This week on Acta Non Verba Emily Kwok returns to share why top leaders need to really get out of the day-to-day and become high-level thinkers. Listen in as we discuss how to identify what you’re really passionate about and the importance of meditation. We’ll also dive into the advantages of giving yourself that empty space to evaluate things and about “peak performance”.
Emily Kwok is a multi-time-international Brazilian jujitsu Federation World Champion, a mixed martial arts veteran and co-owner and co-head instructor of Princeton, Brazilian jujitsu, peak performance consultant, and freelance writer. She is widely regarded as the early pioneer of Brazilian jujitsu in North America, being one of the first females to rise to prominence as the sport extended around the globe. She has spent the better part of the last decade working closely with Josh Waitzkin, training in the field of peak performance, exploring how to manage and induce optimal states in the self.
You can learn more about Emily at www.emilykwok.com
Episode Transcript:
00:26
In this episode of Acta Non Verba, we hear part two of my interview with Emily Kwok, a multi-time international Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation world champion, co-owner of Princeton Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
00:56
peak performance consultant, and author. In part one, we talked about how Emily discovered jiu-jitsu, some of the challenges that she faced with it, and how we need to challenge ourselves to become mentally resilient and self-reliant. You can hear part one on episode 30 of Octo Nonverbal. In part two, we discussed what Emily has learned from working closely with world-renowned peak performance athlete and elite executive coach Josh Wadeskin over the better part of the last decade, the importance of meditation.
01:25
and how to cultivate empty space to reach your next level in performance. You can find out more about Emily at EmilyKwok.com. I truly love this conversation and I hope that you do too. Please enjoy part two of this interview with the truly incredible Emily Quark. So you have some of these people that are founders or co-founders and they create this thing, this system, this widget, this process, whatever it is, and then they create more demand than what they can fulfill. So they hire people.
01:53
But they never put themselves mentally into that CEO place, into that leadership space. They just think it’s me and these three other people that are doing these things when, and because they can’t get out of that, because they cannot step away from the front lines or the weeds or whatever you want to call it. Now it’s really hard for them to have a vision, to see something beyond what’s going on. And even if they’re making a lot of money, they’re still caught up in the minutiae of what’s going on in those moments. And again, not looking above.
02:20
So everybody talks about that 30,000 foot view, but you had to think 30,000 moments beyond this as well. Not just this high level view of what you can still see, but what is this gonna do? Where are we gonna go? How is this gonna impact these things? Again, what more could I be doing with this in the process to cultivate not only my culture, but myself as a human to make you a better wife, mother, et cetera. Yeah, and I also think that it’s about pausing for a moment and asking yourself, is this even what I wanna do? Does this even make me happy? Yeah.
02:48
I mean, I think that that’s something that I have to mention, you know, the person I have the honor and the pleasure of working with, which is Josh, has influenced my life so much. I really do think sometimes about where I would be in life if I wasn’t working with him, you know, and for your audience members, I don’t know who Josh is. His name is Josh Wadeskin, and he was largely popularized in the movie, Searching for Bobby Fisher as a young quote unquote, chess prodigy.
03:15
And one of the things that he will say he really hates is the term prodigy, because he’s like, no, I actually worked really hard to be good at what I was good at doing. And I’m really passionate about it. And I love learning. And I love competing. And that’s why I became good at what I did. And since then he transferred his skillset to push hands, Tai Chi and jujitsu. And now he’s really involved in the world of surfing. And I had never met someone. I mean, imagine this, imagine taking your
03:45
favorite thing to do. I don’t care if it’s dancing or riding a bicycle or licking lollipops, whatever it is. But that’s all you do and you’re just so good at doing it that you understand yourself and the layers to the self and how you fit into the world. You understand that so deeply and it’s so potent and you just you really get to find the edges of who you are and that is your existence. That is your gift to the world.
04:14
That’s the work that you do. And I remember when I met Josh through Marcelo’s, I started training there in 2010 and I remember when I went, everyone was like, Oh, that’s where the chess guy is. And I said, who’s the chess guy? Who’s the chess guy? The chess guy, you know, that chess guy, they made a movie about him. And when I started training, it wasn’t long before I met him because he was at the school all the time and so was I, you know, and this kind of cycles back to
04:43
a lot of what we’ve been talking about this whole time is like, if you’re the person that’s willing to do the work, you will align and gravitate towards other people of the same quality or, you know, that are on the same mission as you. And so we started becoming friends and I worked for MG in Action, which was the online academy that Marcelo’s school had. And again, you know, Marcelo Garcia, for your listeners, is sort of considered to be like the Michael Jordan of Jiu-Jitsu. He’s a phenomenal competitor. So technical.
05:12
very and also just very aggressive and forward thinking with his fighting style. And so Josh co-owned the school and the platform and so I started working with them in that capacity. And just when I had my first child, I had contemplated going back to corporate. I used to work in event management because I wanted a little bit more of a mental push and a challenge. And Josh had said, you know, maybe before you do that, let me think about this. Maybe there’s a space for you to come work with me privately. And
05:41
I think at the time his career had gone from doing a lot of keynote speaking and whatnot, and he was just starting to break into more of a one-on-one consulting field. And we work primarily with elite financial executives. And so I started working with him. And I have to say a lot of my time with Josh has been observing, you know, just being familiar and being able to understand what he does. And I think like a lot of…
06:09
high level performers that I’ve been exposed to. Sometimes when you’re really, really good, actually not sometimes, most of the time, when you’re really good at what you do and it’s what you’re most focused on and you’re not distracted, it’s actually very hard for you to describe what it is you do to other people because you’re so deep in the zone. And so the first few years working with him,
06:33
was a bit surreal because I didn’t know what to ask. You know, he was an open book. He’s like, ask me anything. You know, I want us to have a shared consciousness, but I didn’t know what to ask. And I didn’t know what river to jump into because he’s just a dynamic force. And through working with him, I actually felt that I was starting to be unconditioned to living the typical life that I thought I was supposed to live. You know, working from home seven, eight years ago.
07:02
That was not a norm. You know, it’s very much the norm with COVID now, but seven, eight years ago, when someone tells you to work from home, I’m checking my phone every five minutes and I feel like somebody’s watching me over my shoulder because what are we trained to do in a corporate world, right? We’re working at a desk and we need to be accountable. And Josh was the one that really started to push on me to understand and identify what quality was in my life, not quantity.
07:29
I’ve always been a person of quantity. I’m really good at balancing 10 plates on my head and like one on my toe, but really like distill quality and presence. And it was unlearning all the mechanisms and systems and ways of life that I had picked up in my 30 years. And we’re talking about somebody who didn’t spend that much time in corporate. So imagine you start working for a big agency when you’re 20 or freshly out of college.
07:57
how deep in the zone you are in a socialized externally led structure. And so from working with Josh, he really not only helped me unlearn those things, but he taught me how to value what was much more important in life and to seek those things in myself and to also give me the opportunity to learn and to be a better performer. And I just think what a reverse flow that is and how unusual
08:27
my opportunity was and is, and what it would take for the world to get on track with that and to build better leaders and to cultivate stronger workers and companies. And it takes so much because when I think about my unusual existence already, having to unlearn and unravel with someone like Josh, I just think to myself, wow, like how much work do we have to do?
08:54
to be better ourselves and to also teach others how to unleash their own potential. It’s so true as a coach or as a consultant, we have to be in that place where we’re willing to push ourselves, constantly challenge ourselves, because how can I possibly ask my client to do that if I’m not willing to do it myself? And again, not just what I did years ago, not just what you did years ago, but here now, like I have found this fresh weakness and it’s…
09:22
I always say emotions assassinate the truth. It evokes an emotion within us as close to us. It may remind us of another part of ourselves that we don’t like and we go through this negative, cascading emotions. But am I willing to really look at that? Am I willing to sort of callous that over in order to get stronger, in order to become better? So like you said, when we have high level people, it’s so important for us to do that because that conversation that we have and that change in behavior that we create in them literally affects.
09:49
hundreds if not thousands of their employees with the ripple effect because they’re seafood executives, they’re boards, they’re leaders, all those things. So that’s why, in my mind, that’s why I like to coach individuals more when they have companies because now I know for sure that I’m not just going to give them a sound bite. I’ve been able to work with them, see the pattern, anticipate the pattern, get them to acknowledge it, change that behavior, now move to another place with this.
10:15
And it can be in any circle of existence, whether it be their own edification, their physical capacity, their nutrition, their relationships and all those things. That’s why, like you were saying too, people are like, are you a performance consultant? Yes. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to talk about your finances if that affects your performance. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to talk about the physicality because that absolutely affects your performance. If you’re not able to sleep well or you’re eating a bunch of bullshit food that’s not serving you, how can you possibly get to a higher level? And a lot of people think that it’s about more and more and more.
10:44
But as you were saying with what Josh said, quality has a quantity all of its own if we invest in it continually. And in his incredible book, he makes that comment about how he intentionally cultivates empty space just for that sheer bandwidth to have these other places to think obliquely and laterally as opposed to just trying to go straight down the track, which may be obvious, but nothing comes from those places for us. Yeah. And I mean, nothing exposed that more than this time of COVID.
11:14
I think sometimes when we cultivate that empty space, when we’re new to it, it feels like we’re doing something wrong. It feels like you’re just dicking around, right? Cause you go, shouldn’t I be doing something right now? What’s the end result of this space? It’s like, there’s not, there’s no expectation. It’s like, how could there be no expectation? Why am I doing this then? That’s why we’re doing it. And it’s funny. So I’ve had three kids in the last seven years and Josh would often,
11:42
gawk and scold me because I might be, uh, you know, one hour, freshly a new mom again. And I’d be answering emails and he’d be like, Emily, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I’m like, I’m bored, Josh. I’m just, you know, the baby’s being cleaned up. Nobody’s in the room. I like, you know, and he’s just like, just enjoy being a mom. Like just enjoy the time. And I was like, okay, Josh, but you know, we all have our own weird quirks.
12:13
And Josh has helped me sort of understand my own, which is he’s like, he’s like, you’re one of the best executors I’ve ever seen. You know, like you, you just know how to get shit done. But I think in learning, knowing that I like to get shit done, it means that my mind’s constantly dynamically cycling through this and that and bouncing back and forth. And you could say that I’ve been trying to become a better higher level thinker to do less busy work, you know, not that the busy work doesn’t need to be done, but to.
12:41
give it a time and a place or delegate it if it doesn’t have to be me. And as COVID hit, I was doing a lot of work on myself with an executive coach that we work with. And just before COVID hit, I just had my last child. And so in the middle of the summer, I was straight out having like an existential crisis about what is the meaning of life and what are we doing? And what kind of world am I raising my kids in? And Josh was like, just how about instead of us
13:10
working on stuff, like just take some time, like don’t, there’s no pressure to do work, quote unquote. I want you to just enjoy being a mom, be a parent. You haven’t really had this time to yourself before. You’ve never taken maternity leave. Another interesting thing about the way we work is Josh is someone who really, like we don’t have a lot of boundaries over what we do and how we work together. We’re very good friends. We work closely together.
13:37
When I travel to where he is, our families are together. I was never assigned vacation days. I was never assigned sick days. It’s just live life as it comes and take what you need, right? And give, make sure you always give back. So it’s been an interesting year for me because I’ve had a lot more empty space than I normally would. And I think I’m finally at a place in my life where I was ready to receive it. Because I was much more inclined to busy myself and say,
14:06
empty space is not meant to be empty space. Empty space means I’m not being efficient with my day. And there’s just such a clear difference between that. And that’s such a profound, again, breakthrough, that knowledge of sometimes having that empty space and that feeling of, you know, what am I doing? Am I doing this wrong? Whether it be meditation, whatever it is, it’s because we have an expectation, because we think X equals Y, or if I sit down and zaza meditation for 20 minutes, I should have this when I’m done. But sometimes that’s not it.
14:36
Sometimes it’s just that ability to how many people, if you’re listening to us and you’re putting your head to the pillow and you can’t turn your mind off before you go to bed, you probably need to have some empty space because that may be the first time in their day where they actually have that quiet. And now that they’re trying to sleep, much like a person who has been injured, now that their body feels safe enough, it will start unpacking this stuff. What do you want it to or not? It’s like, Hey, we’re downloading this guys. I don’t know if you’re ready or not, but here we go. And now
15:06
You don’t have that ability to have that true rest, but if you could take a few moments and you don’t have to be Tony Robinson do it for three hours in the morning or whatever it is, but find a space that is repeatable and something that you will do. Again, if you’re in the shower or you’re driving, sometimes that’s when we have that ability to have that sort of breakthrough or those things that sort of come to us. What you’re talking about and what Josh is famous for is being able to get people to find that loop within themselves and then do it.
15:35
Consistently they know in the morning or in the afternoon that this is what’s going to happen which allows them to have almost an unfair advantage against their competition in these arenas because they’re Improving in leaps and bounds in ways in a weekly manner The other people take six months or a year and they don’t even feel it until they’re on vacation or There’s a pandemic or there’s a death in the family or there’s somebody being born because they don’t have that ability to really Experience that yeah. I mean I think that we’re conditioned to results
16:05
We’re always thinking about what we’re supposed to get out of this or where it’s supposed to end up at the end of the day. And it takes a lot of work to not result. It takes a lot of work to just be present. It takes a lot of work to not think that there has to be something that comes out of it all the time. And I’m really fortunate that I have a teacher and a mentor and a friend that is willing to sit with me in those moments and say, hey, we were working on this thing together.
16:34
and it’s totally okay that it did not work out. It’s totally fine that we didn’t end up with what we thought we were gonna end up with. That has to be taught, you know, because we’re always reinforcing the other. We are always reinforcing the result, that the result has to be positive. And in my case, like that’s how I grew up in an Asian household was, if you don’t meet these markers, you’re a failure. But really understanding that in order to get ahead, we have to be okay with where we are.
17:04
We’re not going to get ahead by looking at the finish line all the time. So learning to be comfortable with that gray space is something that I’ve really worked hard at over the last few years. And again, like I’m just so grateful that I have the influence and the leadership in my life to help me see those things. And so the best thing that I could recommend to, you know, your listeners is if these things that we’re talking about resonate with you, that you need to contact or engage with people that will.
17:34
sit with you in that space, you know, and make it digestible for you. When you were talking about, you know, forming habits, I just wrote an article for my website that I’m going to put up soon about like not looking at the top of the mountain when you start off on the hike, because if you just keep looking at where you’re supposed to go, it’s going to just feel like you’re never going to get there. And that if you just put the pack on your back and you start walking in an hour’s time, you’ll look behind and go, Holy smokes, like look at how much ground we covered.
18:03
And all of a sudden the peak doesn’t seem so far away. But I think we have a hard time sort of deconstructing our goals into bite-sized missions and doing things that are actually relatable, trying to achieve things that are achievable versus trying to bite off more than we can chew. And sometimes we need to have that friend or that person in our shoulder or our coach or whoever it is to tell us, hey, it’s okay that you took a nibble. That’s a lot more than you did yesterday. And we’re gonna get there.
18:33
It’s about a practice. You practice jujitsu, you’re not done. We practice coaching, we practice meditation, we practice presence, because these things all take practice and they’re gonna be sometimes when we have a great breakthrough and we’re like, wow, that’s amazing, especially when we began because we don’t know anything. So of course we’re gonna learn and leave some bounds. It’s like, oh wow, well, I didn’t know anything. But then when you get to a certain level, then you start realizing, okay, it’s gonna take me more of these things to get to that place. But like you were saying with climbing the mountain or building a wall or whatever, it’s about
19:03
finding that finger hold right now perfectly and not letting anything else be in the presence other than this or laying that one brick perfectly and nothing else matters and then doing it again. And then before you know it, the whole Lao Tzu idea, the wall, we don’t build a wall, we just lay one brick. And we get so caught up in, again, this destination ideal or the hedonic treadmill of the next thing, trying to get all these markers, these KPIs when.
19:31
key performance indicators, which for a lot of people that should just be removed because again, what is it doing? If we measure it, it can be managed, I understand, but if we can only measure three things and there are literally a dozen things that we should be working on, people will gravitate towards those things that they can see. Like you said, these metrics, these boxes that they can check when in actuality, these other seven or 10 things may be even more important to help us get to those places. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And sometimes when it seems too simple, it’s actually just enough.
20:01
It’s not about how much more, it’s not about all the big things. It’s about the really small little things. It’s about the nuance and how much can you appreciate those small things? How much can you appreciate those little moments that additively makes so much more of an impact in your life? A few months ago, I watched, I don’t know if you’ve seen this on Netflix, there was a great, a beautiful documentary called my octopus teacher.
20:29
And I loved it. I fell in love with it because it sort of exemplified everything that we’ve been speaking about relative to being receptive and seeing the things in front of you that have always been there, but you just have been too distracted or busy to notice. And what we learned from observing that, and I think as I’ve grown older in life, you know, I’m a very extroverted person, so I have no problem getting out there and doing what I need to do. But I found that there’s more times in life now where I just want to sit back and observe and listen.
20:58
And I just want to sit back and see what happens because I’ve learned a lot and I can interject and say what I want to say, but I’m waiting for that golden nugget to reveal itself. And sometimes when we’re too busy talking, too busy watching and doing other things, we miss the things that we really need to see. And trying to pocket the time where I’m like, okay, I’m using my phone or I’m on the computer, but now I’m done with it.
21:26
you know, or I’m just going to concentrate on reading this book and not be distracted by notifications every five minutes or whatever it is. Like small exercises to practice that yourself, I think are more important now than they ever were because we are increasingly heading into the type of world where distractions take place of presence and we’re being present only with things that are diverting our attention from ourselves. Yeah, we’re continually putting out fires. We’re continually, you said, reactionary.
21:54
It used to be a disrespect if you would tell somebody you have the attention span of a goldfish, but literally now a goldfish has more of an attention span than the average human that has a cell phone. And what do we do? That becomes our default. That becomes what we’re used to. And people take these things that they’re accustomed to and they make that preference, even if that’s not what their intention was. And then before you know it, again, the cultivation of the family dynamic and how if your family had chaos as you grew up,
22:23
That’s what you seek because that’s the norm. And then if you open a business and you had chaos in your family, now guess what? As a CEO, you’re recreating all those dynamics in your company. And so now you have no idea why you have so many people that are reactionary or putting out fires or they don’t have the ability to be present to cultivate that space to do what needs to be done in these times. And I love what you talk about with peak performance because that’s the way I think of it. It’s peak performance, but it’s also about sustained capacity in that performance. Yes.
22:51
It’s about being able to click up that baseline because we know a lot of young entrepreneurs that want to work 120 hours a week and they think that they’re going to build this next startup. That’s going to, they’ll be able to pump it up to 500 million in two years and to sell it, but they don’t understand that that’s not sustainable. And in the process of doing that, they lose all these things that we’re talking about, these nuances, these small existencies, these pockets in time, these moments that we will remember if we can be aware of them, but if we’re not, then we’re just going a thousand miles an hour with our hair on fire.
23:21
And we don’t even know where we’re going. And frankly, we don’t even know if we’ve gotten there. We could, we could have passed it a long time ago if we don’t have these faculties about us. Yeah. And as you were speaking, I was just also thinking about this, when we talk about adversity and we also think about self-control, right? Like peak performance is not, like you said, working 120 hours and getting the most that you can, like squeezing the lemon completely dry. That’s not peak performance.
23:50
It’s not running up 10 mountains in two days. It’s being able to distill what your path forward should be and knowing that you’re not going to be able to do that well. You might get up 10 peaks in two days, but you’re going to be crawling down or you’re going to die halfway up the last mountain. And I think that having exercising and practicing this idea of self-control, knowing yourself deeply, like when you were talking about…
24:18
Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating well? Are you, you know, all of these things that just, they seem like inconsequential parts of who we are, but really when we’re talking about peak performance, it’s understanding the state of who you are and what helps you be in that optimal state. And then when you’re in the optimal state, you might have it for an hour or two. That’s maybe in your day when you’re capable of doing the most work.
24:43
So if that’s the case, how do we induce that? How do we prepare you for that so that you get the most bang for your buck and then go into recovery mode? Because we just can’t keep pushing. There’s one thing about pushing forward and testing yourself and using adversity and maybe like stretching yourself, but that’s really for a finite period of time. That’s not something that’s sustainable long-term. And I think that’s where we also, we were around computers and machines so much, I think humans start to think that
25:11
we need to operate the same way. No, you can’t. We’re never gonna do the things that computers do. But computers to some degree will never be able to do what we do. Our unique existence, what we bring to the table, no matter how smart a machine becomes, they will never feel the same way that human does. And that is the beauty of, I think, what humans do and something that we have lost sight of. I absolutely agree. And there’s a great quote in Josh’s book where he says, you know, it’s a marathon and it’s a sprint. It’s a marathon of sprints.
25:41
So when we understand that, and again, if people are saying, oh, well, I can do these things at a high level, no, you can’t. If I’m asking you to sprint as hard as you can for 20 seconds, or if you do a Tabata 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, you’re about to puke halfway through it if you’re really given everything that you have. So you can lie to yourself and say, oh, I am doing all these things. No, you’re not. You’re going at a marathon-style pace. And then you have the audacity to be surprised when you’re not getting to this next place as quickly or whatever the expectation may be.
26:07
It’s about finding that place and then allowing that recovery. Because if anything, you almost have to have a two to one ratio to be able to just recover from the inroads that you’ve created, let alone to give yourself the capacity to adapt, to grow stronger, to get better. So much like a callus on our fingers, if I just keep pushing, it’s going to go bloody and now there’s no way I can recover. There’s just not enough time. And if you can respect your body, yourself, your mind, your company enough to do that.
26:35
then that’s when you can really start making these tremendous leaps and bounds. And it, you know, it sounds kind of Tim Ferris ask where, you know, getting more done in less time, but that’s the truth. You just have to know where that is and where to pour all those resources in to create that gravity and that momentum in this moment. Yeah. And I think it’s really hard for a lot of high performers to let go of what they think they should be doing. Cause that’s what got them here, but they don’t understand that
27:03
This is armor that they don’t have to carry anymore. That feeling, that belief, that idea, that fear that pushes you. When you take that CEO, when you show him, it’s like, listen, I know that this fear is what’s driven you, given you your edge, but what if we could pour into these other areas, and now that gives you even more, even more ability to do this, and now it’s sustainable, and now you have time to be with your family, and not feel guilty, and not feel resentment, and not feel fear, and not be worried. But a lot of them don’t even know that that place, again, when you were telling them about teaching.
27:33
They don’t even know that that place exists. That’s a pipe dream that other people talk about. And to hear other people talk about it, even the way they react to it, whatever, must be nice. That’s not what it is at all. But you have to be willing to do the work and have the white belt mentality and just empty your cup and come to a clean slate and say, teach me. Yes. What am I doing? Yeah. We put so much weight on our accomplishments, and so many of us are looking to.
28:00
have enough titles or create enough worth in the external world. And when we think about what actually impacts our performance the most, we have to let go of some of what those things are because those things are things that we’ve done. And like you said, what got us here, got us here, but it might not be what’s going to get us there. And so clinging to the things that you know, clinging to the things that have got you to where you are, if you don’t learn to…
28:28
liberate yourself from some of those frameworks and constructs. They will forever hold you in the place that you are. If you need to go higher, you might have to do different things. You might have to embrace different things. You might have to drop the load. It makes me think of years ago, I had filmed DVD back in Vancouver on Jiu-Jitsu and we went on a hike, a five-day hike with Stefan, the producer. And he’s a very experienced camper and outdoorsman. And I, not so much.
28:57
And my husband certainly wasn’t. And my husband suffered for, we were carrying 70 pound packs because we were doing a five day hike. And my husband, after the first day, that evening, his knee spazzed out. His IT band had tightened. And he was, he had a very hard time walking, but we’d started the trail and he was like, no, I’m going to keep going. So we keep walking and we hear from some other people on the trail that there is a really beautiful.
29:27
grotto that is sort of marked silently on this trail. Uh, the, the marker is a bit difficult to find, but if you can find it, you walk down off this edge and it’ll lead you to an old grotto where the Indians used to observe the sea lions. And so we start walking, we get to the section of the hike where this marker is supposed to exist and we’re in an old growth forest and it’s the size of, I don’t know.
29:55
maybe a pie, but there’s a rock that’s just in the middle, on the side of the trail with a tiny white paint marker on it. And Stefan walks up and he goes, I think this is it. And I said, you think this is it? And he’s like, yeah, I’m looking around the forest. I’m like, you think this is it? I was like, how do you know that’s not bird crap? No, I think this is what we’re looking for. And so we walk off and he says, let’s take our
30:25
and put them behind this log and let’s walk out towards the edge of the path. And I was like, are you sure we should drop our packs? Because like, what if somebody comes along? He’s like, Emily, we’re on a five day hike. Everybody’s carrying 70 pounds on their back. Nobody’s going to come take another 70 pounds. Because like, I think we’ve got a couple of hours. I’m like, OK, so we drop the load.
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And we walk out to the edge of the forest. And at that point, it’s almost like a cliff side and we’re on an edge, the ridge of a mountain, like a cliff side that’s gonna snake down towards the water. And I was like, yeah, this looks dangerous as hell. And it doesn’t even really look like a trail. It just looks like one foot of rock ledge on one side and then death on the other.
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So I’m like, okay, we’ll try this. And so we go. And my husband, I’m like, well, what are you gonna do? I was like, do you wanna just sit here and wait for us? He goes, no, you go, I’ll figure it out. I’ll follow, but I’ll figure it out. So we started hiking down this ledge and 45 minutes later, we come to a clearing. And I kid you not, it’s like a little pocket of open space on this cliff side that drops out over the ocean, Pacific Ocean. And there was a big storm cloud.
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clouds opened up and the sun came down and a pod of killer whales of orcas start swimming by and just below us was a circle of sea lions. And I don’t know what they were doing, but they were there must have been I don’t know, 12 or 15 of them. And they were some of them were upset right side up some of them were upside down, but they had formed a circle. And then off to the right side was this grotto where you saw all these sea lions sunning out on the rocks and doing jumps off of the ledge.
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And I mean, it was just such a magical moment. And just then my husband came down and he goes, I told you I’d make it. And it was just so telling because it was like that moment where you’re like, okay, I’m gonna trust not my instincts because I don’t know better, but I’ve got to drop the load and maybe see what this is about and see if it’s worth it. And it really was. I mean, it’s one of those moments that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. And so sometimes I can’t tell you how much I value.
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my circle of influence because when I don’t know better, they’re the ones that can point me in the right direction and say, this is what we’ve got to do to have a bigger moment, to really appreciate what’s going on. And if we’re able to let go, to stop clinging so tightly to what we think is right, we just don’t know what’s on the other side of that. And sometimes what’s on the other side of it is worth knowing, most of the times it is. And so I always liked, I have this expression, my dance card is full.
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I used to be at a time in my life where I was just happy to meet everybody and I always am. But when I think about the people who I spend quality time with, there’s probably no more than five or six people that I really will go out of my way to have a deep conversation with or get together over a nice dinner. And like these are the people who I hold above myself, people who I feel like I’m the dumbest person in the room when I’m next to them. And I count my blessings when I think about the fact that
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I’ve been able to cultivate that type of existence where I’m not swimming with bottom feeders. And I think that those of us who are seeking out something more in life, those of us that might be leading or doing the right things have to be careful about understanding the type of quality of people and the energy that you have. Where are you devoting your best self? And is it going to help you as a person or is this just going to pull you away from your greater good?
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So, you know, I think that leads to again, sort of building the potency of quality and reducing or subtracting things that aren’t necessary in your life in order to live a better life. Well, and everybody talks about us being the average of the five people that surround us, but what they don’t understand is it’s those qualities that those people evoke within us. So again, back to quality, if we’re around a bunch of people that are bottom feeders that are just lazy, doing the bare minimum, just want to get to Friday, they hate Monday, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, of course, that’s going to polish on.
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rub off onto you, but if you are around people that are constantly pushing themselves, they don’t even have to tell you to push yourself. You just see it. That’s the standard. That’s the norm. That uncommon idea, even among the uncommon, when you have that and you’re like, this is what I want to do. I don’t want to be these other people. I want to be this. Then those five people that you surround yourself with become a higher caliber. And then you have to elevate to that level. So again, that’s where that sort of
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idea of the tide rising all boats. Yeah. But you had to be willing to jump in the water and get wet. It doesn’t just come to you. Yeah. I 100% agree. Emily, I could talk to you for hours and I’m sure that we’ll have other conversations, but I want to be respectful of your time and thank you so much for giving all that you’ve given. You’ve talked to us about everything from philosophy to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to Josh Watesgen, who in the coaching industry is incredible, but yet he’s still very much almost a legend where people don’t really seem to understand.
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not only how tremendous he is, but even what he does. And so just these little insights that you’ve given us has helped a lot of people better understand what coaching is, what consulting is, what it can do for them, not just as a person, but as a leader. Where can people find out more about what you do for consulting, like what we’re talking about, and for everything that you’re up to in the current day? So I just launched a website, and you can go to emilyclough.com, and that gives you a little bit of my pedigree and what I do and services that I offer.
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specifically people are looking for judicial information. They can also go to Princeton BJJ and that’s where I own a school and I have a community of people. So that’s where I’ve summarized most of my existence, all my social media and whatnot can be linked off of my website. I love that. And I’m going to have them put all those links in the show notes and everywhere as well. Any parting gifts or advice that you would like to give our listeners, you’ve already given us a tremendous amount, but any parting words that you’d like to leave us until the next time. So first of all, thank you. And I think that my
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party words might actually be very early on when I moved to New York. I moved to New York with $700 in my pocket and I was 19 years old. And I made a lot of friends, Native New Yorkers, and they were all very skeptical of new people and people that wanted things from them. So anytime, you know, I started making a new friend on a subway platform or some random place.
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They would be like, ah, don’t talk to that person. They’re crazy. And they were really conditioned to be skeptical of strangers. And I will say that I wouldn’t have had this great conversation with you if I hadn’t continued to believe that you don’t know who you don’t know and to be receptive and open to the different people that might come through your life and being able to observe and maybe study and understand how to filter what is good.
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because this has been an incredibly stimulating conversation for me. And I’ve really appreciated being able to talk to somebody who not only studies these concepts, but also lives them. You know, that’s really not something that you get to do every day when you’re in this type of format or this type of industry. And I would just encourage everyone to be receptive. You know, you just, you really don’t know who and what is out there and what you can learn from other people. If you just.
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Shut your mouth, open your ears, open your eyes, and be receptive to all the greater good that’s maybe right before you. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Emily. We’ll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
