The Dangers of "Repressed Special"- Part One

How do you "wake up with integrity"? A remarkable conversation with coaching Yoda Brian Whetten

If you’re a successful and intelligent person pursuing a more spiritual life path, you should listen to this.

If you’re a successful and intelligent person pursuing a more spiritual career path, you MUST listen to this.

This is one of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had.

It started, as is becoming mysteriously common, with a cold direct message on Twitter.

A man called Brian Whetten started messaging me with advice and comments relating to my work. I quickly realized he was unusually insightful. I asked if we could meet. He asked when I was going to be in Los Angeles next. I replied that I was on my way there for a wedding at that exact moment, and my plane landed in an hour. The next day we were sitting down to lunch overlooking the beach in Santa Monica.

As those who know me will tell you, I tend to talk too much. But from the moment I met Brian, a voice inside me said: “sit down, shut up and listen.” For two hours I inhaled everything he had to tell me. This interview is an even more insightful version of that conversation. I’ve subsequently listened to it four times, including once with my wife.

The short bio on Brian is that he’s an ex-Silicon Valley founder turned coach (who is usually well out of my price range). What interested me is that he’s dedicated his engineer’s mind to a systematic study of what works in the spiritual and self-help world. Personally, I saw powerful evidence that he’s a discerning filter when I read his short book on making better life decisions, “Yes, Yes, Hell No!” It’s both simple and excellent (which triggers my intellect, that always wants things to be abstract and complicated).

The specific focus of our conversation was what he calls “repressed special.” This refers to the unique problems encountered by intelligent and successful people embarking on a spiritual path. Greater awareness and spirituality makes you more powerful. When you marry that power to an already-exceptional ego, both amazing and terrible things can happen. As you will hear from our conversation, I have made every. single. one. of these unforced errors on the path. So I would prefer others avoid the more obvious traps I walked into.

Our conversation was highly conceptual, but also unbelievably dense with insights. As a result, we’ve decided to split the conversation up into two parts. Part 1 will discuss the diagnosis of the problem. Part 2 will explicitly discuss tools and strategies to avoid the major pitfalls. Brian prepared slides that went with the video, they are available on request, as well as the transcript. If it works with your attention style, this is really worth sitting down and watching like a lecture. (Spotify/Apple podcast links).

I am not going to summarise the interview here, because it’s worth watching or listening to in full. But what I will say is Brian and I share the same mission of reducing unnecessary suffering on the necessary path of personal evolution. And we both believe safe, committed and loving containers are a key part the solution.

Join us later in the week for Part 2 where we dig into the specific tools to avoid these traps.