Joe Hudson Celebration at The Mindful CEO: 

This month, I want to honor the work of a special voice in leadership coaching: 

Joe Hudson.

Joe is the “coach behind Silicon Valley’s unicorn CEOs”. He is one of the most sought-after teachers among the world’s top leaders at OpenAI, Alphabet, Apple, and numerous other companies (the list is endless). 

I am deeply honored to have Joe as a guest expert on the faculty of my annual CEO Cohort program.

And to celebrate his contribution, the following weeks will be dedicated to some of his transformative ideas for leadership.

If you'd like to read more from Joe himself or participate in his acclaimed AoA training programs, you can find the information here. 

How to be more emotionally intelligent (without trying so hard)

Guest post by Joe Hudson

1. If you’re scared of feeling an emotion, you’re already in it.

2. Constantly trying to make sense of your emotions prevents you from hearing their wisdom.

3. Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions. She won’t come into your house if her children are not welcome.

4. If you can’t welcome the emotion, welcome the resistance to it.

5. Ego is as much what you don’t think you are as what you think you are.

6. You can’t give or receive love fully if you’re constantly calculating what could go wrong.

7. You also cannot love fully unless you see that you are completely empowered.

8. It is near impossible to love what you think oppresses you.

9. We often abandon ourselves in an attempt to prevent other people from abandoning us.

10. When your thinking is binary, fear is running the show. The next time you’re in freeze or depression, notice how much of it is repressed or held back anger.

11. Anger in its purity is beautiful. Trying to change somebody, change their beliefs, be above them, dominate them, control them, scare them, push them away, or try to make them do anything – that is manipulation, not anger.

12. The next time you’re feeling anxious, notice how much of it is repressed or held back excitement.

13. People don’t want you to be perfect. What they want is to feel connected to you.

14. People who are exhausted all day are often in the habit of beating themselves up or telling themselves how they should be.

15. Endless self-criticism is usually a sign that you want to be seen as valuable rather than to be of value.

16. There is no way of getting it perfect. There is no complete, no finish line, no done. There is simply “What’s the next experiment?” There is only play.

17. If you can’t say “no” easily, you can’t be trusted.

18. If it feels scary to say, it’s important

    If it feels scary to say, NOT saying it will hurt your connection

    If it feels scary to say, NOT saying it prioritizes their imagined reaction over your truth

19. You can’t be accepted for who you are if you’re not showing up as who you are.

20. We are often scared of the consequences of revealing who we actually are or what we actually think.

    But whatever that “consequence” is also happens to be a direct path to the life where we are accepted and loved for who we are.

21. Willpower is needed if it’s a desire from the head. Willpower is not needed if it’s a desire from the heart.

22. If you feel oppressed, the most powerful oppressor is the thought that you can’t do anything about it.

23. If you struggle with paying attention:

    What was the quality of attention you got as a kid?

24. If you’re trying to manage other people’s feelings, you’re abandoning your own.

25. Many people believe that peace means never feeling agitated. Deep peace is the ability to be with agitation without aversion.

26. People cannot be split up into parts you accept and parts you reject. A person is a whole.

27. Unconditional love isn’t people-pleasing or caretaking. It’s the capacity to hold space for others’ choices while honoring your own truth.

28. Judging others for showing off is often an indication that we’re struggling with our own desire to be seen.

29. Being known is the empty calorie surrogate to being seen.

30. The desire to be special can only exist when you don’t know who you are.

31. Overwhelm is a form of fear. It is the moment where you think you have to get out of flow to manage reality.

32. Perceiving yourself as “better than” other people is a sign of repressed emotions. And you can’t repress emotions without repressing joy.

33. I have never met anyone who is both deeply joyful and also harbors a sense of superiority.

34. If you’re feeling stuck, it’s usually an indicator that there’s an emotion you’re trying to avoid feeling. The most common are fear, anger, or shame.

35. You cannot become more valuable.

36. Most people believe confidence comes from being really good at what they do or never messing up. But unshakable confidence comes from knowing your worth isn’t tied to your performance.

37. What did you call the fear you experienced around money before you knew what money was?

38. How is your relationship with money similar to your relationship with your mom or dad?

39. Judging other people’s emotions is just a form of rejecting your own.

40. We can’t handle in other people what we don’t allow in ourselves.

41. Some folks refuse to get angry because they had a parent who raged and was abusive. But they’ll get angry at themselves all day long.

42. Trying to find your purpose is a fool’s errand. It’s like trying to find your breath.

    Your purpose is in you, and you were born with it. To think you have to find it cuts off the faith that purpose needs to grow.

43. If you’re telling yourself you should change a habit, that’s a great way to keep the habit.

44. We rebel against tyrants even if the voice in our own head is the tyrant.

45. You can’t stop the voice in your head. But you can react to it in different ways, and that will change its tune.

46. Being conflict-avoidant is another way of saying I can’t be loved for who I am.

47. If you think you have to act a certain way in order to be loved, you’re not actually being loved. You’re being loved for someone you’re pretending to be, and that’s not being loved.

48. Caretaking is a watered-down version of love. You can tell because there is no buzz.

49. Emotional abuse doesn’t just mean yelling or physical violence. It includes anytime you use your emotions to control another person.

50. Tension is essential to life — without the proper tension, a balloon deflates, the strings on a guitar lose their tune, and the muscles in your body can’t move.

    The same is true for any relationship.

51. Meditation is inefficient if it’s your only tool for self-discovery.

    It’s like building a house with only a saw. It can be done, but it’s going to take a shit ton of time.

I love this list to pieces. Its one of the most condensed wisdom held in writing to date. I will forever love Joe for this.

Yours,

P.S. Invitation for Founders and CEOs

Everything I write about here, I first encounter in the room: with founders who feel alone at the top, with CEOs navigating complexity they've never seen before, with leaders ready to shed an old skin.

If these ideas landed for you, it might be time for us to work together. I guide a small number of 1:1 clients, lead organizational transformations, and host the Wise Leaders Fellowship Cohort for CEOs seeking depth and community. Just reply here and introduce yourself.

P.P.S: And because you deserve it - here is your bonus.

My 10 “Most Popular Mini Leadership Guides”:

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