From Shame to Self-Leadership: The Bold Journey of Brent Perkins

(**check out Brent's Great Offer Below)

In this powerful episode of Sex Afflictions & Porn Addictions, I sit down with Brent Perkins—former corporate executive turned self-leadership powerhouse and founder of 3xBOLD. We met at the Big Tent Summit in Loveland, CO and we connected!!!

Brent shares his raw, unfiltered story of climbing the corporate ladder only to realize the view from the top was empty ... sound familiar? His awakening began with pain, shame, and a pattern of people-pleasing that nearly cost him everything (sound familiar?) - he and I have a lot in common!!! And we both love the word "CAPACITY," which is a life-changer once you get it!!! Be ready to take notes. 

You are going to love this podcast. 

We dive deep into:

• How men can reclaim purpose and identity in midlife
• The cost of ignoring your shadow (and how Brent faced his)
• What boldness really means in the context of healing and transformation
• How executives, fathers, and husbands can lead from truth—not ego

This conversation is for anyone who’s ever felt like they’re dying inside while looking “successful” on the outside. And he's obsessed with CAPACITY: creating it and sustaining it. 

📍 Find Brent at 3xBOLD.com

🔊 What Brent’s Promoting:
🧠 Expand Your Capacity – An invite-only, 60-minute monthly gathering for impact-driven, family-focused leaders who feel stretched thin but refuse to burn out. Walk in with overwhelm, walk out with clarity, tools, and connection.
👉 Join here

About Brent Perkins
Brent Perkins is a former multi–8-figure CEO turned leadership alchemist, obsessed with one thing: capacity—the inner operating system that scales everything.

As founder of 3xBOLD and the author of Papercuts: The Art of Self-Delusion, he helps impact-driven and family-focused entrepreneurs and elite coaches amplify their impact, at home and at work, bridging neuroscience and somatics into board‑room results and bedroom presence.

Brent also serves on the board of Front Row Dads and is known for his trademark style: radical honesty, quiet strength, and insight that lands like a gut punch wrapped in love.

📘 Book: Papercuts – Available on Amazon & Audible
🔗 Website: 3xBOLD.com
📅 Join Brent’s Monthly Call: 3xBOLD.com/expansion
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brentrperkins
📧 Email: brent [at] 3xbold [dot] com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, what's up everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is Craig Parra and you are listening to Sex
Afflictions and Porn Addictions, a podcast to help you create
and sustain healthy sexuality in a great life, to build
the capacity to not just do those things, but to
sustain those things over extended periods of time. Welcome. I

(00:23):
have a very very special guest today. His name is
Brent Perkins. We met in Colorado at that big Tent
summit that I was telling you about, and it's a
real privilege to introduce him.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Let me tell you a little bit about him.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
He is a former multi eight figure CEO turned leadership
alchemist obsessed with one thing capacity. You guys are gonna
love this, the inner operating system that scales everything. He's
the founder of three times Bold and the author of
paper Cuts The Art of Self Delusion. And I'm gonna

(00:56):
put that link in the chat for everybody. You can
see my copy here, all marked up. He helps impact
driven and family focused entrepreneurs elite coaches amplify their impact
at home and at work, giving me a lot of
great advice in the short time that I've met him.
He also serves on the board of front Row dads,
and I recently got introduced to that awesome organization and

(01:19):
is known for his trademark style radical honesty, quiet strength,
and insight that lands like a gut punch wrapped in love.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Brent, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Thank you for that introduction.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
You're very welcome.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, I really felt that connection man when we met
at the Big Pence Summit, and I'm so glad you're here.
There's so much that we could possibly get into. But
did I leave anything out of that introduction?

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Brand?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
I know there's a heart centered side of you that
the academic and the accolades part didn't cover, So I
wanted to give you the space to share something else
if you're so inclined.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
You know, What's what's so special and so important for
me these days is getting to share all sides to
my journey really openly, really vulnerably, because I really believe
the one thing we can offer anybody in our life
is just permission. And we offer that permission by not
giving advice, not telling people how and what to do

(02:30):
when and where, but what we've gone through, what's working, where,
what's not, you know, and that that is what I
am most excited to get to share throughout everything else
you've already said.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
So awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you for being here, Brent.
Like I said, I'm going to put all the links
in the description. Tell me about this state of self
so OS that that appeals to me, because when I
see SOS, I'm like emergency.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Tell me about the four quadrants.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
That I read about, and I want you to share
with my listeners.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
So one of the things that I built my career around,
because I'm a marketing and management background guy, how did
I get to be CEO? How did I get to
run biotech companies? And it was taking complex things and
making them understandable, whether by the market, whether having the
engineer and sales team be able to talk to each other,

(03:27):
and doing it in a way that just makes sense visciorally.
And what's come out of this kind of three to
four year journey I've been on since I stepped out
of my corporate career and you've read about it in
my book too, is trying to really understand what does
it look like in terms of how we show up,
what are the barriers that hold us back? And this

(03:48):
state of Self map was my way to say, hey,
pretty quickly, you can pinpoint where are you at right now?
Where do you think you're operating from? Where? What are
the stories you're maybe telling yourself that are actually keeping
you stuck in a loop. And the map, the state
of self map helps it helps me navigate. Oh, this
is where I maybe need to go next. So let

(04:09):
me explain it. I looked at leadership as not just
in business, but at home in a community, we're leading ourselves.
So for me, leadership is the core to everything we do.
And when I was looking at leadership, I said, you know,
so much of this is me stuck on this kind
of am I doing things that are selfish or self less?

(04:32):
And I was so afraid of especially today a world
calls us narcissists or makes us afraid to step into
some narcissistic behavior. And the problem is is the other
side of narcissism, So the selfless side of how we
do things is this uglier side that we step into
a lot and don't know what called martyrdom. Right, So
we're living on this spectrum of what are we doing,

(04:54):
how are we doing it? And the problem is that's
just a one dimensional X access look at left or right,
how do we show up and until we start overlaying
the Y axis, so we form this this uh you know,
vertical pattern of who are we being while we're doing?
And that being axis goes from the bottom of being

(05:17):
self poor, which is the state of depletion, right to
the top being self rich, self full, this place of abundance.
So we start to get this quadrant that's forming here
of how are we doing? What are we doing, and
how are we being while we're doing it? And we
can look at this this doing access as our output right,

(05:39):
our output to the world, and the being access our
input because it takes both. And I found, I thought,
and I wanted to be a servant leader, and I
called myself a giver. I was proud of being a giver.
And the problem is is that when I really broke
this down, when we're being self less, right, which is

(06:00):
an amazing place to strive to be, giving, that word
lives below the line of input. So it lived below
a healthy place of more in that self poor area.
Because when you give, who knows if anybody wants or
needs what you're giving. You're giving because it makes you

(06:20):
feel good, which makes it also a little selfish. Right,
And what happens when we give and give and give
ultimately from a place that we don't have overflow, we
burn out.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah, right, I know that well very well.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
So going from this place, and by the way, the
bottom right hand quadrant, which is self poor but self
self less, call it performing because we're doing our job.
We're ticking the boxes, you know, we're giving. That's where
a lot of us live in this performing quadrant, right.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
But the output and you mean, Brent, sorry for the interruption,
but I want to understand output is there.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
You're showing up, no, you know, maybe major problems doing
it in that quadrant.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Your job is happy with your performance. You're showing up
at home, although how much presence do you actually have
that's a whole nother story. But you're physically there. Yeah,
you're ticking the boxes of life, yes, and you're also
silently burning out inside, which we can get into later.

(07:30):
Is this is the most dangerous place to be because
it's where our addictions keep us keep us going, or
at least we feel like or what we need to
keep performing in quotations right, performing at the high level
and where we ultimately want to get is the upper
right hand quadrant. This is this beautiful place where we're

(07:51):
not only self less, but we're self full or self rich.
We're living from this place of abundance and we're able
to show up and have a lot of out. But
this isn't This isn't giving. This is contributing contributing. The
difference between giving and contributing is that contributing is additive.
It may not actually be giving anything. It may just

(08:11):
be showing up, listening, seeing, sharing a calm presence. Contributing
can look like so many things, and it's usually not
a box checking thing that we do in performance. So
this upper right hand quadrant is called leadership because true
leadership isn't forcing people. It's not shaming or blaming them,

(08:34):
it's not commanding them. It's pulling out the best of
what's already inside of them right and leading them and
leading them, leading yourself, which automatically leads other people because
they want to follow you.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
And what's really interesting, Brent and I want to make
this point for you guys, listening and doing your parts work,
what you're going to hear so much of what Brent
is talking about applying externally, what's wild it is also
applies internally, Brent, because as I was reading this, I
was like, Oh, he's talking on himself.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
There's parts work there there. I marked off a couple.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Of areas, and that's just a fascinating realization that I
keep saying to myself more and more.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
What's outside is in m h.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
So let me finish the quadrant real fast and it'll
tee us up for the rest of this conversation, which is,
so we've established what does what does output look like?
In a self less way, in an unhealthy and a
healthy way right, either performing or leading. On the other
side of this quadrant, we have the kind of an ugly,
scary side. My guess is most of us aren't living here,
at least not all the time. That's surviving. That's where

(09:44):
we have That's where we're selfish and we're self poor.
We have no output, we're fearful, no input, and we're
just living in scarcity, right and the world's happening to
me and I'm a victim, well is me. But the
place where we don't talk about a lot and this
is what you just kind of segued into this upper
left hand quadrant. It's still technically selfish because we're not

(10:06):
outputting a lot, but it's highly self full or self rich.
And that is this developing quadrant. And this is where
when we sit here or we cycle through this area,
this is where we build capacity. This is where we
build resilience. This is where we do that inner work

(10:27):
that makes leading possible. And it is impossible to go
from performing to leading without developing yourself building capacity.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
First, tell me why that word is so important for you,
this notion of capacity. There's a hundred words you could
have used, but you chose this one, which I happened
to love and my listeners know. We talk about, you know,
creating and sustaining capacity. I want to know why you
really anchored to it.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
And it's such a word.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Yeah, it's really simple because part of developing is learning, right.
It is reading books, it is taking courses, it is
going to school, it's doing all these things that build
our intellect too. So we have language to draw from
and frameworks and ideas and models to follow. The problem
is is that our intellect is still secondary to you know,

(11:27):
showing up in our body and our heart, and it
will get us in trouble and we'll overthink things and
we'll get stuck in loops. If that's all we rely on,
and if we if we didn't do any of that
and we only built capacity in our nervous system. Right,
So capacity is really the internal side of capacity's nervous
system work. It's knowing that I'm good enough. I don't
have to respond. I don't have to show people how

(11:49):
smart I am. I don't have to get them to
like me. I don't need them to understand exactly where
I'm coming from because we all have our own experiences
and our own stories. I'm okay, I can get curious, listen,
ask questions, and understand them. Right. It takes having that
nervous system capacity to do those things. And if you'd
never built out your intellect and you only did that,

(12:11):
you would still be eighty percent of the way there
to be an amazing leader. And the intellects just like
the icing on top, and society teaches it in the
reverse order.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, no, they totally do. Because you think of the
result of all that dysregulation. That's when guys find themselves
to me, because they can't be present with that discomfort.
They've been numbing, coping and escaping from it for you know,

(12:42):
in childhood sexually. So I really think that that focus
of you know, being able to be being safe in
your body, you know, being able to be you know
present with fight, flight, freeze or or fawn people pleasing.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, the absence of that, what do you have?

Speaker 3 (13:05):
You don't and it shifts how we talk to ourselves,
which I know is a big part of your work too.
You example this, I was just talking to my daddy's
eighty and he had some skin cancer removed from behind
his ear and he went and had a procedure done
where he's like, yeah, I was so pissed off. And
I said, whoa, that's okay, what happened? And he said, well,

(13:27):
the doctor was thirty eight minutes late to my surgery,
and instead of taking the hour it takes to like
make sure they get clean margins, took him almost ninety minutes.
He's like, my whole day was ruined. And I'm thinking
to myself, Okay, well all you do is watch Netflix
and smoke cigars and not a whole lot of things

(13:48):
going on in your life besides just chilling anyways. And
it was just his choice to perceive that the world
was happening to him and he was actually pissed off,
like those are strong words, right, and he doesn't have
a lot of capacity, So for him, it's not about
you know what this doc. He probably could have canceled

(14:09):
this today because he was behind scheduled, but he chose
to keep showing up. And I got this done and
now I'm safe, like I can move on and clear
this out of my my this heaviness out of my head,
worrying about do I have this cancer cell?

Speaker 1 (14:22):
And they spend more time on me to be extra thorough.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
So it's this storytelling, which is what I really get
into that in the book paper Cuts. You know, the
art of self delusion is is that what stories are
you telling yourself? Are they delusions? And if they are,
are they healthier non healthy ones? Because you get that choice,
like that's your personal agency. This is free will at
it's most minute level, which is what story are you

(14:47):
going to tell yourself? Because only you experience life in
your way and you get to say whether it's hard
and whether I need to go grab that drink because
I got to calm myself down, or I've got to
go do X, Y and Z, because you know you've
decided the story you're telling yourself is healthy or unhealthy,
serves you or doesn't serve you.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
And those stories get implanted so so so deep.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
And what I love about.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Being on this journey, Brent, it never ends in one
of the stories that I learned about myself at the
Big Tent Summit, seeing other people having relationships, being cooperative,
strategic partnerships jvs, whatever like in me completely coming from
my silo because I haven't stepped out of it in

(15:37):
a big way. But for that Big Tent retreat, I
saw the legacy of competition and that people are out
to get me.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
And now I know intellectually that that is not true.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
And I've met great people at the event and had
wonderful relationships.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Those thoughts aren't there.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
But there is a part that that's, you know, feels
unsafe and in reaching out so much so that the
statement of hey, how can I help your business was
like a mind blowing moment for me seeing other people
being so obvious that so it was it was a
big I learned a lot, you know, I learned a

(16:20):
lot in contrast to because I didn't have capacity to
feel that without somehow putting a power dynamic on it
and being judged and not being good enough. Right, that's
what's at the root of it, man, that's at the
root that I'm not good enough. And it was really powerful,

(16:41):
And I want to let everyone know Brent called me
out beautifully, gently, kindly, and lovingly on two specific occasions
that I remember that I'm very grateful for.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, and this, you know, this is coming from a
from a man who has dedicated his life to this work,
who has served people at the highest levels of society,
who has been on every news channel and been awarded
accolades and seen the results over and over again amongst

(17:13):
thousands of people you've helped, you've helped, and it still
shows up, Right, So if it's showing up there, where
for all of us, does it show up in the
quiet ways, the ways where we've never been we've never
seen public success, we've never even heard anything about it? Like,
those are the areas I don't like. You know, if

(17:35):
they're written down, you'd be like, oh, that's no big deal.
And it's the biggest deal because it's the hardest ones
in our lives to tell ourselves different stories around.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Well and we maybe this is a nice segue into
the so many people fight it with hustle versus building
that emotional capacity, and I know you distinguish, can you
maybe unpacked at a little bit more?

Speaker 1 (18:04):
The difference is Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
This is a further deep dive into this bottom right
hand quadrant, which is performing right. Hustle is part of
that performing culture or hustle culture is part of just performing,
which is the more effort I put in, the more
I do, the more chances that something good will come
out of it. And the problem really lies in that

(18:26):
you don't really have anything to offer the world except
for your best version of yourself, and the best version
of yourself requires input, requires you to pour into whether
it's eating right, whether it's exercising, whether it's praying or meditating,
or giving yourself a walk in nature, talking nicely to yourself,

(18:48):
learning how to If you can't honor you, how the
heck can you honor anybody else in your life? Sure,
you can give lip service to it, but eventually what's
going to happen is the true core to how you
you actually treat the number one person in your life,
which is you. You're the only person you were born
with and die with. It ultimately trickles out, It ultimately

(19:10):
comes through so when we get stuck in hustle culture,
I'm guilty. I've done that. I blew up a twenty
year marriage. And did I do it on my own?

Speaker 1 (19:18):
No?

Speaker 3 (19:18):
But did my hustle mentality contribute to it? Heck yes
it did?

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, so so powerful and so important
and the outcome is far greater building that emotional capacity.
Yet yet I know that in the fiber of my being.
But I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, Brent.

(19:44):
There's a David Goggins style voice in my head which says,
fuck this pussy shit. No one's you know on Carnegie Gilhall,
whose parents weren't beating their fingers to death to play
the right notes.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
To give me your thoughts and response to.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
That reaction that you know that not only do a
lot of us have, but you see it reinforced sure,
over and over, and I'll come out there by you know, entrepreneurs,
who are you monetizing this message of never quit don't
be a pussy?

Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah? So, nowhere in the model that I've presented, or
in what I've seen in life, does performing and doing
the hustle culture and doing more nowhere doesn't mean that
you're not going to make a lot of money or
get people to see that you've done some extraordinary feat

(20:39):
and give you accolades for it. The challenge is is
that never once have I ever seen it be sustainable ever.
You know, I don't know David Goggins personally, but like
talk to people that know him, and it's not like
he's some peaceful dude who's just happy with life and
can get up and decide, Yeah, today, I'm not gonna

(21:00):
put in that kind of effort because my body needs rest.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
No.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
He hustles and hustles and hustles, and it served him
well to a point. But at what point does it
break your spirit and your soul and people around you
don't want to be around you because now you've got
to go do some crazy, crazy thing for too many
hours a day and then you don't see them. It's part,
not part. The entire point to life is is being

(21:24):
in relationship with others? Right, how do you do that
when you don't ever see them? You wonder why marriages
or partnerships or you know, being a parent and those
relationships break down because we don't actually see or hear
the other person and we get in the way, and

(21:47):
these hustle hustle ideas, whether their Goggin style or whether
they're business you know, whatever it is they get in
the way. Yeah. Do they make you money, yes? Do
they give you the material things? Sure? And then you
end up having a harder tech or dying early and
never get to connect with people you actually wanted to love. Anyways,
it was all or not right right.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
The thing I really like about the book, the concept
of paper cuts implies or is you know little, you know,
little cuts over extended periods of time, over and over
and over again. And the thing that I was really
attracted to on the solution side this notion of quiet

(22:31):
power in recovery and using capacity practices, practices to replace.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Numbing habits with embodied leadership. And one of my favorite.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Pieces of advice Brent, especially to give the high achievers, is.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Lower the bar. Lower the bar. We want to build capacity.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Let's start setting some attainable goals and really figure out
what's getting in the way.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Tell me about quiet power.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Hm, So, fietpower is really really hard to practice and
step into until one day you just let go of
control because it's what it takes and let it show
up and I'll give you. I'm gonna tell you a
story real quick. How it showed up with one of

(23:19):
my clients who's a CEO. We family run business on
the East Coast, and he's got a couple of cousins
and a sister that work with him, and they've they've
got a great business, but they've been trying to figure
out how do we how do how do four of

(23:39):
us their family all run this thing. Make sure we
get our share, have our say that there's you know,
they navigate the hierarchical thing that happens when they go
have family barbecues, like who's better than or higher than
somebody else? Like they're always navigating this challenge and part
of where the guy I worked with he was most

(24:00):
stressed with. He's like, I'm CEO. I've got to provide leadership.
The other people have to look up to me. I've
got to do these things. I got to show him
how to do this. I got to show him I'm smart.
I got to come in, I gotta work harder, I
gotta show up before them. I'm gonna leave after them.
I got to do all these things to step into
this role. You while he's got three kids at home,
he's got a wife, and he's got a long commute,
and he's trying to be all things to all people,

(24:22):
and most of all himself. He's suffering right because he's like, well,
I don't have time for me. I ratterly have time
to make my kids baseball game. And so as we
talked through this one day and we really worked on
building capacity for him, he started stepping out of this
surface level, like, I've got to be the one that

(24:42):
answers everybody's challenges and solves their problem. Is that this
like always on strategist at the office. And he just
got quiet and he started listening, and he started empowering
his cousins and his sister and the other people at
his organization by letting them come up ideas themselves, put
them into practice, not shaming or blaming them if they

(25:04):
if they you know something they tried went sideways on them,
really supporting them. And as they as they really started
to thrive, what happened was they started taking over and
doing an amazing job, actually a better job, and a
lot of the things he thought were his his role
as CEO. But you know what that did for him, that.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Gave them I know, profoundly changed his life and the
company did better, and he.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Just bought back almost twenty hours a week in his
time because he finally let go of things and his
If you went and pulled or interviewed his staff and
his cousins and sister, they would tell you that he
has turned into one of the best leaders I've ever seen.
And what he would have told you along the way was,
I didn't do anything, but just stop stop trying to

(25:53):
be the one in control. Stop trying to be the
one who is, you know, doing everything. And that's quiet power.
It's this doing less, just letting other people be their
most amazing self, right, that's quiet power. It's sitting down
at the dinner table with your kids and you don't
have to say anything. But when you when you model,

(26:15):
when you show up as self full or self rich,
yourself automatically through osmosis, your kids feel, oh, this is
this is how dad listens and doesn't respond, or in
something like Mom's getting stressed out about something, he He's
just able to ask questions and you know, kind of

(26:36):
turn the situation around. Or when I'm when I'm really
struggling at school, like it's this quiet way where we
don't have to Oh my gosh, I can't believe youre
feeling that way that person treated you like, You're not
jumping into You can empathize without going to this extreme
radical embodiment of it. Right, you can just see people, Yeah,

(26:57):
oh that's got us, that's really got to hurt. I'm
so sorry. Tell me more, What would you do differently
if you had another chance?

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Right?

Speaker 3 (27:05):
This is quiet power is being curious.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
How does one acquire that power? Brent?

Speaker 2 (27:12):
When our conditioning in every aspect of our upbringing.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Is fix it, fix it, fix it.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
And I know it's a complicated answer, but it gets
to that, you know, building capacity, And I wonder if
there's some productive things you can speak to that that help,
because I to to be in that place you have
to be or you know, you're you're grounded, you're connected,
you're in self leadership is what we call that an

(27:40):
I F S.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
It's not a unique term to I F S, of.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Course, but a term that that describes this place where
you don't have to do anything and.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
See the value in listening and talking less.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
And one of the things that I did I calculated
in my mind the percentage time how much I was
talking and I wanted it to go from sixty percent
down to twenty five percent.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
But yeah, love your thoughts on that.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
So what helped me? You know, I was definitely one
of these entrepreneurs and business leaders who really was proud
of my intellect and how I could come up with
answers and be smart about most situations or politics or
the news or business or whatever it might be. And

(28:32):
as I realized, and I don't think it really matters
what your spiritual belief is or your religious belief, as
long as you have some belief in something greater than yourself.
But that we are these infinite cosmic beings, right, our
souls who are here on earth, and we've taken on

(28:55):
the form of a body, and our body has five senses.
That's how we interact with the world. How we know
what's happening, right, because if we couldn't taste it, see it,
smell it, feel it, nothing would have any meaning. Right.
And in third position, we have a brain and our
brain interprets these signals coming in. So we are this

(29:19):
cosmic being who's got this amazing human body, who then
has this little computer that sits on top that's just
kind of doing some data computing, and yet we live
life vice versa. We live life where it's like my
brain is the most important thing, it rules everything. And
then sometimes I'll pay attention to my body and trust it,
and then I forget that I'm an infinite being that

(29:41):
comes from who knows where. But you know, there's some
creator or some higher energy that's weighed beyond me. And
so as I put that into perspective more often and
realizing my ego has flipped this on me, and it's
trying to tell me that I need to outsmart this,
intellectualize this, come up with a better answer, go to

(30:03):
the news, go to social media, go to somewhere else,
and solve it. And it's been lying to me my
whole life. Right, The answers are have always been there
because we are. If we're infinite, then we are tied
into all that ever was, and our body gives us
all these signals, and we choose which ones we want

(30:23):
to pay attention to because some aren't so comfortable, but
they're still meaningful, right, They still meet, you know, they
still have they're really insightful. Just because it doesn't feel
great immediately, and we just we always running to my intellect.
So as I flip that on its head and I said, hey,
how do I put my intellect last? How do I

(30:44):
let it know without shaming it or calling it names
or getting frustrated with that? How do I let it know? Hey,
thank you for what you do. Let's put you over here,
though I don't need you right now, move more into
my body to tap into that infinite wisdom that we
all have inside. Whether you're you know, whether you think
it's your higher self or whether you think it's the
Holy Spirit, there is something inside all of us. And

(31:05):
what did you and I do before we started this podcast?

Speaker 1 (31:08):
We had a little meditation session, put our hands on
our hearts.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
Yeah, because both of us in some way we're operating
from a heavy space. As we came into this podcast,
right turning all the little dials on, looking at you know,
reminding ourselves of what we're going to talk about, like
all of these intellectual things, when at the end of
the day, you and I just really needed to drop
in and see each other, you know, feel the flow

(31:34):
of this conversation. And this is so true for life.
How do you do this with your kids, with your
girlfriend or boyfriend? With your coworkers. Nobody wants to listen
to you talk about how smart you are, right. They
want to they want to show up at the table
with you co creating something beautiful.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
That's so powerful.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
It really is so beautiful in its simplicity. It is
a new definition of fixing, you know, because because the
fix is here's what I think you need to do.
I'm going to tell you how to do it. This
is listening, and then the answer it comes. It really

(32:25):
really does, Brent. I've been doing parts work for thirteen
years and you know, professionally, and then two years before
that on my own, and the lesson always comes. Now,
sometimes it's not the lesson you expect, and sometimes it
doesn't go as quick as you would like. Like right now,
my system says thank you, no, thank you. We're not

(32:46):
ready to talk right now because there's some really really
heavy stuff that came up after the Big tenth Summit
in my internal family systems training.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
So I'm listening. I'm listening.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, And when we listen and we don't have to have,
you know, and we're not like me, me me, let
me tell you what what I just heard? You know,
we can calm that inside voice listening allows us to
get curious and go, Man, that is maybe the weirdest
shit I've ever heard somebody say, But it's kind of
mean something else. So I'm gonna keep asking questions, right,

(33:22):
are going Gosh, that sounds just like something I've experienced,
But it can't be because you know, Craig's not me,
and Craig's had his own life and which isn't my life.
So I wonder what this means to Craig. I'm gonna
ask him before I tell him what it means to me.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah. No, so beautiful, so beautiful.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Now, my guys listening, a lot of these men are
in recovery or thinking about getting in recovery. How does
capacity work replace destructive coping loops?

Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yeah? So I have two cheat codes that I go
to more often than anything else. So this is the
only going to partially answer your question. But in terms
of practical and tangible tactics, the number one thing that
has worked in my life is implementing timeouts. This isn't

(34:14):
that thing you put your kids in when they frustrate you, Right,
It's not like wearing a dun's cap in the corner,
But timeouts is really stealing an idea of what you
know basketball, football. You know, sports use for very specific reasons.
You know, you know in basketball, maybe your players are
just tired, right, and you just take a time out

(34:37):
and give everybody a chance just to breathe for a minute.
Maybe the ball is about to go out of bounds,
or you're about to get a jump ball, and so
you're trying to prevent something from happening, right, and you're
trying to save a moment. Maybe everything is just going
exactly not to plan. The other team is scoring. You know,

(35:00):
I scored ten points in a row, and you just
need to shift momentum, so you take a time out.
So what's the time out? A time out of sixty seconds.
And the simplest form of it, because it could look
like a lot of things, but the simplest form of
it is how do you snap yourself out of whatever
you're doing? And for me, it's close my eyes, put
my hand on my heart, feel myself breathed. Sometimes it

(35:22):
looks like a special breath, most often it doesn't, because
it just gets me out of my head into my
heart and I think about something that brings me joy,
something I have gratitude for. Could be me, could be
another person, could be a moment of trip, a lot
of things. And I just breathe that in that connection
to myself with my hand and my heart, my eyes closed,

(35:44):
I'm not looking at the world around me and thinking
about whatever brings a smile on my face, and that's it.
And he opened my eyes. And usually there's enough of
a shift ten percent or more that gets me out
of whatever the loop I was stuck in. And what's
even more curious is is when you do this with

(36:06):
other people, it aligns you in a way that is unbelievable.
Everybody stops trying to control the situation or be the
smarter right one, or you know, it calms their fears.
You know a lot of times we don't know what
we're getting into or what other people are thinking. And

(36:28):
this just shows you it doesn't matter. Like this timeout
is this It's actually a mix of a lot of practices,
one of them being some of the science developed at
the Heart Math Institute. But I've never found anything that
in sixty seconds shifts and builds capacity like that.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Well, you've got the breath, you've got the heart, you've
got the reflection. There's so much interwoven into that where
it's the you know a great like you said, and
I love that concept of time out because I know
a lot of guys connect with that and it's not
a bad thing. It is regroup, reconnect, rest, restrategize, do something.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
And what you're doing, right, Brent, you're creating.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Capacity by pausing, by not continuing to get swept up.
You're aware of the disregulation, your awareness of the disregulation,
the balls going out of bounds, time out, Yeah, and
that awareness triggers the time out, and what you do
in that moment builds capacity.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
So I remember as a kid, multitasking was something that
was really really coveted and people were proud of. And then,
you know, ten fifteen years ago they science showed that
multitasking is false and it's actually horrible and you can't
do it as humans. And yeah, in our lives, we

(38:02):
multitask inadvertently because we don't ever make these transition points. Right.
You don't walk out of one meeting into the next meeting,
clearing what just happened and moving into the next space
without pulling the threads of the last one into that, right.
We often don't arrive at home without hanging on to
some thread from the day and pulling it through into

(38:24):
our home life. So these timeouts, yes, can shift us
when we're at this point of stress or frustration or
we really need it. And it's a great transition mechanism,
So why not use it ten times a day. It's
ten minutes in total that will actually help you detach

(38:47):
from whatever conversation, phone call, situation, meeting, just thought process
you're in and move to the next one. Clear clean,
that's capacity right. You're not caring baggage with you throughout
your day.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
And you're embracing the your You're anchoring the new habit
to the transition which there will be multiple throughout the
day for any professional, father person, inevitable transitions. And those
transitions are the trigger, you know, the moment of self reflection, release, calm, well,

(39:29):
whatever you need.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
I know when I used to drink every day and
that was my go to calming mechanism after working a
long day. It's because I never did these things, and
I'd get the end of the day and my head
would be buzzing in every a million directions and I'd
have so many thoughts. I had never let go of
anything in my day where today, when I show up
back at home, there's not a whole lot of head

(39:51):
trash happening, And so I don't need to grab a drink.
I don't need to go to what other you know,
addictions to live in our lives to you know, just
give me some breathing room, because those addictions, they do
give us temporary capacity, right, they most certainly do, but
it's not sustainable and it's not healthy, right right right.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
I love that so so so guys, you know, prioritize
the transition, use that time to reflect, to recenter.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Of course you need it. It's it's it's I love it.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
You're you're getting ahead of it, you know, with those
little timeouts, and I love it because, uh, it's really simple.
I mean, you know how challenging it is for people
stuck in the patterns to implement. But if you're not
taking you know, one minute, well then there's other barriers
and obstacles getting in the way, and those will be
evident if you can't commit to doing that one man

(40:49):
or can't execute on that one minute, because that happens
sometimes too.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Yeah. You know, when I first started doing this, I'd
show up in meetings and I honestly, I'd be like,
I'm not ready to be here, and I just close
my eyes and just put my hand on my heart
and say nothing. And at first, you know, I definitely
had employees and colleagues of mind going what are you doing?
And I would finish whatever I was, you know, this
thirty seconds of breathing, and I would I would just say, hey,
I'm just trying to get at a place where I

(41:15):
can show up here and really really listen. I want
to be fully present here. And nobody thinks that's stupid.
Nobody argues with that, because of course they want the
same thing too. Yeah, it's so silly when you first
do it, you.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Know, Yeah, well it does. But then you you realize
how effective it is. You Even starting this, I was,
of course, I'm in my head. I've got to I
got the right introduction. I got to make sure I
say the right things. I want to do the best
podcast I can. I don't want to embarrass myself.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
In front of you.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
So all these parts are, you know, are vigilant there
on guard, and they're ready. Well, when I'm able to
step back and relax, I know I'm able to come
from a place of authenticity and curiosity versus anything you
know that I had planned?

Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah, I do have one? Do you want me to
share one more?

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah? Please? Please, please please.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
So the second thing, and this is definitely in second
position to what we just talked about. Timeouts are by
far the the first place to start, but the second
thing that's helped me more than anything else. And it
is a practice, let's be honest. But it's agreements versus expectations.

(42:43):
And what I mean by that is there was there's
a wonderful book by a lady named Christine Hassler who
she wrote. Her book was Expectations Hangover, and it really
shifted my perspective on this. And what I found was
is that I live most of my life with a

(43:05):
million expectations from what was going to happen When I
opened up my garage door. Where my neighbor's going to
say something, Who's going to say hi to me? What's
it smell like inside of Starbucks today? Did I get
my drink right? Did they write my name? Now? Who
greets me at my office? How every step of the
way are my kids, you know, appreciating the breakfast I
made for them? Is my partner? X Y AND's like

(43:26):
it was expectations everywhere everywhere, And when I shifted to
how do I start making agreements with life, with the
world with people in it, right, what happens is that
is that we go from expectations, which, by the way,
nobody understands our expectations. Even when we feel justified in them,

(43:50):
there's still our own version, our own story of some
you know, reasoning that only we understand. So one nobody
understands you, and two expectations are personal, right, because when
somebody violates or breaks your expectation, it feels like they hurt,
Like you're like, but I expected and it should have
been this way, you know where this is the story

(44:11):
we tell, and it feels very personal when they get broken.
When you make an agreement, a couple of things happens. One,
you get to share what's you get to communicate and
share what's actually going on in your brain with somebody else.
Then you invite them to share what's going on in
their brain, and you can come to some middle ground.
You know, you might have to give up a little bit,
but that's okay. And once you come to that middle

(44:33):
ground where everybody understands each other one, it feels great
because you're like, oh, cool, like we got this figured out. Two,
you make an agreement. When it gets violated or it
gets broken, it's not personal because they didn't violate your expectations.
They broke an agreement. So the conversation looks very different

(44:55):
when we say, hey, I thought we talked about this
and we both agree that this is where we're going
to go from now on how we're going to operate,
and the other person says, you know what, you're right. Shoot,
but they say, yeah, I know we said that, but
we're gonna have to make a new agreement because I
can't hold to it. It's this detached conversation, right, that
doesn't bring any of the nervous system challenges that living

(45:20):
in expectations does in our life. And there's nothing else.
Once you kind of master the art of timing out
and giving yourself a pause, there's nothing else that gives
sustained capacity. Then trading your expectations for agreements with people.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
So wise those expectations will leave you wanting alone, frustrated, depressed, anxious.
I think we could go on and on.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Well, they show up everywhere. I mean, I was just
flying to Reno Nevada and I jumped on a I
went stand by to get a four hour earlier flight,
just trying to get home, and I went from a
thirty seven was my boarding time thing to see fifty six.
Like literally, I was the second to last person on
a plane and I'm six six, so not getting a

(46:12):
you know, an aisle seat is really not the most fun.
Plus I didn't check a bag, so I wanted to
find space for my roller bag. And I'm like, you
know what could have had expectations around how the airline
screwed me and I actually paid for that eight thirty
seven upgrade and I didn't get it. All these things
could have been there, and instead I let them show up.

(46:35):
I just made this agreement with myself that you know,
I'm getting home early, I get to see my family.
It's gonna if I have to check a back, great,
It's whatever happens, happens is going to be okay. None
of it's going to change my world. And guess what
I got the last I'll see it on the plane.
My bag went into the overhead and just it was
all fine, right, And versus these stories we tell ourselves

(47:00):
and we get ourselves. We we get ourselves so worked
up and we lose all capacity because of the head trash.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
And it's deep and that's why these these not only
the perspective, but the actions that you can take, like
the time out, like renegotiating expectations as agreements. What is
one challenge, Brent, that you would give our listeners to

(47:33):
experiment with over the next week, whether it's the time out,
something you've already said, or something that maybe you haven't
said yet. What's one way to to you know, in
one challenge? Buy the book paper Cuts. Then you will
get a lot of value. Not only is it super informative.
I learned a lot, but it's also a deep personal

(47:54):
journey too, which I really connected with and am connecting with.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
Yeah. Yeah, the just for severy knows that paper Cuts
the Art of Self Delusion isn't a prescriptive book. It's
really a book that will give hopefully give you permission,
permission to keep exploring yourself, to know that you're not
wrong or bad or fucked up, that you're just human
and that we're all going through this journey and I'm

(48:19):
going to have that that lead us into what my
what I invite the listeners into is that. I hope
that you've got enough permission on this this conversation today
to not only do timeouts, do them please in your
own way, but on the back end of your timeouts,

(48:40):
you know, at home and at work, trying in multiple scenarios,
just ask questions. Let that space the time out created
for you allow you to be more curious than you
normally are and to really find out without having to
you know, give your thoughts on it or try to

(49:01):
give advice. Just keep asking questions. Get be so curious
that it's it's painful, and see what shows up.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Be so curious it hurts. Yeah, I love it. I
love it. And one of the other quotes in the
book brant that I high that I flagged was you
met me?

Speaker 2 (49:28):
This is under just showing up and the question is
how can I live in the now? Answer you already do?
You just haven't noticed. And that's Byron Katie, wonderful author
from her book Loving.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
What is what about that quote spoke to you?

Speaker 2 (49:48):
And how did it make it in the book because
it's a very special one to me too.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Yeah, I mean this is this is this is why
capacity work on a whole gives us a chance to
be in the present moment right, because when we're living
in the past, we're fearful and or into the future

(50:20):
which doesn't even exist yet. And it's this present moment
where things are happening, where we're actually interacting with the world,
with people, and whether to time out, which allows you
to create a little bit of space, a little covid
capacity to actually be in the now. For me, that
was just an amazing such a simple little quote to

(50:44):
say that where's the present moment? It's always here? Just
you know, my spin on it is, do you have
the capacity to be part of it?

Speaker 1 (50:54):
I love it? I love it. I love it. Brent.
How can people find you on the web?

Speaker 2 (51:00):
And I'm going to put all these links in the
descriptions and you know what are you working on? How
can people get in touch with you?

Speaker 3 (51:08):
Yeah, you can find me at three X bold dot com,
so the number three, the letter X and then B
O L D dot com. And my work's really around leadership, development,
work and leaders This is not just at work, it's
also at home. So I work directly with entrepreneurs and
CEOs and change makers of seven and eight figure organizations

(51:32):
as well as their teams. You know, really aligning who
the key leadership end up becoming with their culture, you know,
because what ends up happening in organizations is they say, oh,
here's our vision, here's our values, and they don't live it,
and then nobody does because people are smart and see
it and feel it. So how do we align? You know,
who you're being with who the organization is. And that

(51:56):
creates capacity in itself too, because when we're in alignment,
things are easy. Yeah, you don't have time, you don't
need time to like spin stories and create all these
things that then try to align everything in the back
end so it looks like it's all tied together in
the right way.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
It just is just just this. Yeah, No, I love it.
I love it, all right.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Any last messages for the people listening here today, Brent.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Don't underestimate the power of being your best self. And
that is not selfish.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
That is not selfish.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being here, Brent.
It's just such a privilege to get to know you personally,
and so glad you were able to share your wisdom
with us.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
So thank you, my honor.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
Awesome, all right, everybody, thank you for listening. Life is
too short to suck. So please please please reach out
to Brent, reach out to me, reach out to someone
who can help you, who can mentor you, who can
guide you, who can lead you in creating capacity. And
both Brent and I are obsessed on that. We've been
there and you know. Please please please reach out. Thank

(53:06):
you guys for listening. Embrace your power of choice, feed
the right wolf inside you, and I will see you
next time.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Thank you so much, Bye, everybody,