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Cal Callahan: Wall Street to Spiritual Warrior
90 Plays5 years ago
Today we are so lucky and happy to have an old friend on the show, Cal Callahan! Cal is here to talk about his authentic life and the journey that he has been on. He has worked on Wall Street, coached and owned an athletic team, and left it all to explore spirituality. Cal will be the first to admit that he has been through trials and tribulations on his life’s path, but wouldn’t have it any other way. We speak a lot about following your truth and intuition and becoming a spiritual warrior in the fight for authenticity. He has such a beautiful story and his honesty and openness will simply blow you away.
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Transcript
Reconnecting with Cal Callahan
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of The Art of Authenticity. Thank you guys again for tuning in. We've got Cal Callahan joining us. He's an old friend of mine, to be honest. We've been friends since we were in our 20s. We haven't caught up, but we recently found each other and realized that we were both on a spiritual journey, and I thought he's got to come on the show.
From Wall Street to Self-Discovery
00:00:37
Speaker
Here's a story of a guy who went from Wall Street and Chicago partner, living the life, making tons of money, realizing
00:00:45
Speaker
that it might not be his truth, how he walked away, an incredibly vulnerable, truthful story moving from there into coaching, into buying a competitive athletic team, the trials, the tribulations of following your truth, following your path. And now he's jumped on this journey of spiritual warrior, beautiful story filled with incredible
00:01:08
Speaker
nuggets of vulnerabilities, truths, wisdom.
A Humorous Reflection on Friendship
00:01:12
Speaker
I know you're going to enjoy it. I loved, loved this conversation. If you have any questions you want to reach out, you want to talk about coaching, free introductory call anytime at loraco.com. You can also catch me at loraco.com. Send me an email. Thank you guys. Hope you enjoy the show.
00:01:30
Speaker
We have one of my really dear old friends. I don't want to say really old because then that insinuates that we're both old, but I got Cal here. Hey Cal, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm so good. And I'm so grateful you've taken the time to come on today. Well, thanks for having me. It's certainly a pleasure and an honor to join you. I was trying to think how far back we go. I think we met in our twenties. Is that right? So it's been about 20 years. Yeah. Wasn't the late,
00:02:00
Speaker
late 90s. And in fact, I said that to my 11-year-old daughter today, because I was telling her we were doing the podcast. And she's like, how do you know her? I go, we've known each other since the late 90s. And she laughs. She's like, you're 90 years old?
00:02:18
Speaker
You're so damn cute, but no, that's not exactly what it means, but you got to chuckle out of it. That is super cute. And yeah, a little scary when you are looking for your birth date on various things and you have to keep scrolling back in the years.
00:02:34
Speaker
I'm like, oh my God, it's so far.
Career Beginnings and Trading Insights
00:02:37
Speaker
So Cal, I want to chat about what you're up to today and hear your story. You and I have been catching up like crazy lately on this transition you're in and rethinking a bunch of things. But before we get there and talk about, I think this really great adventure you're on, could you take
00:02:54
Speaker
me quite frankly i'm not sure i know a lot of the stories myself but then and listeners back and tell us a little bit about you know. What you been up to your wall street trader for eighteen years is that right yes i traded in chicago started in ninety five and i was thinking about that today and what's funny.
00:03:14
Speaker
is, you know, I went to Amherst College, great school, and basically had this attitude that I was kind of going to get any job I wanted. And I had applied to all these investment banks and consulting groups my senior year. And, you know, I got 10 interviews, which was a lot. Like I played hockey and like none of the other hockey guys had many interviews. So I was feeling pretty proud of myself. And I didn't get one second round interview.
00:03:43
Speaker
It was like, okay, so I need to be more prepared. And now knowing what I know, it's like, maybe that just wasn't the path for me. And so what I what ended up happening was at the end of my senior year.
Realizing a Misaligned Career
00:03:57
Speaker
through happenstance, I got interviewed for a trading job for a really small trading outfit. It was two guys at a time that were kind of trying to grow their business. And I didn't know much about trading. I knew that it was about being on a team and, you know, having some, some balls and being good with numbers. And I'm like, well, that kind of works for me. And I hit it off with both guys. I got the, I got the job and I reached out to a few of my mentors and I said, Hey, do you think I should take this job?
00:04:28
Speaker
Dude, you've got no other options. What are you going to do? Do they have health insurance? Yeah, take the job. I took the job. That's hilarious. It was one of the first inklings of this thing I really wanted. I thought I wanted to work 1,000 hours every week in New York City at an investment bank. I thought that was so cool.
00:04:55
Speaker
What I ended up finding was really something that fit my personality quite well and happened to, you know, very fortunately fall into a trading group that, I mean, the, the Will Hobert who started the group is still doing it to this day. And really one of my closest friends and has been a mentor of mine for years, ever since I walked through the doors and Lori, you've known plenty of people in the trading industry.
00:05:25
Speaker
There's some sketchy folks there. By and large, you don't come across people that you look at and say, this is the type of man I want to be. This is the type of man I want my sons to be. I was very fortunate to find myself there. Like I said, I did it for 18 years.
00:05:50
Speaker
You know, really for probably a good 15 or so years, it was awesome. Um, not without its peaks and valleys, but really, really enjoyed it. And the last couple of years, I just, this, this, it just didn't feel right. And, you know, I was a partner at the firm. I've been a partner since 98. So after I guess year three, I became a partner and here I am going to work every
The Decision to Leave Wall Street
00:06:14
Speaker
day. It's not that busy, but you know, so we're not making a lot of money.
00:06:19
Speaker
And I'm feeling very fake until you make it. I'm just very uncomfortable in my own skin at work and I couldn't figure out what was going on. You bring up two really big themes that I coach on all the time and come up on this podcast all the time.
00:06:37
Speaker
So I want to start with the first one, but when you, when you thought you were going to do the thousand hours, New York city, right. And then you accepted this other job and it worked out, did you, when you accepted the job, did you kind of know, I know your mentors suggested you would take it just cause it had healthcare, but was there a part of you that knew that this was right for you that you were making a decision that made sense for you at the time? Or was it truly a, like, let me just try this and see what happens. You know, I think one of the things,
00:07:05
Speaker
that I guess I think I've been blessed with is I'm a risk taker and moving to another city. I grew up in a small town in Maine and, you know, was in New England through college. I was always willing to go do whatever. And so I looked at the opportunity to move out to Chicago and
00:07:27
Speaker
I had a few friends out there who had graduated a couple of years before me, and I just knew that it would be a cool place. Great things in Chicago had never been there, and I just felt good. Like, you know what? This is just going to be a good opportunity. Again, I don't have anything else going on, and the job started three weeks after graduation, so it's not like I had
00:07:47
Speaker
a whole summer to mess around and, you know, kind of sow my oats. So I just went out there and did it. And from the moment I got there, I was like, holy shit, this is so cool. Like this is the coolest place ever.
00:08:01
Speaker
I'm asking you, Cal, because there's this sense that we can't put our finger on, and often people lose connection with that, and you're bringing it up in both the beginning and the end. But, hey, those things sound right, and this is really cool, and then it worked out. And then there's a turning point where, 15 years in,
00:08:23
Speaker
You said, you know, it just got that sense, that not feeling right, right? And it's like that nagging something. And a lot of people push through that, right? Like a lot of people ignore it, push it down, they get more and more unhappy, stress levels go up. But it sounds like, right, fake it till you make it, but you really
00:08:44
Speaker
Were you listening to that feeling within yourself and slowly thinking about what change needed to happen? Yeah. So back to the original point, you know, what I've come to realize is that my wanting to go in work at an investment bank, you know, because on the surface, it looked like a sec for whatever reason, I thought it was a sexy job. And, you know, that was me intellectually thinking that that would be great.
00:09:10
Speaker
but I never really tapped into my intuition and asked, how does that feel when I think about all that? Coming out of school, those cats are paid a lot of money relative to other people, but per hour basis and a stress level, is that really the course of action?
00:09:32
Speaker
One of the things I've tapped into more recently is relying more on that intuition. How does that feel for me? But to your second point, I stayed in the business longer than I quote unquote should have. I went through that period of where I felt it was a lot of self judgment. I'm a freaking partner here and I'm not showing up.
00:09:58
Speaker
I'm there but I'm not showing up and it was a really authentic feeling and I didn't know what to do with it.
A Book’s Influence and Emotional Breakthrough
00:10:06
Speaker
Like you said, a lot of people do, they just grind through it and it's too bad but what I did find is through that grind,
00:10:16
Speaker
For me, whether it was a year, year and a half, two years, whatever it was, I came out on the other side. And it's funny, what really tipped off this notion for me is I was reading a book by David Data called The Way of the Superior Man. And I got to this chapter and it was really, it was about your kind of your job or a project that you're working on.
00:10:45
Speaker
Right. And for me, you know, the title was, you know, be willing to change everything in your life. And so I'm not even thinking anything about it until I get to these bullet points. And it's like, do you feel like, you know, you have no real feelings towards a project that you've been working on? Do you feel like you could let it go at any point and feel no kind of regret for starting it or ending it? It was like all these things. It was like,
00:11:13
Speaker
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And it was like I'm literally in a coffee shop. I'm at the Star Lounge, which is still my favorite coffee shop in Chicago. And I'm literally crying. I'm in tears because I realized at that moment that I had to leave. It was time. Everything lined up. It all made sense. This is why I've been feeling so uncomfortable lately because I just needed to leave.
00:11:41
Speaker
I was checking all these boxes, I'm like, oh my gosh. I come home and I sit down with my wife and I go, I got some news. You're going to need to sit down for this one. As you know, being in the trading business for that long and a partner, you get used to a nice lifestyle. You can do really well. I had done really well.
00:12:07
Speaker
financially, it was a great place to be. And I said, reading this book, it just became clear to me that I need to leave trading. And she's like, babe, if that's what you need to do, then we'll make it work. Really? That's awesome. I still get choked up when I think about it because of the grace
00:12:34
Speaker
that she showed me, that it wasn't about her, it was about what I needed. And not everybody would react that way, but she just granted me that and loved me and just whatever you need to do, I'm here.
Redefining Success and Courage
00:12:50
Speaker
If we need to sell the house, she was ready to do whatever. I was like, we're good. We're okay. We don't need to start selling shit yet. That's beautiful though. When you think about a relationship and a partnership in your life, it's a beautiful quality to have in somebody to support you because again, externally facing, these jobs are
00:13:15
Speaker
are high prestige and some people can get caught up in the meaning of that versus, you know, what really matters your life and your happiness. Exactly. And you can hold on to, well, you know, a couple of years ago, we made a pretty good chunk of change. So maybe that'll happen again. And it's like, well, at a certain point, I was like, I don't really need more of that. I didn't necessarily feel like it was right around the corner either. So there was that, but
00:13:43
Speaker
Since leaving, it's funny, a lot of people, God, with the courage you showed to leave the job, you're a partner and this and that, I'm like, you don't know what kind of courage I would have had to show to stay. Everything was telling me to leave and to stay would have been so hard.
00:14:03
Speaker
It really became easy. It wasn't hard. What you're saying is so important. I just hope everybody is pausing on that point, right? Because again, unfortunately, I get the phone call and I hear from people who listen.
00:14:21
Speaker
Those moments happen, the book, the moment happens where you cry at the table, but the voice in your head that tells you no, you can't, you're not good enough, you'll never make it, the fears that build up, right? It wins and they stay and they convince themselves out until they lose hope and I think what you're saying is so profound because
00:14:41
Speaker
I think there's a reverse definition of what courage means, right? Like, no, I'm going to man up. I'm going to stick to this. I made a decision to be a traitor and I'm not going to give up and I'm right. And there's a way in which we just feel as if we're failing or losing by leaving. And I agree with what you're saying, right?
00:15:00
Speaker
It is so hard to stay when things are not going and you're experiencing that level of discomfort. And even though the fear of the uncertainty of not knowing and that's what people are looking at and saying, wow, Cal, you're so brave. You're going to lose yourself if you don't. Is that right? Yeah. And yeah, I think you bring up a great point. And I think it's our culture has this. You've got to stick it out. You've got to grind it out. You know, get through the tough spot and you can. It's like, no.
00:15:28
Speaker
That's the wrong message. The message is, what is your heart? What is your being say you need to do right now? Because we've so intellectualized everything. And I don't mean that from an academic standpoint. I mean, we're just so much in our own mind about what we should be doing. And we don't tap into how we feel about it. And so I think a lot of us get
00:15:56
Speaker
poor advice our entire lives about resiliency. Because I think resiliency is amazing, but under what definition, right? What does that look like? What does it mean to grind through something?
00:16:11
Speaker
And there are ways to do it where it's beneficial. And you could argue that it's all beneficial because even the shitty stuff that you slog through that you quote unquote shouldn't, it's teaching you something, right? Like, okay, I spent way more time on this than I should have. I need to recognize the signs earlier
Austin Move and Fitness Center Realization
00:16:29
Speaker
so that I move on, right? It's all- It's all a lesson. And that's the other, that's what I keep coming back to right today is like,
00:16:37
Speaker
It's all learning. Just pay attention. Pay attention to what is presenting to you and don't cast self judgment on it. Just let it be and then make a decision. But again, I've realized that for my entire life, I've spent this space in my head trying to rationalize, think about it, scientific, empirical, whatever you want to say.
00:17:04
Speaker
It's only recently that I've really tried to step away from that and undo those shackles and experience that flow of intuitively, what does my gut say?
00:17:21
Speaker
to kind of get out of the mind because there's so much chatter, right? There's so much negative self thought. Yeah. And you know, we've all been trained that you have kids, right? I say this all the time, but we are born trusting our gut and trusting our feelings and listening to our truth, right? Like kids are brutally honest and you know, you don't have to ask them twice if they would prefer broccoli over pizza, right? They know they want pizza.
00:17:48
Speaker
not confused at all. And we get taught to listen to our minds completely, right? Well, because really in the end of the day, broccoli is healthy and we want to think about that before we just dive into pizza all the time. But there's a tipping point where our minds are running the show and we disregard and we don't honor ourself anymore and our truth, right? And I think finding that space where you use your mind to learn and have information and knowledge, but trust the intuition to guide
00:18:18
Speaker
you on your journey and your path and it's a dance right it's one takes over and then the other and you have to have the play off of them is the key part exactly can't
Societal Narratives and Personal Truth
00:18:31
Speaker
write completely shut one offer there is that is that kind of that balance between the two and for so long there was a there was a real lack of balance for me instead of get that back into a nice kind of getting right relationship with that has has been really like lifted a lot of this
00:18:48
Speaker
kind of burden off my shoulders and can just, I don't feel like I got to figure everything out with my brain. Right, right. It certainly has, you know, plenty of failures, you know, to call upon. But, you know, again, like just being okay with it, you know, being okay with how things play out. Because even though it's not the scenario that I had envisioned, there's something there, right? I didn't have enough information.
00:19:17
Speaker
to see this as it is, but what's presenting now? Okay. And now what do we do with it? So Cal, you're like successful. You're a partner. You come home, you're in tears, right? It's too hard. It's, I can't keep doing this. I need to make this change. And this question of when to grind and when not to grind, right? Like sometimes there is a hard patch. Sometimes we're just pushing through and it is what we care about. And we want to get to the other side in a relationship.
00:19:44
Speaker
How would you describe the difference, though, in making this big of a change where you just knew, this isn't really something I want to grind through, this isn't something I want to get to the other side of, I really do need to get out?
Lessons from Investing in a Fitness League
00:19:56
Speaker
Again, I think there were a few things that presented. Again, we weren't making a lot of money. And I had money tied up in the firm. And there were a couple
00:20:14
Speaker
trading groups out there that had major mistakes with their electronic platform and lost millions of dollars. I'm weighing all these risks out. I have this money at risk. If somebody mistakenly does something upstairs on the computer and costs us everything, that money is gone. There's no insurance or anything.
00:20:35
Speaker
You know some sort of weigh all this out and I feel really good financially I feel very comfortable that I don't need to turn around to find another job and I can you know kind of have this this bandwidth to play around with what my next thing is and at that point I had you know, probably three or four years into like a lot of
00:21:00
Speaker
training, physical training, nutrition, life coaching. Like I was really inspired by this whole kind of sector. And I'd been to seminars and was just honestly just taking the different classes to learn more about my own training. And I hadn't thought about becoming a coach and going into that space. And as all these things were coming together, I'm like, oh, I would totally rather spend all my day
00:21:30
Speaker
learning about physical fitness, about nutrition, about life coaching, about sleep, all these things. It's like, why wouldn't I just do that? Yeah. So you went through the list of things and then the feeling within you that this is just not right and the pain of staying is so much greater than leaving, right? Something like that? Yeah.
00:21:56
Speaker
pick up any book that's going to tell you, do the things you love to do, fill your day with the things you love, love, want to get. It's said in so many different ways, and yes, it's very cliche, but it was like, boom, right in front of me. It's like, yeah, I would rather get paid a lot less and just enjoy my days than continue on this path, which again, there's nothing certain in that path. You can't go on what your history was, how much you made three years ago or when
00:22:27
Speaker
this thing happened, the future's unknown. Yeah, and this idea of success, and then I'm going to move on, but attaining success, I mean, you're arguably right from your resume, you had success, your partner, Wall Street, right? But there isn't an endpoint. You don't actually get there. There's no moment where you're like, oh, I've hit
00:22:47
Speaker
I have, quote unquote, attained success. There's always more. There's always more you can do. There's always more money you can earn. There's always like, write bigger. Somebody's doing it more than what you're doing. So don't you feel too that there isn't a window where you find that thing that I think a lot of us start our careers looking for? Yeah, absolutely. And it's very similar, I think, to a professional athlete in
00:23:14
Speaker
You know these guys who you know you want to write off into the sunset as a trader or whatever job that has this kind of unknown year to year annual income and there's this whole game and. You think that you go into like once I make acts like I'm done peace out I get all the money I need and it becomes a moving target.
00:23:37
Speaker
Then there's never a number really where it's like enough or the thing and you have to totally recontextualize it. It's like it no longer becomes about a number. For me, it wasn't about a number anymore. Granted, the number I felt comfortable where we were. Yes, there's a number involved, but at the same time, it's like
00:24:00
Speaker
How the hell am I going to spend my days? Because at that point, I felt like I was wasting my life away. I was down in the trading pit. I'm staring at my iPhone, reading articles on different apps. It was not a busy time. And I'm like, is this really what I'm supposed to be doing with my life? There's got to be something more to this. Yeah.
00:24:24
Speaker
You move on, you become a coach. I finish up some courses and I become a coach. I'm coaching people remotely. I'm sending training programs and nutrition prescriptions and doing all this. We end up
00:24:42
Speaker
I leave trading in March of 2013. We moved to Austin because we wanted to get out of the cold. I know y'all got a really cold week coming up this week as we're taping. It's 70 degrees down in Austin right now and it's like the most beautiful day ever. Oh my God, it's going to be negative 20 tomorrow, but that's okay. Yeah, but who's counting, right? Oh my God, me. My wife and I decide we need to move someplace warm.
00:25:09
Speaker
She'd had it with the winters. I mean, you've been in Chicago, just amazing city, amazing people, just deep, deep relationships for us. But we needed a good move out of that climate. And so we looked at a few different places. We landed on Austin. It felt right for all the reasons. And so we moved there for the start of the school year, 2013. And here I am, I'm like, all right.
00:25:35
Speaker
I'm going to go find the facility and I'm going to open up this training center and I'm going to do all this stuff and I can't wait. And it was like, I just kept stalling. Like I never really dug into finding this fitness center, right? I had all the ideas about how I wanted it to look, but I never got close enough to where I was even really taking it seriously. And, and.
Mindfulness and Intentional Living
00:26:03
Speaker
And a good friend of mine was doing some life coaching with me and she's like, it's okay. Like you're not feeling it. You don't need to do it. Even if you've told everyone, this is what you're going to do. And I came down here and I told everybody I was going to do this and now I'm not doing it. Like it doesn't, I don't feel good about that. She's like, you need to let that go. It was like some of the advice I got, I let it go.
00:26:28
Speaker
Kel, it's back to that original point you made, right? That internal narrative that judges what you do instead of the lesson, right? I mean, it's beautiful to realize that you had the best of intentions, but you weren't feeling it. And that's okay, right? We don't need to judge it. Yeah, exactly. And you know, when what I've learned about myself, and it's funny, it's through, I introduced you to my friend, John Cole, but through human design about how I operate. And I'm very good
00:26:56
Speaker
When I'm acting in myself, I'm very good at cutting ties when I need to. When I hang on too long, that's when I'm not myself. And I start to feel all this, I feel ashamed and self judgment, and I'm the critic and all that. But when I could just take a step back and say, I just made the wrong call on this thing, it's time to cut ties and move on. You know, and sometimes it happens with relationships, you know, with friends or whatever. And it's like, it's okay.
00:27:25
Speaker
You don't have to feel badly about moving on from relationships or from jobs or from projects or whatever. It's just, so I've recognized this about myself throughout these moments when I felt these things, these burdens lift off my shoulders, you know, like letting go of the facility. And so what happens almost immediately, I get presented with this opportunity from my coach and mentor, a guy named James Fitzgerald, who's based out of Scottsdale.
00:27:54
Speaker
He's like, Hey, man, they're starting up this pro fitness league. Do you want to go in on a team together? Like, you serious dude? Like, he's like, yeah, he goes, you take care of all the business and I'll take care of the athletes. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, like I could be like a poor man's Mark Cuban. That's like the coolest thing ever. Like, that's so awesome. And so I get involved with called the national pro grid league. And we own a team based out of Phoenix. And
00:28:24
Speaker
It goes on for three seasons. The last season was 2016. And it's not officially defunct, but we haven't heard much from the guys in the last year or so. So I'm assuming it is. But I learned so much. I was so involved.
00:28:44
Speaker
every aspect of the business. I mean, it was a brand new venture and they aimed really high. And that was probably our downfall was not making it more of a grassroots thing, like not letting it come to fruition in a kind of over a proper timeframe. It was like, let's just get on TV from day one and blow this thing out. Well, that costs a lot of money. Eventually, you run out of money. And that's kind of what happened. Uh-huh.
00:29:13
Speaker
I spent time with that. At the end of the season in 2016, to be honest, I felt a little burned. I'm like, God, I got involved. It was a financial commitment for sure, so that was gone.
00:29:29
Speaker
And so I got some cold feet. I'm like, I'm not going to do anything for a bit. You know, I went all in on this thing and I got burned, blah, blah, blah, and telling myself the old story and kind of beat myself up about it and not really taking the lessons at that point. And then just kind of have, have moved on from it. And really, I think over the last year and a half, I really kind of dug into kind of what, you know, what, what is this all about? What is, what is, what does
00:29:59
Speaker
what defines my life or what does success really mean to me? Who am I? What do I care about? Because I was starting to get all these messages that all the old stories I was told, all the stuff I believed, all those narratives were false. By those narratives, what do you mean by that? The narratives of what success looks like, what you should be doing, how you should live your life, all of the above? 100%. Yeah, you know,
00:30:26
Speaker
What is success? Well, it obviously has a dollar sign attached to it and that's what it's about. If you've got the house and you've got the car and you've got the vacation home and you've got the pretty wife and you've got the great kids and you're in great physical shape and you take care of yourself and you're all these things,
00:30:50
Speaker
Then you've made it. And for everybody who can't see Cal, he's like 250 pounds of pure muscle. So there's not exactly 250, but there was a time when, yeah, when this was something I was super focused on and I was checking all those boxes and it was like, now this, this is bullshit. Like this is, this is what I thought it was supposed to look like.
00:31:15
Speaker
I got all the things. They're here. Look, I'm not fulfilled in the least bit. What am I supposed to do with this? Right. I went down the same rabbit hole. If I check all these boxes, I'm going to feel a certain way and the feeling I'm going to have is that I'll be fulfilled and I will have that exhale like I've climbed Mount Everest and I've arrived and
00:31:40
Speaker
Now I can, I don't know, sit and be happy, I guess, the rest of my life, but that's so false. That's not how it works, these external things.
Self-Forgiveness and Unconditional Love
00:31:51
Speaker
They're external and they're pleasurable, like the attractive wife and the great kids and the being in shape, that's all wonderful, right?
00:31:59
Speaker
they're separate from the feeling you're searching for, right? That sense of having the fulfillment and the life that what reflects what your deeper self is looking for, those lessons are letting go of all those narratives, right? Exactly. There are all these different roles, like, and this is what I'm kind of learning about now in my life. It's like, these are all these different roles that we play, these different masks that we wear. They're these attachments we have to these things and
00:32:27
Speaker
For me, it's about peeling them back and seeing like what is really underneath all that. Because when you have all those things, everybody, well, I should say almost everyone gives you a all pass. You can kind of get away with whatever because you've been financially successful. I was retired or I am retired. You know, something that I had a lot of, you know, you can ask my wife, like I wouldn't know how to say it to people because I felt
00:32:56
Speaker
Really uncomfortable saying I was retired. Yeah, it's like, you know I didn't want people to think that like I was just done and I didn't want to be like I was boasting Then I had this notion that I am I am gonna do something. I don't know what it is You know, it's I have this whole like I've got to I've got to figure out what I'm gonna do right because because I'm a type a guy and I'm an achiever and I've done this and I've done that and I
00:33:21
Speaker
You know, you're in this whole paradigm, this culture that is about achievement. What's the next thing? Okay. I did it. Okay. Look ahead. You're always looking ahead, right? And what I realize is that in looking ahead, always looking ahead, there's zero presence. In my days today are about finding that presence, you know, often trying to, it's hard. It's really hard, but that's what I'm committed to.
00:33:51
Speaker
It's beautiful. In finding that presence, in living your life on that daily basis, and not just attaining those things, but actually
00:34:02
Speaker
while you're attaining them or whether you are or you're not or whether you're sitting on a park bench or you're accomplishing, you're in your own life, you're in your own days, right? And with that comes a certain level of peace that I think is what we're all searching for. Yeah, you know, it's funny too. Being the check the box list maker type of person that I have been, I had started maybe a year, year and a half ago to start to dig into some of these mindfulness practices, right?
00:34:31
Speaker
meditation, grounding, you know, being outside with my shirt off, getting the vitamin D, infrared sauna, cold water therapy, like all these things, right? Yeah, which are amazing practices. But what was funny is, I would get up and be like, I'm going to do all these things today. And I would do all those things. And I'd have zero mindfulness. Right. It finally occurred to me like,
00:34:58
Speaker
Dude, you need to not set out a list of mindfulness practices that you're going to do. There's a difference between having consistency and creating some patterns in your lifestyle so you're comfortable meditating, so you're comfortable with being uncomfortable in the cold water.
Challenging Western Success Constructs
00:35:18
Speaker
But now what I've done is I've thrown out the list, I wake up, I have a couple of things I need to do, whether it's bring my son to school,
00:35:27
Speaker
have an appointment, but I generally just try to go with what my intuition tells me. What am I called to do today? And if it's to meditate and then to go jump on my Peloton bike and then get in the sauna, then that's what I'm going to do. But I'm not going to hold myself to this standard of a commitment that has been so limiting for me.
00:35:53
Speaker
It's lacked that presence and so through this and I feel like I've been practicing this now for probably three to four months. It's been so damn liberating because I don't have judgment about what I've done or haven't done during the day because you don't always get through that list and when you don't get through that list, at the end of the day, you're like, I'm a loser because I didn't finish what I said I was going to do and it really wasn't that challenging of a list but I didn't do the things.
00:36:18
Speaker
You know, now I have some nuance in what I'm going to do. You know, I started doing Kundalini yoga probably three, four months ago, found a teacher that I love. She teaches on Monday, Thursday, Friday. So I started going Monday, Thursday, Friday. Like that was the thing I was doing, like my commitment, right? And then recently, it was a Monday and I was like, oh, I've got to try to finish up some things I need to get done, but I've got to hustle because I got to get to class because I don't want to miss because I told myself I was going to go and
00:36:48
Speaker
Maybe she's expecting me because I've been there the last 12 classes and I let it go and I got stuff done that needed to get done and I felt so damn good. It's like you don't need to be beholden to these commitments that are made under these pretenses.
00:37:09
Speaker
the flow and it's been so really just liberating for me to experience this new side of my kind of daily life. I love it and I think what is so meaningful, there's so many people out there have busy lives, they have their jobs and they have their kids and then they come home in the grocery shopping and the cooking and I gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta. So there's a sense in which it's like, well,
00:37:35
Speaker
I feel this way and I'm talking this way to myself because I really do have to do these things. I don't have a choice. And so we convince ourselves that, right, all of the things that are on our list are, I mean, it's survival. It's what we need to do. But if you're listening to what Cal is saying out there, right, and I hope people are hearing it,
00:37:53
Speaker
even when your day is kundalini yoga, right? I mean, you did the career with Wall Street and working your ass off and then now it's like getting on the bike or doing yoga, you're bringing that same mindset. And so whatever it is that you're doing on a day-to-day basis, it's the mindset, it's the way you're approaching it that matters and can shift the quality of that experience. And so I made the mistake, right, of thinking,
00:38:21
Speaker
I don't have a choice, so I have to look at it this way and I would just grind through things and give myself all this pressure and stress around it. It wasn't the thing that was causing the stress, it was the way that I view that. Listen, this is not to say you shouldn't make lists and you shouldn't check off the boxes because that served me personally, that served me really well for a long time, but there wasn't
00:38:48
Speaker
any nuance to it. My wife and I went up to Canada, just north of Calgary, and we met with a shaman up there. We wanted to learn about our power animals and this whole kind of have this experience. And I went up and found out my power animal was a wolf. And one of the traits of a wolf is very black and white. And so my wife is like, yeah, yeah.
00:39:17
Speaker
You're very black and white. You're mixing some gray. It's okay to have some gray in there. I've been telling you this for years. And it's like, you know, you don't always listen to your partner. In fact, sometimes you don't. Oh, it's the person you listen to last, right? Right. Yeah. But I'll be damned if she wasn't right in finding all this joy now in living in that gray space.
00:39:44
Speaker
You know, and that's been really, really beneficial for my relationship with my family too, because I used to be like, I'm going out to train. No one bother me. This is my time. You know, it's like, now I go out there. I'm on the Peloton and it's like, I'd come out and chat with me or do whatever. It's play for me. You know, and that's, I used to be so dogmatic about my training. And if you'd have told me,
00:40:12
Speaker
two years ago that I would be riding on a peloton bike as my training, I would have laughed at you. That's not real training. That's not weight training and squatting and power snatching and doing all those hardcore things.
00:40:27
Speaker
They're the most fun. I've had training in years and it's like this silly kind of bike and I love the instructors and I love the music and I like I am trying to get everyone to buy these things because I think they're the coolest things ever. Like I love them. So if you could go back and talk to yourself 10 years ago and teach yourself this lesson that you've learned now, do you feel you would have had
00:40:51
Speaker
success in the same sort of stereotypical way without that aggressive approach to things? Do you think that's necessary? You know, I would have left trading earlier.
Life Lessons and Unconditional Acceptance
00:41:02
Speaker
That would have been, I think, a definite, you know, that said, I wouldn't, you know, everybody says this, but I really wouldn't change any of this stuff because even though I don't feel like I was finally awoken, you know,
00:41:21
Speaker
the fall of 2017, when I finally felt like I could see from outside The Matrix, I needed to have those 46 years of what I did
00:41:38
Speaker
to have context for what I was now learning. I needed that. And I needed all those lessons. I needed all the lessons of the grid league, the three years of like ups and downs. And there were a lot of downs and it was painful at times. And, you know, there were times where I was like, I can't believe I did this. This is one of the stupidest things I've done. I spent all this money. We've got nothing to show for it. Like, but, but at that point, it's like this woe is me and.
00:42:07
Speaker
I learned so much from that. I had some amazing experiences with some of our athletes and our coaches and the people that supported the team and just things that, you know, I would never have otherwise. And so for all the pain that was felt, you know, there was a lot of great learning. So I don't even know if I answered your question.
00:42:29
Speaker
No, you did. It's beautiful. I definitely, I'm totally with you. I don't think regret is a good idea or going back and changing, but I suppose I was trying to ask this question of you because I think a lot of people feel that they can't have true success without that really militant grind mindset that you can't be at ease, you can't be playful and succeed. I know a lot of people who
00:42:57
Speaker
would say the opposite, that have had a ton of success in their life and they've been able to play. And so now that you've had this awakening and you're approaching your bike differently, I suppose I was just trying to highlight that question, right, or break down that cultural norm that real success comes with, right? This really self-imposed pressure and inner self-critic and seriousness and sort of misery, right? And that's how you're going to get there.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think you nailed it. And again, I think it comes back to being nuanced and living in that gray area and being able to turn on that grindy, resilient piece, but also to enjoy in in in take a step back and experience what's going on so that you can make good decisions. But yeah, it's, you know, there's so I mean, really one of the the biggest lessons that's been
00:43:52
Speaker
kind of presenting to me like just over and over and over again lately is this like this sense of forgiveness you know this really starting with me forgiving myself for all the ways all the times where
00:44:11
Speaker
You know, I'm ashamed at how I reacted. I did something quote unquote wrong. Like just all those times when I felt unloved, unworthy, we need to just forgive ourselves of all of those things. You know, cause I think, you know, we, we talk about unconditional love, right? What it means to love unconditionally, but, but I would argue that
00:44:35
Speaker
barely any of us know how to love ourselves unconditionally. It's always like, I'm not worthy of that love because I have to earn it. Everything needs to be earned, right? And there's like, if you can just shift that paradigm and start with the, I'm worthy of love for no other reason than I'm here and I've chosen
00:44:57
Speaker
to be in this earthen vessel, this meat suit. And because of that, I'm worthy of love. And you just start there. And then you forgive yourself for all the ways that you've, you know, quote unquote, embarrassed yourself or whatever. Then you can start to forgive others too. And then it just because, you know, and so that's, it's really every, it's like almost everything I'm reading, the meditations I'm doing, the podcasts,
00:45:23
Speaker
The fiction I'm reading, it all comes back to this forgiveness, self-forgiveness. And it's funny, about a year ago, I had an experience where I was getting this message, surrender. You just need to surrender. You just need to let go of control, right? Oh, it's the hardest. And I understood. I got it. But for me,
00:45:45
Speaker
What I recognized is it almost felt very passive. Surrender felt like just letting go. It didn't feel like I was taking action. And this forgiveness piece has really sat well with me. It's like, yeah, that's a thing that I can do. I can be proactive and forgive. And it just so happens my Kundalini teacher gave me a great meditation. It's called Meditation for the Calm Heart and it's about
00:46:11
Speaker
Connecting to your inner being yourself to be in the relationship with yourself and what that means and so you can sit in this pose and you just concentrate on the breath and then. Kind of whatever comes up comes up into the first couple times i was doing this i was just like thinking about people in my life that needed love needed support that.
00:46:33
Speaker
you know, that just needed me to give them or someone to give them just like some forgiveness. And I would just envision these friends of mine and just wrap them in love. And then by day four, I was, I was wrapping myself in love all those times throughout my life where I felt unloved or unworthy of love or ashamed.
00:47:00
Speaker
And it was just so therapeutic for me to just see that little boy who was scared and just to love him and to forgive him. And it's just been this amazing practice that, you know, going, you know, she sent it to me and she's like, you might like this. And I was like, Oh, sounds cool. Like I've been trying to get the, you know, like,
00:47:22
Speaker
Meditation i really enjoyed it this is a different try it was like oh my god this is amazing this is like everything that i'm learning and it like. It's again it's these messages to keep coming back about forgiveness beautiful beautiful and i.
00:47:39
Speaker
I'm with you, man. The hardest person to love fully is yourself. When I do these 10 more things, then I'll give it to myself and we never really do. If you can't
00:47:57
Speaker
If you can't love yourself the way you love your child or someone you hold so near and dear to yourself, then you can't really accept fully the love that people are trying to offer you. But it is, I think, our life's work to fully embrace ourselves and allow ourselves to
Embracing Spiritual Teachings and Authenticity
00:48:15
Speaker
be
00:48:15
Speaker
you know, good enough. And I, I think almost everybody is walking around with some sense that they're not good enough and nobody wants to talk about it. So I really so deeply appreciate your vulnerability and honesty, uh, because every single person has the same narrative and we're all ashamed to admit, you know, that we don't think we're lovable or deserved or, you know, fill in the blank. Again, we feel like we need to, we need to earn it. It was like, I, and I did this guided meditation recently.
00:48:46
Speaker
with a spiritual fellow named Ajashante. And he's, I mean, he just totally resonates with me. And it was like this 30 minute guided meditation. And it's really one that I want my kids to just listen to. They don't need to meditate. I just want them to listen to his message because his message was about redemptive love. And you're basically, for the fact that you're here,
00:49:12
Speaker
Like you need to understand that you're worthy of love, that it is a gift. It is a gift. It is not something that you need to work for. It is unearned and that is a good thing. Like you don't, there are no conditions upon this thing that, you know, and it's like, you know, I don't know if that would have resonated with me as a kid, but to know that that's like the starting off point that you're just loved and you're, you're worthy of love.
00:49:42
Speaker
Well that could be pretty profound if the kid can understand that because I know I'm starting to understand that and I don't always embody it but when I hear it, it makes sense and he's like what would it feel like if you
00:49:59
Speaker
We're just worthy of that type of love like and it's just like, oh my god, because everything kind of nothing else matters. You just feel the love And you don't have to earn it because we always feel like it's like someone gives you something you feel like well I need to reciprocate I need to do something back somebody gives you a compliment You know a lot of times we're uncomfortable with it. So we say something back, right? Rather than just sieve it. Yeah, it's a gift and I think that's something
00:50:26
Speaker
that I'm working on as well. It's okay to just receive. Yeah. When you have a child, you don't make it work to be loved. You love the child. That was all of us at one point. We receive love just for being here and where that gets lost and how we shift that around to what it ends up being and all the points you're making is it's unfortunate for everybody.
00:50:52
Speaker
But to return back to that, to the best of your ability. And look, there's so many messages out there that tell you not to love yourself, right? Because there's so many goalposts that you're supposed to attain. There's so many ways in which you're supposed to look. There's so much that is taught to us that we're not where we need to be, but we confuse
00:51:17
Speaker
While we might want to do things with our life, we might want to make an impact. We might want to get in shape. We might want to produce, be successful. That has nothing to do with whether we're lovable. Exactly. We have this kind of westernized construct of how we're supposed to be and what achievement and success looks like and what I'm coming to find. And I think you are too. It's all bullshit.
00:51:46
Speaker
It's kind of one sliver of success. It's one tranche, it's 5%, whatever. There's so much more out there that we were really blind to for a long time. And when you start to go down that path, it's a bit mind-numbing because it's a lot to take on. You're like, holy shit, I've had this all wrong. Yeah, it is. Oh, no, where do I begin? Yep.
00:52:15
Speaker
Yep. And just on layering, removing the messages that you've received that are inaccurate and retraining yourself because again, there's nothing wrong with.
00:52:26
Speaker
ambition and success and attaining and impacting and, you know, creating and producing. It's a big part of why we're here, but it has nothing but failing and where it is and how far it's gone. It has nothing to do with whether or not you're good enough. And, you know, that's what I've struggled with. That's what I work with people on. And it's, you know, what this podcast is all about and your vulnerability. And in talking about that with your background and everything you've attained, right, is just I so deeply appreciate it.
Concluding Thoughts and Appreciation
00:52:56
Speaker
So, Kel, I ask everybody who comes on the show and I want to ask you, you know, what does an authentic life mean to you? You know, for me, it's about stripping away all these attachments, you know, all these things we think we need to be, who we should be. And what's under all that stuff? Who are you? And if you can't
00:53:26
Speaker
dig into that and sit with that and work with that, then you're not living an authentic life. You're allowing the things to blind you to your true self, your higher self. You're letting kind of the small self dictate that. And I've done that for so many years and I don't want to do it anymore.
00:53:51
Speaker
And it's hard. There's a lot of programming, a lot of conditioning that we're all subject to. And I'm working to undo these things and to look at who I am underneath that. And, you know, the more I dig, you know, there's a lot of stuff that comes up and it's not always easy to deal with, but the work is worth it. And, and it's allowed me to let go of a lot of things, a lot of
00:54:21
Speaker
these masks that I wear or that I thought I had to wear, these roles I thought I had to play. I can just be me, but who is me, right? And so then it just becomes this like digging, digging, digging and looking to different points of reference, whether it's an author that speaks on this stuff or spiritual, you know, quote unquote guru, like a Ram Dass or Ajashanti or Krishnamurti, like,
00:54:50
Speaker
to tap into these things that allow you to see your life through a different paradigm. It's been really important for me, but not easy. As I said, 40 some odd years of conditioning. Yeah, cow.
00:55:07
Speaker
I love you. This is such a beautiful interview. I so appreciate your honesty. Thank you so much for coming on today's show. Well, it's so great to reconnect with you and thanks for having me on. It's been so fun. It's my first one. So my first podcast and it was awesome. I really had so much fun. You killed it and thank you. I appreciate it.