Leadershipedelics
Leadershipedelics
Exploring Happiness, Leadership, and Self-Ownership with Olivier Egli: Discovering the Power of Storytelling and Intention
What happens when you sit around a bonfire, sharing stories, and reconnecting with your true self? Olivier Egli, founder at Why Story and the brain behind the Bonfire Exchange, takes us on a journey of discovery, revealing how leaders can create unified teams bonded over shared narratives rather than mere business objectives. This episode invites you to examine your own story and unravel the ways in which it can transform your leadership style.
Have you ever wondered about the correlation between personal happiness and your true nature? Olivier Egli provokes us to explore this idea, shedding light on his own journey of choosing contentment over a high-paying job. We take on the conventional concepts of happiness and perfection, showcasing how growth and appreciating every moment are actually the keys to unlocking our true potential. The discussion then steers towards self-ownership, and the significance of embracing the scars and pain that life inevitably presents.
As we navigate through the world of storytelling and intention in business, Olivier offers some intriguing insights. He illustrates how Steve Jobs created an unparalleled value with Apple products by focusing on the intention behind them, rather than purely on market capitalization. We challenge the notion of giving as a means of bringing systemic change to society, drawing parallels from the wisdom of our elders and the interconnectedness of an ancient forest. Wrapping up our enriching conversation, we explore the balance between personal and professional growth, and how embracing our true nature can lead to authentic happiness. Join us for this enlightening discussion, packed with invaluable life and leadership lessons.
Enjoy 🙏
Connecting with Olivier Egli
- olivier@why-story.com
- www.why-story.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dohappywork/
Connecting with Sebastien
- http://fooyad.com
- Upcoming Sacred Creativity Retreat in April 2024: http://sacredcreativityretreat.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastienfouillade/
Welcome to the Leadershipedelics podcast. Today we're sitting down with Olivier Egli. He is the innovative mind behind the Bonfire exchange and the founder of Why Story, created to help people on their journey to happy work. Our conversation with Olivier uncovers the power of storytelling and forging unified teams, provokes thoughts about the interplay between personal happiness and authenticity, and challenges conventional ideas of success. We'll explore transformative leadership styles, the importance of self-honorship and how visionaries like Steve Jobs established immense value through intention Venturing. Further, we delve into the age-old wisdoms of ancestors, linking it to meaningful, systematic change in our communities. Finally, we examine the harmony between personal and professional growth, along with the quest for true happiness. Join us for an insightful conversation filled with essential life and leadership lessons. Enjoy and see you on the other side.
Sebastien Fouillade:Here we are, Oliver Egli. Welcome to Leadershipedelics. It's so good to have you here today and that you could join us. I'm so happy to be here finally. Yeah, I was really looking forward to that because the last time we chatted, it reaches us so much to share and about your journey, your story, and I can't wait to share that with the audience. How's your day going so far?
Olivier Egli:It's been busy times. There's a lot of movement happening, but movement is life and flow is life. So I'm happy, I'm not complaining, but I'm traveling a lot right now and there's a lot happening. I am so grateful to take this time and talk to you because, as you said, last time we had so much fun. It was so great.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah, we're going to talk about happy work today, but before that you were just telling me you were heading to a retreat today, or in the next few weeks, or whatever Tomorrow.
Olivier Egli:Yeah, we're doing a retreat in Mexico with a couple of good clients of mine and we're doing what we call the Bonfire Exchange, where at the end of the work because my company is called the why Story when people have discovered their why Story, or also Wild Story, as we call it, we go to a place, usually a beautiful beach, we build a bonfire and we exchange our stories with each other, which is kind of like the final litmus test for a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders to see how much they reconnect with that story and how other people resonate with that story.
Olivier Egli:It's something that's very important very sacred, I would say and that really reconnects people with their essence when they get to share their story, because we're storytellers by nature, so that is really a very, very important part of the process.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah, how did you come up with the format for a retreat like this?
Olivier Egli:So I have always been involved in storytelling, so I know about the essence of telling stories around the bonfire. That's something very primal, something very human, because for ages people have exchanged stories, cautionary tales and whatnot around the bonfire and that's kind of like where knowledge is passed on. So to take this into a modern format in entrepreneurship, where people have to stand for something and share their stories, has proven to be so magical and so important that I wouldn't want to miss it for anything in the world. So now it's really part of something that I do. I don't always do it, but with the people who really want to do it. We do it when we have a good group, and then it's just unlike anything else.
Sebastien Fouillade:That's wonderful. How big is a group usually for storytelling bonfires?
Olivier Egli:Yeah, it really varies. Now we're doing it outside of the US, it's going to be. It's a group of eight people, eight very stubborn, very unique people who need a lot of space, who are given a lot of space. But sometimes, if you do it within a group like the same company, it can be as many as 30, 40 people. So the format always changes, but the principle is always the same.
Sebastien Fouillade:I love it and, just like you were saying, this is in our blood. This is something that we've done for thousands of years gathering around the fire, sharing stories and finding the words. I think there's a big thing about the appreciation of the language when you do that.
Olivier Egli:Oh yeah.
Sebastien Fouillade:And the words you use to describe your. I'm assuming are people talking about their own stories and reflecting on that, or is it more? Is it looking backward forward, like what is usually the story they share?
Olivier Egli:So the story that people share is usually the story of the self. I call it so it's. They share why they exist. They share why they even get up in the morning. Why Do you know that? What drives them? So that other people when I do it in a group, that's the same business, for example it is the leader sharing the story of what they're trying to achieve in their doings and their actions and why this company exists, so that their teams and their staff can relate to that story.
Olivier Egli:Because people, they don't relate to business plans, they don't relate to numbers, to, you know, plans in general, people relate to stories and if you have a leader that tells you look, this is why we exist. This is what I'm seeking to achieve, this is the value I'm here to give, and I've wrapped that in a story. People instantly realize I resonate with the story and I want to be part of that story. Well, this story is not for me, and I'm actually checking out and then has created much stronger companies and businesses and teams where people are united by a story, much more than united by, you know, a, the accomplishment of a goal, of a business goal or a strategy of a. You know, and that's the magical thing Once you share why you exist. People can opt in or out, but based on the story, not based on market evaluation or you know the standing of the company in general.
Sebastien Fouillade:So it's a mix of you mentioned leaders, that the people who are coming to the storytelling are leaders, and I saw that you help hundreds, almost that almost a thousand people in their journeys. Are those personal stories mixed with kind of leadership, like business stories on where they want to take their business, or like where's the kind of the personal and then business aspect? And I think this touches on on happy work as well. Yes, yes.
Olivier Egli:This is a great question to ask, because the essence of my work is that there is no difference. We are one person, we have one story. The difference between the professional, the professional expression of our story and the personal expression is just that one side is the doing and the other side is the being. So you are who you are, but then you express who you are in your work. So there is only one story that we have to share, and when a leader shares their personal story and shows that the business that builds is the expression of their story, then people feel personally touched, because it's a strange wall that we build, you know, between the professional career and the personal self. It's not real, because if we do that we become schizophrenic. We try to balance these two sides of our self, but we're only one person, we're one holistic being.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah, no, that's beautiful and that's such an important message. How do, how does that change people's lives Now, you know, like the leaders when they go back to their work after that, like, can you share some of the examples of things, that some of the changes you've seen?
Olivier Egli:It's very simple. Actually, my entire work is geared towards clarity, and clarity comes from self ownership. So people who discover their story, they become owners of their own self again. They're not owned by foreign stories. You know the stories that your mom told you, your dad told you, your mentor told you, your teachers told you. The world is telling you. You own your own story. That gives you self ownership, which gives you clarity on the self and then focus on your actions.
Olivier Egli:These people become so relentless and wild I call it the wildness that they become so relentless and unapologetic that they start to be so clear in what they're saying. They do, but at the same time, they also polarize, because when you start living your own story, there's a group of people who will love you and it's a group of people who will not be able to stomach you because you're just too direct. You stand for something that's so incredibly strong that some people will not like that, and I've seen this happen hundreds of times that these people go back into their businesses and suddenly they're like okay, this is what needs to happen, this is what I want, this is what we need, and suddenly there is this drive. There is this unapologetic, relentless showing up but standing for something, and when you stand for yourself, you will always have people who will be enamored with that, and that creates that surge. You know, a surge within an organization versus you're driven by doubt and confusion, you're being left and right.
Olivier Egli:So I would really say the clarity is the most relevant thing that people suddenly have this incredible clarity in. Of course, this is what needs to happen, this is the decision that needs to be taken, whereas before you were kind of like hmm, should I share the naught? We need more data, we need more information. No, now the information is your story. When your story is the source of the information, you tap into what I call intuition, the inner teacher, and a person that's guided by the inner teacher becomes completely invulnerable towards markets and the industry and you know the fashions and the trends, that self ownership. That is invaluable.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah, Now, I love everything you've mentioned and the fact that we tend to be programmed through marketing, advertising, what I call also weaponized narratives and making people feel that it's their own stories when it's really not their own stories, and going through that work to rediscover their stories is huge. And you do have experience in telling those narratives to program people like I was looking at your background, you know you've got background in advertising. You've done a lot of work, so I'd love to hear a little bit about your own personal journey that led you to discovering, you know, the happy work and using storytelling as a healing element rather than a maybe a manipulative element.
Olivier Egli:You know all about it. We talked about it, we had a great conversation.
Olivier Egli:I remember like it left me so touched because whenever you know, someone like you takes me back to that place and I realize again I really needed to happen. It's just, you know, it's tumultuous. So yeah, as you said, I have always been a, I would say, like a projé or like a student of narratives, of narration, of storytelling. I got my education and my degrees in that. You know direction and I applied it for over two decades in advertising and marketing. I was at a high level in advertising as a director and I showed a lot of commercials and I was co-owner of a production company where our business was to create stories for advertising agencies. But we used storytelling as a manipulative element, as a way to make people buy things they don't need and to buy things they actually don't even have the money for to clutter their lives. Right, we use storytelling to clutter people's lives and at some point I reached a point for myself where I was highly successful in the traditional sense, you know. I made a lot of money, I had a lot of accolades, I won awards and all those things, but the more I did that, the more empty I felt. I felt like I was chasing something that would never pay the dividends of the investment that I gave, like I gave more than I got in return. But the problem is that all the people around me told me that you're doing so great, you're killing it.
Olivier Egli:So I lived in a strange disruption. Disruptive state of the book says I'm doing well, the heart says I'm doing horrible. What's going on? And I kept pushing myself. You know, more education, more gigs, more jobs, more pitches. And then suddenly I was like paralyzed. I couldn't move anymore, I couldn't get out of bed anymore. The lights went out and I actually thought of taking my own life. I thought of, you know, just turning off the lights and be like, okay, that's it. Apparently, life is not for me. Apparently, this is as far as I'm supposed to go. And it was really, really a dark time. And I did go as far as you know, trying to take my life, and, thank God, something pulled me back, and that's something that pulled me back was I spent a day away from work and I went into a forest.
Olivier Egli:I went into a forest. I walked for hours through a Swiss forest on the beautiful spring day, and I think I spent the entire day in the forest just walking, walking, walking. And I was, just as I was walking, I felt more and more clarity inside of myself. I felt like reconnected with myself in a strange way, because the far that I got away from the noise, the deeper I went into the silence of the forest, the more I heard my own voice. And I realized there is a voice inside of me that is speaking to me, that is trying, that has been trying to say something for years, and now that I took the time away from all the noise that you know promised success, I heard that voice and I realized it was like something like you could call it the heart, the soul, speaking to me and saying hey, don't you remember who you are? Don't you remember what you care about? Don't you remember you know what we used to do, what we used to be passionate about? And so I sat down in the middle of that forest and I remember this one picture there was a tree, there was one tree that was just standing tall in front of me I think it was an oak tree and I looked at that tree and I realized one thing, my friend. I realized one thing that to this day, has become the driving force of my life the tree represents nature, and nature represents one thing clarity on the self. Nothing in nature is unclear on what it stands for and what it needs to do. Me, on the other hand, I was just confused, being that I was trying to go for things that lied outside of myself. I was trying to pervert, distort and betray my nature by saying I want to be this guy, I want to be that guy, I want to achieve this, I want to have that, all the things that have nothing to do with my nature. So I made a pact with myself on that day. I said all my efforts in my life will now, from this day forth, be geared towards rediscovering my nature and reengaging my nature and allowing my nature to be the driving force of my actions. And I never, ever, looked back.
Olivier Egli:So that time in darkness, that dark time in my life, was necessary for me to realize that I was a wild being and that my heart desired to be wild again and that I am actually a I'm not going to say a missionary, but I'm a guide for people who also want to reconnect with the nature because at some point they feel like this is not working anymore. This is going nowhere. I realized that day that life is about a powerful choice, and the powerful choice that I made that day, that I had to experience in that darkness, was Are you going to be a domesticated animal in a petting zoo or are you going to be a wild horse? Are you going to engage in your true nature, which is this explosive, wild, wet, screaming being that has a truth that needs to come out of you and you know color all your doings, your words, your actions? Or are you going to be a better version of your parents, of your neighbor, of what society wants you to be? Are you going to be someone who uses work to do a better job at winning the competition, competitive game of life, or are you going to use work as an expression of the art, the truth that lives within you, that can turn into value that other people need? And for me, that was a decisive change in my life, because before I was trained to sell people things they don't need but make them want them, and now suddenly I became this person that wanted to use storytelling for people to give other people what they need. But there's a decisive difference between selling people things they want, making them want it, and giving people things they need because they don't even know how much they need it.
Olivier Egli:And when I did this, I walked away from a very high paying job, from, you know, being part of an industry, a career. I abandoned everything that pulled the cord, that pulled the cable. I pulled everything, moved away and engaged into something that I call my happiness journey, because before I tried to be successful. Now all I want is to be happy. And, as weird as it sounds, I know people look at me like, oh you know square when I say this. Like what do you mean? You chose to be happy. Yeah, traditionally no one ever teaches us how to be happy, but only how to be successful. And we forget that in the end, nothing matters if you're not happy, because life is about an emotional experience, not a monetary, financial, material experience. That doesn't matter if it has no emotional validity.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah. So what is your definition of happy compared to, maybe, what we think happy is when we watch a commercial of a family getting up in the morning, everybody with smiles? Yeah, there are so many of those, so many of those. What does happy mean for you?
Olivier Egli:Well, it's actually much more simple than I thought it would be. Happiness is a state. Happiness is an inner state. It's not an outside reality, it's an inner state. It is something that is lived, not something that's achieved. It's something that you own, not something that owns you, because if you think your car is your happiness, the car owns you. Now you don't have the car anymore. Now happiness is gone.
Olivier Egli:But if you have happiness as a state, in the fabric, you know the fabric that makes you, if that is your reality. So you wake up in the morning and you own your happiness, not because something happened, not because you're existing, because you live in your own truth. Now you own your happiness. And when you own your happiness as a state, you own your life, and this is the best we can hope for as human beings. It's the best. After that there's nothing, there's just. Well, now we can use this to apply in the things we do, but without that there's nothing. There's nothing left.
Olivier Egli:So you know, happiness used to be a trophy for me. It used to be the things that my mom wanted me to achieve, like good grades and a diploma, a degree, a wife, you know, a children card, you know safety, insurance, all these things. Those things mean nothing because A we know they can go away, right, the spouse can leave you a house, can burn down a job, you can be fired from the company and just go bankrupt. But happiness, that is an inner state, because you understand that happiness is the expression of the self, is something that you own. You decide. It's just like someone talks to you in a poor way, someone insults you.
Olivier Egli:We tend to think this person now is taking over my happiness, it's taking my happiness away. We forget that we are responsible for giving it away because otherwise it would mean that the world owns us. And that's the traditional thinking in business, but also in life in general. We think that, oh, vacation is going to make us happy, doing yoga is going to make us happy, you know, seeing a person will make us happy. No, we are the ones who give that thing the power to create our happiness. But it is very important that at some point in our lives we regain that ownership and say like, wait a second Happiness.
Olivier Egli:What does happiness mean to me? What is happiness as a state for me? Is it the things I own or is it the state that allow myself to be in by saying you know what? I am enough. I as a human being, I am amazing. I am all I need right here, right now, because that's really what creates happiness in the end. It's to say, in the morning, you get up and say like I'm alive and breathing. I'm here, this is awesome, I am enough, I'm not missing anything, and anything that I could achieve will happen or will not happen, and nevertheless, no matter what happens, it's perfect. This is also to me. That's why happiness and perfection are closely interlinked.
Olivier Egli:If you think that happiness is an outside thing, you will always strive for perfection, which, for a person like me, is very problematic because I'm a perfectionist. So I killed myself in my former job making things perfect, and it was never perfect enough, by definition. I was always living in the future. I was always living in like oh no, but tomorrow I have to do a better job and this sucks and I have to be better. I have to be better. And when you do that, when you say that I have to be better, what do you say? You say that today I'm not good enough. That's what you say. And when you say today I'm not good enough, you basically say that right now you're not enough. And when you say you're not enough, by definition you dismiss happiness as a potential state, because you're not loving yourself.
Sebastien Fouillade:There's no love for you. It's interesting you bring up perfection, because I feel there's a subtle difference there. I think about craftsmen, I think about people who make the Japanese sword makers, who look for perfection as they create the blade and everything. But I think there's a difference looking for perfection in an unhealthy way and maybe in a way that's not aligned with your nature, and looking for perfection as part of a craft and as part of following your nature. And I'm curious if you're seeing that, maybe, or if you felt that, because I feel like I look at your website, it's still very clean, very nice. I know you still spend a lot of time and care in doing what you're doing. What's the difference from, maybe, you chasing perfections before and it hurting yourself, to now where I still believe you are following some perfection, but in a different way?
Olivier Egli:So I think this is so important because it has a lot to do with how nature grows and how nature expands. And let me be clear on this my whole teaching, my whole work is about you as a human being. You're like a tree. You want to expand, and expansion means you want to source your potential, who you are, the truth, and you want to spread it into all four corners of the world. That is what a tree does. If you look at a tree, it's like an open hand. It's like a hand with fingers, and every finger has another hand that just reaches for the sky. That's what we, as human beings also want. We want to spread it out into the world, but in order to do so, we need to use growth. We need to grow from the seed to the fully grown tree.
Olivier Egli:Now, the tree is not looking for perfection, even though it's a perfect being, and perfection in this case means nothing but the accomplishment of the self in every moment along the way. Every moment to see, every moment is perfect. That's perfection. Now, if you are a sword maker and you beat yourself up today because you know you could have done a better job, that's going to make you sick, because you will never cherish the moment. You always think the moment is lacking, but if you're able to say this is perfect and tomorrow I'm going to make an even better job, I'm going to do an even better job Tomorrow. I'm going to bring myself in even more. I'm going to try to bring myself even more into the world and I will take what I have today and I will elevate this. That's how growth happens in life. The trunk continues to grow because it realizes now is great and tomorrow a little more, and a little more.
Olivier Egli:But at some point the tree stops to grow. At some point growth stops and we need to understand, as human beings, that we too need a healthy view on growth. We cannot all grow to become bazillionaires and like Jeff Bezos and be like killing it, like certain people we see, because if we did so, it would mean that we all want to be trees that grow 500 feet tall and the biggest tree ever seen. Can you imagine what that forest would look like? It would be completely overgrown. Instead, we need to understand what is my growth, how do I need to grow, what is my perfection, what is my speed, and embrace that. And once you stop growing, once you reach that point. You operate at that roof, at that ceiling level, and you maintain what you have.
Olivier Egli:This is something that in business, nobody understands. There's so many businesses that are still trying to grow, even though they're past the pivot point, and I, for example, I have a very small business. We're four people and I have realized that we're already reached our pivot point. I don't want more. In order to deliver my value in the very best way, we have to remain at this size. But our traditional business thinking says no, how can you scale this so that you can rake in more benefits, so that you can reach more people? That would actually endanger my value, because I am the value giver, so I can only give what I have, and that is the natural ceiling of my growth.
Olivier Egli:And my perfection now is just to show up every day and give it all I have, but not judge the result from it and make myself the promise that tomorrow I will show up again and what I learned today I will apply tomorrow, and so on and so on.
Olivier Egli:And I think in those crafts that you mentioned, that's what we Westerners don't understand about Asian culture. These people are not beating themselves up. Yes, they seem obsessed, but they see the beauty of their work, they see the magic of what's happening right now. They live in the present moment, but they also know there will never be a day where that will just stop and say it's over, that's it, because that is the nature of perfection is that as long as you live, you show up, you do your thing, you do your thing, you do your thing, you do your thing, you keep doing it. There's no retirement, there's no retracting from giving your value, there's no stopping. But when your growth stops, it means that you now just keep doing what you do, you do it, you keep doing it, you keep doing it, you keep showing up.
Sebastien Fouillade:A lot of it is being in the moment. A lot of it is just living in the moment. There's a lot of love and care too. That is involved with that is involved in giving and crafting.
Sebastien Fouillade:One of the things that's interesting you talked about earlier ending your life. You mentioned it, I think, in your bio as well on your website. You clarified you actually meant it literally just earlier. When I first read it I was like well, in a way, you did end a life. You did end a life. You did not like, you did start a new life. I love that play of word that you had in there, which is like oh, I don't really know what it meant by that when I first read it. You clarified it today, but at the same time, the other meaning is sometimes you do have to look at okay, this is the life I led for a while.
Sebastien Fouillade:It's not necessarily an alignment. I have two options. I can continue on that trajectory. I know how it's going to play out. It's going to be painful and dark, but maybe have external gratification. I could say I'm done with that. Like you did, I'm going to move forward and rewrite my story and change the course of my story, which you did. I'd be curious did you call it your nature journey, the journey you went on to at that point? What was it like? What did you do? More nature, more exploration.
Olivier Egli:I want to take you up on something you said that I think is so important Ending a life so brilliant, sebastian. So brilliant because that's exactly true. Something that human beings don't understand is that death is part of life and at some point in your life, you need to die in order to be reborn in your own light. Because check this out You're born as a wonderful human being, a perfect human being, to your parents, but now you are in the responsibility and the care of your parents, who, of course, want the best thing for you, and the formative years will show you how to best function in the world. So I call this trials and tribulations. Right, when we're in our teens, in our 20s, we go and we try our things, we get our heart broken, we go to college, we learn things, we dismiss things, we get pushed around, we travel, right, we do all these things, but then, at some point, your heart suddenly says enough, enough, we can't go on like this. We need to reconnect with what was there at the very beginning. Now that we've done all these experiences, we've seen this checkmark bucket list. All good, now it's time we shift the gaze from outside to the inside. Okay, what's there? What's there.
Olivier Egli:But in order for this to happen, you have to literally be reborn to yourself, because now you have to be your own parents. You have to. You know it's crazy. From the thousands of people that I worked with, I would say 88 to 90 percent were still attached with their umbilical cord to their mothers, especially men in the 30s. Even in the 40s, they're still invisibly linked to their parents. We have to cut that umbilical cord that has not been cut before so that we can be our own person. You cannot be your own person as long as you live in the shadow of someone else, and most of us do.
Olivier Egli:I did. I was still trying to be mama's boy. I was still trying to make my mom proud. I still remember the teaching, the lessons I knew. Oh, if I did this, my mom would not like it. And so to kill yourself, literally kill the old self off by making that choice, to choose your nature, means that you are cutting that cord and you are being reborn into your own hands. That's what self ownership means. Hey, I am now completely self accountable, completely self responsible. But to do this is a very lonely process. It's very lonely, it's scary. I was terrified because I was alone. I went and spent so much time by myself during that phase. I went a lot into nature and I thought I was losing it. I was talking to trees and I was caressing grass and whatnot.
Sebastien Fouillade:That's without drugs, right Say what.
Olivier Egli:Without drugs.
Sebastien Fouillade:Without drugs, which you know. We talk a lot about psychedelics on the show, but nature is so powerful just by itself. I think that's a really important point too about your journey. This was like going in nature, breathing nature and facing nature and being nature.
Olivier Egli:Oh yeah, being. Oh, this is the thing actually. You know, that's actually the thing I realized as I went through this phase. I realized that before I drew a line between me and nature, but suddenly I became part of nature Now, if that makes sense, that was the big one. The big universal unity became so obvious to me and I started talking to scientists. So I have, through my former education and friends and acquaintances that I have, have access to a lot of scientists in the field of microbiology, biology in general, botanists, but also, you know, during my short stint in medical studies to now, people who've been in medicine for a long time, and I started having conversations with these people about the holistic aspects of being alive and how biology, spirituality, but also business strategy are actually the same thing.
Olivier Egli:And I'm now this guy who operates at the crossroad of these things. I'm trying to bring together all these things and realizing, wow, there is no difference between an organism, life itself, and creating an organization. There's no difference. If we engage in a false sense of growth, we actually engage in the same kind of proliferation of cancer or a virus pursues. You know, it's the same thing. If we don't understand what happiness means and use it for ourselves, we actually act against the biology of the human being, we act against our real nature, we become second nature and that's what makes people so miserable. You know, and to go through that, but in an experiential way. You know what was the first thing that happened, the first thing that I changed? I changed my breathing.
Olivier Egli:My breathing changed my breathing was the first thing I experienced changed and I now have this exercise that I do with my clients, which is inside out breathing, because traditionally, as a manager, you learn outside in breathing, you breathe, you breathe the room in and then you fill yourself with the anxiety of the room so that you become the room and then you exhale the consumed air. But that shows the mindset that we have in business we're dependent on the outside. We make the outside our inner reality. But life is the other way around. We have to make our inner reality part of the outside. We have to share our inner reality with the world. So now what I do is inside out breathing, is I breathe in, but as I breathe in, I imagine that the breath is sourced by me. I am the creator of my breath and as I exhale, I give my breath away, so it becomes part of the forest, of the system of society. And as I did this, I have to laugh because it's so, it's so crazy.
Olivier Egli:As I did this, I was like what if my work was the exact same as my breath? I source my work and then I share it with the world and boom, all my fuses blew and everything. All the nights turned into day and I was so clear. This is it. That's the secret. That is the secret. Giving is the secret to be giving, to be a giving organism of the universe, not a taking. Because you go to business school and I went to a fair amount of business schools All you learn is to be a better taker. I'm now here to teach people to be better givers, because giving man, giving is just giving, is everything. Give yourself to the world. You can die right now and you die knowing that you gave yourself away. You gave.
Sebastien Fouillade:That's a beautiful death and it's very freeing to things. Just to give there's a freeing aspect to it. I love that you use the breath again in conjunction with talking about nature. I had this beautiful vision once in the ceremony and it ties back to your tree image, but it was in an ayahuasca ceremony down in Peru and I went inside my lungs and I saw all those little trees in there.
Sebastien Fouillade:All those little trees that had this beautiful relationship with nature, and it made me realize how much each breath that we took was a mark of that coexistence with nature that had developed over thousands of years and we were dependent on that and it was for me. It became a sign of that unconditional love we get from nature and that undeniable fact that we are connected with nature. We will go back to nature and be reclaimed by nature, and hearing your story and bringing the breath and talking about nature, it just brought me back to that, which is the fact that every breath that we get is a gift. It's a gift to us, but in the way you're saying it, it's also a gift to others, an opportunity to share that energy. It's wonderful.
Olivier Egli:And I think that that is the essence. First, you have to realize the gift for yourself, so that then you can become a gift to the world. And this is how I see unconditional love work. Unconditional love is nothing else but to live free of judgment, to recognize the perfection of the moment, which is all that exists. The past is an illusion, the future is an illusion, all that exists, all that requires our attention is the present moment. But to give yourself completely into the present moment and to receive the gifts that you have within you, but then not to hold on to it but to give it away, like the apple tree gives away its apples. It's what we can do without work. And imagine, at the end of your work day, if you can sit in your car and smile and say what did I give away today? What was it that I gave away? How much did I give away Versus how much did I take? How much did I receive? Shows the distinction between unconditional love.
Olivier Egli:Unconditional love means to give and conditional love means to receive. Now you see that in partnerships partnerships traditionally and I'm so heartbroken to say that traditionally people meet and get married, come together because of conditional love. The condition is, I will love you. If you love me, I will honor you. If you honor me, as long as you take care of me, I will take care of you. That's bullshit. That's not how nature works. That's not that's pain.
Olivier Egli:The real secret to happiness is to give, no matter what To give, it's just to give. The apple tree will not make it dependent on its mood or whether you're a nice person or not. If there are apples for you to take or not, it will not make it dependent on that. The apple tree is just happy to give. Once we realize that we engage in true unconditional love, we will realize that unconditional love is something that always comes back. It's a holistic system, but it's about one specific concept and I cannot stress this enough Unconditional love is the art of creating space.
Olivier Egli:Read them. So if you are in a relationship business or private and you engage in conditional love, you're actually crushing someone and yourself. You're taking away space. You're taking away freedom. If you're in an unconditional relationship with yourself, you give yourself all the freedom, all the space to be who you are. And what comes when we're free? Happiness comes when we're free. Freedom creates happiness. If there's no space, if you have clutter at home, you have toxic relationships, you're in a job that oppresses you, you have financial debt and, rather than paying them off, you keep ordering bullshit on Amazon. There's no space for your own self to develop and, as such, there is no way for happiness to be invited in. This is how these things are all interconnected is mind blowing.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah, and it goes back to nature too right, because for you, going back to your story, that first space was going in nature when you didn't have any other ways out.
Sebastien Fouillade:And I love how you're jumping on unconditional love, because another thing I feel sometimes is people are not used to it. They're not used to trust others who also provide unconditional loves, and I've seen a lot of people like that and that's why pets are so amazing. Like it hit me one day, was the reason people like pets in general is there's this being that provides full unconditional love, and you can give them unconditional love back, though at some point you could argue whether it becomes a symbiotic relationship of just looking for that unconditional love, but the pet looking for the petting and you looking for the happiness of the pet, but there's still a lot of giving and more trust and that trust, rebuilding trust in each other, I think is also something really important that we're not necessarily taught and just like you were saying, we're taught to take, take, take, take, and we assume others are probably taught the same thing.
Olivier Egli:Well, that's what makes the competition of the world right. We're like, if I don't do it, someone else will, and then I will be left out in the rain. We should not forget that, when you can, each one can investigate for themselves. When did the narrative shift in their life from the understanding that we are holistic beings that are here to have a beautiful emotional experience and bring themselves into the world and that everything is okay, to the notion that life is a race, life is a competition, it's about being first or second or third, that there's a ranking list, that there is, that there are some people who are better than yourself. When did that notion creep into your mind? And for me it's clear. And for me it's clear, and for most of the people I work with too, it's either the instant when you're met with the teachings of the parents, or the second you enter a classroom. The classroom has this formative power of organizing humanity according to ranking and performance. And suddenly, when you enter the classroom, your self-worth is connected with performance, and not self-performance, but performance in the eye of society, like how well you do at a certain, at math or geometry, whatever, which has nothing to do with your own truth. Nothing, because that is a concept that's man-made. It's not something that resonates with your own truth, but we should not forget we were exposed to the competitive aspects of social life during our formative years and now that we're grown up, we have to reverse those effects. But who does that on their own? All we do, and that is something I really wanted also to share with you.
Olivier Egli:When people turn 35, 36, 37, or 45, whatever, and they realize something is wrong, what do they do and I did it too they go to a therapist because they think they're broken. We think that once we're unhappy, doubtful, frustrated by our lives, oh, something is wrong, we're fucked up. Sorry for saying so, but I mean that's the general story. And then the therapist will tell us yeah, you're broken, let's fix you, but we're not broken. It's natural for our heart to yell enough enough, we're not broken, we don't need fixing. That's why I do what I do.
Olivier Egli:I keep telling the people I work with you're fine, you're actually in the best state of your life, because a crisis is a moment of a decision. Please do not think you're broken. Do not think you're broken. Guide yourself through the door and choose you. Stop choosing someone else. Stop choosing the lawyer, the doctor, the politician, the false identity. Choose yourself and allow yourself to then dictate what identity you should have. But this is the craziness, right. This is what we think. The midlife crisis is the end of the path of my god. It's like it's over. No, it's about to begin. It's about to begin. That's when it gets great. That's when things could happen now.
Sebastien Fouillade:Now, you could choose yourself, and it's an essential part of being human. I believe Part of me wants to ask you or figure out a way. It's like how could you force that earlier in life, or how could you help people get to that earlier, or is there a way to bring up the kids differently and playing this out? But then another aspect is like no, there's a natural unfoldment. Even if you were in a tribe in the middle of Africa, maybe you'd be learning to be in the moment, but you would still have duties and teachings and things that would be passed on to you programming passed on to you from previous generations and you're still probably going to have some type of midlife crisis. So there's part of me.
Sebastien Fouillade:As a kid I would always hear about the stories of midlife crisis, like it's a bad thing, like you're talking about oh my god, he had his midlife crisis, he got divorced, he bought a car and we have no idea what happened to him. Those are the stories that told you to scare you from that. But it's like no, you want to welcome that. And at the same time, there's young people nowadays that are like, hey, you've gotten that breakthrough and you're happy, and how do I get there sooner. I get that too, and I think some of it is like you have to let it happen, right.
Olivier Egli:I think there is a natural course to life and, as you said correctly, I think those moments are essential. They're essential, They've been with us forever In any kind of cultural setting. People have to first endure the trials and tribulations. They have to be hurt. We have to get hurt. We have to learn about the world so that we can acquire that knowledge and then apply it when we're ready to discover who we are, Because without it it would be impossible for a teenage person to already progress into that state. Without those experiences we have to have our heart broken before we realize what the power of the heart actually is. We have to learn about the world so that then we can place our true self inside of the world. I think this is very, very natural and that's why in storytelling there is the expression right of passage.
Sebastien Fouillade:This was right on my mind as you said that, I was like the right of passage that we've lost.
Olivier Egli:The right of passage. Look, I have a great example from nature actually to underline what we're saying here the butterfly and the caterpillar. The butterfly is not born in the butterflies, it's born into the shape of the caterpillar. It has to endure the shape of the caterpillar, but then comes the thing the transformation. And the transformation, the transgression, the midlife crisis into the butterfly is a moment of pain. The caterpillar, basically, is dying. It's basically the death of the caterpillar reborn into the heightened states of the butterfly. That's what midlife crisis is traditionally, naturally, when we want to be born into our true self. But now, the beauty of it is, as you can see, the caterpillar is a perfect being. It's beautiful. So are we even in our old life. It's perfect, as I said before, perfection is the embracement of the moment. It was perfect that you had to go through being fired 10 times, losing whatever friends and people along the way, have your heart broken and trampled on. It's beautiful. This is all part of life and I want to reinforce the fact that life is messy, is dirty, is painful. Yes, life is that, it needs to be that. Ask any tree. It's crazy what a tree has to endure the winters, the blazing heat, the drought, the birds. But that's what life is about.
Olivier Egli:I'm not here to advocate an easy, comfortable life. That's bullshit. That is the false life. That's the protective life. That's living for survival, for comfort, for safety, all the things that are not real. They're not real. Anyone listening to this. Life is not about being comfortable and safe. Life is about being wild. Life is about going out there and yelling your song into the world. Life is about being bruised and wounded and being like, yes, and at the end, when you slide into your grave, you're covered in bruises, you're covered in scars, and every scar tells you I went there, I did this, I wanted to do that and I went there. Yes, I lived, I existed, I brought myself into the world and I'm ready to go Versus cosmetically perfectly packaged, being cut away, not having lived, not ever having given space to that voice inside of you, just oppressing it Bullshit. We have to go through the dirt.
Sebastien Fouillade:We have to Through the dirt and back to the dirt and back to nature.
Olivier Egli:Yes, I mean I.
Sebastien Fouillade:It's like an apple. It's like, oh, if it makes it back into the dirt it's ever pooped out or it's been decomposed in the dirt, but it's had a fulfilling life.
Olivier Egli:But if you live life with this false notion that we learn again, the false stories that we learn that you have to be safe. Your mom just wanted you to be well and that's not through no fault of her own. Our mothers traditionally they want us to be preserved, they want us to be safe. No pain, nothing. But they do us a grave disservice. A grave disservice when our parents want nothing bad happening to us. It's a little bit like we're never being exposed to the realness of life In nature. You constantly see and I live in the mountains and I'm sorry with my own eyes the mama bird whoopsies the baby bird out of the nest.
Olivier Egli:That is a natural progression of life. Why? Not because he hates the baby bird, but because the baby bird has to learn to fly on its own. It has to exist on its own. So we have to cut that umbilical cord. Since our parents or our teachers didn't do it, since we held onto it, we have to do it. We have to cut it. We have to live for our own self and our own truth and we have to take that responsibility. It's not the responsibility of the state or whatever to live for us. It's not the politicians that are going to live for us. You live for your own self, but that requires responsibility, and responsibility requires self-love, and self-love requires the attention and focus on the self, the willingness to even live for yourself. Not many schools in life teach you that.
Sebastien Fouillade:Not many. I've got an 18-year-old finishing high school right now, starting college next year, so it's very appropriate to think about that. And I've had that picture of papabird giving me kick in the ass out of the nest. And I'm split because I love him and everything. But there's also non-attachment, which is different from loving someone. That was another big lesson. I had in a journey.
Olivier Egli:Remember space. If you're awesome and unconditionally you give that person space to develop.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah, so he's welcoming, that he's ready for it, which is great. I'm very happy.
Olivier Egli:Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's going to be very, very fine.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah, so all right, I lost my train of thought for a second, thinking about the baby bird. I was well, he's not a baby bird anymore. I was kicking out of the nest. You did touch on something that I thought was really interesting, which is it's going back to companies and businesses that people grow further than they should. Can you expand a little bit on that, because I've seen that pattern time and time again playing out, especially in startups, pushing the business further than it should be? And then, how do you know? How do you guide people to know? Well, I'm fine where I'm at, I know how it works for you. You touched on that, but when you have clients coming to you, how do you work with them to help them visualize that, or visualize that point, or be more sensitive to it?
Olivier Egli:Well, first I have to reconnect them with a natural, healthy way of understanding growth. And growth has become in the business community the main aim. All we want is to grow, but in nature growth is a tool. It's not the reason for existing. Only cancer and a virus see growth as a means for survival. We need to grow, otherwise the organism is going to swallow us and we will not exist anymore. So growth is only relevant for an organism that feels threatened in its existence. So it's not healthy.
Olivier Egli:The real definition of growth is a tool that helps you to do a better job at being yourself. That is the definition of growth. So in a tree, the trunk grows, the anchoring root grows, the branches grow to support the expansion of the tree so it can give its apples. So see, growth is tied to an intention. Not many businesses tie growth to an intention. They tie growth to a business expectation, which is again conditional love. So I teach the people I work with to reconnect with a natural state of growth by telling them you have to have a clear intention, which growth will serve.
Olivier Egli:You have to understand that growth always has to happen inside out, but traditionally in business growth is outside in the market, in the industry, the customers, the sales. No, growth happens from within to the outside. Then growth is always incremental. The tree grows incrementally. It doesn't leap from one foot to 15 feet, but we think we should. We have to double, triple, quadruple our sales, count our head, count our sales, whatever. No, incremental is the path of growth.
Olivier Egli:And growth requires you to check in on one simple thing Are we still doing our best possible job, the value that we promised to bring into the world? Where and how do we need to grow to bring more, more accessible value to more people? And once we realize, oh, we're focusing on the wrong things, we have to refocus. We have to create space in other areas. But it's very easy for someone and I work with a lot of startups and founders it's very easy to pinpoint where the end of growth will happen.
Olivier Egli:It's very easy to say with this value, this is where the tree is going to stop, and that's what you need to know now for your vision. All you need to do is show up every day and know that this point will be reached. That's no problem, because even if your business stops at 50 employees, all you need with 50 employees is probably 2,000, 3,000 paying clients, and that's it. We have this idea that we have to market to the world, we have to sell to the whole world. Everybody needs to be our customer. That's bullshit, this traditional advertising that has created this lie. I don't need more than 10 clients a month and I'm in the good position to have more than that, but this is it.
Sebastien Fouillade:I don't want more. There's also a big difference between what private companies can do versus public companies, and then you know, like I think, as a private company, you have a little bit more leeway, I'd like to think, and public companies, thinking about the big ones that I've worked out the shareholders expect growth. You've created a system where people just expect something specific, and what I find really interesting is that you took the analogy of the apple tree and there's the company name Apple, and what I like with Apple what they've tried to do along the years is awareness of their DNA, and I think, as you go into an apple tree too, it's always good to remember you're an apple tree.
Olivier Egli:That was my learning when I went into that forest. Remember that's. I'm all about that. But see, here's the thing, though and apple is a great example, because I started Apple intensely over the last years through my business, through the lens of my business. So I told you before, growth that is a meaningful tool always supports an intention. Always there's an intention at the basis. Now, growth is the attention that would bring into the intention. In focusing on certain areas, we focus on this, we focus on that. You can focus on finances, you can focus on the HR, you can focus on different areas. That's where growth can happen, but the intention never changes. It's like the mission.
Olivier Egli:In a company, and with Apple, there was one person that, of course, embodied the intention. There was Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was the anchor of the tree, he was the DNA. He represented through his own being the clarity of the truth, and I always love that because he's a symbol for what it means to stay connected to the intention. Now, you might not like it because of his ways. You know how he behaved. That is his right, because that's the culture that he you know. That was necessary for him to stay focused on the intention. It was like you're either in or you're out. This is what we're doing, this is what we focus on, but now, as long as you have that, as long as you have that, you can always ask yourself if we grow this. Does it support the intention?
Olivier Egli:And Steve Jobs would have been the first one to say fuck this, we're not doing it, even if for the shareholders it would mean but there's great market potential. No, there's no market potential because it doesn't serve the intention. And that's where value becomes disconnected from the financial aspect. True value is not about money. True value is about does this, what we're doing, actually bring value to the people we're serving?
Olivier Egli:And in the case of Steve Jobs, it was simplicity through design. It's to think different, which means do our products express the needs that lives within him, to think outside the box, challenging the status quo and therefore elevating human mankind in the expression of themselves. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I have my doubts about the current state of the company, because I can feel that the understanding of value has shifted back into a more traditional approach that is tied to, of course, market capitalization. Before, the only market capitalization was like. I want to own the market of simplicity through the design, making the distance between the user and the expression of their art, of what they have to say, shorter. How can we make it as short as possible so that people can express what they have?
Sebastien Fouillade:I think they're in an interesting state right now. I feel like they're caught between wanting to carry on Steve's DNA and honor that, and then the market pressure and the more traditional pressure. They just released the Vision Pro headset. That's going to be an interesting test because they made some very clear design decision. This is probably one of the boldest products they're putting out, one of the most unnatural human interaction they're putting out, but at the same time they're trying to be different. I don't know where it's going to go, but at the same time I love that you're using the apple tree. It's a little bit tied back to Apple and the way Steve Jobs was. I was extremely focused, but he also knew what they could do and couldn't do. He always saw growth as a servant to his cause and not as the thing to go after.
Olivier Egli:That's kind of like the conversation he used to have with upper management and the people who fired him on the regular, that they would see market capitalization as the indicator for success. He just saw. Are we doing the best possible job at expressing the intention we have through value that lives in our products? That's what he questioned. He questioned and that's why he was a stickler. Usually people are reconnected to their intentions. That have to be sticklers because it's so sacred. It's so sacred that the message remains untainted, that it remains clear and that the value remains available to the people.
Olivier Egli:I have my doubts with Apple, as I've seen with a lot of car companies that had a lot of value to give in the 70s and the 80s, even in the 90s. Now, today, every car looks the same. It's basically just an own interpretation of a car that already exists. That happened simply because management and companies has shifted from being someone who came from the factory floor and was connected to the value to people who are just educated by business schools. When you're only educated by business schools, you only see value as a transaction, but if you're connected to the value in a product, you see value in the transformation that the product can give people. You want to see a smile. You want to see people changing their behavior.
Olivier Egli:You want to see lives change and Steve Jobs products the ecosystems he built. They changed life. They changed the way we listen to music. They changed the way we consume art and media. Samsung doesn't do that. Samsung just builds products with specifications. But specifications in Apple were never really that important.
Sebastien Fouillade:Their products actually sometimes performed subpar, I think when the Apple Tree knows it's an Apple Tree and naturally gives and grows organically from that, it's a lot easier to do that too. Another thing about Steve Jobs is storytelling. He was huge in storytelling how he presented the products, the word he picked, how he talked about them With a lot of care, love and attention to details. I'm curious. I'm going to bring it back to how you help people when people come to you, and a big part of your process, the main part of your process, is their story, own your story. Do people have the tools to even be storytellers anymore? Is it part of your training and process to help them with that aspect?
Olivier Egli:We're all storytellers by nature. We open our mouth and we're storytellers. We use gestures and mimic to tell a story. We tell someone about our day, about our fears, about what we encountered, about the commute home. We tell someone a joke, but in our own words, in our own intonation, we tell a story. We're all attracted by stories, which can be seen by the way people consume television today, cable or on-demands stories. People love stories. The problem is that people think that they're not storytellers. They think that there are people who are educated or natural storytellers and they're simply not. They're just a clerk, they're just an accountant, they're just so what? But they forget that every time, as soon as they write, their story begins and the question is are they owning that story, or is that story owned by someone or something else?
Sebastien Fouillade:I would say hijacked, it gets hijacked.
Olivier Egli:It gets hijacked. It gets hijacked early on and now we have all these writers in our head. There's a big writing room in our head Writing that story. That's not ours every day of you. So what I help people with is reclaiming the writer's room in your head so that you now own that story and every step of that storytelling becomes a conscious act. And yes to your question, people own those tools already and it's fascinating to see how quickly people progress into writing their story as soon as you just show them the door and tell them what could be possible and what they're doing right now.
Olivier Egli:Because most people fall into depression and I was one of these guys Back then. I was clinically diagnosed with depression, whatever that means. It just means like I take the couple boxes I realize now the only thing is that I was not seeing the light anymore. I was losing that self-confidence, the self-connection, until the day I woke up and I felt like I lived outside of myself, like there is me, and then there's this person and I'm looking at this person, not recognizing who it is, but also realizing that's who I'm supposed to be. So the story we tell makes sure that we go back into that body and own this entity. Again, that's been remote controlled.
Sebastien Fouillade:It's interesting because you talked about how much of that is an inner process. I feel like what we tend to forget is that, that inner process. We have the tools. A lot of those tools are acquired by what we're exposed to. Whether we watch Netflix, we go to a movie, we watch advertising, directors will use specific shots, specific music, specific pace to control that story and those things seep in to our subconscious. And when we tell ourselves stories, a lot of times, strangely enough, those are the things that are playing out. If you tend to listen to dark music, to watch messed up movies that are done so well, now these are the things that are going to be available to you.
Sebastien Fouillade:So breaking out, I think, has to be really intentional sometimes, and stepping away and going to nature, I think in a way does some of that, because it provides that space to reconnect with those tools and figure out wow, what's a soundtrack I want to use when I'm telling my own story? What's the camera angle? Is it more of a Hitchcock movie? Is it more of a Marvel superhero movie? Is it more of a documentary? How do I approach it? And I think those are tools that sometimes we forget, what all the subconscious picks up when we're exposed to all those things, even what we're reading, and it's good to just be aware of that so that when you tell your own story, you really intentionally use those tools to not craft something that's post-apocalyptic dark and something that's more like oh no, I'm very grateful, I'm in a wonderful world, I've got a forest right next to me, the birds are singing, it's the sound of nature.
Olivier Egli:Yeah, it's true. I would even go as far as saying because that's the process that I put the people I work with through first, you have to obviously shift your mindset, because a mindset that is wired for fear is incapable of engaging into its own story. It will always reject its own story because it's not safe, it's instinctively not a proven path, because your path is unique, it's never been walked. So a fearful mind does not want a unique story. It's the first thing I do reconnecting, reshifting the mind into its initial state, the loving state that says, yes, I want my own path. But then, you know, with relation to what you just said, those tools I'm actually of the belief that we have to toss it all out, because the traditional storytelling and I did this for over two decades professionally is to work with tropes and stereotypes, because tropes and stereotypes quickly latch into the mindset that's already there.
Olivier Egli:A Marvel movie needs to very, very quickly engage the viewer and it can only do so if it taps into existing beliefs, opinions, bias and all that. That's what it does, and by doing so it does something else it reinforces the bias, it reinforces the opinion and that's what gets people stuck. And the trick there is to really become this completely neutral watcher, listener that is able to realize what's going on. Oh, okay, you know the manipulator. It's a little bit like the red and blue pill in the.
Olivier Egli:Matrix. If you want to see the Matrix, you have to step out of the Matrix. You have to take the red pill and say, okay, but that comes at a cost, because now you see the bullshit, Now you see it, you see what's happening there. And I will tell you this much it's horrific how people have created an image of reality through the stories that are being brought to them. For example, people who watch these crime shows. They actually think that's how the police investigates crime. It's not true. They actually think every surgeon is sexy, is well-mannered and is involved in these dramas Like oh, the life of a surgeon or of an ER you know, er, rescue worker is not what TV tells you.
Olivier Egli:Life is not what those stories tell you life should be like, because those stories need to reinforce bias and be readily, quickly accessible and digestible. Now, if you wanna have our own story, we need to step away from these predisposed images and say like wow, in my blank canvas, if I plant my seeds, how does this story unfold? And it's beyond Hitchcock-esque and Kubrick-esque and whatnot. It's your own story and your life's work is now to bring that story out into the world. And that's when we see great musicians, great artists, great authors, write things that blow our minds. We realize that's someone who planted their seed and are now willing to share it with us. And, oh my God, and that's the original writing that lives outside of the tropes and the biases, the Jimi Hendrixes you know about time. That's what we need. That's the true originality of the apple tree. No two apple trees are the same. No two apples are the same. Why behave like we should all be Granny Smith and all look the same? Why, why, why.
Sebastien Fouillade:We've got lots of apples in Washington, lots of different apples. We're gonna have to. This is a wonderful conversation. We're gonna have to wrap it up soon, but I do wanna do another call out you talked about.
Sebastien Fouillade:I love how you expanded from tree to forest and how we wanna be a forest and you talk about Jeff Bezos, you know, being that giant 500 foot tree.
Sebastien Fouillade:It actually brought images to me not of orchards but of old growth forest, because we do have, you know, in Washington there's a lot of those big, huge logs from the old old growth forest that were cut by logging in the early 1900s, I believe. But like there's really a potential of you know, in old growth forest you still have big trees and we all live together and there's a lot of symbiotic between it and I think, even though you know you take the analogy of the apple tree, which is beautiful, I think there's the opportunity of having that old growth forest back, you know, which is healthy and big, strong tree that own their space, and it's not, you know, no, you don't have the 500 foot tree that takes up the resources from all the other trees, but it's your bringing back that healthiness, that healthiness and that you know, and there's a lot about the mycelium network and how to talk together, but anyway, it's just a call out the secret life of trees. Secret life of trees.
Olivier Egli:Wonderful book. Yeah, I agree with you, and it's actually scientifically proven that even when a tree you know breaks off and there's only a stump lift, the forest will rally to keep that stump alive. It's still alive because that stump contains knowledge. It contains knowledge from hundreds of winters, hundreds of summers, times and times that we're endured. There's knowledge and we should learn to understand that. The community, just as much as a society, is made up of many, many, many, many, many, many million and billion different trees who all know something. Every tree knows something, we all you know something, I know something. We're here to exchange what we know.
Olivier Egli:Now, imagine if we human beings could live together in this connected, giant, ancient forest where we realize that just because you retire doesn't mean you're not valuable to society anymore.
Olivier Egli:Your knowledge needs to remain available to the community and that every person has something you need to give, and we would tap into that uniqueness and make it available Again. Giving, giving, we would be giving trees and we would not believe in retirement. We would say like, even though I'm 75, 85 years old, I still have something to give and we would readily accept it. Imagine how that would shift the entire idea of a society that is interconnected, where we all become giving in nature, but we also realize that every bit of knowledge that's needed to solve problems is available. It's all already here. That's what beats me that we have today systemic issues, systemic issues that are all created by us, and we are the ones keeping ourselves in the dark when we have all the answers. All we would need to do is to shift our understanding of what work is and become giving in nature, so that this value becomes accessible to the entire society. That would solve everything. It would balance us, just like a forest is an automatically balancing ecosystem.
Sebastien Fouillade:All goes back to giving. I also love talking about elders and wisdoms and appreciating our elders more and the wisdom they can bring. I think it's connected to what you're talking about and even in death they're still giving. If you take the trees and the stump like you were talking about, I've got some huge stumps all growth stumps on the property I have and those stumps I've had to pull a few out, but I try to leave as many as I can in the ground and honor them because they're wonderful. They're beautiful. There's life around them, there's life under the roots, there's water that is collected there, there's little mice and it's amazing and just knowing that in their death they're still giving, they're still giving and that wisdom is still there, it's still helping. So beautiful, beautiful image there. So let's wrap this up.
Olivier Egli:Not easy. Huh, it's not easy.
Sebastien Fouillade:We could talk for a long time. We just need a bonfire there and do this in person. That'd be amazing. It will happen. It will happen, especially I am. I mean, I'd love to get together in Washington. It'd be wonderful. You have a podcast, and what you probably didn't know about the podcast is your first episode came out about four or five days after the first episode of my podcast, so we started our podcast almost at the same time.
Sebastien Fouillade:This is so great to hear. Yeah, I recommend people check it out. What's the name of your podcast, called the Do Happy Work podcast? Do Happy Work podcast. I love this. You also have a book that you're working on as well.
Olivier Egli:Yes, I have a book that I have been working on feverishly. It's happening. I cannot give any dates. I can just you know the baseline it's coming, it's coming.
Sebastien Fouillade:I love it. It's a process, like, yeah, I wrote one book, I don't have a calling to write another one right now, and it's a very mental process and I think, like you, not giving a date it just shows respect for the process and, you know, letting it unfold.
Olivier Egli:I have no choice. It works on me just as I'm working on it, but I'm off the thinking, and that's actually how I kickstart my process Once people become free to engage in their story. I'm off the thinking. If you only had one book you could write in your lifetime, what would that book be? And that's the book I'm writing. So therefore, no pressure.
Sebastien Fouillade:Yeah, take your time. That's good, that's wonderful. So you eat a book and then you've got your coaching work and then online courses as well.
Olivier Egli:The online courses also they're in the completion phase. They're going to be available in a couple of months from today.
Sebastien Fouillade:Okay.
Olivier Egli:This is also due to so much happening right now. There's a lot of traveling. We have also retreats in our place in South California that we do up on the mountain, tucked away in the forest, where we invite people who want to go through the wide story process on one and two day retreats. We do that. That's going to change in terms of location. We're also doing it in Europe. So people from Europe, we're interested in knowing more. We do that in Vienna, we do that in Paris and there's going to be more happening. But again, only as much as I can do.
Sebastien Fouillade:Great. Well, it already seems like a lot, so I'm like that's impressive, but you're just being your own apple tree and knowing your limits. I love it Great. What's the best way for people to engage with you If they listen to the podcast and they feel called to reaching out? And how could they see this engagement unfold with them? How could you help them?
Olivier Egli:So I understand that it's very personal work. A lot of people, even if they are in the depth of darkness, sometimes don't want to admit that they need a little push. I understand sometimes a commitment at this moment is too much. I always invite people to shoot me an email that's olivieratwai-storycom For a brief chat. I love to hear from people where they stand, what their emotional reality is With regards to themselves. Also, their work is right now in a brief phone call. It's also then that I can tell people more like what I would recommend. Again, I'm not a salesperson at all. It's more like I like for people who are in a bad place to know that it's actually a great place and that it's an opportunity, and if there's a way I can help, I will always propose that. But sometimes people just need more time and more attention for themselves. Check out the website. There are different ways to reach out there as well. That's waidashstorycom.
Olivier Egli:I also have a newsletter where I share articles specifically around happy work and about re-shifting our work towards something that expresses our nature On the regular. You can either go on the website and subscribe. You will find also ways on LinkedIn, for example, where I am under my regular name, olivier Igley Maybe you can leave that somewhere in the notes and I'm on social media in general, but I'm not really a social media person. I really love the personal interactions. The email is probably the best, but definitely check out the podcast.
Olivier Egli:I'm sure the podcast can address a lot of things or maybe make people more curious on specific topics. Also very important, every third Wednesday of the month just started in May at 11 am PST, I have something that's called Open Office Hours where for 45 to 60 minutes I just open a room on Zoom and we just get to talk about the bigger questions behind work, how to reconnect with work, things that preoccupy people but that maybe they cannot talk about on the regular or with their colleagues or their family members. So we do that every third Wednesday of the month, 11 am on Zoom. It's free, but you have to sign up. You can do that again on the website or on Zoom. Oh my God, I'm sorry. I'm like hugging your beautiful show here with like.
Sebastien Fouillade:That's wonderful. It's like no, I don't like that. Oh no, this is great. I love it. I like how you're doing all this, how you're giving space, giving space with your office hours. I think it's a beautiful commitment. Your retreat, that's wonderful. So is there anything else, any questions you might have or anything else you wanted to cover that we didn't cover?
Olivier Egli:I will just say one thing, and that's kind of like what kickstarted everything. I just want to invite people to be like an apple tree. Mark my words Next time you do something and you don't feel great about it, next time you choose something that feels off or you're having second thoughts, just remind yourself to be like an apple tree. Remind yourself what would the apple tree have done? What is your true nature? Are you really aware of your nature or is something else pulling your strings? It's really all I can ask for For people to give themselves the space to investigate what they think is comfortable and known, and with that I'm out. Yeah, thank, you Olivier.
Olivier Egli:And thank you so much for giving me the space. You created a beautiful space here and I think we filled that space very nicely, as we always do.
Sebastien Fouillade:Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please subscribe to it on Apple Podcasts. Follow me on Instagram at leadershipadelics, or stop by my website and say hi at fooyatcom. That's F-O-O-Y-E. There's a lot going on and I'd love to hear from you all the listeners that tune in every week, and if you have suggestions for future guests, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm there and I'd love to get more guests on the show. Thank you, have a great day.