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Securing Your Inner Happiness with Chris Gates, Sr. Offensive Security Manager, Robinhood
78 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Dr. Stacy Thayer chats with Chris Gates, Sr. Offensive Security Manager at Robinhood and of The Sky Beckons (https://www.theskybeckons.com) about the relationship between hacking and security and mental health and happiness. Chris shares his personal journey to happiness and how hacking helped him become a spiritual fitness coach and energy healer. Contact us here: https://netography.com/contact/ #Netography
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Transcript
Introduction to Cyber Psych Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Cyber Psych, an Autography podcast where we talk to industry professionals about the human side of technology, how it relates to the field of security, and how it impacts your overall business.
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm Dr. Stacey Thayer, and I'm a cyber psychologist and senior manager of research engagement and photography.
Meet Chris Gates
00:00:28
Speaker
And I'm here today with special guest, Chris Gates. Chris is a senior offensive security manager at Robinhood. He's a graduate of the United States Military Academy and an army veteran. He's definitely a well-known information security professional and has spoken at over 50 conferences around the world. And if you've had the chance to see him,
00:00:45
Speaker
or hear him talk. It's fantastic to listen to. He's also a spiritual fitness coach and energy healer. He's here today to talk about the relationship between hacking and security and mental health and happiness. Welcome, Chris. We're excited to have you get into this today. You're welcome, Stacy. Thanks for letting me have a chance to talk to the audience and have a good one.
00:01:08
Speaker
So in recent years, and I see your LinkedIn, I see various social media, but I've noticed that you've become a huge advocate for mental health, which always is really exciting to watch and read. But what really I think is cool is you've used your expertise in security and hacking
00:01:24
Speaker
to then bridge that gap between the hacker mindset and mental health. Can you share what led you down that path and where you are with it, what you've been doing, just the 10,000-foot view of your perspective?
Mental Health Advocacy
00:01:38
Speaker
Sure. Stop me if it gets long. How did I get started on that? It was DEFCON 24 in 2016. Everything on LinkedIn should have suggested that things were going the best they have ever gone.
00:01:53
Speaker
I was the first offensive security engineer at Facebook. I was at Uber then. I had an amazing time working with like Chris Nickerson and Eric Smith over at Laura's. Yeah. And we were at the hotel formerly known as Artisan. I think it's got a new name. It changes everything. It has a lot of memories there. Right. And I should have been the most happy I've ever been. And I was actually the saddest I have ever been.
00:02:19
Speaker
so bad that a mutual friend like John Cran was asking my wife, is he okay? It had been a long road of depression. Around that time, I'd hit all my goals and everything was good. I was like, I hit a now what?
00:02:38
Speaker
So, and that led me into being super depressed, suicidal. And eventually I was like, I need help. And so I went to the doctor and you know, you had the conversation and he was like, yeah, we can start to get you on the, the antidepressants and start getting you into therapy. And I was like, okay, cool.
00:02:55
Speaker
And so I kind of got on the road to do that. And I encourage everyone to do that. Like if they're not feeling well, they should go see their doctor. Like they shouldn't go do all the alternative things that I'm about to talk about.
Exploring Hypnotherapy
00:03:06
Speaker
She goes to go see your doctor. Um, but I got, I came across this video by Dolores Cannon. So as people, uh, if you're on TikTok, there's a lot of Dolores Cannon videos. She's passed passed away now, but she was like a very well-known hypnotherapist. And in this video clip said, if you're struggling in this life, it may be related to things in a past life.
00:03:25
Speaker
And I had never really been brought up in that kind of belief or knew much about that.
00:03:33
Speaker
But something with that took hold of me. And I was like, I want to, I want to experiment with this hypnotherapy thing. And about that time I had a, I got a thousand dollars from a bug bounty program that I just didn't think we're going to get. I said, okay, I'm going to spend this thousand dollars on hitting on this hypnotherapist, uh, as many sessions as I can get. And if this doesn't work back to the doctor to get on the antidepressants. And I would say the first, the first one, so I found one in Northern Virginia.
00:04:00
Speaker
That seemed seemed okay, and it's looking at different websites First session I would say was just okay I think most most of us are afraid of what we say to others that can be used against us especially as hackers by like You know we went through that whole Dox scene craze We're like probably a lot of our friends were docs and like so that's always in the back of my mind of like if anything I say gonna be recorded I'm gonna hear it on Twitter later when I thought I was having a private conversation and
00:04:28
Speaker
But so, okay, first session, second session. Um, really the only way I can explain it is whatever deity you believe in. I call it the, I'll say the universe as we talk today, but the universe came in and embraced me. And at that moment, I actually didn't feel alone. So I had a house with kids and my wife. I felt alone friends. I felt alone everything in my life. I felt alone and like I was isolated on this planet. And in that moment.
00:04:58
Speaker
I didn't feel alone anymore. And that was really what I would say was the hitting the rock bottom of that wet, bad spiral that began the journey up. So did a lot of hypnotherapy, past life regressions, life between lives, hypnosis.
00:05:15
Speaker
QHCT hypnosis because as a hacker, I want to know how all this stuff works. And so I, you know, I turn on the, all right, I feel like despite, you know, the way you said about being an energy healer and coach, I think I'm still a pretty healthy skeptic. Like if it doesn't work for me, then I don't believe in it. So I was like, okay, let's just keep seeing if this works. And I just kept seeing gates.
00:05:40
Speaker
I also in one of the sessions told myself to learn Reiki and I was like, I'd never heard that word before.
00:05:47
Speaker
And I was like, what is that? And the practitioner was like, what's this energy thing? And I was like, that sounds stupid. What is that? It doesn't make any sense. I can't see it. I can't touch it. I can't break it. There's invisible energy that you can harness and send to people or send to yourself. I was like, that sounds like Saturday morning stuff. Well, six months later, I
Journey into Energy Healing
00:06:11
Speaker
found myself on a Reiki table. Had some things going on with my life.
00:06:16
Speaker
And that really started a journey of understanding energy work and just learning more about myself. I got into a mentorship with a person here in Northern Virginia and it was like a spiritual mentorship. And we spent six months just really learning who I was and getting exposed to these different modalities. So that's how I kind of got my start. And that's where I started.
00:06:38
Speaker
understanding all the trauma I had accumulated over my life that every human accumulates. And over the years, no matter how hard you try, you're creating trauma for your kids. You're trading trauma for other people that you work with. Even if you're the most mindful parent, you're still unintentionally doing these things.
00:07:00
Speaker
And so I just kind of got to, again, I just do the hacker thing on it like deep. You just see a topic and you dig and you dig and you dig. Now the problem with metaphysics is I don't know if it has a bottom, right? It just keeps going and it keeps expanding, but usually you are expanding with it and growing.
00:07:18
Speaker
It's just like learning a new oh, I learned a new programming language or I learned this new tool. You know, I'm an expert with this tool I found on GitHub to do a thing. I now have that in my repertoire of of healing things to do or ways to look at the world in a different place. And they just you just keep accumulating them just like we do. It's like like our our peers do in the industry who have been doing this for 20 years, 30 years. They just accumulated a lot of knowledge via the experiences they've had.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, so let me pause there because I don't want to get too too long. Oh, no, I guess I'll add. And then I have now shifted a little bit to working with plant medicines. So that was kind of the next thing. You know, there's a lot of, you know, like, I think a lot of people point to Aaron Rodgers, the football player who
00:08:04
Speaker
does ayahuasca in the off seasons and has really unlocked a lot of healing and insight for him. And so while I don't think that's for everybody, there's lots of people that it's not for, I was feeling the call to work with mushrooms and ayahuasca and some of the other medicines. And that's really, I think has brought me to the next level of being comfortable
00:08:29
Speaker
with who I am, being comfortable to come on and talk about my trauma and mistakes I've made and things that have happened to me because the only way to get through them is usually just for someone else to show that they did it and it's okay. So I really look like sharing this journey is really my journey right now to show the people that they can do it too because I'm not special. Everybody can do this.
00:08:53
Speaker
Well, it's interesting hearing your journey and what works and what takes you.
00:09:00
Speaker
out of it and out of that happiness, out of that depression. I've touched a lot of different people and there's so much stigma around mental health and there's so much stigma around even religion and just around what to believe and who we are. So a lot of times I feel like people, they're feeling depressed and yeah, you look around and you're like, hey, I have a job, I have a family, it feels good. What's not going on inside?
00:09:30
Speaker
that isn't, what's not translating, why? And it's funny because I'll talk to people and I'm like, you never get sad. Like you don't just wake up and you're sad for no reason.
00:09:42
Speaker
what's that like? I didn't know what to do with that. And like, I've talked with a couple people who were like, like that, and, you know, in the security industry, like there's a lot of pretty high suicide rate. And, you know, it's like, and I try to talk to people,
00:10:03
Speaker
about burnout and a lot of times meditation comes up. And so like the talk I did at Black Hat was like, okay, here's, if you Google right now, like how to manage stress and how to handle depression, it's like go for a walk, exercise
Meditation Challenges and Alternatives
00:10:17
Speaker
more, eat right. And I always say like, okay, no, that's great. I want to get there. I would, my ideal self, I'm somebody who works out every day and meditates regularly, eats my fruit and veggies. In reality, there's some days when I'm like,
00:10:32
Speaker
I'm not running unless I'm chased, and I can't find my inner peace. To meditate, I can't be alone with my thoughts right now, and if I do, it's 30 seconds, and I'm like, ah, I can't do this, and I'm eating Taco Bell. There's no judgment on Taco Bell, by the way, a big fan, but three or four days in a row, you're just like, I can't cook, I can't do anything. You're surviving.
00:10:57
Speaker
I love that your journey where it started was asking questions, that I don't have to be like this. I'm in survival mode, but I don't have to be. And that there is an answer that can be anything from whatever works for you, whether it's... And for you, what I'm interested in hearing more too, I'm getting into a question. How do you think...
00:11:23
Speaker
When you finally decided, all right, I've had enough and you found into this, what about it made you persevere? Is it that hacker mindset of I'm going to keep going and tapping until I understand this? Do you feel like it was a calling? What advice to that person who's like, I'm just going to drink because I don't know what else to do or I'm on self-destructive habits or near suicidal. How do you give them that hand to reach out and pull them up because they're down?
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, okay. There's multiple- There's a lot there. Sorry. There's like five questions. There's a lot of talking in five questions. We'll see how we do. As far as I guess reaching out, one, I would tell people it's okay to feel the feels.
00:12:05
Speaker
And I, a lot of times we, especially I'd say like most people that are in infosec upper middle class or higher. Right. So you've got a whole population of the United States or the world. It was like, what do you have to complain about? Yeah. Right. And so that weighed on me too. Cause I, like, I was like, I started with like, I had this amazing career. Why are you sad, Chris? You have everything that you wanted.
00:12:31
Speaker
I was like, well, I hear you, but I still feel sad, right? I still feel incomplete. And so one of the things that has occurred to me on this journey is, and I think this applies to a lot of hackers, is most humans are on this planet to serve, right? Serve in some capacity. And most of us who are an infosec, we serve by protecting companies or protecting people.
00:12:59
Speaker
right? Educating them so that they don't get taken advantage of or so our employers don't get hacked. And I would say that that is that is noble. And I think that is in the right direction. But I think at least in the United States, we get told to serve
00:13:14
Speaker
in the military, law enforcement, fire, EMS, doctor, those are the ways to serve. Those are not the all-encompassing ways to serve. In fact, I would say those ones that I just laid out have a lot of negative cons to them. I was in the military, our job to serve is to go places and murder people.
00:13:37
Speaker
That's the job, is to hate other countries, hate other religions, hate other people, and do the bidding of the President of the United States, whatever that may be, when it usually means going somewhere and occupying a space by force.
00:13:53
Speaker
So you're serving, but are you really serving humanity in the right way with that? I would argue no. As someone that was in the military, I didn't have to ever spend much time in any place that was too dangerous. But many of my classmates did. Many of my classmates didn't come home. And so you have this idea of service. And I think most hackers can relate to that. What I started to learn was there are other ways to serve. There are ways to serve humans.
00:14:22
Speaker
Um, by being there for them and doing, and that's how I kind of found myself into the energy work. And then later into the coaching is.
00:14:31
Speaker
This is how right now I feel called to serve is I can listen. I had learned how to open my heart because my heart was super closed as most people's are because that's a defense mechanism to survival on this planet is closing our heart because I can't get hurt if my heart's closed. I don't want you to hurt me. Yeah. We're not made to be vulnerable. In fact, you spend your entire time not being vulnerable and your career is not being vulnerable. And then now let's be vulnerable. Right. Right. And especially like you're going to go back to the docs and like,
00:15:01
Speaker
You're putting yourself out and you've got people that for a while, I don't think it's calmed down now, but like going after people like Christian and myself and lots of all of our friends that you're like, I'm just trying to serve and you're attacking me.
00:15:17
Speaker
for doing this because you don't like it for some reason. So yeah, heart closed. So now I look at it as like, okay, my heart is open or I'm still working to open my heart. How can I teach others to open their heart? How can I hold space for someone? And so it's now doing that as an energy healer, as a coach, as a manager. I tried to bring all of the mindfulness in to, am I creating a space for the people that work with me where they feel safe to say, I don't know how to do something?
00:15:47
Speaker
Or I made a mistake because I definitely were places where I couldn't say that. But now, but that's, that's a part of doing this business. Like every, you know, we're sometimes doing many things for the first time, new technologies, new things, but we can set this expectation that I can't fail. And I think that, that can drive, um, some depression for me to circle all that back was I didn't feel like I was doing my, my, my purpose. And that was what put me into a depression. I do realize.
00:16:17
Speaker
There are lots of other reasons that people could be depressed, chemical and other things. But for me, it was, I found out later, I was like, not doing everything I should be doing. And it began that journey of figuring out what am I actually supposed to be doing?
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah. I think you asked about meditation too, right? Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the reason is for a lot of people, that's sort of where it starts. So it's like the barrier to entry of like, okay, at least meditate. Cause there's lots of studies that show that that's really good for your brain and just that quiet and all of that. But like I'm ADHD. So like sitting there for like.
00:16:50
Speaker
five minutes. It's like eat, pray, love, right? Where she's like, okay, this has been 30 seconds. Like, you know, I'm doing it. Oh crap. I'm not doing it. Not clear my brain. And I mean, you're asking people who are really smart most of the time and like to empty their, their thoughts. That's really a challenge. So I will give you my personal take. Uh, I'm not, uh, I'm not, not a Buddhist or anything, but I look at meditation as am I thinking about the thing that I intend to think about?
00:17:21
Speaker
Okay, so that doesn't so if I choose for the thing that I think about to be not thinking about anything that is one form of meditation Chanting would be another form of meditation Listening to music would be another form of meditation if I am not thinking about the thing I have to do 30 minutes from now while I'm listening to that song, but I'm in the song so When I teach people meditation, I give them a variety of different things so you can do guided meditations chanting music and
00:17:51
Speaker
Visualizations you kind of dial in what works for people and it's not the master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda one with That is that is a that is a sliver of meditation and that's great for some people and you may there Someone may want to work to that. I wouldn't suggest they start with that. It's very difficult
00:18:11
Speaker
I usually suggest people start with Vishan Lakhani from Mindvalley has the six phase meditation. I think it's about 14 minutes long and you're just having to pay attention to things for like two, two and a half minutes and then it switches to another thing and then another thing and then another thing.
00:18:28
Speaker
usually do a minute or two on a thing. And then about the time, that's when my mind wanders, but now we're on to a new thing in a new thing. And then it's about, okay, hacking your own mind and understanding that. And I also say that most people understand the phrase mind over matter, but really with meditation, it's soul over mind. So the mind has been commissioned to always be looking for problems. It's in our DNA to look for the negative in things, because that's what humans do. We see the negative. Oh, that could be improved.
00:18:57
Speaker
Let's think about that. And so the brain is just running too much. And so we really do want us just to start to understand what functions are running. What's the source code that's running? And then are those actually memory safe? Are those actually good for me?
00:19:15
Speaker
Are those programs and subroutines that are running, are they actually healthy and doing good? Or were they programmed by somebody else? And a lot of times they are, and then we want to inspect those. And I talk about that, I try to make that analogy in the hacking your hackiness talks of like, you got programmed as a child,
00:19:33
Speaker
We don't actually usually inspect that programming, but someone else programmed it. It may not be the best program or subroutine for you. And so as an adult, as we get into meditation, meditation creates the space to take a look at that. You're like, oh, I actually want to look at that. Show it to me. And then you're like, OK, when you start to create a little bit of space.
00:19:53
Speaker
And just like anything, it just takes practice, right? Like no one that's listening to this the first time they started Metasploit or started a debugger or started anything was good at it. Like I fumbled around, but eventually you might become a developer. You might write your own tools. You might do these other things. It's just the same process that we do with everything else and just being gentle with yourself to know this is the first time I'm doing it. I'm not going to be good at it. I'm probably not going to be good at it the first hundred times I do it and just making that okay.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. Because it seems like, oh, how hard can meditation be? You just sit there, right? But it's like, no. It's really hard. And the other thing that I've been practicing doing, too, is noticing where I keep my tension in my body, too. I hold everything here. Sometimes I'll wake up, and I'm sleeping, like a Bella Lugosi rise from the dead. But for those who can't see, my hands are sort of like butterflied around my neck chest area.
00:20:50
Speaker
Versus or like is it in my stomach is in the pit of your stomach like where where is it that you're feeling this and? What I've kind of come to realize and I tell people when I'm talking about about burnout rivers like when are you your best self? And what is that? What is it? What do you feel like then and? Like so I'll play video games or I'll binge watch a TV show, but I'm not present in fact. It's the opposite. I'm disconnected I'm disassociating I the brain is like just I'm getting I want to bet I
00:21:17
Speaker
When I travel, I'm my best self. I'm happy. I'm growing. I am learning. I like who I am. And I had the opportunity to travel a couple weeks ago, and I'm holding on to how that felt to see, okay, how can I bring that into my day-to-day life? And the only reason is really just because I do like traveling, but I'm present for every single moment of it. It's in the moment. It's present. I feel things. I watch things in a way that in my day-to-day life, to be that present would be exhausting.
00:21:46
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. You asked earlier, like, how do you get off the couch? Um, what I would normally say is like, Tony Robbins talks about if you want to change your state, you have to change your physical self. And so if, if I'm sitting here in the dungeon, uh, you know, and I'm finding myself not feeling the way that I want to feel. He would say, it's time to get up and go for a walk and take it for a walk and go do something because you can't change your mental state. If you don't change your physical body.
00:22:17
Speaker
No, there is a little bit of like, you've just got to do it. I don't have a magic bullet to get you out, except maybe that's where hopefully friends, family, if you tell people you're hurting, like, Hey, do you want to go out? I know you're not feeling well, let's go out. The best thing for that is to get. So put the Taco Bell down and go eat Taco Bell at the restaurant.
00:22:38
Speaker
I'll meet you there to eat instead of eating at home. Whatever it takes to get the movement, because it is hard to be upset if you're doing that. And that can start to, again, you can start to bring excitement into your life. There's a few tools that do that too. What experiences do you want to have in your life? And making that list and saying, okay, well, I'm feeling down. Let me find something on the list that I can do. I know I need to get up and change my state.
00:23:08
Speaker
What can I do today? What's within 20 minutes of my house or 30 minutes of my house that I want to do? Yeah. If you can get moving, it's almost like when you're, great example, like when you're doing a pen test, man, you're banging your head against the wall. As soon as you get the one little thing, that's when it opens up, right? And then you can kind of dig it. You can dive into that. We're really looking for mentally or in our lives. What's the little thing that can get me started on?
00:23:36
Speaker
on the next thing and that's gonna be unique for everyone but now that you kind of know that oh that's what i need to be looking for that's what i need to do you can say okay i got maybe i got to phone a friend or or do whatever the other thing i will add very quickly on that is in my depression i felt like i was calling out for help and then when i finally did like the facebook post saying that i was depressed and i'm changing my life in these ways that all these people go i had no idea i was like
00:24:00
Speaker
I felt like I was I was being loud about it So I would say if anyone's there like you might have to very clearly say I need help because everyone's got their own stuff going on and No one wants to assume the worst
Communicating and Supporting Mental Health
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah. They don't want to ask like, it doesn't work that way. You've got one or two people that you trust like, man, I'm in a bad spot. Can we go hang out? And you might just have to go. Take it a little further. Cause yeah, I felt like I was crying for help and nobody, nobody was coming and I felt even more alone. They just didn't hear it. Cause I wasn't saying a lot enough. Yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, and we look necessarily like a pretty high suicidal rate and depression rate. I'm caught by surprise so many times by who it is. You're like, oh my God, I never knew. How did I not know? Were they asking for help? You're playing every conversation in your brain.
00:24:59
Speaker
But the fact is, is that people are busy. If they're not looking for it, if they're not paying attention, things have changed a lot since our 20s. And we've got little people we're responsible for in our houses and our jobs and managing teams. There's a lot of distractions and a lot of things to keep you out of. A lot of things to keep you out of self-work. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:22
Speaker
Now, you run a meditation group at work, is that right? Yeah, it's called Brain Body Heart. Brain Body Heart, yeah. And I love the idea of that because I think a lot of companies, as preface is clear, but a lot of companies, they do want to invest in people's mental health, but they don't know how. And there's this great movement towards unlimited PTO.
00:25:46
Speaker
but not everybody knows how to take it or how to disconnect. I mean, you have to uninstall Slack, Google, turn off your Google Alert, turn on, you know, basically like go to Mars so nobody can talk to you or you do it. I do it to myself. I'm like, I'll just check in for a second. The next thing you know, crap.
00:26:07
Speaker
What would you recommend? Can you tell me the story about that? How did that get started or how did you get involved with it? And then advice for companies that may want to have a program like that. Yeah. I wish I could take credit for starting it, but it does predate me when I showed up at Rob. It was a reaction to COVID and all the remote work. One of the people that worked there created this group and got some corporate buy-in for that.
00:26:32
Speaker
I started out just going because this is my jam. I love talking about this. So I just joined as a member and then The person running it was like, oh, do you want to help out? I was like sure I'll help out and then she's like, do you want to do meditations? I was like, well, I'm really scared to do those in public So yeah, I'll do it because this is the only way to get through my fear of doing it is to do it So I started running meditations twice twice a month and then she's like, oh, do you want to co-lead I was like
00:26:59
Speaker
I guess, and then all of a sudden now I'm in charge. And so I was like, how did this happen? And that's been a journey of just being, you know, this is something that I want to do. I want to bring more of this because I do think that these topics can help people I care about, which is the hacking community, the hacking community. And I was like, the universe just guided me kind of kicking and screaming into being in charge of this and having to figure out
00:27:25
Speaker
Well, how do I actually build a mindfulness program for my employer? And so there's a few other companies like SAP is probably the most famous company that has someone that that's their job is to run mindfulness for SAP. And so I watched, I went and watched all his TED talks.
00:27:41
Speaker
and his articles and started looking for other people that are doing this. There's just some other businesses that teach classes on it. And I said, okay, well, you know, things can't get any worse. So like, let's just start trying to bring in these topics.
00:27:57
Speaker
Into the environment. So I think you know advice for anybody that's doing it, you know, you need you need a corporate sponsor You need some top cover You need to have a space that's safe You need to have a little money to bring in speakers or to buy things although we we run on a pretty I would say pretty limited budget There's a lot of people that would love to come talk to an organization because they're passionate about the topic just like myself You know, but I also you also want to bring in speakers. I know I'm not here like I
00:28:27
Speaker
Sure, I'm a good speaker, but I never know everyone doesn't want to hear me every month. They want to hear other people. So you can bring in other people that want to talk about these subjects. And that's where really the magic begins. As the lead, I get to engage with all these people that I find really interesting on TikTok or Instagram or on LinkedIn. And it allows me to reach out and make these relationships and see, hear their stories or how they do it. And most people just want to share. They just want to serve.
00:28:55
Speaker
you're giving people you're actually doing everyone a solid by bringing in these people who just want to share their message and serve.
00:29:04
Speaker
And how do you reach critical mass with that? Like so many, especially smaller companies, it's, I mean, it's people are busy. So even if it's like a social, like, Hey, let's get together and have coffee, it's, it's hard. You get maybe like five people and then it loses momentum and you're awkward. Okay. Um, so yeah. And so let me start with that. And then I'll ask my other questions, but yeah, how do you get critical mass? Uh, I wish I knew we're struggling with that with, with, uh, zoom fatigues and all the meetings, um,
00:29:32
Speaker
You know, uh, ask, ask the group. If you have a group, ask the group what they want helps. All right. Cause then you're, you're at least bringing events at the times people can make them.
00:29:43
Speaker
On the days people can make them, you're bringing in the topics that at least a handful of people want to see. And then just like building any community, it's creating a safe space. It's asking the questions and it's work. It's a lot of work to build a community. Anybody that's done it on any information, like in a Discord or whatever, Slack, very difficult to bring a community and get people to engage. The secret is the leads have to go first.
00:30:09
Speaker
Just like a manager, if I want to create a safe space or vulnerability in my team, I have to be vulnerable first. So as the person that's trying to create this group, you have to do a lot of work and hope that your motivation carries you long enough for that to build some momentum.
00:30:30
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it could be a fun team activity. So in another company that I worked at, there was a murder mystery, or one of those type things. And we weren't going. And then our manager was like, let's all do it. It'll be like a team activity kind of thing. And we had a blast, and it was a team builder. But yeah, she had to take us kind of kicking and screaming. But it ended up like, there's so many times we pass on the things that could bring us joy. Yeah.
00:30:57
Speaker
And being able to recognize that and be like, okay, maybe I give it a try or maybe I do it with some friends and that snowball effect. But I 100% agree that that makes total sense of right. It has to start with the leader saying, let's all go do this together. And maybe it's fun and maybe it's a monthly thing we do or something like that. And it has to get biased. When we have speakers, we record them. So I understand people are busy. And so
00:31:19
Speaker
I recorded everything so I still want you to watch it. I still want people to watch it. Maybe they started at the business later or they just missed it. If a single person wants to watch it, I want to be able to give them the opportunity to be able to watch it and to engage. It's tough though, right?
00:31:45
Speaker
It's been one of the hardest things I've had to work on to talk about like going through your fear of like, am I picking the right things for a whole group of people? Very scary. Hope for feedback. You know, hope that my intuition is right. Hope that
00:32:03
Speaker
everything just works out. And thankfully, I think we have a core group of people who are vocal. If something's not going well, they will, they will let me know. And then usually in a kind way and we can, we can adjust. Um, but ultimately I think just want to, yeah. Yeah. Everybody wants it. They just don't always know that they're, they need it. Yeah. Yeah. That it's a priority to, to make the time. Um, and it builds the more you can help fix yourself or
00:32:31
Speaker
not maybe fix, but help yourself or heal yourself. Really, the more energy and time and everything, it's kind of like the inverse of what you would think. The more I heal myself, actually, the more I have to give to others.
00:32:46
Speaker
I say it's like when you're on the airplane. Yeah, you can be selfish about it, right? Right. Right. Well, when you're on the airplane and they say before helping a child, put your oxygen mask on first. And as a mother, it's like, your first instinct is like, no, I have to protect the child. And I remember thinking, oh, right. But if I pass out mid while putting this on my child, I can't help them. Exactly. So that's one of my kind of things I see is it's like, put your oxygen mask on first.
00:33:12
Speaker
And, you know, one of the things you said in your, your happiness talk and you're hacking your way to happiness talk was do something that's that scares you effectively that if you're afraid of it, you're on the right path was kind of my, my takeaway of things. And I find like,
00:33:28
Speaker
like going to Africa by myself. That was scary. It was really triumphant. It was like, Oh, I'm going to do this. And then I felt more confident as a person because I'm like, Hey, I just did this kind of like pretty, you know, challenging thing. It wasn't that it ended up not being that challenging, but the idea was like to get on a plane and go by myself and talk to people and everything. And it was like, Oh, I can do that thing. I can do other hard things too. And I tell my kids this all the time because they getting anxious about stuff. And I'm like, you,
00:33:56
Speaker
done this, this, this, and this, you can do that. Um, and that, that kind of self-talk. Yeah. I think there's a kid's book where we were definitely stronger than you believe. Yes. You're, uh, what is it? You're, you're braver than you believe, stronger than you think. And whatever it is in love more than you'll ever know. Yeah. It's true. And we're, we're taught that working on self is selfish, but you know, that is actually not true, right? Like, like, like you just said, the more
00:34:23
Speaker
The more stable I am, the more I have for my kids, the more I have for my job, the more I have for the people that work on me, the more I have to connect with the people that the universe wants me to connect with. The more energy I have to post that video on LinkedIn or TikTok or whatever, if I'm taking care of myself. So it does actually, it builds that solid base so that you can actually, if you have a solid base, you're a little more willing to try that scary thing.
00:34:52
Speaker
than if it's not solid. If you're just scrambled and just trying to survive, well, if I'm in survival mode, I'm not going to go try a thing that I don't know how it's going to go. But if I'm stable, I say, well, if I fall, I'll be back on solid ground. So you've got to get yourself on solid ground. And that's my taking care of yourself.
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah. And it's hard to do. And one of the reasons why I ended up going to Africa is because someone had said to me, go do something for yourself. Now, I realized they meant like a painting class or go see a movie or whatever, but hey. But the exercise of when I, my husband was fine when he had a conversation. It was a conversation. I wasn't like, peace, I'm out, but have fun with the kids. No, it was not like that.
00:35:35
Speaker
But the different reactions from my mom, from my mother, like, you know, from everybody, like, what do you mean you're spending your own money on yourself when you have kids? And what do you mean that the father is going to watch the kids while the mother goes away? Okay, that's a whole other thing. But like, they're old enough.
00:35:53
Speaker
the hoops that I had to go through to do something to take care of me. And I saw my doctor, Leslie, she said, you look like a totally different person. It was like, yeah, because I've been I've been taking care of everybody else for so long, I hadn't put my oxygen mask on. And I feel like a totally different person. So
00:36:10
Speaker
to get to the point of, you know, what you do also is I think that it sounds to me, you would know better. But by doing that mental work, you're looking at your own energy, your own state of mind, your own expansion and growth. And while it may, in theory, be selfish, because you are focusing on yourself, and you're taking time for yourself, and you're growing yourself,
00:36:35
Speaker
It's a good thing to do. You need to focus on yourself. And by getting in touch with yourself, you can get in touch with that sadness. Is that kind of what I'm hearing from you? Yeah, I think it's accurate.
00:36:51
Speaker
What advice do you have for people to help them get aware of their own state of mind? So if they're like, I don't want to commit, I want to pay money for a Reiki, I don't want to, you know, I don't know, I don't want to be stereotyped or stigmatized into a therapist. You know, I don't know where to start. I've seen, I've done this a lot with them when I was in Southern California, working with people coming to sobriety, like how do they start, you know? And so with mental health too, and this kind of energy work, yeah, where do you start?
00:37:23
Speaker
Good question. Science hasn't caught up to a lot of metaphysics. Before there were microscopes, we believed a completely different thing about why people got sick or other things. It wasn't until later that we understood there was another reason.
00:37:45
Speaker
Um, so I, I, I personally, this is like probably spicy take, I just don't believe that science is caught up to consciousness in the things that are happening in our bodies. And so what I would, what I tell clients or what I tell myself or what I tell my kids is, you know, in the absence of scientific proof, which I would always prefer, um, repeated experience can Trump is the evidence of that. Right. So like.
00:38:12
Speaker
Can I do Reiki? Can I try a mindfulness technique? Can I do this thing? If I do it a few times and I'm getting the same results and it's working for you, then that should be sufficient. Even if mom, dad, sister, brother, friend group don't believe in it. It's okay, right? Because
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean energy feeling sounds ridiculous, right? But I've done over a thousand hours of it as between mostly as a practitioner, but I've had hundreds of hundreds of hours given to myself. And there's just been experiences that I could I cannot explain otherwise.
00:38:49
Speaker
and it wasn't one time. So if somebody did something one time and said like, all right, you might need to do that a few more times, but if someone's put a thousand hours into something and they've had repeated experiences over multiple clients, over multiple years in different mental scenarios and things like that, eventually you have to go, well, I feel like there's something to this. So I don't know if that fully answered the question. I tend to get off track, but... You and me both.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah, it does. I think what I'm hearing with that is just beginning with start with an open mind. Yes, start with your your hacker mindset, which is okay. What is the thing I believe actually true? So when we're talking about limiting beliefs or beliefs that you have, the best question to ask yourself if you can create the moment to ask, and that's where meditation comes in, is, is this belief actually true?
00:39:46
Speaker
And then who installed this belief? And is this belief helping me or holding me back? If you could start to ask those questions about a belief, you can really see most of them are not, they're nonsense, right? Most of our beliefs are not helping us. Someone I've been thinking about recently is like, I really cared about what people thought about me about my whole life. That's really been a net negative in my life. Carrying what other people think has been a net negative. Oh, gosh, yeah. But I'm like, why are you learning this at 47?
00:40:16
Speaker
That carrying what other people think, like strangers think is a net negative. Well, now I'm trying to teach that to my kids. If they can carry that in their teens forward, they'll do a lot better than I did. Same thing with some of the other things I experienced.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah. And then, so yeah, tune the hacker thing. Just do the hacker. What's the happy path, right? Okay. What are the unintended, what are the unintended things that could be done? And that's just what you start to do as you inspect all these things is, you know, is that actually true? What other intended, other intended behaviors can, can a system do? And that's hacking, right? Like, well, yeah, the API says you can only do this. Well, what happens if I send it this other character, it wasn't expecting.
00:41:01
Speaker
Oh, what happens if I interject energy work? What happens if I interject meditation? What happens if I interject forgiveness or gratitude? What if I just start letting go of the anger and realizing that the people that hurt me were also hurting?
00:41:21
Speaker
And you didn't have the opportunity to process any of that. And while I may be really sick of my parents, they did the best they could because they were really uneducated on how to raise kids. And you just start to let things go. It's like, okay, what happens if? And that's the ultimate hacker question that all of us do anytime we're doing any sort of work, what happens if?
00:41:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Mess around and find out, you know, what happens if like, you know, all of those, those things. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of my team.
00:41:52
Speaker
Right. I don't know. Let's find out. Like it will either work or it won't. And then we'll just adjust. Yeah. And I wish, and I will always encourage more people to bring that into their life. Maybe this, this relationship, let's see what happens. Let's cut this person out. Let's see what happens. Let's do this thing. Let's get on a plane and go there. Let's just see what happens. You know, obviously, you know,
00:42:14
Speaker
keep it safe. But like, most of the time, the things that we're afraid to do are not terribly dangerous, which just, you know, someone shouldn't do it. And you're like, well, yeah, be smart about it. But yeah, yeah, is that actually true? Yeah. Well, and so then
00:42:31
Speaker
As we wrap up and close out here, you mentioned a couple of great TikToks and other things. Are there any, so just resources that you recommend. So if somebody is listening and say, okay, all right, all right, I'll give it a try. What do I do? Where do I go? Where should I start? Yeah. Am I supposed to recommend my own stuff? No, by all means. So I'm pretty active on Instagram and TikTok. It's the sky beckons where I try to just, I learned best by teaching others. That's how I know I've locked it in.
00:42:59
Speaker
And so yeah, my stuff, my own stuff. But for more famous people, let's see, The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield is an amazing book on synchronicities and energy and the energy dynamics amongst other people. That's a great book. A New Earth by Eckert Tolle. All of like Jay Shetty's material, like Think Like a Monk, great book. Mike Dooley's material.
00:43:29
Speaker
And then for the hackers, Joe dispenses. Joe dispenses material is great. He brings science into everything that he talks about. And so those of us that are healthy skeptics, which we should be, would encourage him to look at his materials because he shows the brain scans of people that are, how they change in meditation, how they heal themselves. And he has a really good series called Rewired.
00:43:52
Speaker
Um, where he, where he talks about that. So if you don't like to consume things, uh, in a book fashion, he's got, uh, videos there in 30 minute clips, which most people can consume. Um, trying to think who else there's, I mean, there's a, there is a giant, giant amount of that information. Sahara Rose is good. On the other book I wrote down was the whole elephant revealed by Marja De Vries.
00:44:16
Speaker
That talks about universal laws and so everyone's heard of law of attraction, but there's actually like 11 other universal laws.
00:44:23
Speaker
And it's just an interesting thing as a hacker, like, okay, what are all the routines that make things, what are the operating systems of the universe? That book really digs into that. And how do you start to tweak those for your own benefit? If you understand how things work, you can start to then make it do things you want or add, add a different, Hey, did you know that it would actually accept this other variable? Well, if you don't inspect the source code or you don't understand how the function works, you don't know that, but
00:44:49
Speaker
There's a lot of functions that run on this reality that you can actually put a few more variables into and get really interesting things out of. I would encourage everyone that's listening, do their hacker thing on that. Just play with it, explore it, see where it takes you.
00:45:05
Speaker
And I'll include a link to your site when this goes online to your bio and everything. So if people want to reach you or have questions, they can reach out there too. Yeah, please. I'm here to answer the questions and share and serve the best that I can. Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much for your time and your insight. It's been great to have you here. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Cyber Psych, and I will see you next time. Thanks, Chris. You're welcome. See ya.