Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] I could do a video, but you probably wouldn't want to see it.
[00:00:05] I'm in a hospital bed in Utrecht the day after my birthday in 2026.
[00:00:13] I've spent the past 48 hours here, and it's been, dare I say, a gift.
[00:00:24] I even had little flocheches or slingers.
[00:00:29] Those are the Dutch words which mean little flags. And it's a typical Dutch birthday thing. The nurses hung them up for me on my birthday, and those people said that, wouldn't I have rather spent my birthday somewhere else?
[00:00:47] And I'm going to quote one of my favorite songs, and that is there is no place I'd rather be.
[00:00:56] And it's God's honest truth as I sit here recovering from my surgery in all in the deepest of gratitude that all of this could happen and so efficiently and effectively and wish I should love and care, and everybody's so friendly. And I'm not exactly a bundle of negative Nelly nerves anyway.
[00:01:32] And I bring the light and I bring the energy, and I bring the love.
[00:01:35] I share it with me wherever I go, no matter where I am and why.
[00:01:44] Wow.
[00:01:49] Just as I said at the end of a fantastic retreat last week, there's really just five words you need to know there.
[00:02:01] Oh, wow.
[00:02:04] There is so much love.
[00:02:08] There is so much love.
[00:02:12] Okay, I didn't expect this, but.
[00:02:18] Now I'm really glad I didn't do video.
[00:02:21] Got tears rolling down my face.
[00:02:24] I think I'm just one of the most blessed people on the planet.
[00:02:36] You know, I keep saying how this surgery, the timing was just perfect and how I was at a retreat in Italy last week and I'm presenting at a conference in France next week.
[00:02:52] And I need to pause for a moment and think that this is the dream that I have been dreaming about for years, if not decades.
[00:03:05] I live in Europe.
[00:03:07] I go to workshops and retreats.
[00:03:10] I present at other ones.
[00:03:14] I'm part of teams.
[00:03:16] I'm on boards, I'm speaking publicly.
[00:03:21] I've written a ton of books.
[00:03:24] I have a completely unexpected YouTube channel presence where I haven't looked in a few days, But I hit 265,000 subscribers, which is just baffling.
[00:03:41] And yet the only subscriber I really want is just myself, because I think that's sort of the weird secret, is that we're back to the oxygen mask. And I do it for me.
[00:04:03] I do it so that I can thrive and stay alive and survive and thrive some more.
[00:04:14] I think if you're not doing it for you, and if you're doing it to please someone else.
[00:04:23] I don't know. I guess it could work, but people ask me, where do I get the energy? Where do I get the creativity? Where do I get the drive and the power?
[00:04:38] I wish I had another answer, but it's just like oxygen for me.
[00:04:46] I just.
[00:04:51] It's. It's. We're back to mathematics.
[00:04:54] We're back to the idea of compound interest and growth and how it doesn't.
[00:05:04] Nothing grows in a vacuum.
[00:05:06] But the more you build, the more it builds upon you.
[00:05:11] And the more you create, the more you want to create and the more you publish, the more creative you get. And the more creative you get, the more you publish.
[00:05:19] It's not about publishing and numbers and subscribers and books sold and money, but it's.
[00:05:29] I don't know if everybody thinks this. You know what? I do know that not everybody thinks this, but letting it out and creating it just creates that circular flow of consuming and creating and consuming and creating.
[00:05:49] We watch and we take in and we listen and we learn, but we need to let it out.
[00:05:55] And whether that's in a form of an audio that I probably really shouldn't publish, but I might.
[00:06:04] Coming from my hospital bed after 48 hours of surgery and the best ice cream I've ever had in my entire life, which was like a rocket pop.
[00:06:18] But I was so drugged out that it was the greatest thing of all time.
[00:06:24] Cairo's time, Chronos time and how I can be out like a light.
[00:06:31] Okay, it was drug induced, but I open my eyes and the surgery is done and I don't feel a thing.
[00:06:41] Or last weekend where I meet people and it seems like I've known some of them for lifetimes and yet it's been hours.
[00:06:54] There's other people I meet and it seems like it's lifetime or the other way around.
[00:07:02] But not everybody is your connection and that's okay.
[00:07:05] If everybody was such a deep connection, then we'd be living in constant kairos time and that would be overwhelming.
[00:07:12] We've got to find that balance, that math and that magic to find that perfect math and magician magic.
[00:07:20] The math and magician balance, the mathematician measurement. I'm going to keep with the alliteration.
[00:07:32] I hope that wherever you are right now, if you're listening to this, it's hard to say.
[00:07:39] I clearly, obviously wouldn't even want to say it all the time, but right now there is no place I'd rather be.
[00:07:47] I'm just healing and cured from this appendicitis. Appendicitis. I had a surgery it went well.
[00:07:56] There was some more infection that cleaned it up, had some more antibiotics. I cleaned that up and I'm all good.
[00:08:05] I'm ready to roll, ready to get back in the saddle again.
[00:08:11] And I think, what, what am I excited to do? I want to sing.
[00:08:16] I want to use my voice.
[00:08:18] I want to sing with others.
[00:08:21] I want to marinate my voice together with others and create a soup of song that is both beautiful and meaningful.
[00:08:30] And I am no musician. I can't even read notes. I have no idea what I'm doing. But I've got the heart, my mind. Good old Martijn. He can probably figure out that learning notes stuff. But I think it's going to be more of a heart and gut, but mostly heart.
[00:08:47] Henri is going to have to get his singing act together.
[00:08:51] Wonder if I can sing with a French accent. That would be really bad.
[00:08:55] And comedy and laughter.
[00:08:57] And thanks to Kosha Prati for her.
[00:09:02] Sorry, if you're listening to this, her pronunciation, that was the big joke, by the way.
[00:09:09] Monday morning after the retreat she was talking about.
[00:09:15] I'm going to say them with exaggerated pronunciation.
[00:09:19] Love and laugh.
[00:09:23] So you'll understand that it's L, O, V E or L A, U, G H.
[00:09:29] But in her Polish accent she would say, love yourself.
[00:09:35] Love yourself.
[00:09:37] Sorry, I've got this whole like Dracula accent thing going.
[00:09:41] Love yourself into confidence.
[00:09:43] Love yourself into success. Love yourself into love.
[00:09:52] Oh, man, that was good.
[00:09:56] Okay, I'm rambling, but that was one of my big takeaways from that weekend.
[00:10:02] Love yourself, which I know.
[00:10:05] And then there's the element of laughing and laughter and lightness and silliness and joking and games and humor and comedy and stand up comedy and improv comedy and failure and fun and laughing and meeting new people and making new friends, hopefully some of them for a lifetime or longer.
[00:10:36] There's gotta have that element of laughter.
[00:10:39] I don't know if you don't have laughter together with someone, I mean, I guess there's other stuff.
[00:10:48] I don't mean that we all need to be stand up comedians. I'm certainly not.
[00:10:55] My stand up comedian act was how I failed out of comedy school, but I guess it was kind of funny.
[00:11:07] All right.
[00:11:09] You know how I know I feel better here on this Wednesday after my birthday because I'm recording something again and for the past four or five days I just haven't felt it. I don't even think I've created a short.
[00:11:22] I mean, I am in a hospital, after all. But that's when I know that I'm feeling good.
[00:11:31] When I want to create, I want to make something and it doesn't need to be published.
[00:11:39] In fact, do you want to hear about my France presentation?
[00:11:45] I ask into the void. As if there's anybody around. Well, I do have two. Two roommates here, but yeah, that's a different story.
[00:11:57] Okay, I'm gonna tell you really quickly because I need to work on this. And in fact, it's something I was even thinking about this morning as well. I'm working on it and it's already a sign that I'm feeling better.
[00:12:11] Just the fact that I'm thinking about my upcoming projects and I just haven't wanted to think about them the past few days.
[00:12:19] So. Here, you ready? It's called YouTube for speakers. It's actually going to be in Dutch, YouTube for spreakers.
[00:12:26] But I'm not worried about that part.
[00:12:29] And the presentation I gave last Friday night, It was only 15 minutes and the workshop is going to be 45. And I want to get an interactive element going.
[00:12:40] But here's the basic premise in YouTube. And I'm sort of using this as a.
[00:12:46] As a foundation for.
[00:12:50] Well, okay. My chatgpt called it the confidence ladder, which I like. That's good.
[00:12:57] And then, okay, remember, if I don't remember, remember to remind me. Okay, that's good. Remember to remind me that Gosha, what she was talking about. Right. Love, self, love.
[00:13:12] And so that needs to be at the end of the confidence letter or maybe at the beginning.
[00:13:17] So here. Sorry, I keep sidetracking.
[00:13:20] In YouTube, your video can be a selection of three different statuses.
[00:13:28] Number one is private, number two is unlisted, and number three is public, as you probably can imagine, but I will explain them Anyway, private is just for you. You have to like manually invite somebody per email and they have to accept it. And their email account has to be a Google account. And it's a big pain. So basically, private is just for you.
[00:13:52] Just for you. Nobody can even accidentally view it. So that's like. It's even more safe than on your phone. If it's on your phone, somebody can pick up your phone and watch it right here.
[00:14:04] Okay. I guess if they're logged into your YouTube account as you.
[00:14:08] Okay, that's private. Just you. Just you. Totally private.
[00:14:12] Number two is unlisted.
[00:14:14] I think this is actually quite interesting that unless it is something you would share with a group, a small group, big group, this select group, not white and public. Right.
[00:14:26] And so that's a conscious decision to share. And ideally you're going to share with people who have an interest in some way or care or you want their feedback or whatever. Right. And if this scares you, then share with a safe group.
[00:14:44] Like if you're in a writer's group or the writers group. Speaking group. Speaking group.
[00:14:49] And then finally there's public. And public is what most people think is the big scary thing.
[00:14:54] I actually have a little secret. I think private is the scariest because that's the first step. And the first step is the scariest.
[00:15:02] Even making the video, even recording the video, just the fact that you're doing it, that's the scariest.
[00:15:10] I think that's the biggest leap.
[00:15:13] And then to unlist it is much less scary. And once you're at unlisted, public is eh, it's okay.
[00:15:20] Whereas private, like nothing to private video.
[00:15:24] That's the hardest because we are usually our harshest critics.
[00:15:31] And that first one. And I have some techniques to help you analyze or evaluate your own talk here. I might as well tell you right now.
[00:15:43] One is put the phone down so you don't watch the video and you only listen the other one. So you are only using your ears.
[00:15:52] Then you mute it and you watch it. So now you're only using your eyes.
[00:15:58] And then you watch it with both on and you see if things match up as part of the interactive stuff. What I did in Vegas last year, which I got such great feedback on, it's funny because I just need to remember to put myself in the shoes of me before I started doing all this, right. I used to be really scared to publish a video or record a video. Of course we all are now. I do it easily. But why?
[00:16:28] Because I've been doing it for years and I've published over 5000 videos.
[00:16:32] So no, I'm not scared anymore.
[00:16:35] But I need to remember, Bradley, that this is scary.
[00:16:39] And so last year in Vegas, I had everybody take out their phones and record a 15 second video.
[00:16:45] And not to publish it, not to go public, but just to record a video to see what it's like. If they had YouTube account, great. If not, no worries. Just record on camera and make it terrible. Record the carpet, record the ceiling, didn't matter.
[00:16:59] And wow. People told me like, wow, you like opened up a portal for me. And now I'm one person was like, I'm recording every day for 30 days.
[00:17:10] It was amazing. So I want to do a bit of that. And even though this is a speakers conference where people are apparently a little less scared of speaking, it's still scary. It's always scary.
[00:17:23] So I want to open that up. And I probably will have people do the a 15 second short because that kind of riles people up and gets them kind of freaked out. And I like that.
[00:17:36] Okay, that's enough on that. You get the idea.
[00:17:43] I just hit record a while back. It's been a while now.
[00:17:47] I can look at my time.
[00:17:56] 17 minutes. What a surprise.
[00:17:59] All right, I'm gonna wrap up.
[00:18:01] I started unexpectedly saying that there's no place I'd rather be, and I'm sticking with it because there is no place I'd rather be.
[00:18:08] I'm here, I'm recovering, I got this thing taken care of that I never have to deal with again in my life.
[00:18:14] I sort of feel reassured by the Dutch health care system, which I was not worried about, but now I've experienced it in its full power.
[00:18:25] And I know if you're Dutch, you're like, what's the problem?
[00:18:30] Can you go with me on this?
[00:18:31] Can you try to understand that there are most countries in the world that are not as organized as this and that I am grateful that I live here?
[00:18:46] It is just beyond words how grateful I am for that.
[00:18:51] Not to mention my bank account is grateful, because this in the US I think I'd have to.
[00:18:59] They could have just taken out a kidney and sold that.
[00:19:03] I might have paid for it.
[00:19:09] Some Mel Robbins. I know people have their issues with her because of copyright some or other. She has a really neat thing at the end of her podcast.
[00:19:18] She says something like, hey, and if nobody's told you today that they love you, let me tell you, I love you.
[00:19:28] I really like it.
[00:19:29] And you know that, whatever, she's a rock star and she doesn't know you and she's just saying it into a microphone, but, you know, it doesn't hurt. And also, if you have so much love like I do, I have so much love.
[00:19:44] I have so much love to give.
[00:19:47] I have an endless supply of love to give, and so I am happy to share it.
[00:19:54] And if you need some, I've got some here for you.
[00:19:58] So there you have it.
[00:20:00] I love you.
[00:20:02] Even if I don't know you, I'll share some of that with you and just receive it and accept it and surrender to it and let it sink in. Because from me, it's coming. It's coming real.
[00:20:14] You're getting Henri, you're getting the full French heart from me.
[00:20:22] So enjoy it and take it in.
[00:20:24] And I hope that you are also happy.
[00:20:27] Okay.
[00:20:35] Yeah. There's aircraft on all the things.
[00:20:45] Oh, fine.
[00:20:55] Yeah.
[00:21:18] In my status.
[00:21:20] Was it like a Superaki?
[00:21:30] Alright, there you have the real thing. I can't make this stuff up.
[00:21:34] She just mentioned Italy and ice cream and sunburn and peeling and taking the IV drip out my arm.
[00:21:44] Pretty real around here.
[00:21:46] And yet. That's the math.
[00:21:49] There's a lot of magic here too.
[00:21:52] Let that magic come into your life.
[00:21:55] Just let it come in.
[00:21:57] Don't expect it, but don't push it away either.
[00:22:04] All right, if you're still listening, you get a double one. Ready?
[00:22:10] I love you.
[00:22:13] I'm still here. And I love me.
[00:22:16] In fact, I love me.
[00:22:21] Do you love you?
[00:22:23] Do you love you?
[00:22:25] Love yourself into love?
[00:22:30] Okay, maybe the drugs are getting in my head. Wait a minute. I don't have any drugs.
[00:22:40] Hey. Go out and create something, okay?
[00:22:43] Go. Make something.
[00:22:45] Do something. Hit record.
[00:22:47] Write some words.
[00:22:49] Build a sandcastle. Make a painting. Create a sing. A song.
[00:22:54] Dance. A dance.
[00:22:57] Anything creative, anything that didn't exist before and then you make it, and then it exists.
[00:23:05] And you might think that it seeps away into the ether of the air, but it didn't because you created it. Now it exists.
[00:23:14] Those words or those musical notes are floating somewhere. And they're gonna seep into someone's ear.
[00:23:24] And they will hear you.
[00:23:27] And they will be grateful as I am today.
[00:23:31] Because today there is so much love.
[00:23:36] There's no place I'd rather be.
[00:23:42] Great. Talk.
