Episode 46: Self Mastery & Inner Peace with Barry Brownstein, PhD

Synopsis

I couldn't be more excited to share our show with you today; my guest is Barry Brownstein. Barry is a PhD Economist and a Professor Emeritus of Economics & Leadership. He self-describes as working at the intersection of spirituality and the physical (economics), and as usual, the intersections are where the interest are.

This is the first conversation that he and I ever had on a live call. Not minutes after jumping onto the video call, I realized there would be zero beats missed, and the content of our conversation was such that - if for no one other than my future self - I wanted to capture it and savor it later on.

There was a lot of belly laughing, at one point early on I was incredibly moved even to tears when he shared a piece of his lens, his why. As the conversation progressed, it honestly just got better and better.

It wasn't until the very end of our call that I actually invited Barry to be my guest on this show - "in the future". He was so generous and humble to offer that if I could find anything of value in the conversation we had just had, I was welcome to use it as well as to schedule with him again.

We did in fact meet again and record again, but this one feels complete in its own right! You can connect with Barry here on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrybrownstein/
And also subscribe to his newsletter: https://mindsetshifts.substack.com/subscribe

Show Notes

Welcome journeyer to episode 46 of Calm, Confident and Deliriously Happy. This is the first episode in the new 9 sets. I produce the show in nines and so episode 45, which went live last week, was the Ego Death by Story so here we are beginning again starting fresh and I am so excited for you to enjoy the content of our show today specifically because I have a guest. And this person's name is Barry Brownstein.

Barry is a PhD economist and a professor emeritus of economics and leadership. He's somebody who in a very short period of time in my life, both from or at a distance but also closer through conversation, has made a tremendous impact in my work and made a difference for me personally. His ideas are really powerful and he lives those ideas out in a way that I very much admire. He has an amazing sense of humor and I really don't want to linger here spending any more time introducing him but rather you just experience him personally through the show so without further ado, let's dive right in. I do want to remind you that you can find today’s show notes as always at bit.ly/cicada046.

Barry: Ultimately you can’t drop anxiety until you drop self concept. yes everything else is very you know technique so yes there are things you can give to people to help them feel better. An aspirin helps a headache but it's not getting out the cause of the headache so people could feel like, “okay this helps... it helps if I go for a run, do yoga, climb a mountain, I feel good after that.” You can’t climb a mountain or do yoga all day long so people end up coping the other times.

If you examine your thinking, more aware, you become horrified at the stream of thinking that goes through your head because it's all about preserving and enhancing their sense of “I.”

I used to ask people to go home and sit down and share for 15 minutes and don't do anything-  no books. no gadget - well they come back the next class or day and say that was the hardest thing they ever had to do. They started to freak out, they just could not sit there. Because if they don't have a gadget or a book, their stream of thinking was front and center and they were never aware of it. It can be very uncomfortable.

The problem is we identify with it. The thoughts are not a problem if it's not grabbed hold of if you don't identify with that. If you're out for a walk and you remember something you were embarrassed by something that happened at some point. Well that is just going to go in and out of your head except if you grab hold of it.

You can also worry if the same situation happens again, I'm gonna be this way again. That self concept gets strengthened.

The real question is, “How do you get past that self concept, how do you start to go beyond that self concept?” Here's the thing: most clients are not going to want to hear this.

You see what you have to go beyond by your judgments you make about other people. Because of a projection, you’re only able to see what you're thinking about yourself by what you think about others.

Mandy: That's a really, really different take on projection views because people can think they are not nice to their wife and are really angry all the time and then you think, how's that inner dialogue going for them? I’m trying to help people find some compassion and that's why that resonates. I'm coming at the same factors in a fully different way. They're fixating on how they're treating another person and choosing that to beat themselves up.

Barry: From an ultimate spiritual point of view, there is no other person. Even this self concept, there's no difference in the self concept of ourselves and our concept about somebody else. It's all outside of our true nature. Our true self is not the self concept and is not what we're thinking about other people now. Discerning something about somebody else is not judging somebody else. You may not behave in exactly the same way about something that you're getting upset about it. Otherwise you won’t feel the charge about trying to confirm this identity.

Any progress we’re making, we’re shackling ourselves because we can. When that identity feels stronger, you get a false sense of progress. When you are making progress, the mind automatically stops where you’re so caught up in identity and worries and anxieties. The second you step out past that, you get so tired instantly that youI have to go to sleep because you’ve been so fueled up by that mental noise.

There's always another lesson you have to learn. Your biggest layers underneath it all there's these layers of guilt and shame that you're not prepared to actually see about your self concept. It’s trying to protect that but you’re imagining all the guilt and shame. 

Mandy: That is the optimism of economics. It really speaks to the whole science of just shedding outside the intersection.

Barry: That's part of the stuff I do. I’m trying to bridge that gap between Economics and spirituality which usually people don't see that it’s all connected. There are some rational people that think the spiritual stuff is out, and there are spiritual people who don’t know much about economics.

That gap has to be bridged if society is going to go forward. That is part of the work I'm doing - trying to bridge that gap now.

Mandy: That is so cool. It's obvious now that you say it but knowing that’s your direct intention and purpose. So let me ask you this, do you have an objective? What gives you joy about doing this?

Barry: I mean this is very bad but I still ask the question what should I be doing for the final thirty of my life? I ask that question a lot, and because I find that when I write pure economic essays, I don't get that much pleasure anymore from them. I'm not getting at the underlying mindset & spiritual issues - there's not a lot of pleasure.

There’s only a certain amount of hours you have in the day and if I'm doing something that other people can do that is not as enjoyable to me, why should I be doing it?

Like the other month, I had this essay out. It was a first time publication and the editor sent me back the best note he could have said - it was the best type of article I could get is an essay that only the author could have written. That is just the kind of target that I find myself shooting for only the essay that I could have written.

Mandy: That’s amazing, that’s the answer to the question! A song that only you can sing. Thank you for this because when I find myself clear out in left field on my podcast talking about things that nobody's saying, I wonder who is even going to want to hear this? We shouldn't be doing anything else. Going really, really deep on subjects that arguably noone else would even have the patience to do for themselves... but I think there's a level of interest there that really resonates with me. Wow, what a what a beautiful compliment, too?

What was the essay? I am so curious, I want to read it.

Barry: After the call, I’ll send you a copy.

Mandy: What's been really interesting for me has been letting the chips fall where they may. What do you hear when I say that?

Barry: I know that if I get up in the morning and I sit down to write ,any other space other than that space… and I am often not in that space at the beginning. I'm often not in the state of flow where I'm not invested in something. It’s involvement versus investment. If you’re involved in something or invested, you’re not open to having the chips fall as they may. You’re thinking, what is somebody gonna think about this? So Are you out of the state of flow? If you're on the basketball court. you're going to be throwing up bricks.

Mandy: You're describing my own morning in a way. I feel like I realized in the last year that even when you clear all of that conditioning and all of the reactive reflexes to whatever the belief systems that got accepted at some point are, then you're a lot more in choice. And if there's not actually meaning to anything, but if the truth self therefore is neither good or bad, there's just choice… What do you think about that? When you're beyond conditioning and you’re acting in choice, you are truly choosing. I used to think that everybody that was doing deceptive things or even appearing to be harmful things, they were responding to conditioning. But what I actually believe now is that many people are in choice during whatever. I think that was something very strange for me to realize. You can choose anything you and choosing something that I don't agree with as harmful is necessarily responding to traumatic conditioning.

Barry: Well when somebody is in the best of their ego, the best of their self concept, they are absolutely mindless. Everything they are doing is coming from their external circumstances. It could be seen like there is no choice. “I can only go down this road because of my external circumstances... my ex, my partner, my teacher, my boss, the president, society, my house, my kids...the traffic  - an endless amount of external circumstances that should be mindless - it still makes it seem like we have no choice.

As you get closer into your true self, more circumstances it seems like you have a choice. The power of choice is restored. All of us have a right mind and a wrong mind and the power to choose in between. All of us have that.

But the ego tries to hide that essential choice that make us mindless. Ultimately, there is fundamental equality with everybody on this planet. We all have a right mind, a wrong mind, and the power to choose.

How much more simpler can you be than that? As somebody who is in the grip of thinking what they’re feeling, coming from their circumstances, it seems like they absolutely have no choice at all.

Often, our view as a counselor, you have a choice to make when you hear somebody going on and on about their circumstances, you have already seen them down the wrong path.

All they're doing is rehearsing their story. If they don't get a chance to share their story they feel like they haven’t been heard.

Mandy: Well now that we've actually spoken a little bit, I don't do a great deal of research about anybody. I’ve just been reading your stuff and I just love it. Now I know even more about the kind of lens that’s informing what you write now. Did you teach on this stuff?

Barry: How did I get into all this stuff? Well I was very fortunate. I've always been interested since I was a kid and was always studying it on my own. I was about 45 and the university had a Saturday executive program and I was fortunate enough that I was very popular in the program so the Dean of the school said this Saturday, executive students would be interested in you teaching something other than an Economics course. Can you add some other course on it? He said, “I'll give you a budget and I'll give you 6 months to prepare some other field of your choice.” I said, “Okay how about leadership course?”

I’ll teach this course from the inner work side of it. And it was a very popular course. Students loved it and so I started to do workshops around it and the DIA and the CIA. There’s always someone in the room that doesn’t want to hear this stuff no matter how hard you attempt to get it through to them. One person could be outraged that I would even be going into this type of area. It was all self study and then I was fortunate enough to have a Dean who asked me to get involved in that area and so I started to teach it.

Mandy: What was the area called that you were teaching?

Barry: Leadership. I had some colleagues join in and we created a concentration on leadership in the MBA program. So I was having a blast by the end of my career at the university. The school had gone into more undergraduate courses, where I started with almost all graduate courses.

I had no skills to teach undergrad - an 18 year old is not interested in hearing any of this stuff.

Mandy: It’s like trying to work with children and imagery like I do. It's trying to hold ants in your hand or something-  it just scatters. It’s a different skillset, different age group.

Barry: You must be very good at the stuff you do since you’re not eligible for insurance, since people have to pay you out of pocket in order to keep and attract clients.

Mandy: This is where it’s been very interesting lately because trying to create business with people around what they really need that aligns with the method you are trying to use, it’s just very tricky. That’s why I think I was talking about trust in this episode- even in building a business. What does that really look like? When you’re taking someone’s money and you’re promising something because you're trying to provide hope in something they've literally never experienced before and they come in some ways don't even believe is possible… to be stepping beyond this sphere not only just like conditioned physical fear but actual in the recesses like the carousel-go-round of meaning making about personal individual value.

I'm hooking all this stuff but nevertheless... I am really good at it and I think my background is really cool because  I used to work on the flight line at Langley Air Force base as a maintenance officer and in lots of different commercial industries and bringing system to something like healing.

It’s like a systematic way so I've always been really focused on results for people because also I am empathetic. I know that it’s a dark place without any hope, despite total despair and thinking especially people that have privilege. We are so comfortable having the resource. Me personally, on the outside everything looks successful.

So I think that can be a very isolating place as people. I work with some people who have 7 bigger companies or this or that. They have a house that's maybe $1.5 million or more and they don’t enjoy any of it. Chose a wife, wanted kids, chose the job… they’ve been climbing this ladder and that's really the specialty where I can actually make a difference - the promise of a change of a result that really could be transformative like a lifetime achievement because once you see beyond that you get to keep it forever.

Right now it's like the most important thing.

Barry: Yeah exactly where they need to hear from you first and foremost. There's nothing wrong with them fundamentally. It’s what’s inside them. That person they’re trying to find is there and there's nothing wrong with that. All the stuff on the outside that they’re suffering from, the weight that they are not unique. Everybody on this planet is suffering in the same way and for some people that's a great relief to know nothing is wrong with them.

I’ll ask classes, “Is there anybody in the room that would be comfortable having a neon sign on their forehead showing their current thought? And everybody laughs because everybody is messed up. There's nobody here that would be comfortable having a sign on their forehead showing their current thoughts.

But that's not who you are so it's okay and for some people to just give up trying to polish this turd on the outside. You give people that hope, you give that great gift. They can give up polishing the turd.

Mandy: I don’t think I have laughed this much in quite some time. So enjoyable. I feel really even more grace that we have now talked.

When you think about impact of time spent just in this life and thinking about, what should I be doing? Have you ever have had a vision of what's the impact of the work you’re doing? If I sing the song that I’m going to sing, do you even identify with wanting an outcome from that or do you simply stay in the work?

Barry: Yeah well, that's a great question when you’re at the university, when you're in front of a room, you're getting that sense. If you have a self sense and you know you connected and that you helped, you don’t know what the outcome is to be, but you know you helped… since I stepped outside the university and my main form of communication is in essays, you don't know that as much... The whole metaphor that you're throwing a stone in the pond and you don't know how it's gonna ripple. I have to just remember because being isolated and just your writing is not the same as what you do where you have that check in, that connection and you have that felt sense which could really be beautiful.

The connection might be an enriching conversation. I feel enriched by it- it’s nice. That’s something you don't quite get with an essay.

A standard joke with some of my students was that, “You screwed me for life.” How did I screw them for life? Well there's no going back to the old ways after a little bit of understanding. They  can never forget what was learned. They can never hide it again. I’m sure that’s the same impact you have on your clients. If you only see them once or twice, they can't quite go back because you opened the door to something they didn’t see before.

Mandy: Yes, it’s true. Clearly you're operating from a certain set of values that I feel resonate very closely with my values and that also leads me to think that in one way, there is something that you're kind of attempting to create through the writing. I think the way you answered that question is exactly the way that I meant it nd that's actually giving a lot of benefits to me personally, too, because I'm realizing there's reasons why the work is compelling sometimes and maybe not others. And also the personal benefit gained from the work, but then in a very practical sense, are you advocating for something specific?

Barry: Well, that's a really great question. When I was teaching in a classroom, people used to jokingly say, “You’re sneaking up on us.” If you have 16 weeks in a whole semester and you have 2 days for a workshop, you can build the place you're trying to go to some extent. Any single one essay has to be self contained because somebody might only see that one essay. If I'm advocating one thing, it’s that you have a choice to stop being mindless. People have a choice and they're lying if they think they don't have a choice. They're burying their choice or unaware of their choice.

Each person has to wake up to their own choices. They've gone as far as they can following the messy noisy.