AI Cannot Replace What Only You Can Give, Derek Rydall on Human Purpose in the Age of Disruption

Derek Rydall and Dwight Heck on the Give A Heck Podcast discussing human purpose, AI disruption, and the core wound

🎧 Listen and Watch Give A Heck Podcast

 

What does AI actually threaten to take from you — and what does it have no power to touch? Derek Rydall returns for Part 2 with the answer hidden inside your deepest wound, your hardest loss, and the life code that no algorithm can replicate.

 

🎙️ Give A Heck Podcast

Real conversations and solo episodes about purpose, financial stewardship, mindset, leadership, and intentional living — with a special focus this episode on human identity, purpose, and thriving in the age of AI disruption.

 

🔍 Episode Overview

Derek Rydall is back for the second of two conversations, and this one goes deeper. In Part 1, Derek shared the near-death experience in a coral reef that shattered his identity and gave birth to the Law of Emergence. He ended that episode with a warning: we are entering one of the most existential periods in human history, and we need to prepare.

Part 2 delivers on that promise. Derek makes the full case for why AI is not simply a technology story — it is a meaning and identity crisis unlike anything humanity has faced before. He breaks down his concept of the core wound as the gateway to your greatest purpose, explains why self-improvement is an oxymoron, and shares what writing his new book A Whole New Human truly cost him on a soul level.

Dwight opens with a deeply personal reflection on grief, regression, and the perennial plant that dies in the fall and grows back stronger in the spring. Together they explore why service is the master pattern of awakening, what it means to live by insight rather than eyesight, and why the very disruption you fear may be the initiation you were made for.

 

📚 What You Will Learn in This Episode

✅ Why the real danger of AI is not job loss but the loss of human meaning and purpose

✅ What Derek means by your life code and why AI can never replicate it

✅ How the core wound functions as a core initiation into your truest purpose

✅ Why self-improvement is an oxymoron and personal development is not

✅ What Derek’s attempt to live as a monk revealed about who he was meant to be

✅ How grief, loss, and even stolen fortunes can become the soil for a bigger life

✅ Why the goal you are not yet capable of achieving is the right goal

✅ What writing A Whole New Human cracked open in Derek that he did not expect

 

📑 Chapter Summaries

0:00 Teaser and Intro

Derek opens with a raw line about the loss of his son. Dwight’s intro grounds listeners in the mission of the Give A Heck Podcast and the cost of living without purpose.

1:11 Recap of Part 1 and Picking Up the Thread

Dwight recaps Derek’s origin story, the coral reef near-death experience, the Law of Emergence, and Derek’s closing words from Part 1 about the existential period ahead.

4:54 Carrying the Fire Without Letting It Become a Weight

Derek reflects on the death of his son, a DJ who died days before his first major festival performance. He explains how grief became fuel and how living your purpose is the only honest response to losing someone who died before living theirs.

8:07 Dwight’s Personal Story: The Perennial Plant

Dwight shares how losing his granddaughter in 2017 pulled him off purpose, and how he eventually rebuilt through one thing to hold onto. He uses the image of a perennial plant: cut to the ground in winter, returning stronger in spring.

10:49 The Universal Principle Behind Every Great Teacher

Derek draws on Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, and Einstein to illustrate a single universal truth: life is always conspiring for your flourishing. The outer world may not validate what is trying to emerge inside you, but the signal is always there.

14:25 The Apocalypse and Armageddon Reframed

Derek redefines both words from their Greek and Hebrew roots. Apocalypse means the unveiling of what was hidden. Armageddon means the destruction of the old models and beliefs. Both are happening now — and both are invitations.

20:52 The Monastery Story

Derek reveals what happened when he tried to become a monk after his coral reef experience. Fasting, silence, a stolen block of cheese, an out-of-body experience, and a rapid departure. He returned to Los Angeles and built his own monastery — alone in his apartment with scripture, meditation, and an acorn that changed everything.

28:54 Service as the Master Pattern

Both Dwight and Derek agree that the greatest leaps in personal awakening happen not in solitude but in service. Derek explains the sacred union of filling yourself up and giving it all away — and why you cannot keep what you do not give.

32:01 Making the Full Case for AI as an Existential Crisis

Derek shares the prophetic vision he received before ChatGPT existed. He was told to build an ark. He explains why AI threatens not just jobs but the very source of human meaning, and why Viktor Frankl’s work in the Holocaust is directly relevant to what is coming.

41:08 The Opportunity Hidden Inside the Crisis

The same disruption that threatens to strip humanity of meaning is also forcing the most important question of our time: what is a human really for? Derek sees a whole new renaissance emerging on the other side — if people are willing to accept the call.

42:46 The Core Wound as Core Initiation

Derek unpacks his concept of the core wound in depth. It is the moment in childhood when you had to believe a lie about yourself to survive. The lie shaped your compensations, your gifts, and your journey. Your wounds carry your deepest wisdom. Your pain carries the seeds of your truest purpose.

54:15 The Life Code and What AI Cannot Do

Your life code is the algorithm you are meant to run. It is encoded in your lived experience. It makes you singular and above competition. Taylor Swift is not popular because she is the best singer — she is popular because her life code is in her music. Yours can be too.

55:47 What Writing A Whole New Human Really Cost

Derek describes nearly quitting. The book is the most cited of anything he has ever written. It required academic-level rigour he had never applied before. He had to live through his own principles. On the other side: more of himself, not less.

1:04:42 The Books That Changed Derek’s Life

Derek names Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as one of the most formative — for showing what a person of real character looks like, not just theory. He also names Michael Beckwith, Joel Goldsmith, and the Bible read with spiritual discernment.

1:11:48 Closing Reflections and Where to Find Derek

Dwight delivers a closing tribute that lands: not a career, a life lived on purpose. Derek directs listeners to his website, the A Whole New Human book page, his Emergence podcast, and his new live stream, News from the Real World.

 

🎯 Key Takeaway

AI can do everything a human can do — except be you. Your wounds, your losses, your life code, and the workshop you have been living are things no algorithm can replicate. The disruption you fear is the initiation you were made for. Stop trying to fix yourself. Start discovering what is already in you, waiting for the right conditions to emerge.

 

💬 Continue the Conversation

If this episode moved you, these five episodes from the Give A Heck Podcast will take the conversation further.

 

Part 1 of this conversation. Derek’s origin story, the near-death experience in the coral reef, and the Law of Emergence that changed how he understands human potential. Everything in this episode builds on what Derek shared here. Start here if you have not already.

 

A solo episode from Dwight on the financial and emotional weight of the sandwich generation. If the theme of carrying purpose through pressure landed in this episode, this one hits from a deeply practical and personal angle.

 

Sira Laurel and Dwight dig into what AI adoption is doing to human identity inside organizations, and why staying human is the most strategic and meaningful move any leader can make right now.

 

Jim Tracy on legacy, service, and what it means to live with purpose long after the world stops watching. A natural companion to Derek’s message about carrying the fire without letting it become a weight.

 

Sira’s first conversation with Dwight on what it costs to give everything you have to a system that was never designed for who you really are, and what it looks like to reclaim yourself.

 

🔑 Key Themes Discussed

  • Human purpose and meaning in the age of AI
  • The core wound as core initiation
  • The life code and what makes you singular
  • Grief as a catalyst for purpose
  • Service as the master pattern of awakening
  • Why self-improvement is an oxymoron
  • The Law of Emergence and the oak inside the acorn
  • Living by insight rather than eyesight
  • The apocalypse and Armageddon reframed as unveiling and reset
  • Why the goal you cannot yet achieve is the right goal

 

👤 About Derek Rydall

Derek Rydall is a bestselling author, transformational coach, and speaker whose work sits at the intersection of ancient wisdom, cutting-edge science, and decades of human development research. He is the author of Emergence, The Abundance Project, and his newest release, A Whole New Human: Ten Ways We Must Evolve to Survive and Thrive in the AI Age, published by Atria/Beyond Words in 2026. He has shared stages with Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Michael Beckwith, and Wayne Dyer, and has worked with Fortune 500 executives and Academy Award winners. His Emergence podcast has hundreds of episodes and a global following. Derek’s message is not theoretical — he has lived every word of it, from a near-death experience in a coral reef to the death of his son to the loss of a fortune, and he came back each time with more of himself, not less.

 

🌐 Connect with Derek Rydall

Connect with Derek Rydall (click below to access)

 

🤝 Connect with Dwight Heck

 

🎧 Listen and Watch This Episode

 

💭 Final Thoughts

This conversation does not let you off the hook. Derek Rydall has lost a son, a fortune, a marriage, and his sense of self — more than once — and came back each time with more clarity, not less. The message of Part 2 is not about surviving AI. It is about finally asking the question that AI is forcing all of us to answer: what are you actually here for? If you have been sitting on your purpose, waiting for the right conditions, waiting until you feel ready, this episode is your signal. The conditions will never be perfect. The acorn does not wait for a better season. It just grows.

 

📣 Call to Action

If Part 2 moved you, go back and listen to Part 1. Derek’s full origin story, the coral reef, and the Law of Emergence are the foundation for everything in this episode.

Pick up A Whole New Human at derekrydall.com or wherever books are sold. It is available in hardcover, ebook, and on Audible.

Share this episode with someone who is afraid of what AI means for their future. There is a real person on the other end of that fear who needs to hear what Derek said today.

Subscribe on your favourite platform. Leave a review. It genuinely helps this show reach more people who are ready to live life on purpose, not by accident.

Full Transcript of Episode:

[00:00:00] Derek: I don’t know if there’s anything more challenging, tragic, difficult for a person to live through than the loss of a child and this particular one. And he was the love of my life. He is the love of my life

Welcome to Give a Heck. I am your host, Dwight Heck, and for much of my life, lived my life in quiet, desperation wondering how I was going to pay the bills, take vacations, save for retirement, and one day wondering if I would get off the hamster wheel of life and have purpose, a life that most of society lives, which takes us to work, then home, then repeat, and pays us hopefully enough.

Just to survive the harsh truth that most live with more months than money and have no idea how to live life on purpose, not by accident. This ensures the mass majority are living not just financially broke, however, emotionally and mentally as well. Due to financial pressures and each episode, I will introduce you to thoughts, ideas, and guests that can help you to learn how you too can live life on purpose, not by accident.

[00:01:11] Dwight: Last time Derek Rydall joined me on this show and the conversation went somewhere he honestly did not expect. We started with the origin story, a curious kid from a family that did not quite know what to do with him, a boy who took apart everything he could get his hands on, who felt like an oddball in his own home.

Who wanted his father to be proud of him and had to find a different road when that did not come to fruition, that road led through computers philosophy through a decade of trying to fix himself with every self frame, self-help framework he could find. And then he nearly died, trapped in a coral reef under water off the coast of Jamaica.

Night, falling nobody around. And then in the moment he accepted he was not getting out. Something cracked open. He saw a self he had never met before, A self that had never been damaged, A self that could be improved because it was already whole. The experience became the law of emergence. The idea that what you are seeking is not something you attract from the outside yourself.

It is something that’s already inside you, waiting for the right conditions to come forward. Like an oak inside and acorn, you do not make it happen. You become the soil it needs to grow. We covered the origin. We covered the law of emergence. We barely touch what came next. And at the end of the conversation, Derek said something I have been sitting with ever since.

Tune in next time because we are entering one of the most existential periods in human history and we need to prepare. So here we are. Part two. Welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast, to show up for people who want to live life on purpose and not by accident. I am your host, Dwight Heck. Derek Rydall is a bestselling author of multiple books, including Emergence, the Abundance Project, and his news released a whole new human, 10 ways we must evolve to survive and thrive in the AI age.

He has shared stages with Deepak Chopra, Mariana Williamson, Michael Beckwith, and Wayne Dyer. He has worked with Fortune 500 executives, academy Award winners and thousands of people rebuilding their lives from the inside out. What he knows about transformation is not theoretical.

He has lived every word of it. Derek, welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast. Thanks for coming back. I’m really glad to pick up where we left off.

[00:03:46] Derek: Yes, thank you brother. It’s an honour and a pleasure to be back.

[00:03:49] Dwight: Fantastic. We got a lot to cover, lots of ground to cover. Those that have, were privileged to listen to the first episode.

You’ll be able to follow this second episode. No problem. If you get a chance, go back to episode number one. I’m telling you, Derek’s story is just amazing and he’s such a, a fantastic storyteller. He’s able to share his knowledge and his wisdom in a very impactful way that is not overwhelming. So I highly encourage you to check out episode one.

And thank you for being here for the second part of, communicating with Derek about his. Life. It’s just amazing. So Derek, last time you left us was something that had stayed with me. You said when the form said the form that held your love shatters love is not lost. It is liberated. You were talking about your son, a musician, a DJ who died days before he was finally going to play his first major festival.

You set it, put a fire in you. How do you carry the fire without letting it become a weight?

[00:04:54] Derek: Yeah, I mean, uh, I don’t know if there’s anything more challenging, tragic, difficult for a person to live through than the loss of a child and this particular one. And he was the love of my life. He is the love of my life and.

But there was another level to it that was even more painful for me as painful and tragic and truly annihilating as it as it was to lose him. The even more painful was that he died with his music still in him. That he, it was such a dream of his, and he had finally gone through all these things and pulled himself together in a lot of ways.

And then this happened. My whole life as I talked, I think about in the other episode, has been a, has had a singular theme, a singular question or belief that there’s something in us. There’s that we’re here for a reason, for a purpose. That life is not accidental, as you say. We’re not here living on accident, but living on purpose.

There is a seed pattern in us that we are meant to fulfil. You can call it your dream, your purpose, et cetera. And that, that’s really the meaning of life, the ever greater expression of who and what you really are. So that’s been my whole life drive. And it’s, it’s what I help, have helped many, many people do to discover what that is and to get it out.

And here is my son on the verge of that. And having watched him struggle with that, and he died before he could. And it, and it put a deep fire in me in the sense of I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure, first of all, that I don’t cop out on my own purpose. That whatever it takes, no matter how hard it is, I’m not gonna leave here with my music still in me.

And then secondly, I’m going to do everything I can for anybody that wants to discover what that is in them. What is their music, what is their dream, what is their purpose? I’m gonna do everything I can to help them not leave this place before they sing their song. So that’s the fire. And yeah, it can feel like a burden, it can feel like a weight, but you know, we’re all meant to carry our cross.

Everybody has to bear the cross at some point. Everybody has to be willing to do really hard and uncomfortable things to activate their potential. But that if you do it for a worthy purpose, it doesn’t tear you down, it makes you stronger. It make, gives your life more meaning. So that’s, that’s how I hold it.

And it’s a day to day, week to week, I’m in another to chapter of evolution to my life right now where I’m having to make choices that are scary. ’cause living your authentic self and purpose means a constant letting go of who you were and what worked. And, and it might even still be working at the level you’re at, but it won’t take you to where you’re meant to be.

You can’t put new wine into old wine skins. Um, so, so that’s how I hold it. And I’m sure we can unpack more of that. Well,

[00:08:07] Dwight: it definitely, um. I look at the fact that when you lose somebody that’s really close to you, ’cause I have, again, I never lost, as my listeners know, I haven’t lost a child, but I’ve lost a grandchild at a very young age.

Yes, you mentioned it. And, and it literally, I had a choice. Initially I was depressed. Initially I regressed, and at the end of the day, I had copped out of life, pardon me, copped outta life. I had stopped, I had climbed back onto the hamster wheel and, and wasn’t living with purpose. Mm-hmm. In some ways I was, because there’s autopilot purpose that we live.

Sure. And some people don’t realise that we do have autopilot. We can create positive habits. But without getting past that, if I would’ve stayed stuck, it didn’t just affect me, it affected everybody around me. Right. My family, my clients, my friends. And it was, it was a very dark time for me. It took me, uh, a while to get past it, but through that all I went through an evolution.

I went through like a regrowth. It, it would be like, it would be like plants that in Canada, here where I am, where there’s snow at die, die in a fall. And there they’re considered perennials. They come back in the spring and they, yet they’re chopped down right to the ground and they grow again.

[00:09:31] Derek: Yes.

[00:09:32] Dwight: It was an old plant with a new beginning.

[00:09:34] Derek: Yes.

[00:09:35] Dwight: And that’s how, and that’s how I consider myself, my evolution and even the process of not having a bad day. Right. And that’s been, that’s been a long time for me. Right. 2017, I started on that journey when my granddaughter passed away by 2018. Um, it was getting better by 2019. Right. You wouldn’t hear me talk about it.

If anything, I constantly got back to a state where I never have a bad day, where I could deflect even the worst possible thing you could think of in a day. I still had gratefulness for opening my eyes.

[00:10:08] Derek: Yes.

[00:10:08] Dwight: Right. I had something to hang onto. So those listening are watching start with hanging onto one thing.

Yes. Take that baby step. You are worth it. You have greatness in you that you haven’t even begin to water. You can’t expect the world to water it. You can expect them to support you once you start on your journey. If you ask, open your mouth, remove all doubt works both sides of the coin. Yes. Ask for assistance, right?

Yes. Find that tribe of people that are gonna not go, oh, boo hoo, woo hoo. You lost somebody, boo hoo hoo. You lost your job. You lost your co, you lost your business. You lost. There’s so much loss we have in our life. Right.

[00:10:49] Derek: It’s part of, it’s part of the process. Jesus said, if you try to save your life, you’ll lose it.

But if you’re willing to lose your life, you’ll find it. And that’s not a religious statement. That’s a universal principle, which again, is understanding that. You were a child at one point and at some point unconsciously, through natural evolution instincts, you let go of childish ways. You let go of childish beliefs.

You let go of child, a child body, you didn’t see it, you didn’t notice it, but you were doing it. And at a certain point, we grow up and now we have to consciously collaborate with life and evolution. Not just accidentally, not just naturally and instinctually. And that’s where most of us are now. We have to consciously go, what’s really in me seeking to emerge if I truly believe life was for me and life supported me?

As Einstein said, at some point, you gotta make a decision. It’s either all a miracle or none of it is. And once you understand the true nature of life, you realise life is all there is. And life can never be against life. And so everything is conspiring for us to flourish and to flower and to unfold from glory to greater glory.

And so once you understand that, then you have to recognise, as we just said, that life is always giving you a signal for what’s trying to emerge. Now, more of you, more life, more love, more peace, more joy, more creativity, more abundance, et cetera. But it’s not always going to, the outer world isn’t always going to validate the life that’s trying to emerge in the inner world.

It’s going, you’re gonna have to build what I call living by insight more than eyesight, the Jedi way. You gotta be a Jedi. You gotta learn to discern and and have inner eyes and inner ears to discern the world and the reality that’s in you, that is always infinitely greater than the world outside of you if you can see it.

And, and then you have to serve that. You have to bring yourself into alignment with that. You have to hold it sometimes in silent secret confidence, but then you have to express it and step into it. And you might look crazy to people for a while. I’ve looked crazy many, many times,

[00:13:14] Dwight: haven’t we all though?

[00:13:15] Derek: Right? Right. Because you gotta break the status quo. Sometimes. You gotta sit at the front of the bus. You gotta go against the status quo, go against the rules. I don’t mean break laws and be an anarchist necessarily. Sometimes you got to, but then you build resilience and sometimes it comes through.

You lost your job. But if you’re honest, you there’s something more trying to emerge. I got fired three times from the same job until I finally got the message. And sometimes it’s a loss of a loved one. It’s, it’s terrible, it’s tragic. Um, it’s not fun, it’s not fair. But there is something greater trying to emerge.

And we’re in the midst of, we’re all, what I like to say? We’re in the midst of an actual apocalypse right now in an Armageddon. But the real understanding of that is apocalypse from the Greek apocalyptic apocalypses means the unveiling. It means what was hidden is being revealed. And Armageddon doesn’t mean the destruction of the world.

It means the destruction of the concepts, the beliefs, the stories, the models you, you were living in. It’s the destruction of the matrix. And it’s

[00:14:25] Dwight: back to that reset that you and I talked about

[00:14:27] Derek: exactly

[00:14:27] Dwight: prior to recording and the machine that we live in, of society. Um, I like the fact that you brought up Jesus.

Jesus wasn’t an organised religion. Right. Jesus was a person that had,

[00:14:40] Derek: he

[00:14:40] Dwight: was a revelator,

[00:14:40] Derek: he was a radical.

[00:14:42] Dwight: Yes. He was very much so, and he was very much on, on the soapbox with his convictions, but he had the most kind and compassionate heart and he didn’t always get it back. Right. There was always somebody wanting and something from him you think, look,

[00:14:58] Derek: he

[00:14:59] Dwight: didn’t

[00:14:59] Derek: always give it back.

He’s literally dealing and feeding everybody.

[00:15:02] Dwight: Look at, look what Judis did to him. Right?

[00:15:05] Derek: Then he gets betrayed and then he’s like, all these people that he had been feeding and healing, they’re like, release the, the criminal and killed the lover. It’s like that’s,

[00:15:14] Dwight: that’s why I say to people, you know, at the end of the day, whether or not you believe Jesus existed, right.

Every religion, organised religion in some way or form believes in Jesus, not necessarily as the son of God, right, but as a prophet. Right. Yeah. The Muslims believe him as a prophet. The list goes on, and at the end of the day, Jesus

[00:15:34] Derek: and Buddha and Mohammed

[00:15:35] Dwight: and yeah, just go, they would be hanging out, talking about same stuff.

Get past, get past your hangups, those listening are watching, and just listen to the message within the stories that were shared.

[00:15:45] Derek: Exactly

[00:15:45] Dwight: Where, where you can go and look and we will get moving on. ’cause you and I have such great conversations. I just love talking to you, brother. Well, it’s good

[00:15:53] Derek: stuff.

[00:15:53] Dwight: Because we, we have a lot of commonality. We, we, we are on a lot of the same wavelength and I really appreciate that. But I read something here recently and I did a deep dive into it. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not. They have a, a video of a globe and they talk about the different readings and again, I’m not saying that it’s a hundred percent legit, the Bible, but you look at the gospels and they look at where they were written and by who they were written.

Many of the gospels weren’t even written by the apostle. They were written by somebody that was following along with them because they couldn’t read or write. They

[00:16:25] Derek: were

[00:16:25] Dwight: illiterate.

[00:16:26] Derek: It was an

[00:16:26] Dwight: oral tradition. But my point, but my point is though, is this globe that they had showed all the intersections of points of everything coming back to the same point.

[00:16:35] Derek: Yeah.

[00:16:35] Dwight: And, and some of it thousands, a years indifference in time. So how do you, how do you not, when people say we want collaboration, that that was real, my gosh, how much more do you need? Right? Yes. You don’t have to be that person on that plane or on that bandwagon. Whatever floats your boat for a term, whatever you wanna label it.

Just be somebody that’s true to yourself and you want to grow and know there’s more of the truth that you’ve been sheltered from. Because when you, you talked about a little bit when you get, as a teenager, by the time you’re a teenager, you’re al already plugged into a learning mode of society. Yeah.

Which is your parents too, right. You need, you’re

[00:17:15] Derek: already in the

[00:17:16] Dwight: matrix. Yeah. So you need to Exactly. You need to unplug and realise there’s so much more, but we’re gonna go on because I know you could. Anyway, I, I just, I really am being sincere. I love having conversations with you. Lemme, I’ll put one little button.

[00:17:31] Derek: I’ll just put one button on. Yeah. Just one button on it. Sure. In terms of. To wrap around like the apocalypse, the Armageddon thing. And the revelations and all that. Again, the most, and even like, whether you are, you believe in Jesus as you said, or you’re an atheist, or it doesn’t matter to me.

I’m a student of all. I’m a student of truth, and I’ve studied the great religions and philosophies and seen behind the dogma, the doctrine, the cultural idioms, the analogies, the metaphors, the stories to see there is universal truth behind all of it. As I like to say, we have to have a glimpse behind the scene, SEEN, and learn to interpret life, not what’s on the surface, but ask what is trying to emerge by means of this condition, by means of this.

You know, we don’t wanna build the Tower of Babel again so that we can’t communicate and connect with each other. We want to understand there’s a universal language of truth, and it starts within us. And that’s why we have to learn, to discern, to ask, and even say, this is my affirmation more than I wanna fix, change, heal, control, manipulate anybody or anything, including myself.

I wanna know the truth that makes me free. I want to see with the eyes of reality, I wanna be a transparency of reality. And that that principle, that affirmation, it allows me to set an intention and to create the condition for those moments of revelation or insight where the veil parts, and I see what’s more true about me, about you, about life than the conditions.

And then that’s my marching orders. That’s, that’s the apocalypse. What was hidden is now revealed. Sometimes it’s not a good thing. It’s like, oh, there’s corruption everywhere. People are confused. Or I’m the one that’s confused. And then the Armageddon is, oh, I have to be willing to let go of this world, of this model, maybe this job, maybe whatever, in order to serve a deeper, truer, pure purpose within me.

And that if you’re willing to do that, and we’ll talk about it, I’m sure in this current existential crisis we’re moving through, you are going to need to learn to do that, to live by insight more than eyesight in order to not only survive, but to thrive through the coming age of disruption. But that’s what all the great teachers we’re teaching, whether it’s Jesus, Buddha, lasu, Kwan, Zuri, Astor, Gandhi, Dr.

King, whoever. They’re all fundamentally teaching. To learn to connect more with something that’s true inside of you, and then have the courage to live it. And I’m sure we’ll talk more about it. Yeah. But that’s been my whole modus operandi and it got me through the death of my son, the loss of a fortune.

Think of a number now, double it, double it again. Um, through terrible divorce, through all kinds of challenges. And then once you all understand how to live from that deeper powerful place within you, you will not only survive and make it through, but you will become more you than ever before and more capable of living a life in a way that you currently can’t even imagine.

So yeah.

[00:20:52] Dwight: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. One of the things we, um, I noticed throughout the transcript of the last conversation, there was many things you talked about. And one of these things was the fact you said we could have it a whole episode about it. You may not recall, but you mentioned the monastery almost in passing.

Oh yeah. You said it deserved its own episode. And I did have it within the conversation, but we never got to that point. It just came up in one of our, one of our flows of conversation. You pulled that outta the society, became a monk, walked away from family and friends. What were you actually looking for when you went there, when that happened?

Well,

[00:21:28] Derek: well, I’d had that experience, the near death experience in the coral reef. And the realisation that the self I’ve been trying to fix, change, heal, and improve was a fiction, an amalgamation of parental fantasy, societal conditioning, peer pressure, and nothing I would ever do would make that self enough.

He was a fiction and behind that, there was a self that had never been hurt or damaged, so it didn’t. Fixed and it was already whole, so it couldn’t be improved. Self-improvement is actually an oxymoron. Personal development. Yes. But self-improvement is an oxymoron. You can’t, the acorn doesn’t improve itself into an oak tree, right?

It is already an oak. When the conditions are right, it develops its potential. The potential emerges. So I saw that, but I was like, what the heck do I do with all that? Right? And, uh, and, and, and I, and I, and I couldn’t fit back into society. Humpty Dumpty had fallen off a wall, something had, the cosmic egg had shattered, and I didn’t know how to operate, but I felt a deep pull inward.

So I decided I was gonna join a monastery, and that did not go so well. I mean, I was fasting, I was silent. I’d never done any of this. And pretty shortly within that period of being there, I started to freak out. And I remember one night I finally couldn’t handle it anymore and I left my little room and scurried into the woods and into the monk’s main room and area with the kitchen, and broke into their kitchen and stole food out of their Sub-Zero freezer.

I remember there was like down the hall, there was like a little light bulb where they were sleeping, and I’m like trying to open the fridge so the light doesn’t go on and stick my hand in there and steal and I’m just grabbing whatever’s in there. And it was probably like bird food. Who knows what I was getting?

And I’m just stuffing it in my mouth. I do remember a chunk of a cheese block the size of my head, and I remember like a giant cabbage, and I’m just eating it. And I scurried back to my room because I think I heard something and I got violently sick. And then I had an out of body experience, literally the first time I’d ever experienced that.

And I thought I was dying again. And, and then I was like flying around the monastery and, and, and there was like this sense of presence of other presences like tormenting me and it terrified me. And I pretty much packed up and left that next morning. I don’t know if I slept at all that night, but I, so I was like, the monastery is not for me.

That’s not my life. I later found out whether you believe in this or not, that I’d been a monk in previous lives more than once. And this time around life was like, Nope, you’re not gonna go seclude again. You need to be in the world. But in any case, I went back to my apartment in North Hollywood and I cloistered myself there.

And I created my own monastery in the middle of the city. I got rid of tv, I got rid of so many things, just a few books of scripture and different texts. And I just began to meditate and pray and journal and try to really understand what was happening to me and also to unpack that vision I had in the coral reef.

And that’s when one day I was walking and I saw an acorn on the ground in nature, and the whole idea of the oak is already there. And, and I looked around at other trees and everything was already in the seed. And then I realised everything in nature, everything in life comes from a seed. Whether it’s a physical seed, a biological seed, or a seed of an idea, everything comes from a pattern.

There’s a platonic reality. And, and that all of my efforts to fix, change, heal, make it happen. Were the resistance to what is a more natural process that makes it welcome. And we, that I had to come, I had to discover what is the seed within me, not what my parents told me, not what society tells me I have to be, must be can’t be, but, but I needed to go back to the original og, self-help guru, the oracle of Delphi.

And she, it was a woman and she said, know thyself. I’m like, I’m gonna sit here and I’m gonna figure out who and what I really am and why I am alive so that I can then serve, that I can be in service of the seed that was planted in me before I was planted in my mother’s womb. And let me be very clear, that’s the only job every single person has been given that nobody else has been given.

Is to, you’ve been given a seed, you’ve been given a pattern, you’ve been given a flame, whatever you want to, whatever metaphor, and it is your job, your most important job to grow that seed. And then you’ll have fruits. And now you give those fruits away. And if we put that in religious terms, it’s the first two commandments.

Love God with all of your heart and soul. And might, where did Jesus say God was within you? If we only got that part right, we’d be in a different world. So first you gotta love the divine spark within you. Then love your neighbour as yourself. Now you have to take what you’ve grown, the fruits, the, the perfume, the nuts, whatever.

And give that to serve others in being able to grow their own. Now, where else is that principle operative everywhere in nature. That’s how we were designed. So that’s all that unfolded out of this monastic life. It was a few years I was just in meditation and reading and studying. And then

[00:27:27] Dwight: it Well, that’s the key though.

It’s, it was a few years. Those listening are watching anything worthwhile take can take time. Right? Yeah. You gotta be willing to be in the uncomfortable to get to a point where, , you like what you see in the mirror. Right? It’s, that’s

[00:27:43] Derek: taken me a little longer, but yes.

[00:27:45] Dwight: But yeah, exactly. So thank you so much for that.

I wrote down so many bullet points, but I know if I start discussing ’em, we’re gonna knock it onto the next episode, episode

[00:27:55] Derek: three, episode

[00:27:56] Dwight: four. Yeah. Or we just get on every week and have our own podcast together and share with the world. That would be it. That would be an option too. I’ve, I’ve offered that to a few people.

Nobody’s up. You have a lot of hecks on it. Well, I’m serious. I’d, I’d love to have a joint podcast with somebody. I think it would be, um, so much of a deal changer. Right. I’ve had lots of podcast friends try it and not succeed. Yeah. But here’s the reason why that doesn’t succeed, and then we’re gonna move on to the Ai, ai stuff is, I feel it doesn’t succeed is because of the fact that their true intention for doing it isn’t sincere.

It isn’t rooted in, and like you said, and, and we need to serve and help others in order to serve and help ourselves. Just like I say to God every single day, multiple times a day. Right. I thank you for letting me serve so that I can grow and change myself. Right. So anyway, thank you so much for that.

Absolutely. We’re gonna go on to the next one. But yeah, those listeners

[00:28:54] Derek: are, service is the key. You’re right. That’s

[00:28:56] Dwight: Oh, absolutely. A hundred percent.

[00:28:57] Derek: That’s what Dr. King said. Everybody can be great because anybody can serve

[00:29:02] Dwight: well. Look at, look at somebody. The people constantly disregard. Mother Teresa did.

She, was she, was she a servant? She was a servant. All she for everything. That’s all she did.

[00:29:13] Derek: They’re all servants. , The, that was something just real quick, little sidebar and then I promise we’ll get

[00:29:17] Dwight: that. Okay, go ahead.

[00:29:18] Derek: Um, yeah, I was having this awareness recently, and looking at my own journey of, of, of awakening and seeking to awake and whatever that means to people, um, to be myself fully, whatever.

Uh, I’ve, I’ve seen that. What the greatest leaps in my own personal growth development, uh, expanded awareness, capacity to love, compassion, et cetera, heal has been when not I’m just doing it all for my own self awakening, but when I’m taking whatever knowledge or wisdom or love I have and putting it in service to another, that’s where the quantum leap in my own awakening happens.

And then I suddenly realised, you know, all these names were naming, whether it’s Dr. King, Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, mother Theresa, they became awake or enlightened or whatever you wanna call. And you may believe Jesus is just the only son of God, but in any case, they’re all examples of individuals that their awakening, their highest height came not from them sitting in a cave or sitting on a mountaintop, but from them coming down off the mountaintop and serving.

And, and that’s increasingly a growing revelation in me is, I mean, I’ve known it and I’ve known it intellectually, but truly, yes, you have to serve yourself because if you don’t fill yourself up, if you don’t put the oxygen mask on first, et cetera, you’re gonna run out of air. You’re not gonna have the resources.

You, you can’t give away your roots. You have to give away your fruits. So you have to nurture your roots and grow yourself. But the ultimate way is finding the right dance, what I call the way of sacred union, where you are serving yourself and filling yourself up so that you can give it away. And in the giving it away is where the real magic happens.

You, you cannot keep what you don’t give. And, and so as you give you discover, oh my God, I have more, give more, give it all, give all that away. Oh my God, I have even more give up. And you’re like, I think I found a secret. Don’t tell anybody. But if you just yes, take care of yourself. But if you just give and serve and love and bless and help people, like in business, they say you want to be a billionaire, help a billion people.

It’s true. But you do have to make sure you, you are taking care of yourself. But it really is the master pattern, which is service. So I just wanted to

[00:31:51] Dwight: put a a hundred percent. A hundred percent. So one of the things we, so we’re gonna go on to a whole new human, the AI argument, right?

[00:32:01] Derek: Yes.

[00:32:01] Dwight: Which you ended part one saying, we are entering one of those most existential periods in human history, and we need to prepare, make the full case what is actually happening and why is it so urgent?

[00:32:15] Derek: Yeah, excuse me. Um, yeah, I mean the, a i, I had a vision, I’ve had a couple visions or moments that were prophetic in my life was a different feeling than just an insight or revelation. The first one happened, I don’t know, six years ago or so, where I knew something bad was coming. It was a feeling, a prophetic feeling like I’d never felt.

I was trying to help people prepare, and then COVID hit and people didn’t believe me. They thought I was weird. And then cut to a li a year later or so, or after, somewhere in the middle of that before chat, GPT came out and I had that feeling again. And I saw, and it gave a vision with it, and it showed me ai and it showed me what it was going to do.

The good, the good, and the, the good, bad and the ugly. And it, the vision said, the voice said, build an arc. The flood is coming. And I did not, run out to Home Depot and stock up on lumber, just in case anybody’s wondering. I didn’t think I was actually a prophet, but it was a prophetic feeling. And I knew that feeling.

And this time I wasn’t going to deny it, but I, it showed me that AI was gonna be one of the greatest existential crises that we faced. Um, because as AI is able to do everything a human can do better, faster, cheaper, or at least everything humans have identified as valuable economically and otherwise, we would face a universal global identity crisis, unlike we’ve ever faced before.

Because ai, the, the, the very imp purpose or intention of the AI builders, the hyperscalers as they’re called, is to replace all human labour. Mental, physical, even emotional, like companionship, everything all down the line. And it’s already on track and is doing it at a certain level. Um, it’s not right now able to run mad and free and fulfil everything, but it’s on track and that’s their intention.

But I saw this before, they were all talking about it, and I saw two things. One was that we would, like so many technologies before be in great risk of outsourcing more and more of ourself in the sense that, as the calculator came along and then GPS and then automobiles and we’ve outsourced capacities, and this is actually scientifically provable.

There’s studies, I, I talk about this in my book. I, I give the history of industrial revolutions and our cognitive decline and, and also our loss of agency, which is critical because if you don’t have the cognition to think for yourself and you don’t have the agency to live and fulfil what you’re really made of and made for, you lose meaning and purpose.

And if you lose meaning you die. Humans can survive anything. Plagues wars, h. But we cannot survive the loss of meaning. When a person truly doesn’t feel like they have a meaning or purpose for tomorrow, they kill themselves, if not literally, then inevitably slowly, drugs, alcohol, giving up, et cetera. So this is not, you know, I’m not, this is not hyperbole.

So the loss of meaning and purpose is the most dangerous thing. And that’s why Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning and the Holocaust, he found if a person lost meaning and purpose, other than the murder and the, the terrible things that happened to people, if they didn’t end up being killed, but they lost their meaning and purpose, they died anyway in many cases.

So all of this was shown to me before any of this was happening. And, and it was an urgent thing because it would provide a great promise, increase productivity, increase a business profitability, all these great things. And a lot of people would buy into that. And you see now, everywhere across the internet, make more money, scale your business.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Luddite, I’m ProTech. But what the vision showed me is what’s most important is developing and remembering our human technology. That humans, human consciousness, the human heart, we have to upgrade our HeartWare. We have the capacity within us to be the killer app we’ve been looking for.

And if you look through history from the Tower of Babel to the Golum, to the Frankenstein’s monster, to to all these, to, sorcerer’s, apprentice, sorcerer, stone, these are all stories about how humans sought to create God or become God or create an outer technology, believing this will save them, or, give them power and control.

And always, those are cautionary tales. And we’re stepping into another one right now. So all of this came in the vision, and I realised this time I was not going to be, be quiet about it. And that’s where the book came out. And, and the second side of it. So that’s the existential danger. We can lose our identity.

We could lose our meaning and purpose, not to mention the, because there will be an incredible disruption of all jobs, opportunities, economies, et cetera. But the second side was this. Like I said before, we have to learn to read behind the scene. We have to be able to ask what’s trying to emerge by means of this crisis.

My son dies. I can’t do anything about it, but, but if I’m gonna live on what’s the bigger life trying to emerge, I get divorced after 20 some years. I lose everything. But what’s the bigger life trying to emerge? My entire fortune is stolen. Okay, but what’s the bigger life trying to emerge? So as I opened up to that, what I could see was very clear much of what humans spend their time and energy and resources on and their jobs and where put meaning is ne was never what humans were meant to be doing.

It was never what humans were made for. And so the big question that this new era will force us to an ask an answer is what’s a human really for? And then ultimately, what am I really for? And I believe therefore, as we ask and answer that question as what stripped away is everything we thought mattered.

We will discover a whole new renaissance of what a human is for and what we’re capable of. So while it will be very disruptive and very hard and already is on a lot of levels, if you are anchored in this question and in this journey, which is what the book is all about, a whole new human, you will not only survive, but you, we evolve to discover maybe for the first time in your life and maybe for the first time in our human existence on mass, whoa, this is what I was born for.

Not all of that, this right? It was this that I was born for. And we’ve seen glimpses throughout history, we see a glimpse of what a human is capable of. In a Gandhi, in a Buddha, in a Dr. King, in a Mother Teresa, maybe even in a Jesus, some people believe, I mean he was a man. He even if he’s God as a man, but nevertheless he said greater things than these shall you do?

He’s like, you think I’m great? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And that’s the first coming. But the second coming isn’t Jesus on a cloud, it’s us getting it. It’s us humans waking up and discovering we can heal, we can love, we can serve like the great lights throughout all of history. And that’s the utopia we’re meant to build.

Not everybody doesn’t have to work. And, robots are running the world and we all have free everything. That’s the dystopia. A utopia is humans finally discover their destiny and we become the lovers and the creators and, and the lights in the world. Not looking up to one guru but looking at each other and saying, Namaste.

Oh my God, do you know how beautiful you are? That’s the world that is available to us now. But like every great transition it, every great promised land, it usually is proceeded by an Armageddon and an apocalypse. And that’s what we’re in the midst of. But it’s nothing to be scared of. It’s something to get ready to go on an adventure in.

And that’s what this book is about. And that’s what I believe this new era for us, should we be willing to accept the call and not let it go to voicemail.

[00:41:08] Dwight: I like that. Not go to voicemail. Um, wow. What a great. Response, what a great conversation we’re having. We’re gonna move on to the next section, just because I want to make sure I cover all the things that Sure.

I felt were relevant that we missed in the first one. And again, it’s not that what you were discussing as an important, those listening and watching, they followed me for how many years. I would love to keep on going down that path, but unfortunately other things will get missed. So what does this tell you?

It tells you listeners and watchers, go get the book. Go to Derek’s website, go check out his social media, get connected, learn and realise that you have the seeds of greatness in you to grow through specific processes that you need to develop. You need to put that extra work in, right? You need to understand that anything worth it’s weight and salt, gold, whatever, whatever error you want to follow, it doesn’t mean that you are not gonna have to put in some investment in time.

Yeah. Some sacrifice of things you thought were fulfilling you, which were actually keeping you caught in that matrix. Yes. Plugged into society. Right? So we’re gonna go onto the core wound, right? You talk about the coral wound, a place where a person’s deep, deepest hurt lives, and you say it as the gateway to their greatest power and purpose, right?

That as a paradox, most people have not been handed that way. Walk me through how this actually works.

[00:42:46] Derek: I’ll tie all this back into what I just said. The, the overall thesis or premise of this new age of disruption and, and the core idea of the book and how we can prepare to survive and thrive.

And that is, again, if AI’s doing everything a human can do better, faster, cheaper, and you have to ask, well then what’s a human for? What am I for? Well plant it in you is this seed. And, and, and in your journey, your life experience has embodied in you what I call your life code. And that’s the algorithm you’re meant to run rather than being run and controlled by all these external algorithms, it’s your life code.

It’s that what makes you singular and of one un above competition. ’cause AI can do everything, but it can never do you specifically your lived experience and the value, the Gucci and the Prada, and the value of this new world, even to in your intimate personal relationships, which has always been true, is going to be what is unique and authentic and lived about you.

That’s gonna be, that’s gonna bring taste and perspective and, and that’s what’s gonna make you stand out, make you valuable. It’s always been true, right? Every, you gotta be yourself, everybody else has taken. So the but, but the problem is, is again, we haven’t learned how to read, how to see the larger good that is always trying to emerge in the midst of what appears to be bad.

So we think of like, I was wounded, I was abandoned, I was betrayed. And then we spend a life either coping and compensating or stuck in compulsive behaviours to push down and not feel, or we get caught on the self-help treadmill and we are forever trying to fix our broken self. None of these work.

Because you’re not broken. The acorn isn’t broken, isn’t a broken, inadequate oak tree, right? It’s a perfect acorn with the potential of an oak inside of it. And in in nature, many different species need powerfully damaging, terrible, challenging experiences. The jack Pine needs a forest fire to open up its seeds.

Certain plants need rough, rocky soil that really struggle with to activate their bark and their enzymes in the bark and all this stuff. So your core wound is also the core initiation into the quest, into the mission. You’re, you’re here for. Now, to put it simply, the core wound is that moment, and there’s many moments, but there’s an initial one where you must believe a lie about yourself and about the world to survive.

So you had to believe that before the core wound, you know who you are more, and you have more trust in life, let’s say. Then you have an experience that tells you you can’t be who you are. You can’t be that crazy. You can’t run around naked. You can’t just speak your mind. You can’t just have what you need.

There’s not enough to go around. You are not enough. Whatever. You get that message from parents, teachers, authorities, whatever. And the setup is, if I keep speaking up and acting out and being who I really am, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get in trouble. I’m gonna get punished. I’m, from an evolutionary standpoint, I’m in danger.

I’ll get kicked out of the tribe and I’ll die from an evolutionary instinct. So I have to figure out a way to conform, to fit in to, to not cause as much conflict, to make sure I still eat and I’m not kicked out of the tribe. Again, you’re not thinking all this, but that’s evolutionary instinct. So you’re like, oh, let me stop making it about my needs and let me make it about mommies.

Let me take care of mommy or daddy, or, oh, let me not express what is in me this truth, this awareness that is expansive. Let me stop saying things that they think are stupid or crazy, or having all these ideas, or put my clothes on whatever. Literally and metaphorically, who told you you were naked?

God asks, well, that’s what happens, right? We are naked and then we clothe ourselves in parental, societal, or peer concepts so that we can meet our core needs. A sense of love, safety, security, meaning, you know, usefulness. We have to meet those needs. So that’s what happens with the core wound. Now that sounds bad, right?

Well, shoot. Now, now I’ve repressed myself. I’m confused, I’m scared, and, and I literally, it’s a wound because I convinced myself, I let myself be convinced I believed the lie, right? If you knew you were lying, you would just go, okay, I know I’m gonna, I’m gonna play the part, but then in a few years I’m gonna, you actually have to, to live in that reality, you have to believe the lie.

It’s like being a great actor, and I was an actor. I don’t know if I was a great one, but I was a pretty good one. You had to live under imaginary circumstances. You had to believe the lie, the story, and it would activate the emotions, and you would literally come to life on stage in the tragedy or in the love affair or whatever it was.

And that’s what makes great actors and great acting. You believe it. The difference is then when you walk off stage, hopefully you realise, oh yeah, that wasn’t real, but we never walk off stage, right? And so, so that’s what happens when you’re young in the age of imprinting. And then what happens is you must now create a compensatory degree of things.

So like you say, I can’t be, I can’t be naked, or I can’t be crazy, or I can’t be, uh, needy, or whatever the thing is, you build up that lie. Now I have to be, instead I have to make it about other people. I have to not need too much. I have to not want too much. Now you develop the capacity, so you might develop the capacity to not make it about yourself and to be really, really good at making it about everybody else.

And you develop skills, talents, gifts, abilities. You become very intuitive, very perceptive. You can see that flicker on your mom’s face and know exactly what she needs, and she’s not in a good mood. And that, and that makes you a master at navigating and developing this whole other dimension of you, right?

Or maybe, your house is so overly, um, it’s so chaotic. You learn how to create control and create order. Or maybe you learn that you are not worthy doing what you really want, but worthiness in your family looks like, doing more of what your mom and dad think is good. So you get better grades.

You become an A student. You learn how to plan and have goals and you, so these are good qualities you develop, but it’s at the expense of a deeper, more authentic part of you, or at least some other very critical parts of you. It’s like a guy going to the gym and all he does is work out his upper body and he’s got little pencil legs or no back, and he ends up being injured later.

So that’s where the core wound comes in. Now, it’s a core initiation, as I said, because you’re developing these other parts of you and you are learning once you learn how to decode your life. As you come to a point in your life where finally you realise this isn’t working, it’s not good enough. You stand up in the cubicle and say, I’m mad as hell.

I’m not gonna take it anymore. You have one of those moments, and probably many of you listening have had that, or in the midst of that, that’s an existential crisis. You’re like, that just doesn’t work anymore. I’m tired. I’m resentful of giving away my power, of stepping over my voice and my needs of not asking for the support I need of, of keeping my mouth closed when I have more to say, I can’t live this way anymore.

It’s not working. And that could come through a crisis, a tragedy or just frustration. That begins a journey if you’re willing to go back and remember what you had to forget in order to survive. And that’s the process I take people through in this book and much more in depth in my classes because now once you understand what you forgot, your journey of learning how to cope, survive, the strategies you learned, the skills you developed, and then your journey back to reclaiming these repressed parts of you, this buried treasure, when you put all of that together, that is a transformational journey.

It’s also called the hero’s journey, or the Heroine’s journey. It’s the substance of every great myth and every great story, and it’s already encoded in you. And when you can understand that that encoding points to the life you’re really meant to live, the wisdom you already have to give, it’s already encoded in you.

If you’re 30 plus or 20, even 20 something plus, there’s already the basic. Foundation of your deepest genius, your deepest wisdom and the direction your life path is meant to take. And that’s what I show you how to do in the book and also what I teach in general. But that is what will make you singular.

When that, when that life code is plugged into your work, your words, and your world, it will bring forth a universal idea that other humans will deeply relate to. But it will be unique to you. And that is something AI can’t do. That is something that took me from being broke, broken, suicidal, to making millions and millions of dollars and helping hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, even when I didn’t exactly know what the hell I was doing or how.

And I stumbled and bumbled my way through. But what I did have was I knew, what I was uniquely made of and made for. And I was able to decode my life’s journey into a code that, that, again, the great stories, the great art, the great music, et cetera. Taylor Swift is not popular ’cause she’s the best singer.

She’s popular because her life code is encoded in her music. It’s an archetypal journey and people relate to it. And whether she’s done it consciously or not, but I think she has, that’s why she’s, she’s a phenomenon. And so that’s what’s capable in all of us. And I like to say to people that are, like in the, I teach a lot of people that are authors and teachers and podcasters, self-help people, whatever.

And I say, the workshop you’ve been living is the one you’re meant to be giving. And whether it’s building a business or, or just raising a family, again, the encoding of your deepest wisdom and genius is already in you and it’s lived experience so that your wounds carry your deepest wisdom, your pain and your problems carry the seeds of your truest purpose.

So I know that’s a, a long, lengthy thing, but hopefully I really wanted to kind of flesh out. You

[00:54:14] Dwight: did great

[00:54:15] Derek: idea there.

[00:54:15] Dwight: You, you did great. We’re gonna run out of time here. So I wanna ask you about the book more as a, a personal thing, right? And here’s what I mean. Like, I’ve, I’ve interviewed so many authors, including being an author myself.

I know what I went through, uh, you know, people I ask this question to. So I’ve had to learn how to break it down so that it really resonates. So I get an answer that is truly about them. So what I mean by that is, when I wrote my book, it was very cathartic, right? I, I sat down and had an intention to write something, right?

But not really realising what it was gonna do to me. And through that experience of dealing with the editor, coming back and forth, expanding on a storyline, deciding something didn’t fit in a chapter and moving back and forth, I realised I, I didn’t pat myself on the back. I didn’t celebrate, uh, a victory that I had along the journey of, of helping others, including myself.

Or I didn’t kick myself in the pants and correct something that I just all of a sudden had maybe compartmentalised and didn’t realise it was something, even as the smallest thing can hold us back from our purpose, right? Mm-hmm. It can be that little irritant, like the old story where there’s a p underneath, what was it?

Seven, eight mattresses. They could still feel it. P

[00:55:36] Derek: Yeah.

[00:55:36] Dwight: Yes. So what was it like for you, not what you set out to write, but what the writing itself cracked open that you did not see coming when you did this? Any of the books doesn’t matter.

[00:55:47] Derek: It’s a good question. ’cause I, you know, it would seem like I, I shouldn’t be such a, such a, a quest to write a book.

I’ve written five books, published five books. I’ve written five or six novels. I’ve written a dozen screenplays, a couple hundred songs. I mean, I’m a writer, I’m a creator. I’ve been doing it all my life. But this book really tried my soul. Um, and they all do. It’s like a child. They all are wonderful and they all, at some point you wanna throw ’em out the window.

Um, and, and this book uniquely, because this is different from my other books in that it does encapsulate my core teachings that I’ve been teaching for two decades. But it, it’s a different level or calibre of, I just couldn’t let myself get off the hook and neither would my publisher of anything I was saying that wasn’t grounded in reality or truth or fact.

It couldn’t just be a poetic, nice thing to write. ’cause it looks and sounds good or I, I feel it. It had to be that too. But it’s the most cited. If you took all of my writings, all of my books combined, they’re not cited as much as this book is. The, the cta, it’s like an academic paper. It doesn’t read like an academic paper.

It reads like, hopefully, uh, it’s very easy to read. And so far the reviews and the people love it, but it’s cited, it’s backed by the research, like an academic paper, every chapter. And I almost quit. It was so hard. It was like, I can’t do this. I’m spending the research, the rigour, but the good news, so this is again, the challenge.

I’m willing to do hard things. If you’re not having regular hard conversations and difficult and uncomfortable actions, like every week, you’re playing too small. I was like, okay, this is really hard, but I want the outcome. I wanna make this the best. I’m always trying to up my game with each new project, and I’m like, this is really hard, man.

But I had to keep my eyes on the prize. And the result was, again, it developed, it’s what I said before. There’s a danger of outsourcing our capacities, our potential, our cognition, if we keep giving it to a technology that can do all the work. Another way to put it is you have to dig the well to get the benefit of the water.

With knowledge you really have to really embody something. You have to be changed by the process of getting it. And so because, and that usually feels hard because if it wasn’t hard, you would already still be in the nature and in the territory of the familiar, it wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be new, it wouldn’t be growth.

It’s the all potential is buried. There’s a reason why gold and diamonds are buried. It’s a metaphor and it’s reality. There’s a reason why the dragon is guarding the treasure, because the potential in us is buried. Why? Because it’s infinite and, and whatever is on the surface, it’s already been scooped up.

So, so I, so I had to remind myself I had to live through my own principles on a regular basis. I do, believe me, and on the other side, the capacity for wisdom, insight, understanding, rigour in me now is, it’s a whole nother quantum leap to where I, I, when I look back now and I thought I was, I was. I thought I had a good mind or brain or capacity or, or, or, or commitment to rigour and discipline.

And when I look back now that Derrick from a few years ago looks like a high school student compared to where I feel in my embodiment now. But it was really, really rough. It was tough. I’m not gonna lie,

[00:59:51] Dwight: , It’s back to, the acorn, right? And the tree.

[00:59:54] Derek: Exactly. It’s like, that was an acorn.

That was another acorn. And I was just a little nut. Yeah., And I had to be willing to go through the process if you look at a seed when it’s breaking open and growing, it’s not a pretty picture. It looks like violence. It’s chaotic. And, uh, yeah. And I had to dig myself in a hole, what is a hole that you put a seed in? It’s, it’s literally a tomb. You’re burying it. And, and a seed doesn’t grow up first. It grows down into the dark. And so I had to go down into the dark and face my own lack of limitations and pain. And I don’t want to do it. It’s not fair. Why do I have to do all this?

Don’t you know who I am? I’ve done so many things. Why do I have to still work so damn hard? And I was like, Derek, just buck up, man. Get back to it. Take care of yourself till

[01:00:47] Dwight: your last breath. Till your last breath. There’s always more that can be accomplished and done. Right.

[01:00:53] Derek: But the good thing, again, what I, we were saying before is because I had a worthy goal, doesn’t mean it’s anybody else agrees with it.

But I believed in it. It mattered to me. It was bigger than me. It was in service. And I was willing to do the very hard, difficult work on the other side. What I’m left with isn’t resentment. Uh, and like it broke me. What I’m left with is more meaning I have a deeper deposit of meaning and purpose in me, because I went through that quest.

[01:01:25] Dwight: Yeah. And

[01:01:25] Derek: that’s what’s possible.

[01:01:28] Dwight: Absolutely. So those listening are watching. Think about everything that Derek just talked about before we go into the last closing part of this conversation. Look at everything he’s done, all the books, he’s wr, written screen, screenplays, novels, et cetera, et cetera. And if he can come to a point where he is, it, it’s doesn’t just flow easily, it just tells you that life is a, life can be a struggle.

There’s always around the corner. And another thing that you are gonna have to circumvent through effort, through not letting the inside voice right, control you or the outside voices, whatever it is. Sometimes you just have to suck it up, I guess is a, is the simplest

[01:02:11] Derek: way to look at and get

[01:02:13] Dwight: past. But also,

[01:02:13] Derek: yeah, but the things we want also.

Yeah, you gotta suck it up. You gotta, um, do the hard work. But like, I value and love and respect myself more. You. You will develop more self-esteem, more confidence, more certainty, and a greater capacity to do the thing you really want next by going through that. So it’s not like it tears you down and breaks you down and you’re a puddle.

It’s like, no, you’re anti-fragile. It makes you stronger, more resilient. It activates more genius, more capacity, more potential, more self-worth. So all those things you’re striving for or you want, or you say, when I have more confidence, self-worth, or strength, then I’ll do it. You’ve got it backwards. You have to do the thing you most want for a worthy purpose and go through the challenge and the struggle.

And on the other side of that, you have the confidence, the self-esteem, the self-worth, not before. So we’ve been conditioned backwards. When I feel this, then I will, when this happens first, then I will. That’s backwards. You will never have what you want. As Gandhi said, you must be the change. You have to have the goal that you most want, that you are not capable of right now.

If it’s a goal you’re capable of, it’s the wrong goal. The purpose of a goal is not merely the achieving of the goal. It’s what it activates and calls out of you. It’s not about having more possessions, it’s about having a greater and greater possession of yourself and expression of yourself. So at the end of the day, I’ve got a book.

Yeah. But what I’ve got more importantly is more of me, more of me, not less of me. And so that’s the key idea that most people never understand and all the marketing and media and advertising keeps saying, it’s this person’s fault, or this condition needs to change. Or when this president’s in office, or when the economy looks like this, or, no, no, start now.

Decide and discover what you’re really made have been made for what you really want most that you are not capable of doing right now, but that matters most to you. And make a plan and a commitment and do that, and you will discover. Who you really are and what you’re really made of. And believe me, you’ll like that person even more.

[01:04:42] Dwight: Wow. I love that. I was gonna ask you to give a message to the listeners or viewers about what it, actually means to give a heck. But you, this whole conversation’s about it and that last and that last bit was literally anybody listening or watching Derek gives a heck, right? He, he’s willing to live purpose and intent and live the uncomfortable.

Yes. Are you? Yes. Are you willing to live the uncomfortable those listening are watching? I’m gonna jump into the, to the last thing, that I wanted to ask, and that’s about books. And you talked about Viktor Frankl. Right? I love that book, to be honest with you. Very, very powerful. What I learned from it, and I, and I listen to it.

I’m more of an audible, fan just because I, I read so much during the day when I read a book, it puts me to sleep. And it’s not because the content isn’t good. My brain is just, okay, you’ve done all this today, you’ve read all this stuff. Yeah. And now you want to read this to relax. Yeah. I find I’ve over the last, what, six, seven years I’ve literally ingested, so many books.

Yeah. And one of ’em was that book. What would be the book that you, that changed your life the most that somebody else wrote? Right. Something that cracked you open through the first page and right to the end.

[01:05:56] Derek: Gosh. I mean, I’ve read so many books like you too. I used to read a lot of them, actually read them.

But like, you also know I’m an audible freak. Um, and, and a podcast and YouTube freak. Um, my wife thinks I’m a cyborg. I’ve always got something in my ear in between everything. Um,

[01:06:13] Dwight: that’s awesome. I love it.

[01:06:15] Derek: There, there’s a lot of books. Gosh, some of Wayne Dyer’s earlier books, when I was young and just kind of getting head there was, a warmth and a, and a invitation and a human being really doing the work.

I thought with Wayne Dyer and, uh, and of course Eckhart Tole the Power of Now, some of these classics. Also Stephen Covey, the Seven Habits of Highly Affected People. He was a big influence on me, me

[01:06:40] Dwight: too,

[01:06:41] Derek: first books that I took in and I read and read and read. And then I even went and saw him speak at like a little, like Holiday Inn or something before he was really big.

And um, and he was just like sweating. He was given so much, he was just given his all. And what, and what I caught with Stephen Covey was what it really looks like to have the real character of a true leader and teacher. And he was a man who studied all the great success literature and religious literature, and he excavated the principles.

And I I, and I didn’t know it at the time, but that was what I, what what would become my journey. So I’ve, one of the things about my books and my teachings is they are based on decades of research, study, and excavation of the universal principles, like a unifying theory of everything. So behind, I can see behind all the great teachings, religions, philosophies, et cetera.

And even like other teachings like botany, Nate Natural teach Natural, Darwin’s evolution versus quantum physics, and still extract what’s universal. And that’s what I saw Covey doing in these seven habits. And I ended up even teaching that material. So that was a really big, again, what I saw in Covey, unlike so many of the fly by night self-help teachings and frameworks.

Was a man who was living the teaching and living it deeply and a man of real character. That’s my perception of him anyways, and his work. And that really got to me. It’s, I’m glad you asked that ’cause I hadn’t really, I’m feeling,

[01:08:22] Dwight: I, I love Stephen Covey because when I started my, whatever you wanna call it, self, how personal development, whatever label it was back in 1993 and I was handed a few books and that was one of them.

Yeah. And it was by a friend of mine that said, this could help you. Right? Yeah. You need to read this book. And then I went on to the eighth habit and, you know what I mean? It’s habit,

[01:08:43] Derek: vision,

[01:08:43] Dwight: There’s just so many, so many people that are out there. But I’m glad you brought up Stephen Covey.

[01:08:48] Derek: I say, I would say Steven was probably one of the most impactful in a way that brought, ’cause what I am, I’m very spiritual.

I’m very, I can go down rabbit holes and meditator for decades and have had lots of mystical experiences, but I’m also really practical. And it’s about the integration of the practicality, the real embodied, faith Without Works is dead. You gotta get your hands dirty, you gotta get there and do it.

So I really think Stephen Covey represented that. The other person, I would say. Then moving up the scale of more expanded, even more deep or rich thinking. I was very, um, he more his teachings than his books, but his, but he has books too. Michael Beckwith, who has, is a, was in the movie The Secret. And he was, he’s been a mentor of mine for many years, and he has a, a church called Agape International Spiritual Centre.

Um, his works were, he was a man, one of the most embodied spiritual individuals where in his presence, I would just be weeping. I would feel the presence of the divine. Uh, like it was, it was so tangible. Him and another, his partner in Agape, Nirvana, Reginald Gale, who was my best man. And then I would say there’s a mystic, a turn of the century Mystic, Joel Goldsmith, who was a Christian mystic, and Hi, I’ve, I’ve read and listened to his books.

I’ve read his books. I have stacks and like tell, like, they’re falling apart and they’re dogeared and the cover falls off and it’s, so Joel Goldsmith would be the one, and then I would, and I would just have to say, the Bible, you can’t go wrong. If you read it with spiritual discernment, if you read it to just take every word literally, in my opinion, you’re gonna get confused and you’re gonna not, you’re gonna be, you’re not gonna understand what the text is really about, which is a depiction of the evolution of human consciousness all the way up to Christ hood.

But, but if you read it with the desire to really wake up, to know the truth, to know yourself and to discern the spiritual technology that is encoded in it, it will, even if you don’t understand it all, it will change your life. Um, so yeah, those are those, I would say those, again, I’ve read pretty much everything out there.

I mean, at least up, I would say up to in the last, the last five or five or so years, maybe not, obviously not everything, but there was a time where, I mean, I was reading a book or two every single week, both literally and audible. Um, it’s a little harder with podcasts.

[01:11:27] Dwight: Me too. Me too. I was the same as you.

There was lots of books es especially during the pandemic podcasts. Yeah. You and I have so many commonalities, except I’ve never, I’ve never acted, I’ve never scripted, well, I’ve acted for my grandkids and my kids, but that’s playing around acting.

[01:11:45] Derek: Yeah. We’re acting as Shakespeare said, all the world’s a stage.

[01:11:48] Dwight: Oh, what Amazing, amazing person. But we’re gonna wrap this episode up. Um, wow. I could just go on and on with you. It is. I would love to interview some of the people you communicated about, just to find out what their thought processes are, to understand the foundation of where you are, if that makes sense, or what you become.

So we’ll have to talk about that off air. Maybe you can help me make that a reality. So Derek, I wanna take a moment before I let you go, because across two conversations, you gave the audience something genuinely rare. You did not talk, just talk about transformation. You showed what it actually costs and what it actually produces.

The kid who felt like he did not belong, the man who nearly died in a coral reef and came out something different, the father who lost a son and turned the grief into a fire that will not go out. And now at the exact moment when the world is asking what it means to be human, you have written a book that answers it.

That is not a career, that is a life lived on purpose.

[01:12:50] Derek: Hmm.

[01:12:50] Dwight: Derek, where’s the best place for listeners to find a whole new human? Your other books and everything you’re building and have

[01:12:57] Derek: built? Yeah. Thank you brother, I appreciate that. Uh, yeah, they can certainly go to Derek Rydel, D-E-R-E-K-R-Y-D-A-L l.com.

You’ll see the book there. You can click on it. And by the way, if people, you can get the book, there’s a dropdown you can get at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, wherever books are sold. Um, it’s on Audible too. I recorded the audible and, uh, just watch it like at 1.25 speed or something. Um, but I listen to it rather.

But uh, though, if you go to the book page and you put in your information where you got the book, I’m gonna give you, um, some AI tools that I built, an AI evolution coach and an AI focus coach, which is embedded with my life teaching and the book. So you’ll be able to very quickly discover where are you at right now in your own journey?

How do you future-proof your life, your work, your wealth and your wellbeing for your children, for you, et cetera. You can start having a conversation with this, um, custom GPT or AI tool and start to really get aligned right now so that you get all that and plus other stuff when you get the book. And they can also get all kinds of other free trainings on my website.

You can also go to the podcast emergence. There’s hundreds of episodes there, and you can go to my YouTube channel, um, there, I think it’s at Derek Ryde, legendary Life or something like that. Um, but there’s lots and lots of deep dive trainings and talks around this. And there’s a new live stream I’m doing now on a regular basis called News from the Real World.

And it’s all about how to do what we’re talking about, how to begin to interpret what’s really emerging in this time of disruption so that you don’t get caught in the fear and the lack, but you actually can begin to hold all that’s going on in the world and in your world. From a place that’s empowering, inspiring, and gives you more agency to live your purpose.

So you can check that out as well.

[01:14:58] Dwight: Right on. For those new to the Give a Heck podcast, whether you’re watching or listening, go to give a heck.com. Click at the top where it says podcast. You’ll see, uh, Derek Smiley face, and you’ll see very detailed show notes where I will ensure that everything he just mentioned is there for you to easily click on.

Right? Read, there’s chapter summaries. You’ll literally, their full transcript will be there as well. So there’s no excuse to not take that next baby step or maybe your first baby step. So to everyone listening and watching today, thank you. Not just for tuning in, but for caring enough about your own growth to keep showing up for conversations like this one, that is not a small thing.

It’s either part of this conversation. If either part of this conversation moved, you share it with someone who needs to hear it. There is a real person on the other end of that chair who might be exactly where you were before you press play. Make sure you’re subscribed on your favourite platform, and if you have a minute to leave a review, it genuinely helps this show.

Reach more people. Make sure you’re subscribed and, leave that review. You can also watch the show on Give a Heck YouTube channel if you’re watching there right now. Please subscribe. It helps get this message out to more people, and that is exactly what we are trying to do. Any last comments before I wrap it up?

[01:16:20] Derek: I just, it’s, it’s been a real pleasure to do this with you, there’s a lot of change going on in the world right now, and I know a lot of people are struggling afraid of the future, their jobs, et cetera, and. They’re really, we really are in the midst of what will ultimately be the one of the greatest opportunities of our life.

If you’re willing to make you your deeper purpose, your dreams, a priority now, and then willing to put your life into a greater service, I promise you, you have the capacity, to actually create a life that you look back on today and you go, that was one of the best decisions I ever made. Even though it’ll be hard and it’ll be challenging, you were made to do hard things and you will be better for it.

So even though it seems like really challenging in the world, there’s good cause to be optimistic, and I hope that this has inspired you, given you something. Just take one action, one simple action from today, and watch what starts to unfold and stay connected. I look forward to hearing what, what’s unfolding for everybody.

[01:17:33] Dwight: Fantastic. Thanks so much. So until next time, people listening, watching, and even Derek. Live life on purpose, not by accident it’s something that will give you a satisfaction and it will serve so many, keep on fighting the good fight, never stop. Yes. And remember, it is never too late to give a heck.

Thank you for taking time outta your day and listening to Give a Heck if you find value. I’d appreciate you sharing with your friends and family so they too can learn how to live life on purpose, not by accident. So you do not miss the next episode. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and please also post a review.

I look forward to reading your comments. This has been Dwight Heck. If you want to check out other podcast episodes or today’s show notes, please check out my website. Give a heck.com, and until next time together, let us all strive to give a heck.