):
belief system has been
shared and ingrained
in my mind
since childhood,
but it did not click
until
post Hoffman in the past couple months. It's
like a physical, emotional shift of settling of,
like,
ah, that's what my dad has always meant.
(27:25):
Is that
God, the universe, whomever,
whatever your belief system is, will not take
you places
unless there is another side of it. Right?
Like, I realized at a young age, I
had to make a lot of life sacrifices
that young people normally don't have to do.
I'm very open about this. I had a
very severe eating disorder when I was in
(27:45):
high school and in college,
which meant my
early twenties were spent in recovery
and,
you know, being sober, curious,
and
really dedicating
myself
to healing my mind, body, and spirit. And
while I watched so many people in their
early twenties
party and go off and have the best
(28:07):
time, I had to be a very serious
adult.
And I didn't understand
why I went through all of that. I
true I truly didn't.
But now I do because I know that
if I had not started that work, then
I would never be here
ever.
And I had a friend who said something
to me a couple weeks ago that really
(28:30):
I've been thinking about a lot. He said
that
he always tells his kids,
go enjoy your life. I've got your back.
Go enjoy your life. I've got your back.
And his kids say, thanks, dad. Of course.
And he said it wasn't until he realized,
like, that's what the universe or God says
to him.
Go enjoy your life. I've got your back.
(28:52):
He can say it to his kids because
he realized the universe is saying it to
him. Yes. That shift of, like, wait. Why
didn't I think the universe was doing that
for me? When he told me that, I
was like, holy fuck.
Yeah.
That's the unlock for me post Hoffman. It's
like realizing
that,
(29:13):
god, the universe, whomever
has your back, go enjoy your life, Madison.
Do this work.
Commit to this process and enjoy your life.
I can't say in thirty four years,
I have enjoyed my life in the way
that I do now.
That is the shift. That's the shift post
(29:34):
Hoffman.
It's the shift of doing this work. It's
the shift of my life. It's not just
a mindset. There's a cellular sense of it.
As you talk about, I can feel it
in your body. Yes.
Enjoy your life, Madison. That's
all it's why everything
has led up to this moment.
If some people listening are saying, yeah, I
wish I could enjoy it, but I have
(29:56):
so much stress and work and she doesn't
understand if only she had my life. What's
what's your reaction
to
circumstances
getting in the way of really enjoying your
life?
Probably, the first thing I would say is,
like, I exist as a black woman in
America. So, please, let me tell you. I'm
enjoying my life, and I also have a
(30:17):
lot of systemic barriers that I have to
face
every single damn day.
That's just the truth. So
I think that pain and suffering is relative,
and
I think we can hold two truths at
the same time. I can hold the reality
that exists as a black woman
in America, and there's systemic barriers and pains
(30:39):
and challenges and discrimination and prejudice that I
will experience. I do experience.
And, also,
I can enjoy my life.
These two things can exist at the same
time. And I think for anyone struggling
with whatever, systemic barrier or getting a divorce
or a new parent or hating your job,
like, that nuance that two things can exist
(31:00):
at once is so damn important. Is that
you can be struggling with something very real
to you and don't measure it against whatever
anyone else is struggling with.
And
there is a path that you can choose
through work, not overnight,
where you can learn and begin to try
to find ways to enjoy your life. That's
(31:21):
what I would say back.
So good. I have to ask about your
dad for a second
because I'm thinking about him worrying about whether
you're gonna hate him. As the spiritual
guy who gave you that,
did you ever get a chance to go
back and reconnect with him, and has he
been
transformed as a result of the work you
(31:41):
did?
He said he was really
taken aback
by
me
saying
you know, following the script in my own
way of of apologizing.
That's one of the instructions, right, that you're
given in when you call your parents is
to take ownership and say I'm sorry.
And
he was shocked.
(32:03):
I mean, my dad's the best, and he
was like, oh, you don't owe me any
apology,
any at all. He didn't feel
that it was warranted or needed, but he
was if anything, he just said he felt
an enormous sense of pride and that I
had reached a place of selflessness where I
could apologize
(32:24):
without an if, and, and but.
And so while the he didn't think the
apology was necessary as a parent, he said
he was a very proud moment that his
kid had learned and developed the capacity to
apologize
without
anything
after. And that for him was, like,
enormously grateful for the process for for that
specifically.
And he said he was very a very
(32:45):
proud dad in that moment.
That is so touching.
I I might just feel my heart open
to that moment between you and he post
process.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was very emotionally different.
Right? Like, I was
I wasn't expecting it to impact him so
much. I'm not a parent. I don't have
kids yet. So I don't know what that
must feel like to instill a value in
(33:07):
your child
and then see it expressed
at some point. I'm sure it's transformative.
But he was just like, wow. How cool.
I love the way you frame that, to
instill a value in your child.
And then as they grow up to be
an adult, see it expressed back to you.
That's such a good way of framing what
(33:28):
he experienced.
Yeah. And and also,
he has also shared that there are things
you know, he's very Christian. Neither of us
are particularly religious people. We're spiritual. We but,
no, we don't go to church where none
of us have grasped onto Christianity.
And that's an example for him of, like,
values of value. He wanted his children to
(33:48):
adopt, and they didn't. We were raised Christian,
but once we became adults, we all were
like, yeah, whatever.
And that's you know, he's like, sometimes that
sticks with your kids and sometimes it doesn't.
And he's like, that's, you know, one of
the examples for him. So this value in
particular, the value to be able to apologize,
to take responsibility
for him, you know, that's something he has
very much instilled in us, and that was
(34:10):
one that he got to experience and see
expressed.
You know, now he's, like, calling my siblings,
and he's like, you guys gotta go to
Hoffman. What are you guys going on?
Madison, you have so much aliveness,
so much life force coursing through you. What's
next for you, like, as you step forward
into your life? Where's it where's all this
(34:31):
energy going?
Oh my gosh. So many things. So many
things.
I'm doing a lot of the work that
I stopped doing.
The company I closed, I had a creative
agency.
I am a writer. I'm a creative director.
I'm a strategist, and I built this company
that had 15 people and I became an
operator. And I was no longer
doing the work that I loved, and that
(34:51):
was one of the reasons why I closed
it. It's because I felt that my days
were managing people and talking to lawyers and
dealing with health insurance and all of this
bullshit that I
hated.
What's been amazing is that in now being
an individual
and going back out into being a creative
director again, I've had to reintroduce myself to
people. I've had to, you know, inform people
(35:14):
that I no longer have a 15 person
team. Like, I'm now producing and creative directing
the shoots on my own.
And the response back has been profound and
people are like, welcome back. We missed you.
Like, isn't it so much better not having
all these people work for you? And I'm
like, yes. Then no one talks about the
bullshit of having employees. I mean, I love
it, but, like, jeez. It's it's so
(35:35):
much work.
And so the energy right now is, like,
back into the creative work as an individual.
And that has been, as you can see
and hear in my voice, like, healing, rewarding.
I just got back from
a shoot in LA yesterday. Like, it just
feels good to be back into doing what
I enjoy
(35:56):
and no longer doing what the world expected
of me
because, you know, here I was super successful
and,
you know, I was like,
I god. I mean, I achieved
I look back on my twenties, and I'm
like, oh my gosh.
I just worked so hard.
You know, I got every damn award that
you could possibly get in marketing and design
(36:17):
by the age of 29, and I was
miserable.
Now I don't care about these awards at
all,
and I'm so much happier. It's so much
better. I tell people all the time because
I get a lot of people who reach
out to me. This is for
anyone listening under 30 because I got 30
under 30, the Forbes list when I was,
like, 28.
I get these emails a couple times a
(36:37):
year, and people are like, oh, Madison, like,
what did you do to get on 30
under 30? Like, how did you do it?
What did it feel like? And I always
respond with the same thing, which is that
it doesn't come with a million dollars. Like,
don't waste your time.
Just don't waste your time. It's just a
damn award.
It means nothing, truly. It means it feels
(36:57):
validating for the moment, and you get to
have, like, a couple days of bliss
and acknowledgment and affirmation.
And then you go right back to the
bullshit,
and nothing really changes.
I just want people to know that. And
this is the other caveat is that most
people in this world don't get the privilege
(37:17):
to experience or try to figure out what
they want and love to do. If you
are a part of the small percentage of
people in this world that has even the
capacity to think about this,
Please recognize that privilege.
Most people don't ever it's not even an
option for people to even think about. What
do I want to do with my life?
That to me is
(37:38):
something that I'm trying to get people to
recognize in the work that I'm doing now
is that, like, if you can think about
it,
you are a part of a small subset.
What are you gonna do about it then?
Seize the day on that privilege.
Don't waste it. Wow.
Have you thought about taking these insights
(37:58):
and helping others digest them so they don't
have to suffer the same pain?
I write about them in my substack.
So I have a public facing substack called
BERT.
I've been writing it for over a year
now, and the subject is for anyone tired
of faking fine.
And it's really about confronting
(38:18):
professional
burnout
and challenging
modern work and the systems that we all
operate within
that, especially in The United States, that force
us to fall into these traps of the
one that I fell into, which is total
enmeshment and identity
conflict with your job. And so that's where
I really
talk about this and encourage people
(38:40):
to look at these systems and look at
themselves. And and unlock for me was that,
yes, it's the system. It's American capitalism,
but I'm also, like, an active participant in
this.
You know? Like,
hello. Like, Madison, like, you are fully, like,
fully a consumerist capitalist
whether or not you want to acknowledge it
or not. Like, there was a role that
(39:02):
I was playing in how I kept getting
burnt out
until I recognized that role. And it's behavioral
as much as it is psychological.
Our phones,
I think, really drive a lot of this
overwork and addiction. You know, people have, like,
a five minute coffee break, and they're on
Instagram on the damn toilet. I'm like, you're
not helping yourself in that moment.
(39:23):
Right? Like, there's things that we are responsible
for as an individual within these systems
that we can change. And so that's what
the sub stack really addresses and confronts.
I love that. And as you continue to
push forward
with this values alignment and not faking fine,
I love that, by the way,
send missives back from the front lines
(39:45):
so that people can continue to learn from
your
felt experiences. You have such a a beautiful
way of embodying
the words you're using.
Thank you, Drew.
What's it like to kind of reflect on
all of this, Madison, and remember your Hoffman
journey?
It's fresh.
I'm only a couple months out, so it's
(40:06):
still very much felt physically, emotionally, and spiritually
felt. But the overwhelming sense I feel is
gratitude.
That's truly what I feel more than anything
else when I look about at my process.
The process is not fun. Right?
I'm not like, oh, I wish I was
back there. No. There's part of me that's
happy that it's done.
(40:27):
But I am super grateful.
I've said this a thousand times to people
in my life, but it is the most
important thing I've ever done,
ever.
Nothing comes close. Nothing.
And I went to rehab for an eating
disorder at 19 years old, And I will
still say the Hoffman experience, the Hoffman process
was the most important thing I've ever done
by far. Oh, wow. Did you ever get
(40:49):
in touch with April or your college roommate?
Oh, yeah. I talked to April all the
time.
April
sent me a card
when I was at the Hoffman process, and
it said, I love you and I see
you,
April.
I can get emotionally when thinking about it.
I got it on, like, day four or
day five.
Just an amazing human being. Just to feel
(41:11):
so seen in the moment by somebody who'd
gone through that process.
She didn't even know I was in
the Connecticut one. She called to find out
which location I was in.
But, wow, like, that's also one of the
greatest gifts of Hoffman is that I've met
people who
I've instantly connect with on a just soul
level who've gone to Hoffman.
(41:33):
My sister was in a work meeting, and
a guy in her work meeting who she
barely knew
had said that he'd gone to Hoffman years
ago, but I'll call him Tom for the
sake of his privacy. She was like, this
guy Tom in my meeting says he loves
you and he sees you?
And I was like, I'll tell Tom I
(41:54):
love him and I see you
too. Literally have never met. But that's what
I mean gratitude. Like, that's this community, this
safety, this sense of, like, there's just an
whole world of people out there that
instantly
understand.
What a gift.
Madison, so grateful.
True.
So thank you for having me. Yeah. Thank
(42:15):
you for coming on and just letting it
rip. Letting it rip.
Yeah,
man. Why not?
As my dad would say, fuck it. One
Life.
Thank Thank you for listening to our podcast.
(42:36):
My name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO
and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Razi Ingrassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other and in the world.
To find out more, please go to hoffmaninstitute.org.
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