Victoria Petrovsky: 0:00

Welcome back to the startup of human potential. We're your co hosts

Clifton Smith: 0:04

I'm Clifton

Victoria Petrovsky: 0:05

and I'm Victoria.

Clifton Smith: 0:06

and together we're Faces of the Future. Faces of the Future is a startup studio with a personal development platform at the intersection of consciousness, connection, innovation, and well being. We're excited to have you join us on our show.

Victoria Petrovsky: 0:22

And today we're joined by our lovely, incredible guest, Jeffrey Shub. So Jeffrey is someone Clifton and I met a couple of years ago, and he introduced us to the incredible body of work known as possibility management, connecting deeply with your anger, your sadness, your joy, and your fear. And we'll let Jeffrey dive into that a bit more by just a little bit of background about our incredible guest today. He comes from, Western medicine. He completed medical school at one of the top 40 medical university, university of Miami. And he was in organizational culture design, worked with big companies like Zappos, Microsoft, and a lot of big hospitals. He then went on to start his own medical practice in podiatry and foot and ankle medicine, and at some point decided that he didn't want to wear shoes anymore. So he's just an all around revolutionary, incredible being questioning societal norms everywhere. He goes in every industry that he's worked in and, without further ado, Jeffrey. Hello.

Jeffrey Shub: 1:30

Hello, Victoria and Clifton. I like to start off in podcasts with saying, thank you, saying thank you to, to you who put so much work and effort into making these channels. I get to be a guest, you know, I get to show up and just speak and answer questions and it is so tough to make these things. And so thank you for doing that and for inviting me here to play with you for however long we play for.

Victoria Petrovsky: 2:05

You're so welcome. So excited to have this conversation with you today. You know, many times when we've hung out in the past, we've talked about how, oh, wow, we need to be recording this conversation. People need to hear it and be a fly on the wall. That's literally every conversation we've ever had. So today our listeners get the privilege of being that fly on the wall and engaging in the conversation with us. So, can you share a little bit about your background? You know, I touched on it briefly with kind of the Western medicine, traditional healthcare background, similar to me with the nursing. And then what made you head in that other direction? What made you start questioning things about what you learned with how you were brought up?

Jeffrey Shub: 2:47

Wow. It's a big question. And where it starts actually is when you were leading us through this meditation before kicking off, this practice of connecting with my center to the center of the earth is, One that I've done many times and every time is so different. And this time, which was similar to another recent time, I could feel the cords of all the other beings, you know, all the other humans. And on earth, I feel it connected to mine and it brings a, there's so much, I feel so much sadness in that connection. because first of all, there are all these other beings that I'm connected to, which in its of itself is something that would bring a lot of sadness to me and probably to any other person who allowed themselves to feel it. But also there's so much pain, you know, there's really so much pain happening in the world. and I can feel it, I can feel it for no reason. I can just say, it's important that I allow myself to connect to this. And so your question is, you know, what led me on a different path? And somehow I allowed myself to feel a pain. allowed myself to feel a pain enough that it caused me to make a turn in a different direction. At the time I didn't know this consciously, I didn't have the tools to do it and one thing that I'm sort of tuning into more and more is that all the stuff that we talk about all the spiritual things and the consciousness things, they're not things that I didn't have before and now I have. There are things that we all have are always operating in us and through us. And it's just creating the conscious connection to these things helps to turn the volume up, turn the volume down, and start to become sort of magicians in the definition that I use, which is, the ability to shift. the present through my conscious will. So, back then I did not have this, these tools or this awareness. I just had this insane dissatisfaction. I grew up with this strange understanding that, our bodies are capable of healing themselves. And so when I went into the Western medicine world, it just did not fit. And I tried to reshape myself to make it work. But apparently too rebellious to reshape myself enough that I would be That I would be, turned off enough, you know, that I would be adaptive enough to fit into a world that is as enslaving as medicine is like as indoctrinating as it is. So I just could not turn myself, off enough to fit in. And so that eventually led to a breakdown and, you know, just crumbling to make space for what else could I be if I'm not what I thought I was going to be for my whole, young life

Victoria Petrovsky: 6:16

Wow beautiful. Thank you

Clifton Smith: 6:19

Yes.

Victoria Petrovsky: 6:19

So much depth and presence in that response.

Clifton Smith: 6:24

and some of the things that you said, I'd love to dive in a bit. the first thing you said is you just knew that there was, that the body was capable of healing itself. How did you know that? Or where did that come from?

Jeffrey Shub: 6:39

it is a funny story. I've told this many times, but my dad, my father is a doctor. As I grew up in this house with this being that could really take care of anything that was going on. You know, he studied emergency medicine. And so emergency medicines is this amazing, unique part of medicine where it's like something happens and you just take care of it, handle it. And a lot of things need this acute handling, like to know how to create the, let's say the environment or the parameters for the body to take care of itself. And it's okay. So my dad's a, he's a doctor and all of our family, you know, extended family and friends of the family. I grew up in this very big community in Puerto Rico, Jewish community. You know, it's. A thousand people really tight and everybody goes to my father. He's the doctor of the community and I want this antibiotic, or I want this pill or my, you know, someone recommended this and he would write a prescription to everybody, whatever they wanted, you know, he just didn't, he kind of didn't care to, have the difficult conversations with them, but when it came to us getting sick or getting injured. The answer was always just let it be, your body will take care of it.

Victoria Petrovsky: 8:05

Just breathe

Jeffrey Shub: 8:07

Yeah. You know, it's just, don't worry, you don't have to do anything about this. it was this, it wasn't overtly discussed, but it was just woven in the fabric of. The communication and the approach. so this, it became embedded into my being somehow that there's a wisdom in the body. It knows. What to do, you just have to kind of get out of the way the

Victoria Petrovsky: 8:37

Yeah. So something you shared earlier about, wanting to feel things more intensely. I remember a few years ago when we first met you. that's one of the reasons why you stopped wearing shoes. And, what you just said about the body has its intelligence to kind of heal and calibrate itself. could you speak to that please? And you know, like the piece that we were talking about before we jumped on and hit record was about like the whole ankle and foot. Thing how something is more for the person versus the approach the industry takes is more for I guess the pocket

Jeffrey Shub: 9:12

person versus the pocket. I like that. okay. Where do I start? so there's this, what we just talked about that I already had this in my being. And so I tried to change myself to become a, good medical doctor and I just couldn't. So I left. And then later on, after a couple years, I was approached by a podiatrist. So he's a foot and ankle doctor specialist, and to start a podiatry group practice. And at the time, I still didn't know why. You know, I didn't really know what I believed in. I didn't, I, I didn't know what I was to stand for. So I, I was still trying to make it, I was still trying to be successful in the world. And I said, okay, you know, I was working for this consulting business and it was kind of chaotic and I didn't know what was going on and who wouldn't jump at an opportunity to start their own thing. So I went for it and I had a lot of, I'd done a lot of research in foot and ankle surgery and foot and ankle medicine. So I had that already in my repertoire and you can even look up and foot and ankle international and find my name published in research papers. For those who wants the reputation and and so anyway, I got, I started this business with my partner and I'm working on all of the business side, you know, he's doing the clinical work and I'm doing the HR and the branding and marketing and finances, and I'm teaching myself everything along the way. I'm getting an MBA. On my own, you know, by just reading, okay, what do I need to solve? Here's a book, read the book, you know, read the, whatever I need to do, start testing, call somebody if I don't know. And at the same time, I got very curious about the clinical practices, like why would we do what we did for the patients? as I started to unfold it more and ask some really dangerous questions. It started to unravel, like the, the whole fabric of the, like the whole premise, all the assumptions, the foundation of why we do what we do, it just, it all started to fall out from the bottom, it had no mass, when I measured it against my understanding of what it means to be a human or this like biological evolutionary system being, and for example, when, a person is having a problem with their feet, most times, a podiatrist will recommend getting a pair of orthotics or like shoe inserts that will stabilize your foot.

Victoria Petrovsky: 12:12

I wore them as a nurse sometimes in my nursing shoes because I was on my feet all day

Jeffrey Shub: 12:18

Yes, and since we can have a really big conversation about conventional footwear, a whole other topic. The point is when your feet are hurting, they give you an immobilization and external stabilization device, which, Acutely works in the short term it works. You feel no more pain. You also don't, you also feel no more pain. So you actually get no more inputs from this part of your body about what works and what doesn't work. You're basically numbing your foot and you're externally supporting it, which means that your foot is just going to get worse over time anything in your body does. When you support it X extrinsically or externally, it's just, you start to become weaker. So I don't know if you ever read the book anti fragile, but it was an incredible, portrayal or like, it's basically a new context.

Victoria Petrovsky: 13:18

We have it on the bookshelf back there. doing. ha ha

Clifton Smith: 13:21

it's one of my favorite books, right? It's so good.

Jeffrey Shub: 13:25

yes. It creates a whole new context. For humans to understand themselves. So when you understand that you actually are this thing that gets stronger when you get pushed, then if you apply that to any Western medical treatment, it just, does not fit anymore. So, so the conversation about your health is actually a context conversation, like how to approach your health. It's a conversation about context, not about should I do this or should I do that? You know, is it better if I do this or is it better to do that? It's actually if you can upgrade your context about what it means to be you as a human then the decision making process becomes obvious. So reading anti fragile is a great way to upgrade your context.

Victoria Petrovsky: 14:23

And by context, you mean kind of the zoomed out lens? Like the meta narrative that you work with in your definitions?

Jeffrey Shub: 14:32

exactly. Like the Thought-ware upgrade like what you're thinking with.

Victoria Petrovsky: 14:37

Mm hmm.

Jeffrey Shub: 14:38

So, so you have thoughts, you have all these thoughts all the time and your thoughts come from something deeper, which is what you used to think with. So one example is, this is a great one since we're doing a being based business podcast. One common, pitfall in business is we have a problem. Like there's this thing and we have to solve it. The, problem with it is that there's no we in responsibility, you cannot apply responsibility to a we. Because as most people probably have experienced, when you say we have to do this, who does it, nobody. So, to assign problems to groups of people just doesn't work. So an upgrade in Thought-ware would be, called, problem ownership, whose problem is it? That's an example. So if I move through the world with with this. Deep understanding that, a problem is either mine or yours, or there is no problem, which is an incredibly challenging category for people to fall into somehow to consider that there is no problem, then the world looks different all of a sudden. And the thoughts that I'm capable of having are now different.

Clifton Smith: 16:04

What's an example of that, like if you have no problem, how does that shift someone's thought process when an event occurs?

Jeffrey Shub: 16:13

What a great question. Just before recording this conversation. I was in a space with, another man and we were working on taking back expectations that we've been carrying with us and, you know, he was helping me discover my expectations. And I discovered this expectation. I didn't realize I had, which is. So I'm waiting for someone to approve of me. I'm waiting for someone. So I moved through the world and I take actions. Waiting for in the light of, will somebody approve of this or I must do this so that somebody approves of me, which basically is I'm living in this problem based environment. Like I need approval in order to be okay. Meaning I'm not okay. And I need this approval. So everything is about trying to catch up. And that means that I cannot really access this reality where I'm just creating because I love it, or I'm just creating because I want to have fun. I'm creating because. My being is turned on about a project.

Victoria Petrovsky: 17:34

hmm. Yeah, as you were saying problem ownership before, I couldn't help but think solution ownership and solution kind of comes from that place of inspirations like, Oh, I'm inspired to create something. So then I take responsibility for going to do it, to make it happen, to bring it to fruition.

Jeffrey Shub: 17:51

Yes.

Clifton Smith: 17:53

How does that sort of adjust, I know you had your self taught MBA by great authors book by book. But how does that framework sort of interface with the traditional way that business has been taught, right? Like they teach, have a team and then delegate. And, but really in this world that we're seeing right now, especially with mental health challenges in the workplace, how do you take what you just explained and integrate that into a business environment?

Jeffrey Shub: 18:28

Oh man. So it would, we have to go one step at a time. We would have to go to get there, but I would like, I would just like to take a radical jump into if we started over, say we started over and I love cause you used the word delegate. So I'm going to go into that, doorway walked through the doorway. I held this workshop in Miami recently. And it was for a group of people who were wanting to explore how to make a community happen, you know, how to turn their chaotic gatherings into something more meaningful. And everybody's like, what is it, what is it, what are we, what are we going to do, and everybody's kind of expecting or waiting to be fed something. And what is it? An hour before the space starts, I'm sitting in front of this, flip chart, you know, I love flip charts. I'm sitting in front of flip chart to create the welcome slide, the welcome. page. and I have no clue what it actually is because how could I know it would be so pretentious of me to know what we're actually doing here. So I said, I called the space, what is it? that was the title of the page. And I'm just, so basically I'm going with what is. I'm going with the impulses. I'm working with what is happening in the present. You know, everybody's waiting for me to tell them So there's already something unfolding there. That is, part of the larger culture that most of us inhabit, which I use the term modern culture, which means You know, this consumerists, hierarchical if you live in a city, it's basically the culture of any city, big city, which is, you know, someone has the answer. And I'm going to get it from them. And okay. Anyway, we get in, we go into the space and I open this space and say, okay, what is it, what is it that, that you need help with? What is it that. Is blocking you from unfolding the potential of your being? What is it that you need help with? and the first impulse was. I don't know how to delegate. I need help delegating. So I said, okay, I take, you know, I'm standing in front of the flip chart. I take the markers and I hand him the markers and I go get up there. Let's figure this out because I realized that this is exactly what he needs to practice is being around a group of people and figuring out how to awaken their potential. You know, he didn't know that yet. I already, I had already figured this out, but so he's standing there and he first had to get in front of the group and become vulnerable. He had to say, I need help, which is already a huge step for so many people, I need help. And then what started to happen. And by the way, these steps, we just, we were uncovering the steps as they were happening. So the next step was, it was like taking stock. So kind of like. From everyone in the group discovering, what is their What is their magic? What are their skills? And we started uncovering, you know, everyone's skills together and. Taking stock. And then we took all of this skills and face them into the challenge, which was how to help this man learn how to delegate. And really quickly, it just, that it started to crumble. Because we found out that delegation is like a slave and slave master dynamic. There's somebody who has these things to do and I need other people to do it for me. You know, my time is too valuable and I need to, you know, delegate and to push it off to other people that crumbled completely. And then we're left with the question. okay, what is it that we're really trying to do here? What is it you really want? and then we asked, him the question, okay, what do you really want? And we were trying to get to the bottom of it. And finally we got to the new title, which was how to create inspired collaboration. And all of a sudden with that new title, the context completely shifted because it was no longer about, I know better, I know what needs to get done here and I will, I need you to do it. Then it became, I want to work with an amazing group of people and I want to know from them, you know, what they see. And I want us all to come together and create an incredible experience of. In this, in his case, it was like taking care of this beautiful home that he had built, which is a very big, fancy home that, that is, its intention is to welcome in community and be a, sort of a place where the bright principles of elegance. And acceptance and community and clarity, you know, flow through. So we just, we took it apart. We took the whole fabric of his fantasy world and all of our own fantasy worlds, we took it completely apart and we started over and it was, there was, there's another thing that I, that started to become very obvious, which was fascinating. Which is the minute he went up there and said, I need help. There was a village happening. Everybody was tuned in. Everybody was, you know, we're all working together in a direction, supporting this man in his, With this challenge, with this problem, process, whatever you want to call it. And the community that they were wanting to have was happening. It was so clear. It was like, Holy moly, it's happening. I could see it, you know, this is very meta thing. So we were taking stock of our own skills. And one of my skills is having the meta perspective of Noticing the more I don't know how to, I don't know how to I'm a meta noticer. I'm not a describer,

Victoria Petrovsky: 25:15

Observe the big picture.

Jeffrey Shub: 25:20

and so anyway, later on, we went into a, we rolled into a different space and another person in the group was trying to get from the group of people what they wanted from a community. It became this gremlin like argument, you know, when I say what that means is there was like people choosing sides and people saying, no, I want this and other people were saying like, but who's the leader of this community? And so it became this like finger pointing side, taking thing and, it just was not working. And there was this huge, split between what we were doing at the beginning, which was really working. And it seemed kind of counterintuitive. We were like one person brought their challenge and everyone just got on board and was working on it together with complete ease nobody had to be asked to consent or if they were okay with it, it was just, naturally happening. And then on this other side was so clunky and crunchy and nothing was working. I have this, you know, I'm still carrying this with me about how can we apply this? To create a new model of, what's commonly called business, how could we apply this to completely transform the way business happens and turn them into true communities that are, contexted in transformation and growth and sort of helping each other evolve.

Victoria Petrovsky: 26:57

Yeah, what you're speaking to is something that Clifton and I speak a lot about too. We talk a lot about the new paradigm of business. And, Clifton comes from the traditional MBA background. So for him, it's been a lot of unlearning. And for me, I didn't have a business context and it's about like, why do we do things this way? That doesn't even make any sense. So in some ways it's even easier when you don't have the background of business to understand, like, this actually feels better. If we do things this way, and to your point about the inspired collaboration versus delegation, that is a much more conducive work and collaborative environment. Of course. And, you know, we talk a lot about Beingness Based Businesses. So what that means is it's a business that arises as a natural by product of who you are when you're in alignment and integrity to your core essence. So if everyone is operating in that role, and they're inspired to opt in, however they best want to utilize and contribute their skill sets, not stepping outside of the bounds of who they are, or, self selected role that they would like to opt

Jeffrey Shub: 28:08

into. Yeah, I mean that is terrifying. It's a terrifying proposal for a, you know, whoever would be called the leader in quotations, a leader, because now there is no leader anymore in a way. There's no more hierarchy because if everybody only does what they want or what they're inspired by, which first you have to get to the point where people can actually identify what they're authentically inspired about, then it's kind of chaos. So imagine someone with, yeah, someone that's had experience running a business team now trying to shift into this new paradigm. It, you know how many healing processes that are going to have to go through? A lot. And I would love to see like that. In action, I would love to see like be part of a process of someone going from classic management skills to being based business. Structure,

Victoria Petrovsky: 29:13

Yeah, and I'm curious a bit about your background in organizational change and, you mentioned that you've worked with companies like Zappos before. And from our background studying teal organizations and holacracy, they're one of those case studies for how it's done. I'm curious what experiences you had in that kind of workplace that you can bring into these kinds of conversations.

Jeffrey Shub: 29:42

I wouldn't be the one to speak authoritatively about, holacracy or, these things that you're talking about. There is one thing that, was the thesis around which the consulting firm that I was working with was based. that is that essentially people are driven to make decisions based on emotions, not on logic. It's It's funny enough. I then followed that rabbit hole all the way down to find out what is the emotional body really about and how do you, how does it work and all of this. But if you first, Have to understand that yourself, like you have to, in order for this to make any sense or for you to be able to play with this thesis, you'd have to go into your own emotional world first and learn how to navigate your own emotional worlds. Because the, consulting firm, they had this thesis, but he didn't have the tools or the experience to know how to, how does the emotional body actually work? And how do we play with it? what the consulting firm did was a lot of mimetic engineering. Oh boy. Big word. Oh yeah, I know it's a big, big word. So, memetics is the study of. Culture essentially. So a meme is a unit of a culture, just like a gene is a unit of your genetic makeup. So you can equate genetics to mimetics and gene to meme.

Victoria Petrovsky: 31:20

Yeah. And spiral dynamics, the different means of each color. Okay. Got it. I didn't know that's where that came from. Thank you for going into it.

Jeffrey Shub: 31:28

yeah. So it's, I think it is Richard Dawkins that worked on, this concept of mimetics But the memetic engineering is how you play with the memes of a culture. In order to change anything, you have to shift the memetics. You know, we talked about Thought-ware if you change the Thought-ware only then can you change your thoughts. It's through your Thought-ware. So the Thought-ware is a collection of memes. So problems can exist in a set of memes that make up the possibility of thoughts and, you know, having problem ownership as a whole, it's a collection of different memes that you have to sort of program into your, software.

Clifton Smith: 32:13

So would it be safe to say it's similar to limiting beliefs or beliefs that you have programmed in your subconscious or identity constructs of who you are and how things operate in the

Victoria Petrovsky: 32:23

world like on a systemic level

Jeffrey Shub: 32:27

Usually beliefs are a collection of memes. So there's a, it's a little more complex than just one meme. It's already built out of a few of them. mmhmm kind

Victoria Petrovsky: 32:41

of entangled beliefs and more like on a societal level?

Jeffrey Shub: 32:47

So,

Victoria Petrovsky: 32:47

what you're saying.

Jeffrey Shub: 32:48

so they exist personally, interpersonally, and also culturally. So the way you interact with one person is completely different than the way you interact with another person. Like I was, I just found this out. It was an amazing discovery that I made I love sharing about what's going on with my life. I love unpacking and opening up how I'm feeling, what I'm discovering. And then the other day, my mother sends me a text. Hey, how are you? I haven't heard from you in so long. And. When I tried to respond to the message, I just went completely blank. Like it's as if nothing was going on with my life. all I could say was. Everything's good. I'm okay. And as I started to dig in deeper, I realized that growing up, I was so afraid of her judgments of her not being okay with the things that I was thinking about or doing, you know, that were taboo things. And so I sort of installed this program in myself that whenever she asked me how I'm doing or what am I up to, I just say, yeah, I'm good. Nothing. I'm good.

Victoria Petrovsky: 33:54

So that's that that, interpersonal Meme is what you're saying.

Jeffrey Shub: 33:57

Yeah, there's probably a few in there. One would be something like, I need to be careful what I say to her.

Victoria Petrovsky: 34:04

Yeah. Clifton and I speak to that principle as well. We look at it from the context of the morphic field, like an individual has their morphic field. Then Clifton and I have a morphic field. And then when Clifton, Jeffrey, and I sit down in a conversation, that's another morphic field. And any person that you engage with, anything that you relate to or have a relationship with is a morphic field and there's interpersonal or interrelational dynamics.

Clifton Smith: 34:32

And we use the term, terminology code, code the container, code our identity, and that gets to that Memetic functionality. And then we've embodied a series of those codes or memes into, a component of people's identities if they wish to embrace it or not, which is the coding, the term quantumpreneur, right? Are you a quantumpreneur? You know, your whole identity isn't just a quantumpreneur, but it's a packet of these codes that, revealed themselves emergently through the process. and I love what you were sharing about having a workshop and not knowing where to begin, because that's exactly how our program started. We had our very first client come over and, you know, an hour before, what are we going to do? We don't know. And then all of a sudden, around like 25 minutes, it all just started coming and we're like typing furiously as he's entering the door. oh, okay, this is what we're going to do. And that's been the process every single time. pretty interesting for us. And it's almost a new way of operating that requires, at least for me, a significant amount of trust, presence, And, appreciation for the messiness of creativity and also the magic that transcends logic or reason, or the desire to really have things structured.

Victoria Petrovsky: 35:57

It was very unsettling for me, especially in the beginning for someone who appreciates certainty. I was like, what are we going to do? And then it happens enough times and it's worked out favorably where just being in that present moment and creating through. What we call emergent realizations where you're just like, what is it? And then what is it is like, what's alive in this moment? And it always works out. So I've learned so much about trust and surrendering into that process.

Jeffrey Shub: 36:27

that fear that you're talking about that fear of like, what are we going to do? What are you going to, it's so important because it is the energy of being present. If I'm not with that fear, then I just, I'm just gonna, you know, I just sit back and I just like, okay, whatever. And then I just get

Victoria Petrovsky: 36:43

lazy You don't care., Yeah,

Jeffrey Shub: 36:45

and instead. You know, I noticed that it's not like Oh, well, I don't know what this workshop is going to be about. And I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get there. No, the fear that I'm feeling about. of not knowing keeps me really, it's like sharp. It keeps me sharp in each moment that as I'm leading up to the workshop, I'm like noticing the connection points. I'm I'm seeing the unseen and connections are happening and everything's kind of leading up. So it's this, I think one of you might've been the one that told me about this, but this. This theory that the future actually creates the present.

Victoria Petrovsky: 37:24

hmm.

Jeffrey Shub: 37:25

So I created this workshop that's going to happen over there in the future. And so my present is now changing because it's preparing me. The future is preparing me to meet it over there in this thing that I declared is going to happen.

Victoria Petrovsky: 37:41

Yes.

Clifton Smith: 37:43

Yeah, we do that. One of the exercises is a painted picture exercise where you actually pull from the field of your creative intuition or freehand draw, some timestamped, vision of the future. And it at some point occurs and when we've done it, you know, there's just moments where you're not expecting it and it's not exactly like in three months. Exactly. This is where I'll be. But it may be like a month or two. You're like, Oh, this is that vision that I drew. And we use a lot of that principles in this.

Victoria Petrovsky: 38:20

Yeah. A lot of that is present. Also, when you commit to a certain transformative process, like whether that's a coaching program, a plant medicine ceremony, anything that, you're kind of feel sensing into what that transformation will feel like. You start receiving parts of it. Like when you sign the contract or send the payment before you even taken any of the medicine, done any of the coaching sessions,, it's already, it's with you.

Jeffrey Shub: 38:45

It is a real skill to develop, to be able Kind of shrink the now, and the here's so much that, you can see the, you know, what is it that the person really needs because so often people come in with Oh, I want to work on this, or I want to work on that. And they have this whole, there's already this whole preconceived idea of what the transformation is going to look like and who I'll be when this is over. And anyone who's done transformation that's listening to this, you know, I think can attest that. 99. 9 percent of the time the future or the future state looks nothing like what you thought it was going to look like. You know, the shift that was needed was usually it was like so simple and so obvious looking back, but I could not see it. I could not see it. And so for me, a skilled space holder can just catch the now moment and feed it back. To say, look, this is what you're doing right now. Do you notice that you just did this, did you notice this? And it's like the system starts recalibrating itself by getting this feedback., I love this process because all I have to do is. Prepare myself for presence

Victoria Petrovsky: 40:03

So just getting into that state where you can be present.

Jeffrey Shub: 40:06

And then also have the skills to, like say what I need to say, because one thing is to notice something. The other skill is to like, say hold on a second. You know, say stop, right? That's comes from my conscious anger. Stop. Did you notice that you just did this? And have the confidence to say it, right? They're like, these are call them parallel skills

Victoria Petrovsky: 40:27

hmm.

Jeffrey Shub: 40:27

that I need to have strongly developed to be a great space holder,

Clifton Smith: 40:31

that's beautiful and from a quantum perspective, how we've explained it is, it's the observer effect. It's, there's something that's occurring that's a wave in someone's reality that they're unaware of, but they need an observer to identify it. And once they identify it, they collapse it from a wave to a particle. And now that you have a particle, you can start to adjust that in the 3D.

Victoria Petrovsky: 40:57

Mm hmm. Yeah. You touched on something a few times throughout this recording, Jeffrey, you mentioned conscious anger. And before that you mentioned fear as being part of the creation process. Can you talk about these tools how you use these feelings or emotions, discerning what feeling versus emotion is and how you can consciously use them to create the reality you want to create for yourself, right? So we often look at a lot of these, feeling states as negative anger, fear, sad, like, Oh, no one wants to feel sad. Right? So how has that been transmuted in the body of work that you do?

Jeffrey Shub: 41:36

Oh God, there's, I had this experience of a lot of fear. When you said that, so you just swung this door open. That's has so much, it's like opening that closet, you know, in the house that has all the things in it. It's okay, we've got to piece through it little by little. Place of this conversation about the emotional body. I'll say it's about the emotional body where it starts is you like it or not, your emotional body is always doing things. It's always in action. I work with a map of this map of we'll start with four bodies just to keep it simple. It's not a true map. It's just, a useful map. And, you know, you have the physical body. That's all this. You have the mental body that thinks and that learns and processes information, emotional body that feels and expresses feelings. And then there's this energetic body that senses like, is this cup too close or too far? You know, how's the space feel? It's also connected to sacred sacredness and, you know, sacred, places and objects like sensing. And I don't say feeling because feeling is for the, you know, there's specific words that I use to describe the connection to these different bodies. So if I say feeling, then it's, about my emotional body. If I say sensing, then it's more of my energetic body. Okay. So I think everybody who's listening to this podcast already understands that the world's actually happening on the energetic level, the world's actually happening. Like what, Clifton, you said about Waves and particle, you know, it's it's the energy and the energy, the energetic realm is really hard to tap into, know, just some people can do it. It's a really, it's a really tough skill. However, there's an interface between the physical. Realm and the energetic realm. And that's the emotional realm. The emotional realm sits in between them. And it's kind of like how the energetic realm speaks to the physical realm in a human experience. So you feel things and the feelings are actually, it's like the residue something shakes in the energetic field, you feel something emotionally. And that's then expressed your physical body. That's how it works. We'll leave the mental body out for now. it's not important in this,

Victoria Petrovsky: 44:13

My mental body was just questioning where the mental body works in this framework.

Jeffrey Shub: 44:18

I, I could sense that. So I, that's why I said it. So that's a great example right there. Like I felt fear that, that the mental body was being left out. So I spoke. And I spoke into it of why I'm not mentioning it to create resonance and leveling the field here. That's the example. That's one example. okay. Energetic speaks through the emotional. It's like the, I call it like the remote control. Like you're playing a video game. Energetic is you. That's the one, the player. Then there's this control that then affects the, the, the screen, the things that happen on screen. So at every moment, everything's happening on all the levels at the same time. what does that mean? So the emotional body has these four primary colors, like these four sort of territories of expression that can mix together and they can combine in different ways to form other, more complex feelings or emotions. and those are like, you know, anger, fear, sadness, and joy. This is, this map of four feelings was created by a woman, in the 1970s named Valerie Lankford, who was a transactional analysis practitioner. And the story is that she was committed to a psychiatric hospital and nobody could figure out how to help her after trying and trying. One wise, therapist told her to try to map it out herself, try to figure out what's going on. And so she came up with this. And if you do your own internal, navigation, you probably find the same thing that there are these four core feelings. Ah, take a breath. So these feelings are distinct from emotions. they are two different things, feelings. And emotions in, my language, you know, no truth about this. There's just how we calibrate our language to be able to do things, to play. the feelings are the impulses that are these, you know, what we talked about, the energetic field is moving, your emotional body starts to make feelings and then it goes into your physical body. These are like the right now things like. Wait, the cake's in the oven and I think it's ready. So fear, I should go check it or, God, I haven't drank water all day. I'm thirsty. So grab the water I'm saying these because they seem silly, but that's how simple feelings are. It's really simple stuff about how to take care of yourself, how to take care of your immediate environment, and also they get much bigger, which is how to care for Gaia, how to care for earth, what am I meant to work on? these are much things.

Victoria Petrovsky: 47:21

as you're bringing it more macro. Usually I feel the impact of different astrological events like eclipses a few days before it happens. So from what you're saying in your framework, I'm sensing the energetics of it. I'm feeling it in my body. Well, feeling it first and then in my body, I'm like, oh wow,

Jeffrey Shub: 47:41

Yeah.

Victoria Petrovsky: 47:42

And then the actual event happens and it's much less, intense than. a few days before for me. So talking back into what Clifton mentioned earlier about how you feel into the future possibility ahead of time. So feeling into the transformation that an eclipse or an astrological event can create.

Jeffrey Shub: 48:03

So you probably have seen this and I'm just speaking out loud to get your sort of. Your sense of it is, it's much more, sort of useful for people to describe how they want to feel in the future state. Than what's the material expression of this future state? Is that true?

Victoria Petrovsky: 48:27

Yes.

Jeffrey Shub: 48:28

Yeah. Cause you're getting closer to the energetic field when you're talking about feelings. Then when you're, Oh, I'm going to have 1 million in my bank account and it, I'm going to have a blue house with a red door so getting more and more into the subtle layers of reality tends to have much more consequence on reality.

Victoria Petrovsky: 48:49

Yeah, for sure. So what is the conscious version of those four primary color emotions that you mentioned earlier?

Jeffrey Shub: 48:58

So first, what is consciousness? Consciousness is that I am connected to the bigger purpose of all this. So I like to define this because for me, it's very important to define what consciousness means. Consciousness means I am a servant of the archetypal forces that flow through me. Meaning the difference between conscious and unconscious is not I'm aware or unaware. The difference between conscious and unconscious is I serve the principles of light. Conscious means that I serve the light. I serve the unified field. I'm serving something That has like a real purpose versus unconscious means I'm serving manipulation. I'm serving, you know, like sort of selfish or selfishness or competition or superiority. Like unconscious means my actions are serving shadow principles, dark stuff versus my actions are serving love, connection, transformation, healing, these different things. So conscious anger means I direct the energy of my anger towards the light towards love, connection, clarity, transformation, healing, etc. So each of the four feelings has a set of what, I don't even know how to, put all these words into one category. It's like it has its own flavor of magic. Each of the four feelings has its own flavor of what it can do to serve conscious purpose. So anger serves conscious purpose in its own unique way. And when I use my anger consciously, I access things like Taking action. I access things like speaking up, taking a stand for something, saying no to hate. Things like this. Setting, yeah, boundaries, yes, boundaries, and I want to say about boundaries that, you know, you're not going to treat me this way. That's not a bound, that's not a conscious, use of anger. However, saying, I'm not going to let you cut this tree down. know, I'm going to stand here and I will not move until you agree that you will not cut this tree down. That's a different thing. That's taking a stand for Gaia, for the earth, for nature. It's different from you can't treat me this way. so I just, I don't know if there was this anger in me about this word boundaries, that gets thrown around a lot. And so that's anger.

Victoria Petrovsky: 51:55

So what's, the distinction in that? I'm curious. In that you can't treat me this way versus you can't treat the tree this way. And I'm going to take a stand for not cutting it down.

Jeffrey Shub: 52:05

Well, just listen to the way you said it. Did you notice that the difference of tone of body language of, you know, it's amazing because even you saying you're sitting in front of this microphone, you know, we're just having this conversation and just saying those two things was expressed so differently. They came from different parts of you,

Victoria Petrovsky: 52:27

felt that.

Jeffrey Shub: 52:28

How old is the part of you, anybody listening that says you can't treat me this way, you know, how old do I sound? I'm probably 12 or 13 years old.,, it's a really child level offer of intimacy.

Victoria Petrovsky: 52:45

Is it different if you're like, I would like to be treated this way.

Jeffrey Shub: 52:48

I don't know. It's situational. You got to try it. You know, you got to try it with and see if I see it. It's all about the results, right? Everything that we're talking about is only As good as the results that come from it. So let me know how it goes. Just to give a little hint about boundaries It usually doesn't work very well to try to put boundaries around what somebody else is allowed or not allowed to do hmm. They usually don't work very well. I'm just talking results wise.

Victoria Petrovsky: 53:22

Yeah. So saying what you stand for, like how you wish to be treated and they can opt in or out.

Jeffrey Shub: 53:28

I like to think about it like A train. a train has, it's a certain, Game World, a train and the thing about a train is the doors to the train are always open. Like you're always welcome to get on the train. You just have to buy the ticket. can ride the train as long as you buy the ticket. that's it. So if you think about yourself that way, it's a really kind of a cool map for making boundaries. Like the price of entry to relating with me is this, if you meet that, then I will relate with you. If not, I will not, you know, you're the door is open. You're welcome here, fully welcome. And these are my ground rules. I respect myself enough that if you do not meet these ground rules. these guidelines, I will not relate with you.

Victoria Petrovsky: 54:21

Mm hmm.

Jeffrey Shub: 54:21

So it's action more about putting boundaries around

Clifton Smith: 54:24

And then to follow that up with A lot of times in the boundary world people set boundaries that are just false Threats and they aren't actual real boundaries there from my experience. They're meant to try to adjust a person's behavior And if that person doesn't abide by that desire for adjustment, or I'll call it manipulation, then it's on the other person who set that boundary to now take the action to enforce and demonstrate to the universe that it actually is a boundary, not just, a self defense reaction to what's going on, but a true embodied boundary. So in the train, metaphor, you know, the, if you've ever ridden in a train, you know that you actually can get on the train without a ticket. And there are people on the train who enforce the rule that you need a ticket. So a lot of times. If the train company has not, hired the proper, checkers, then people can get away with it. So there's, The metaphor, I don't want to go too deep into it, but you need to have the self respect to keep your boundaries. You know, it's one thing is setting a boundary, which is actually quite an easy thing to do. I want to be treated this way, or I want this, or I, but to actually hold your boundary, that takes real, like self respect. And honor and integrity and all of these come from your anger. All of these principles come from your conscious anger. if you think about it. We talked about each layer, having a connection to another layer. So in your physical body,, can you guess what tissue, like which tissues of your body resonate with anger, what tissues in your body have the same sort of principles and resonance of anger.

Victoria Petrovsky: 56:25

Like the myofascial or the skeletals.

Jeffrey Shub: 56:28

the skeletal system, right? The skeletal system is about integrity. It's about structure. It's about having, creating the leverage for the next move, you know, and it's about having a defined shape and a defined, this is where I stand. that's the skeletal system and it's amazing. It's really amazing to have this because your anger actually resides in your bones. When we do anger practices, a lot of people will go, ah, you know, and start to squeeze their muscles. Trying to, get access to anger, but they get really tired. They burn themselves out, you know, instead you can access the anger from your bones and it's endless. So it's endless resource when you get it, when you source it from the, from its. Native tissue.

Victoria Petrovsky: 57:25

Hmm.

Jeffrey Shub: 57:27

So

Victoria Petrovsky: 57:28

I'm curious what that looks like.

Clifton Smith: 57:29

Yeah, how do you access

Jeffrey Shub: 57:31

we have a limit on the microphones here, so you could try it. You know, you get into a centered position in your seat, and it starts just with the intention. You just set the intention that you want to connect with your bones and what might happen for you is in your energetic eye,, some people call your mind's eye, I call your energetic eye, in your energetic eye, you start to see your skeletal system lighting up and the energy starts to flow through it. So I discovered recently that your bones are actually, they're kind of like, fiber optic cables. They actually have. They run light through them, so you actually feel it starts to light up and all of a sudden you sit up straighter, you, it's like this, dignity, it comes from your anger, and you can start to feel, yeah, just like that, like the, breath starts to get strong and come from your nose, And you're already starting to build this sort of intensity of I'm here. I'm with me. Anger helps you draw your energy into yourself. Keep your authority in yourself. Just like that. That's already your anger. And you did not use any muscles to do that.

Clifton Smith: 58:48

Interesting. Where did you learn this? Or how did you discover this?

Jeffrey Shub: 58:53

It's in the world of possibility management, which is this global organic decentralized. game world, people are just researching, people are researching. And there's this whole group of, practitioners called feelings practitioners. And for the past 15 years or so, they've been researching the connection between the emotional body and the physical body. And trying to find opportunities for healing the physical body through this study so we go to trainings and we experientially discover this stuff, you know, it's not like they just, okay, that's that. And that's how this how it goes. No, you actually experience it yourself. So let's we can try the next one. This may be a little bit more challenging. This is, the next body layer. So actually I'll go to the third body layer because somehow the gap's a little smaller, but what is the tissue that resonates with your fear? You know, if you think about fear and it's magic and what it offers. What tissues in your body connect to the fear.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:00:03

That one, I would say like your nervous system

Jeffrey Shub: 1:00:05

Your nervous system. So why the nervous system? What is it that your nervous system does?

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:00:11

fight or flight, parasympathetic sympathetic response in the body either get geared up for survival or rest and digest.

Jeffrey Shub: 1:00:19

What else does the nervous system do? Talking about autonomics,

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:00:24

Yeah, you're also tap into like Kundalini energy, like energy that flows into your body. It kind of taxes the nervous system and you have to like calibrate to retain that, to hold that energy in your body.

Jeffrey Shub: 1:00:38

Calibration, and connection to the energetics, to the subtle. It's also about sensing. Just purely, you know, like on the basic level, your nervous system senses, senses the environment, it senses the different, inputs, it's the interface of sensing everything. Your nervous system is about sensing. And it connects it's the big conduit with the energetic body. you know, you have all these sensors all around your body, inside and out, and you're interfacing with the world around you through this nervous system. And it works on alertness. It works on presence, it works on noticing. This is what your nervous system and your fear is for.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:01:26

Perceiving any threats, but also any, upgraded awareness, spidey sensing what's happening around you. Yeah,

Jeffrey Shub: 1:01:38

Anger is the energy it's a warrior energy, this dignity, honor integrity, sharpness and the fear is, about the spidey senses and it's about the magic. It's about the subtle, the unseen. it's really about working in these, realms. And in a big way, it's about sacred space. So I think it's important to talk about because just as much as it works in romantic relating or relating, it's also works in any sort of, relating. So any, when it comes to working with teams or working with, clients, sacred space, Is something you can work with meaning a sacred space is a fragile space or any space is a fragile space with the fear you can detect its fragility and you can then move with so much care that you honor the fragility of the space. So we were just talking about this. I'm working with a group of men and we're doing a fear club, we're running a fear club for men. And we were talking about how it's so important to develop the skill of. starting over in a space. We get together in groups online and we do these practices. Then we go up into breakout rooms to practice certain things in small groups. And then we come back to the big group. So there's this tendency, especially for men who are not so tapped into their fear. You go into the breakouts. Okay guys, let's go, let's do this. Instead of going in and realizing, holy shit, this is a totally new space. And so I stopped for a second. I feel my spinal cord, right? And I feel the electricity in my body, that fear. And I go, whoa, this is an opportunity here. How do I want to use this space? Really taking that extra second to slow down and consider the possibilities. But that's fears for what else is possible. Cause it's like this, Oh my God, we can do anything here. You know, the podcast is about to start. Oh my God, we could talk about anything.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:04:05

I was gonna say, it's kind of like also when you get a chill, when someone shares something really profound or when the hair on your body stands up.'cause it's so oh, that's juicy. there's something big here that's huge.

Clifton Smith: 1:04:18

So to tie this all together, maybe we'll leave a cliffhanger on the other two of the primary emotions where they reside. But, where you, do we, what is pain then? Right? Cause you started talking about feet shutting off the ability to receive. that pain, which is usually a motivator to adjust something. So you're numbing yourself when you do that approach, what, how do you consciously use pain or how do you interpret pain?

Jeffrey Shub: 1:04:49

Wow. What a great way to, tie this whole thing together going back to the physical, emotional, energetic, when you experience physical pain in the body, there's a connection to the emotional body. There's a feeling anger. There are four types of pain, anger, fear, sadness, joy. they're all pain. They're all a form of pain, meaning, a sensation that is. signaling a need for something to happen

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:05:24

Mm-Hmm.

Jeffrey Shub: 1:05:25

And on the energetic, it's something's happening. Something is happening. So in the modern culture, mimetic structure pain is bad. You don't want it. You want to get rid of it. The modern medical world is built on just that meme, you know, painkillers, It's all about getting you out of pain so you can be okay. What does it mean to be okay? It means being numb, being free of feelings, free of pain, free of feelings. that's, that, so pain is just that. It's just pain. And it is working on the different body layers to give you information about what to do next. And, you said it really well, Victoria, that you didn't come from the business background. So you had a lot more range of sort of possibilities when it came to how you did things. Cause you had no previous conditioning. It wasn't better. It's just, you didn't have something solid to hook you into an identity. We all have a hook into the identity of modern culture because we were raised in modern culture. So we all have a hook into pain is bad and into, you know, the value of being numb, essentially. So to step out of that, it's a journey. It's a healing journey to welcome your feelings back in to welcome the pain of your physical body when pain is happening. Be with it. Be with yourself. Listen, ask questions. Be curious. Instead of running You know, to the holy man in the white coat, who's going to save you sound familiar, you go to the church, the guys dressed in the same kind of outfit, and he's promising to do it for you, if you just pay him enough money, you do enough, confessions and donate enough money, then you get, to the light. Anyway, I could go on about this, but you don't need a doctor really. If you change this Thought-ware you really shifted the Though-ware then all you need is community and all you need are people around you to ask you interesting questions and to help you go into your pain so you can discover what is your body asking you to do. Your body's asking you to do something. it's inviting you to take a new action, shift some belief, some where you did not honor yourself in the past and rejigger that block, let's say.

Clifton Smith: 1:08:26

It's beautiful. And our listeners, as they've gone through this journey with us, you know, if they've realized that perhaps they're numb or they've numbed themselves and they feel inspired to be a little more connected to that feeling, to that pain, to the sensations, to life. What are a few recommendations that they can do? You mentioned, you know, join a community. Is there a, a specific group that you recommend? Do you offer support? what's that next inspirational action you've hooked us or, you know, you've inspired us. to take that step to be a little less numb to that pain, to maybe not go to the, go as far as walk barefoot, around, but inspire to start to feel and open up more. What would be those next steps that you recommend to someone?

Jeffrey Shub: 1:09:21

Yeah. Well, there are so many steps to take, you know, there's so many first steps and. First, it's to honor that everybody's journey is. is theirs is completely uniquely theirs and their first step will be that maybe that someone starts walking barefoot. I mean that changed my whole life. Maybe that's your first step. Maybe your first step is start talking to people about this. start talking to your friends or your family about numbness, maybe it's, go find a book that is about feelings. So I still haven't found a better book than, the book Conscious Feelings by Clinton Callahan, who's, a mentor and a friend of mine, and this man Clinton Callahan sort of pioneered this community called possibility management, and I really highly recommend people tap into this community because there are thousands of people around the world who are really a new culture of village. And there are online groups that, that work on everything from anger to fear to commitment. And so to get tapped into this world and just start to play and design your path with other people who are designing their path is. Such a new Thought-ware, like such a new, mimetic construct on its own. And on another level, it's wow, this guy on this conversation was super interesting. I want to connect with him. And so reach out and we can do some one on one work that's possible. And every month or a couple of months, I offer a different. workspace. Usually these days, I'm doing a lot more for just men because, a lot of my research is in men's groups. So the spaces I offer are mostly for men, but if you follow me on Instagram, that's where I do most of my sharing.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:11:26

The, urban barefoot.

Jeffrey Shub: 1:11:28

the, urban barefoot, and my substack page is, I write articles and I have a monthly newsletter and there I share things that I'm researching and also spaces that I'm creating, so it's a great space to stay in touch what would be most interesting is that people just start having more conversations about this stuff. About, deconstructing the way things are to create new options for themselves.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:11:57

And I'll add for our listeners that Jeffrey holds a really big space. And although he doesn't work with many women right now, I did have the pleasure to work with him as has Clifton. And we did do a rage club and we're screaming in the garage at 7 or 8 AM throwing stuff, worked

Clifton Smith: 1:12:15

on our relationship consciously through it. So there's some very powerful things and codes and space that he holds for that. And it's been an incredible conversation, a journey with you, Jeffrey. I think I'd love to end on my side with one question and that is what does human potential mean to you?

Jeffrey Shub: 1:12:39

oof, wow, okay. oftentimes, when I'm in a training space, Somebody is tired, and they're like,, physical body is collapsing and, you know, because our training spaces are quite intense and you talk about this, wave and particle. I love that analogy. we could just let that person go on, you know, with their tiredness. But when somebody decides, hey, what's going on with you? What's going on? Oh, I'm tired. No, no, no. What's really going on? And when you start to dig deeper and deeper, usually we find a block, some sort of emotional reactivity or some block that the person's Underworld is grabbing to suck them out of the space and just say, and I can't do this anymore. And when we worked through that, all of a sudden the person's energy is just back fully back

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:13:39

Hmm.

Jeffrey Shub: 1:13:41

though human potential is what's, what most people struggle with is the blocks that they've put between them and their full potential. And then, the way it goes now with most people is they block their potential so long that they wouldn't even know what to do with the energy once they got it back. So in the coaching world, like when it comes to the work I do, I realized that first I help people get their energy back, you know, get the access to their energy back. And then it's working with their conscious feelings to figure out, okay, what do I actually want? What am I actually supposed to do with this, all this energy? What am I taking a stand for in this world? What boundaries do I need to make? What, magic am I creating? You know, do I have access to, what connections do I need to foster more? where can I be more authentic, more vulnerable? So that's my answer about human potential.

Victoria Petrovsky: 1:14:44

Beautiful. Well said it's like, some people don't even know what to do with their potential is basically what I'm hearing once you access that energy. So then it's about consciously wielding each tool that we have at our disposal, which are our feelings. I love that. Well, it's been such a pleasure and an honor having you on our show today, Jeffrey. I love that we get to just be ourselves and have our usual types of conversation, but with others to witness and observe and collapse it further into a particle as Clifton said, thank you all so much for joining in today. And, we'll talk to you guys next time