101: Jacob Nordby | Embracing Change and Creative Living through Self-Discovery

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Here we are Today. We are together with Jacob Norby, which has a name that for me sounds so Danish that I'm afraid to say it in Danish, almost.

00:10 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm dead sure they don't say Norby.

00:12 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
No, how do you pronounce that in the States? Nordby, nordby, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:19 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Welcome.

00:19 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Welcome. It's good to meet you.

00:22 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
I'm so glad to be here. I've been really curious about this conversation with both of you. I'm so glad to be. I've been really curious about this conversation with both of you.

00:27 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
That is wonderful, because likewise so one day your face popped up on my computer and I was on Facebook doing something and I don't know how it happened, but we have a common friend in Chris Edwards, so maybe it was true that that I clicked on something. But then I read a little and I was like it sounds interesting, let's contact Jacob and talk about creativity, life and freedom. So I almost don't know where to start, but maybe about freedom and finding your, finding a way to free yourself, um, but maybe also a little about your story, first for people.

01:11 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So you have to ask one question yeah, of course, give me a pro tip here okay and I will let you choose well you're.

01:21 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
You're a lot like me, jesper. Uh, you know I often will put out many things all at once and people are like which one do you want me to answer? So I've been so looking forward to this conversation, partly because this Venn diagram crosses between the way you've chosen to live and develop your life and your parenting, and all that to how I grew up. Interestingly, I grew up in a very restrictive Christian cult actually, but as a result, I was homeschooled or in very small private, you know, christian schools and never went to any public schools. So that's one part that's really interesting.

01:59
And then my father actually converted a big yellow bus into a home. We didn't quite ever hit the road with it, but that was part of my childhood, so we lived quite a bit off grid or outside of the normal society in a lot of ways, and that's I was so interested in hearing you know, or in talking with both of you about your choices and how you've redefined success. So, anyway, this is your interview, so I'll answer the question. Remind me which question I'm supposed to be answering.

02:25 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Well, this is your interview, so I'll answer the question. Remind me which question I'm supposed to be answering. Well, it's our interview, but we can't talk with each other. It's not like we have any secrets. I think we just talked about. We're passionate about freedom, but equally, you started sharing your story and you know. Now I'm getting curious. So there's a journey from a christian cult and homeschooling and a bus that never hit the road to writing books about being weird and free. What happened?

03:00 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
what happened? What a great question. Yeah, so there were always questions that I could not get answered in the framework I grew up in and I was really into it, I was a true believer. And so there were these big questions, though, though I wasn't looking to act out, I just wanted to know if there was more to life than what we were being presented, you know. And so that took me probably I don't know more than a decade, 15 years or something, to begin asking those questions.

03:38
I went to Bible college very small Bible college and again found that they couldn't answer the questions that I had, and I was not antagonistic, but there came a time when I realized that to truly follow my heart and follow the adventure and the freedom, the search for truth, I was going to have to leave that group, and so I did, and that was my mid twenties. By then I had three small children and, you know, really didn't know what to do next, and I've always, since then that feels like six or seven lifetimes ago. Since then, I've noticed that anytime life serves up a crossroads for me, go this way or that way. Generally speaking, I can feel it coming for sometimes years, but there's always a choice between the known, which often represents what I don't want it represents a lack of freedom and the unknown. So if I turn the direction of the unknown, there's all that uncertainty. What will happen to me? Can I provide for my family? What will become of me outside of my familiar circumstances?

04:50
So that I got served up a really important crossroads in 2007.

04:57
I had a mortgage company and several other businesses surrounding and everyone thought I was successful and I was waking up at 3am every day, terrified, and I felt like a fraud inside of my personas. You know, one of my employees asked me to go to a meditation retreat. I live here in Boise, idaho is northern US, and it was a couple of hours north in the mountains, and I said I should probably learn how to meditate and so I signed up for it, and it turned out to be a shamanic initiation where they were administering DMT and I had never tried any kind of substances. So this was this massive experience of being broken open and of really remembering, I think, at a deep sort of internal level, that there is freedom available and freedom from all this fear and all of that. And then I went back from that experience that was so shattering in some ways, but shattering in the ways that's like no, there's more to life, but you're gonna have. You're gonna have to have a lot of courage to find out what it is.

06:11 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's funny you mentioned courage now that we're trying to aim for the freedom talk. We had a conversation a few episodes back with a Spanish couple.

06:16 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
we know and the wife said I know how she said it so perfectly. The amount of freedom you, the amount of freedom you can get. I will paraphrase it's not perfect, but the amount of freedoms you will get equals the amount of uncertainty you can hold in your hands you can handle you can handle, yeah yeah, so how courageous are you?

06:45 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
you know how much uncertainty can you handle. That's the limit to your freedom, basically your person.

06:51 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
I love that definition well, it's one perspective.

07:00 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I mean I wouldn't say it's all. There is handling, fear, more handling. Okay, there's uncertainty here. It makes me slightly wobbly, it makes me maybe wake up at night and not fall asleep again right away, but it's okay, because I'm venturing into or out of something and I want that. So I think Tali was really smart when she said those yeah, it was good. Yeah, so 2007, that's still a while ago, did you? Did you make a turnaround at that point? Not?

07:45 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
right, right away, cecily. I was still in full scramble and keep it together mode, and it wasn't until the next year, when the global mortgage crisis happened, that it really got taken out of my hands. It just got wiped out because I was in the financial services business, and that was a time during which I had to let go of all of these hats, all these masks, roles, you know, like the CEO of a company and a successful person, a person with good credit, a person with all of these different things that I had been using to define myself got just taken away immediately. I remember telling my mother back then I feel like a turtle that had its shell ripped off. I just feel like there's.

08:27 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm so exposed and vulnerable yeah right, yeah yeah, maybe a little more vulnerable, that I mean, than you want to do. You can't hold the uncertainty. Then it's not freedom, then it becomes fear. Yeah, well, it's true, and you know, I becomes fear, yeah.

08:44 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
Well, it's true, and you know I'm always interested in these moments in life. I've talked with my brother about this a lot, you know, about whether we can truly wake up. You know, carl Jung would say there is no coming to consciousness without pain. And I don't like to argue with Carl Jung because he has so much Um and I I don't like to argue with Carl Jung because he has so much uh important to say. But I've, I was really hoping that some, some might be able to really self-actualize, really break through without some major crisis in life. Like you know, cecily, I know on from your site, you had this health scare, um, back in. Was it 2010? Yeah, yeah, and that sounds like one of those massive crossroads, that sort of changed things.

09:32 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
A lot, but I still I'd say it did.

09:36 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I mean, I think, the fact that I had cancer. What I usually say is it's sharpened, my pen, it's still the same pen. I didn't completely make a turnaround on my values, but I became. I was a no bullshit kind of person before that scare, after the scare of waiting to see if the disease would come back or stay dormant, so it wasn't like I come back from the hospital, I'm cured. That was not. That's rarely how cancer works. But we had five years of waiting, I remember, because I didn't know am I, am I living another two months or am I living the other half of my life?

10:32 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
well.

10:32 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I still had to just navigate. I know I'm here now and I'm not in the hospital. I'm not having chemotherapy. The hair is growing out again. I get to have a good day today. That's basically what I know. I get to have a few good weeks, maybe even because I knew if the disease was coming back it would take some time for it to build. So I was. It was easy to be sharp at the time. I said I refuse to go to work. That would be like a waste of time. I'm not doing that. I want to be with my children 100% of the time. I don't know if I'm gonna die and I haven't seen them for six months, so now is the time. So that, of course, made it sharper, but I didn't change my values. Do that make sense? It's the same thing, it's just more of it.

11:23 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And and I became less willing to discuss it yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, it was like this is what I want, this is what is true and right for me, and I'm doing it but we hold our breath for for five years yeah, and then we, then it came that we it started growing and, as you say, there is this you can see the something else than where you, the path you're on, you feel more and more attracted to the something else.

11:56
There's uncertainty there and we went. We went looking at it, dipped our toes in, taking longer and longer vacations from work. We bought a small van, rebuilt it took like a one month trip and tried different things to see if we liked that. And then I think it was the winter of 18. We met some friends and talked with them and we met some full-time travelers and they said, we talked with them and they said very simply, they said if you don't set a date, you will always dream and your dream will always be in the future. Yeah, so they say, if you set a date, it actually just go from from dreaming to being logistics.

12:46
And there we came home after having a good time with them and was like, okay, we set a date and. But then it actually became scary. We needed to figure out to rent out the house in this start. We needed to figure out to purchase a bus and and all these things. And then we just did it and and we we did it kind of scared, like I, I got an agreement with the work I had that we could do it for one year and then after that half a year maybe, we were like, okay, we, there's no going back with the freedom freedom we have now it's very difficult for me seeing myself go back to a full-time life in an office.

13:31 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You think the worst part is the house.

13:34 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
The house is also. It's not the same. No, no, not for me. That was the one going to work, cecilia. It's going away from the family. So many, so much time, so much energy going that direction. And now there's kind of a new it's not a totally new path, but I want to live even more, even though people might look at our life and say, oh, you can choose where you want to be, you can travel freely and you work online, so you're pretty lucky. But I want more community. I want to learn to sing together with other people, I want to learn to have music. I want to be, to see people meet up and have this energy, exchange of energy together, and I will bridge this over to you creating events also. What is it that make you want to make a room for people to meet? What is it it gives you?

14:39 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
well, I think what you just said, jesper, um, that exchange of energy that lights me up. It lights me up to invite people into a space. That's transformational and that feels like a lot of pressure to put on an event. It's like transformational. But what I've noticed is I've begun to find transformation as truly, for humans, it's self-discovery, it's who really am I? I mean, these are the big soul questions, right? Who am I? You know, why am I here? So there's who am I? That self-discovery. And then there's this self-acceptance that grows from self-discovery.

15:26
What I see a lot of people try to do is try to get to self-acceptance without the self-discovery. What they're all they're doing is scratching on the surface of all these conditioned masks and roles that they believe. You know, this is what I really want, or this is who I really want, or this is who I really am. And the truth is no, we're all so much deeper than the papier-mâché mask we've created throughout our lives, mostly through survival strategies and you know, reactive coping mechanisms and things. So we don't really know who we are for the most part, and then, as we begin that process of finding that unique, interesting creature inside of there, we begin to fall in love with that. It's like, oh my God, I really love this person. I'm discovering, you know, and from there then, self-expression becomes as natural as breathing, and I really love to see it as breathing too, because it's like I saw a quotation the other day that said Because it's like I saw a quotation the other day that said the opposite of depression is expression and that's. And they went on to say that's how the soul breathes, right? And so when I see a lot of people look at creativity I know you asked about events, Now we're back A lot of people look at creativity and they think of it as a product, like a book or a whatever it is that they're creating. I really see creativity as our spark, our essential spark, and it's meant to flow in every part of our lives. So what you just described, jesper, with meeting people and putting together groups of people who are playing music and exchanging with each other, to me that really is part of the expression of an artful life, and I see everything you all have done as that really important journey.

17:11
Back to transformation, just for a minute, though, because a lot of people go how do I become? You know this and a lot of people go and find a model. I'm sure you have had people follow you and say I just want to become you. And you know it's like I just want to model my behavior after you, so I'll sell everything, I'll buy a red bus, I'll hit the road, and I see this at events, you know, with famous writers. People will say I want to become Anne Lamott or one of these other people.

17:40
And my message to them is no, find out who you are and become that, because in nature, the code is already in the acorn, the code is already in the caterpillar. Like a caterpillar never becomes an eagle, a caterpillar becomes what it's made to become. And so, for me, these events that we put on, whether it's, you know, small groups or larger, larger ones are these opportunities with that intent in mind. They're the. These are these opportunities for people to really go into that self-discovery and say who am I? Who am I? Why am I here? How do I wish to live?

18:18 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
you know, ah, but oh I, that sounds like an awful lot of. I kind of like my shelves and some of my paper machetes and all of the protection. I've put on Me too. I'm totally honest. I love my protective layers because they so what I will. When I first hear you talk, and also I had the pleasure of reading Gabor Maté and some other books and I'm like I'm not sure I want to go through that part of self-discovery. That is a downer, and can you?

19:05 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
I don't know anyone who wants to do that.

19:07 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
No, but the question is, can you have a more fun discovery? Because I'm afraid, if I should dig deeper, I'm like, oh man, I'm not sure. I actually just had a talk with a friend recently where we said, well, co-living as we do, uh, quite often, it is often, uh, the people you live with becomes a mirror. You see something, uh, reflected in what they're doing, something is mirrored inside you. Yeah, and it's not always you like what you see. That is not the fault of the mirror, because a mirror is just a mirror, but so it's not always nice to see the sides of yourself you don't like, and I'm not sure I'm ready for the journey. So, to get back to my, my question is so can transformation be fun?

20:02 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
oh, I, you know, yes, uh, and I'm really glad you brought that up yes, because I think that so many people, including myself, I've done this. You know. It's like I'm on a healing journey. I'm going to dig into all of this and, and there can actually become an addiction to pulling the tearing the scab off, you know, looking for more wounds to heal.

20:22
And what I've come to really understand is the only purpose of a healing journey is to be healthy, to be feel good, like we're not doing this healing, this healing journey cue the dark, heavy music. This healing journey to do more healing. We're doing it so that we can come into our true wholeness. And so, to me, yes, and especially the more comfortable and this goes back to what you shared earlier, cecily I think the more comfortable we come with the unknown, the more we are able to and I don't know that any of us is ever perfectly comfortable with it, but as we gain some comfort and some self-trust, that says you know, yes, I know what to do when I don't know what to do. So if I take this step into the unknown and I feel totally disoriented and scared, I know to stop, take stock, breathe, get centered and then learn to live by intuition. Really, you know.

21:19 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I was thinking about. I'm not afraid. I'm not necessarily afraid of the dark or of rough times, or, you know, sometimes you just need to have a dance with shadow and to figure out where the light is basically um.

21:37
But I don't do a lot of conscious, planned self-discovery and and work that like shadow work, stuff like that, because I this is just my, it could be just me I find healing in the moment. I find it more powerful to step into the moment and to allow for the guidance that I can clearly feel if I'm in that moment and I, I have aligned my head and my heart and my body, I'm here, now and and then I, I am in that miracle of the here and now and I find that all I need at that point, if I can be in that space, I don't need to understand anything, I don't need to know who I am. It doesn't matter who I am actually. What matters is that I can hear the guidance in whatever way it arrives to me, and I know what to do in the next moment.

22:57
I don't necessarily have a plan, but I'm sure I'm going this way now, or I'm not. I'm staying here, or I'm observing the birds, or I'm breathing. Whatever I'm going, I'm going this way now or I'm not. I'm staying here, or I'm observing the birds or I'm breathe. Whatever I'm cooking a meal I. I just know I'm on, I'm on the and it's not like a track, it's more like a rooftop balancing act of never sliding off that moment. If I can do that, I don't need to know who I, it doesn't matter, I don't. I don't need to know who, it doesn't matter, I don't.

23:27 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I don't need to know who I am and it doesn't matter who I am I think our interchangeable life, where we are so often in new situation, new people, um brings forth a growth I I personally didn't see with 22 years in an office. So I think that the nomadic life with a lot of people, a lot of dialogue, a lot of new places, um a force is the wrong word to say it forces change, but it gives the space to grow as we, as we see stuff we wouldn't have where. I remember living in the same place. Then it was more like make your life changes, being fired from work or something.

24:16 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Me it created a growth opportunity but equally, when I think about it, I'm aiming for this with the moment and the guidance and the presence, because I feel that that's where the heart of life really beats. I find the other thing unavoidable that my shit comes up and it takes sense of stage and we have to cope with that or someone else.

24:43
And then we, we we have, we work with it together or with friends or whatever. So maybe it's because it's like a natural flow of life thing that I don't have to because of our unique lifestyle. It could be, I have never put thought into that before.

25:00 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
Well, and what you're describing is really what you're describing is really senior, like life 202 or 303. A lot of people have really what you just described is hey, I don't really have to even have this defined sense of who I am or where I am. I just, you know, learn to move with the moment, with what the moment is calling for. I mean, that is truly next level, you know, and a lot of people start from position of having well, you know, I don't know if either of you have read Robert Anton Wilson, but in his book Prometheus Rising he talks about our reality tunnels. You know, in his book Prometheus Rising, he talks about our reality tunnels, you know, and how they are formed by the society in which we live, by our families, by how we're brought up. We begin to see ourselves and the world in this way, and when that reality tunnel is never shaken up, much people can feel even more terrified to even go in the direction of something that feels like it's calling them because it's outside of that viewpoint. Does that make sense?

26:06 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Oh yeah, I was just thinking that sometimes I would have wished I had a tunnel. Sometimes the field is just so overwhelmingly huge and there are so many dimensions and they cross each other and I I just feel very confused and snowflakey in the whole.

26:26 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
yeah things, yeah, and I was like, oh, how nice a tunnel you know what way to go yesterday I loved, hey, I kind of like, my paper mache mask, like we all, of course, and we all do, you know, it's the yeah, and I, when people I feel like people want to take these things to extremes, you know, and and become very serious about it, it's like, well, hang on, you know, like in the spiritual community, there's all you know there has been. I think it's moving away from that, but there's, we must destroy the ego, and it's like, well, no, we mustn't. That's part of our human experience, just like having a body is become friends with it, learn to work with it better. It's not a great CEO, the ego isn't, but but we really need it to have a human experience, you know, and so I feel like that's so important to give ourselves grace. And I love you bringing it back, jesper, to playfulness, to hey, what if this isn't so scary?

27:20 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I had a very controlled I was about to say inflated ego when I was a teen. We know each other back from when we were young.

27:36 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I have no, comment no.

27:39 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
But I think it so. For me sometimes it's interesting to to look back and think so, um, I could see that some of it came, of course, from insecurity, uh, and having this ego. I wanted to be a movie director. I made an amateur feature film when I was 16 and I was like, look at me, kind of dude, I even had hair and stuff like that, you know. But but back then I walked around and told everybody I wanted to do that. And, yes, I can see now it came from some insecurity and all this. But I can also see what it brought me, how it helped me reach places.

28:25
And today there is a way better balance.

28:29
There's still this insecure boy somewhere that wants to be seen, heard and cheered, but there's also the power that comes with the ego and or the drive, and maybe it's.

28:46
It's also the drive to create sometimes and I actually wanted to talk a little about creation because and I've been back and forth around it because I have, as I said, created this amateur feature film, then I made a small animated movie, then I've written like maybe 19 books for the beginner reader and stuff like that, and for me it was projects, and the fun thing was if I didn't have a project ahead of me, I couldn't be, as they say here in UK, I couldn't be asked to put into drive, and it had to be a monetary goal in the other end that it had the value.

29:30
That was good enough. So people wanted to pay money for it and I've debated this with myself like why is money a value? But it's a language we have now where something is, there's this whole. Is it valuable if we don't pay money for it? So for me it has been a okay. I want to make something that is so good that people will exchange their time to earn money and then give me money for it as a token of appreciation, which money also is. So I'm like back and forth with how evil is money, how good is it and why?

30:03
do I need to have a a goal of earning money on my projects instead of just creating them. That said, a lot of my projects had made like almost less money than I used on creating them, sure, but it was fun doing and I loved doing it and it was a driving force somehow.

30:24 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

30:26 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think you're confusing things a little bit here, jesper. With the thing I mean, there are two subjects. There is, what's the role of the ego in this process and how can it stay healthy?

30:40 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah.

30:42 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And then why are you personally?

30:46 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Oh, we always people, some people.

30:49 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Well, I Driven by Paying me for my work. I know, Hardly anyone.

30:53 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah.

30:54 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And I don't care Because it's your problem. Because, Because I've got you, um, no, but I mean I consider my work work, whether someone's paying me or not. Yeah, that's my point. So I what I'm saying is just, it's two different things. And basically the money thing for you is like an ego driver, but it's also something I remember you saying, maybe 15 years ago. You said I'm not making any more projects. That's not making money. We've got so many children we need. I mean, I might as well, I've got so many ideas.

31:36
There's a logistic to this. I might as well put my energy into something that's fun, that could potentially also pay for the lunch. I mean, I don't think that's unhealthy, but the ego can be unhealthy. That's a more interesting conversation, in my humble opinion.

31:54 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
Well, look, I mean back to Lewis Hyde's book, the classic called the Gift. He talks a lot about this. And look, I mean back to Lewis Hyde's book, the classic called the Gift. He talks a lot about this. No-transcript.

32:39
My parents were, before they became fundamentalist Christians, they were hippies. My mother was right in the middle of Haight-Ashbury 1969, the epicenter, you know and they were quite communistic and you know. And so my father had a very uneasy relationship with money all of my young life and, as a result, I put money on a pedestal as I was leaving homes like I must go and make all this money. What I didn't realize at the time was it wasn't about so much the freedom that the money would give. It was more about my reaction to feeling unsafe and saying, if I can make enough money, I'll be safe. It's basically, I'll build this castle.

33:19
You know, having to let go of all that and venture out beyond what was making money, what was making sense, and really live for a while for some years, as I was putting myself back together and finding out what was next, saying kind of like what you said a minute ago, cecily.

33:38
I'm doing this because it feels good, because I love it, and it may or may not ever turn into money. And I'd say, jesper, that's one thing. As I work with people who are, you know, really seeking to come into their creative birthright in some way, usually the first thing we'll do is I'll encourage them to imagine what they would do with this project if it did not have to make money. Like what would you, what would you pour into this if you knew that it didn't have to be good enough to make it commercially? Because I think that we tag success as creatives. We tag success with know how many thousands of reviews does it have on Amazon? Was it on the New York Times list, whatever those markers are? And often people get hung up on that and it holds them back from creating the thing in the first place, you know.

34:34 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
The fear of success, basically, or the fear of failure instead of the passion for just doing the thing Well, yeah, you know, I just love hearing more about your artful life.

34:45 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
But you know, as you travel around and as you connect with people, my hunch is you're not. You know putting together gatherings and people are making music and you're trying to make a bunch of money on that. That's part of this artful life that you're creating. You know, and I think a lot of people try to squeeze their creativity down this one narrow vector in life and say this is where I'm creative and my invitation is how about all of your life, how about all of your connections, your relationships? How can we make each one of these things artful? And as we do that, the focus on will this one way that I do want to put it out into the world and hopefully it becomes commercially successful. There's less pressure on that, and so we begin to pull the energy from the ways that we are creating an artful life in every vector, in every domain actually fuels then, uh, becoming what we call successful in this one category. Does that make sense?

35:46 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
yeah, one of the things that has grown in me has grown during the last couple of years and actually because um come to writing. Our daughter, who is 25, is a writer and she I remember the first time she had a book published and we were at the reception and, besides her reading parts of the book, what I really loved about it was the meeting of people, of old friends, new friends, people from different areas, creating this gathering around something, and I've seen it with the other books she has published as well. And then Cecilia and I at some point started to give talks on hey, we world school and we on school, and people find that interesting and want to hear some of our experience around this. So we have a couple of times shared in a bigger forum about this and the best part besides yes, part of my ego gets happy of standing there and getting to tell stories and people are, you can get them to laugh and it's nice and having this back and forth with the audience, but it's actually seeing them afterwards connected with people they haven't had and had what I would call a real talk.

37:10
Also, the reason I make this, we make the podcast, is I don't know if it's the, the way the world works. But even when I went to an office for 22 years, I didn't feel I have these deep, real good deep talks about art and love and stuff, and that is something I want to help facilitate more of. And, whatever the excuse if it is us giving a talk on unschooling or world schooling, or if it's an art thing or something or a a dinner gathering, I just want to see more people meet up and talk about real shit.

37:50 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, real shit real love life, beauty.

37:53 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
You have a passion for that, don't you? I love it just keeps coming through, jesper, I love that, yeah, but back to I also wanted passion for that, don't you? I love it just keeps coming through.

38:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yes, but I love that, yeah, yeah but I also wanted to talk about, uh, creativity and writing, because, to put the point on you, jacob, so what is it you help people with?

38:19 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
you know, at the core of all of it yes, for is transformation, um, and so let's just take an arc of I want to be a writer. I'm scared to be a writer. My mom and dad said I couldn't be a writer, but I want to be a writer. So there's a, there's a transformation arc there that that we can walk through. You know, it's like we start here and we go through this experience together and they come out the other side with more of what they truly want is the is the intention. So we, we intuitively explore together.

38:53
You know, I'm unlike a coach. I don't call myself a coach, I'm a guide, and there's a distinction there for me, because often coaches are trying to give you a very set template. Here you go, do this and you'll get this result, which is a totally valid thing. I'm not talking badly about coaches, but for me, what I've noticed is I love being in space with people where their deepest questions can come forward. I love holding the space of a mirror for them. So it's not about my wisdom or strategies, it really is reflecting back to them. You already have, you already know, you already know. So I love watching people grow through and beyond their fears and begin to experience safety in expression, excitement and joy in expression and the ability to begin to take these risks, little ones at first and then bigger ones. Yeah, it's just. It's so gratifying for me to watch the lights come on, know and they go. I can do this. I can do it are.

40:00 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
We kind of circling back to what we talked about in the beginning, about how, when you walk into the unknown, you maybe make a choice to change your life around in some sort of way, letting go of the known, which means walking into the unknown. You know, you used to do it like this and now you're going to do it in a new way and basically you don't know what that means because you haven't done it before. You can only put so much thought into it. Well, you can put a lot of thoughts into it before you do it, but it's a waste of time because in a way, you're walking through a doorway and until you've done it, you don't know what's on the other side. You don't know your new options, you don't know your new emotions, you don't know your new self, you don't know what's calling, you don't know the color scheme, you just don't. So you can imagine only so many things. But really this is my experience Every time my life has changed radically, whether it was my decision, something I chose to do and I opened the door and I walked through it deliberately, or something happened and I was pushed through a doorway.

41:18
There's no way I could have known before what it looked like and how I would respond to it. It has to be a leap of faith. It has to be. There is risk-taking, and how do we handle the fear of regretting? That's it, that's the big deal. That's the reason we stand on this side of the door touching the handle, thinking about the hand, maybe what will happen.

41:50 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
The fear of regretting to do it or haven't done it.

41:54 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
The choice is you can't go back, right, do you know what I mean? And you can't go back, right, okay, do you know what I mean? And you can very much. I mean that was one of our big turnarounds, when we decided to become, excuse me, fully nomadic was we realized we are going to regret not doing it more than we would ever regret doing it for sure. We, we came to a point where we were like, okay, there's a lot of risk here. This is wild, this is crazy, this is weird, and we're letting go of something that's amazing. We had an amazing life, um, but if we don't do it, we are going to regret it the rest of our lives. We just knew it at that point. Of course, that was a good push that came from thinking, but we had no idea what we were walking into.

42:42 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
No, no. And as you said, now we can't go back. No, that door has closed.

42:51 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
Well, you know one thing and I realize we're coming to the end of our time here, but I just wanted to reflect so much appreciation for what you just shared that you've done it. You know, growing up the way I did and watching my father struggle with so many things, and so, yes, for a lot of my father's struggle with the world was he wasn't moving toward, he was kind of moving away from. So a lot of the reasons why he wanted to put us in homeschool versus public school or whatever had to do with fear rather than hey, we can have such a different experience, and so I love being able to meet people like you, who are doing it for a different reason. They're doing it because there's this tremendous passion and excitement for creating something that really matters, that feels right and good, you know, understandably right, I mean, it just feels right, you know. So I just want to express appreciation. I think the world needs a lot more examples of that.

43:57 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
you know and I'm probably that's not why you're doing it, but I see you as examples of that no, and and honestly, um, some of it started as rebellion, of course, against you start with, uh, and I've been thinking a lot about it when people start down and unschooling self-directed, explorative road to what is learning, how are you a parent and all these things it often start with you kind of you have society to one side and for you to be able to break free you first need to define society as evil or the school system as something wrong and all this.

44:37
So, and I think it's kind of to having the strength to say but I actually believe in this thing over here, but in the start it's kind of you need the devil to make the light shine. But actually the light should shine even more for a lot of people, and a friend of mine, ross Jackson, he says this wonderful thing he had been in the eco village movement for more than 50 years and he said he can see all the different eco villages in his past he have looked at and the ones that are still there at are the ones that are for and not against. The ones that was against stuff. The power ran out of them. But can I? Yeah?

45:20 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's just. I mean, we didn't do it because we were against. We had different reasons when we started.

45:28
But I also really find that there is a great truth if you can walk into what you called it life 303 or whatever, like the space of trust and the space of being and the space of being in the moment and just feeling what is true and right here. Where's the energy, where's the light? And if that takes you to a point with a lot, I mean a lot of our life has been defined by a lot of no. No, I'm not doing that. No, I'm not going that way. No, I'm not eating that. No, I'm not a part of that. No, I don't want to do that. No, I don't want to buy that. No, I don't want to live like that. It's a lot of no, it's a journey of. This is wrong. I know with my soul, my being on this planet.

46:28
This is wrong yeah and I can't tell you what's right at this point, because I just hit this wall of oh, that's wrong, so now I have to do something else and there's actually quite big array of options of something else. I have to explore that and I can't tell you what's right. I can just say no. And there is, there is a space for the no. It's just if it becomes identity identity.

47:00
If you identify, you build that ego and flared personality identity idea about yourself. On all the no's, then there's not a lot of space for the soul and there's not a lot of space for for that big array of options and for finding your way. And then what? So it's it's it's a question of how to, to, to navigate it, and there's a whole story we haven't unfolded I would have liked to talk with you about, but maybe I don't know if we should do a second recording or whatever but the whole freedom from what?

47:38
and freedom to why? Freedom, you know what? What are you running away? Are you trying to break free of some shit? Oh, and what do you? So, okay, now you're free. What? What do you? How? What's that? What are you going to do with that? What's that freedom all about?

47:54 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
that's a very interesting conversation, but I'm afraid um, yeah, I'm sorry, I just wanted to say, cecily, that what you described about the no, no, no, no, no, no, um, working with people, it's very rare for someone to show up and know exactly what they do want.

48:14
Um, and what I've found is I can often help because we have this negativity bias. You know that our brain, our brains, I, I will say, well, make a list of everything you don't want, and, my god, that's easy for them all the way down and I'll say, now, listen, hold that up on. That's, the flip side of that coin is what you do want, and and so I mean that's a self-discovery process. Without calling it self-discovery, it's like I'm discovering what does and doesn't work for me, and so I love what you said too, jesper, about at first there's this rebellion, like pushing against, and I feel like the maturation, the integration of that process becomes when it becomes to the point of going oh, I know the difference between an inner no and an inner yes, and that's how I create my life, you know.

49:00 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, yeah, that's wisdom right there.

49:02 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And I think that's a wonderful place to round off. But, Jacob, please tell people what you do professionally and how you can help guide them and where they can find you.

49:19 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
What a great invitation, thank you. I'm a writer, I'm a creative guide. I have just a passion for helping people find their spark and then live it. So probably the easiest way at the moment I have a site under remodel, but the easiest way at the moment I have a site under remodel, but the easiest way is my own site, jacobnordbcom. I also have a little journaling practice that I use a lot every day for my own guidance, inner guidance, and this is really good for people who don't like to journal, because it asks three questions and everyone can just download it for free at creative self journalcom if they want that. It's a little program, a little short instructional video and a guided meditation at the end perfect thanks.

50:01 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
In the show notes it was a really, really big pleasure having this talk with you.

50:07 - Jacob Nordby (Guest)
Thank you for your time jacob, I'm so glad to meet you and I can't wait to follow your travels more thank you.

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