S10 - Larry Kesslin: Redefining Success: Moving From Constant Hustle to True Significance

Are you chasing success but still feeling disconnected at the top? In this episode, Larry Kesslin breaks down "The Success Trap" and explains why high-achievers often feel empty despite checking every box. Discover the critical difference between temporary happiness and lasting joy, learn the actionable C2P (Conscious Connection + Purpose) formula, and find out how to step back from the chaos of your mind to become the conscious observer of your life. It’s time to stop climbing the wrong ladder and start shifting from surface-level success to deep, life-changing significance.

#eaotpodcast #LarryKesslin #TheSuccessTrap #JoyMolecule #mindsetshift #burnout  #personalgrowth #leadership

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

So, Larry, why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself, um, who you are, and what you've been up to over the handful of last years.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

If you're asking who am I, I am a spirit that is living in this human body that has access to 10 fingers and 10 toes, and a mind that is pretty good, uh, a body that feels, and I get to experience every day as the passenger in my own car watching this world unfold in front of me. I think that one of the things that I've found is that for most of my life, my mind was the driver of the car. And what I've found through the work that I've done for myself and the work I do with my clients is that the more we can release the mind from its need for control of this vehicle, human body, skin sack, whatever you want to call it, the more peace we can find in our life.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Break that down for me. You say that my mind has been the driver of the car. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

I believe that my thoughts, or I did believe for a long time that my thoughts were me. And the work that I've done over the last six plus decades, mostly the last 30 years and the last decade intensively, I pretty much went into a cocoon about 10 years ago and got back from a trip to Africa. My world kind of changed dramatically after a month in Africa, which is what both of these books were after that experience. So I went to Africa in 2012 to bring computers to rural villages in eastern and northern Uganda. And we did that.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

And I was there for almost a month. And to this moment, I always thought, well, when I went to Africa, I thought that purpose, which everybody was talking about purpose, and everybody was saying purpose is our destiny, and we're supposed to go find our purpose. And I'm not sure at 62 and a half that I believe that anymore. I think purpose is a doorway, which is this new book. So out of Success Redefined, I wrote this line in the book. It said, conscious connection plus purpose equals joy. So this idea of when we consciously connect with others, that's where we find joy. That to me was my journey is where do I find the joy that these other people had that had so much less than I did? The part of the story I'm left out so far is that I went to a conference seven weeks after I got back from Africa. And at that conference in Mexico, I was asked three questions in my first workshop on my first morning. The conference is called Opportunity Collaboration. It happens every year, focused on social impact. And the questions were what is poverty? Who gets to define it? And why are we trying to fix it? And those three questions kind of blew my mind. Because I said I just went to a place that was poor. And I didn't experience poverty. I experienced impoverishment. I experienced people living in mud, mud houses and thatched roofs and living with less than what I was used to. And I forced my family to stay in a hotel with seven dollars a night for a room with a bed in it. It had a mosquito net. That was good. So my my ex-wife and my son would stay in one room and I would stay with my daughter in the other. They were 10 and 12 at the time. And that experience totally changed my perspective. So, what is poverty? And I started spending the next 18 months until I did a TED talk in 2014. And that TED talk was called The Disconnected Connected World. And I realized that people that I met in Africa, they were deeply connected. They were connected to each other. They were connected to the land. They were connected to their ancestors. And I came to the conclusion that purpose is just a doorway to deeper connection. And that everything in my life, I am a human connector. That's what people know me as. My title of my company is chief connector. My company is called Five Dots. I connect dots. That's what I do. That is one of the skills that this vehicle has. It is no longer my identity, which is where I got trapped for six decades, is that I was this identity of I am an entrepreneur, I am a founder of businesses, I am a coach. And I've realized that no, I'm a being. I have all these skills that I've learned and I have all these natural gifts. And this being does some really cool stuff. So if I would give you the analogy, when I was born, 007 was planted inside of me. And the world affected me for decades. And then one day, 007 wakes up and says, wow, I'm inside this machine. I have no idea what it does, it has no handbook, but somebody designed this credible machine for me, and I got to figure out how it works. And I believe that 007 is our true self. And if we think about from the time we're born in the time you are right now, is my guess is you're in the middle of this journey of figuring out who is, who am I at the end of the day. So when you say stuff like, I don't like myself, or I'm I'm frustrated with myself, who is I and who is myself? And the way that I look at it is our being versus our mind versus our our feelings. And it's almost like the sky, I am the sky. My thoughts are the clouds, and my feelings are the weather. And in the past, I believed I was the clouds, and I'm not. I am the viewer of the clouds. I am the thing that is above the clouds, watching them. And some days the clouds are really nasty and thunderous, and sometimes they're light and fluffy, and sometimes they move slowly, and sometimes they move quickly, and sometimes they bring depression, and sometimes they bring excitement. But at the end of the day, that is not me. Those are just the thoughts that I'm experiencing. 29 years old, I spent a week with 85 inner city kids in Colorado. At the end of that week, I realized that those kids were happier than I was. So I came back on a Saturday night and Monday. I quit my job after uh an eight-year corporate career. And my boss said, What are you gonna do? I said, I have no idea, but not this.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

And 20 plus years later, I I went to his uh retirement party in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I asked him to leave with me. I told him, Let's go buy a business and we can build a business together. And he's like, I got too many golden handcuffs, I got too much stock. GE basically owns me. And by the time he retired after 39 years, he was an amazing guy, but he was he was uh burnt and he was uh used up by a corporation, and I never wanted to do that.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

So you have this framework for for joy, I see it right behind you. Um and you have the joy molecule. So let's say I, of course, I'm seeking joy. You know, I want to be happy. Everybody wants to be happy, nobody wants to be bummed out. Um, but I have all these external things happening. I've got a business run, I got 50 employees, I'm getting married soon. You know, we're trying to have kids. Congratulations. Thank you, appreciate that. How would you coach someone on beginning to think about that? I mean, is it a is it a is the first thing like a mindset shift? Is the first thing exercise? Is the first thing viewing yourself through a different lens? Maybe just talk me through that.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Sure. So let me define joy to begin with. Joy is synonymous with inner peace. It's knowing the way that I define it is knowing what you are, who you are, why you are. When you know those three things, nobody else can tell you or anything other than what you know yourself to be. And you end up becoming um immovable in who you know yourself to be. When the world blows you left and right, that's when we start to get in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Where do you where do you separate joy and happiness? Is happiness a momentary thing? Is joy more of a state of being like so?

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Joy is a way of being, knowing that I'm a spirit having a human experience, knowing that I'm a higher higher self, I have a higher self, and that I am a being that has thought, and I have agency over my thought. I have the ability to decide which thoughts have value and which thoughts don't. Where before in my life, my thoughts were true, no matter whether they were positive, negative, or indifferent. I gave them all the power. And as soon as I take that and say I no longer believe my thoughts, I just have the ability to inspect them, then my life shifted. So joy is a circumstance independent way of being. I can live in joy all the time, knowing what I am, who I am, why I am, living in peace, knowing that I'm a being that has a thoughts and feelings. That is my way of finding joy. Happiness is circumstance related when I get my needs met. If I'm not getting my needs met, I'm not happy. If I'm getting my needs met, I'm happy. The easiest way to get your needs met is not have a lot of needs. Now we can have a whole conversation about this, but Maslow never created a hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy of needs was created by a consulting team that wanted to use his work in the corporate market.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Interesting, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah, so there's no pyramid in Maslow's research. There's nothing. And Maslow didn't stop at self-actualization. Towards the end of his life, he was talking about self-transcendence.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Well, one thing we do have to say those corporate consultants, they were right, because everybody knows about the hierarchy of needs. They did good branding it.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

They did, but the truth is I'm not sure they're needs. Because I'm not sure we need self-actualization, I'm not sure we need self-esteem. They are helpful. Yeah, right. They're more wants and desires. So, what is it that we need? I think we need the foundation. I was sitting there like dumbfounded because I had met all these people that were happier than just about anybody I know. And they had so much less than most of the people I've met in my life. And those two things did not compute. And I went on a personal journey, and I had defined success for myself at 28 as the ability to do what I want whenever I want to do it. I like defining things.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

And when I defined success for myself at 28, I went pursuing that. And when I got to 48, I was successful. I mean, think about it. I went to Africa for a month. My business ran without me. I was able to bring both my kids and my then wife, met my brother in Nairobi, and we did a safari together. So three and a half plus weeks out of the country, disconnected from my work, and I was still making money. And the machine was running. And I was quote unquote successful. And when I got back, I'm like, okay, if that is my definition of success, I don't want that anymore. I want what those people over there had. I wanted that joy. I wanted that aliveness. So I said, you know, I'm done with success. I need to be significant. And I started going down the road of significance. So I'm in Africa. I landed in Teby Airport after coming through Turkey, Istanbul. And uh there was a list of people whose bags got left in Istanbul. And the first four names on the list were Kesslin, Kesslin, Kesslin, Kesslin. So all four of my bags didn't make it on the plane from Istanbul to uh Entebi. So I got to meet the country director of Turkish Airlines three times over the next couple of weeks. And he ended up giving me over $1,000 for my inconvenience for losing my bags. Nobody gets money for getting your bags lost for six days. It's just an inconvenience, but he actually wrote me a check. And I go to this rural village in eastern Uganda, and the woman who brought me there, his name is her name is Debs, introduced me to this kid named Armstrong. So imagine this. I'm in Africa. I'm I'm a born Jewish, I'm in this Jewish community, and I meet a young African Jewish kid named Armstrong, birth given name, who wants to become a pilot. And I mean, the most famous Armstrong I know is Neil Armstrong, and he was the first man on the moon. It's like, okay, Armstrong was meant to be a pilot. And she says to me, he needs $1,000 to take a pilot's test. So I look at my then wife and I said, you know, I met this kid and I'd like you to meet him. He needs $1,000 to take a pilot's test. We were just given this money by an airline. I didn't budget for it. I mean, the trip was costing us 40 grand, whatever. What does $1,000 mean in that budget to someone who's making money? It was insignificant to me at that time. So I said to her, I'd like to give it to him. She says, Let me meet him tomorrow. So she did, and we said, okay. So I hand this kid 10 $100 bills Saturday morning. We got there Friday. And he takes the money and I meet him two and a half weeks later in Nairobi. We had just gotten back, finished our trip. I met all these people that were just filled with joy. And Armstrong sees me at Wilson Airport in Nairobi. Mr. Larry, Mr. Larry, hi. I'm like, hi Armstrong, how are you doing? He says, I passed my test. So out of success redefined, I wrote this line in the book. It said, conscious connection plus purpose equals joy. And the writer I was working with, her name is Susan Saba, said, Larry, that's C2P. And I'm like, okay, what is C2P? She says, Larry, if H2O is the water molecule, then C2P is the joy molecule, which is the cover of the book. So since it was water, joy, hence the water droplet on the cover of the book of the joy molecule. So this idea of when we consciously connect with others, that's where we find joy. That to me was my journey is where do I find the joy that these other people had that had so much less than I did?

SPEAKER_02 13:35

And he's like, if you're listening to your thoughts, then like who's the person listening? Like, what is that essentially? And that like kind of like took me back. And I'm like, yeah, right. Like, if I can listen to my thoughts, well, then I can't be my thoughts. I have to be the listener, right? Um, so I thought I thought that was really fascinating. I don't know if I took it anywhere and used it for anything. Um, but I'm interested to hear how you got to that kind of place. But I'd love to hear a little bit about your businesses because as you put it, and this is kind of the famous like Jim Carrey, right? Like, I wish everyone would get all the success that they wanted, and then they figure out like, oh, that isn't what I needed in the beginning. Um, but you kind of still have to get that success. So, like, what was the what was your business career like?

SPEAKER_00 14:20

So you have friends in your life that you had in college that 15 years later you're probably no longer friends with, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Some in college, yes, some I'm still close with.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

But a lot of them in college you're not close to I'm close with three. Okay. So the other people you met no longer had value to you. Think of your belief system the same way. But we hold on to it. There are all these programs that talk about personal development. So Landmarks Forum, and I work with these this group in San Diego that started in LA called Insight. And it's like you're in a fish tank your whole life, you're a fish and you're pooping, and I'm 60 plus years old and I'm swimming in the same poop I've been swimming in my whole life. That's my belief system. You need to clean out your belief system and say, okay, I have to inspect it and say, okay, what is it that I believe that's true that I want to hold on to?