Episode 220 - The Soul of an Entrepreneur with Curt Thompson
Inspired by deep compassion for others and informed from a Christian perspective, psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson shares fresh insights and practical applications for developing more authentic relationships and fully experiencing our deepest longing: to be known. With a considerable dose of warmth, and surprising measure of humor, Curt weaves together an understanding of interpersonal neurobiology and a Christian view of what it means to be human—to feel known, valued and connected. His unique insights about how the brain affects and processes relationships help people get unstuck and move toward the next beautiful thing they’re being called to make. Curt joins us to dive deeper into the soul of an entrepreneur.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Inspired by deep compassion for others and informed from a Christian perspective, psychiatrist Curt Thompson shares fresh insights and practical applications for developing more authentic relationships and fully experiencing our deepest longing. That is, to be known with a considerable dose of warmth and surprising measure of humor. Curt weaves together in an understanding of interpersonal neurobiology and a Christian view of what it means to be human, to feel known, valued and connected. Curt understands that deep, authentic relationships are essential to experiencing a healthy, more purposeful life. But the only way to realize this is to begin telling our stories. More truly, Curt's unique insights about how the brain affects and processes relationships, help people get unstuck and move toward the next beautiful thing that they're being called to make. Through his workshops, speaking engagements, books, organizational consulting, private clinical practice and other platforms, Curt helps people engage more authentically with their own stories and their own relationships. Only then can they feel truly known and connected and live into the meaningful reality they desire to create. Curt joins us today to dive deeper into the soul of an entrepreneur.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I'm here with William. We are Rusty less.
William Norvell: We are Rusty-less. He is driving across the country. He sent us a video of 50 mile an hour winds across Wyoming. It was crazy town.
Henry Kaestner: My encouragement to him was to pull over, check into a hotel, get a good Internet connection and join us on the podcast. But I think he was just trying to stay alive.
William Norvell: That was your encouragement, which I think he he took under consideration?
Henry Kaestner: I think he did.
William Norvell: You know, I don't know if he listened to it, but he took it under consideration for sure.
Henry Kaestner: You know, Rusty adds value to every single podcast we're ever on. There are some that he is a subject matter expert on, and I really, really want him to be on things like culture, human resources. And then, you know, of course, he's a journalist. He's been great entrepreneur and a great investor. But I'll tell you that today's episode is one, William, that I'm really glad that you're not in the middle of Wyoming driving through a tornado for because the subject matter and the author that we're talking about today is something is completely up your alley. Why don't you tell us why.
William Norvell: It is, you know, and before we started, we'll get into this. But I was telling Curt that, you know, it's an awkward podcast. Sometimes when you read someone's materials, you've seen them speak a ton of times and you're pretty sure your friends. But, you know, you're you know, you're not like you're 100% sure you're not. But he feels like a friend to me and a mentor in ways. And yes, I mean, so what we're going to get into, Curt, obviously, is to talk about the soul and shame and all these great topics you've brought to light in the world. And that's what Henry's alluding to, is that's a lot of what my current startup's trying to do is, you know, we're on a mission to spread soul care to the workforce and build a platform that can come alongside people's soul as they work. And we think that's different than therapy at some levels and some other things that are all good things, right? But we're trying to find that niche and just come out alongside the soul and walking with people as they journey through life, work and everything in between.
Curt Thompson: Hmm. Right on.
Curt Thompson: There are some great podcasts that we have that talk about customer acquisition and customer retention. I think back to some of the ones we've done with [...]. So some that really get really, really practical. And yet the animating force behind the work that we do, a Faith Driven Entrepreneur is to help equip, empower, enable entrepreneurs to go out and be the hands and feet of Jesus to lead in their call, to create through their identity in Christ. And it's based on the fact that we know that entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn't need to be. And so this, among several other of our podcasts, really get into this the soul of an entrepreneur. Our hope is that you will leave today refreshed, that you'll learn a new perspective. I'm very, very grateful for Curt in his time for his life's work, and that he'd be with us today. Curt, thank you.
Curt Thompson: Well, Henry and William, it's great to be with you. It's an honor. I tell folks, you know, anytime you're in a room with people who both know how hard it is to follow Jesus and who are continuing to commit to doing that, I think that's the room where I want to be, because as we like to say, you know, the brain can do a lot of really hard things for a long time, as long as it doesn't have to do it by itself. And I think if we're serious about it and think we're really serious about following Jesus, we will find that it's the hardest thing that we'll ever do in our life. It's also the most joyful thing that we'll ever do in our life. It's the most durable thing that will ever do. It's the most powerful thing that we'll ever do. And all because, you know, we're broken. Oddly enough, right. This is not the message that the world would want to tell us. But in our weakness, God shows up and creates beauty and goodness in ways that we would never imagine outside of Good Friday and Easter. But we would say that we are people who live in the story of Good Friday and Easter and it changes everything, including entrepreneurship. And so I'm just really grateful to be here.
Henry Kaestner: Well, it's really interesting also that you said that I was doing my time in the Bible in one year, which is an app that Nicky Gumbel does. And today the New Testament reading was Luke 12. And Nicky's commentary around that was trust and obey. On one hand, it feels pretty simple. That's what we're supposed to do. trust and obey, we have heard that enough. If we're have been Christ's followers for more than a couple of months, and yet both parts of that can be really hard because of our brokenness and because of the message that we hear from culture. And do I completely, 100% trust that indeed God will clothe me like He does the lilies of the field and do I can I 100% obey? I mess up every single day. How can I be that bad at that? And so thank you for acknowledging the fact that it can be hard and I want you to get more into it. Okay. Before we do that, we'd love to get an autobiographical flyover if each one of the guests that we have on the program and of course, we want to do the same with you. Who are you and where do you come from?
Curt Thompson: So I think the important things for me would be that I grew up in a small town in Ohio. I was the fourth of four sons born to parents who were in their mid-forties, where in 1962, if you're 44 and you're having a kid, it's unusual and it creates all kinds of anxiety. My brothers were 18, 16 and 11. And so that family dynamic has shaped me in very powerful ways by two God fearing parents, but who were also imperfect. And so, as I say to people, I was deeply loved and also grew up learning to be afraid of anger and learning to manage anxiety really, really well that belonged to other people. And so, you know, my psychiatric training began when I was a young kid. How are you going to live in this world and manage all that? The other thing that's true about me is I've been married for 35 and a half years to Phyllis, and we have two adult children who one of a daughter is 31 and a son is 28. And those relationships have been as formational for me as anything on the planet. I say that I, you know, I don't deserve my life. And there would be no three reasons in the world that be more significant examples of why I don't deserve my life. And those three, not just because I can't believe that I get to be married to my wife, but I also can't believe that I get to have a relationship with my two kids who bring their own dynamics and their own challenges into our relationship together. And so I'm just I'm very grateful for that. As my good friend Andy Crouch likes to say, I think that we are called and my sense of my calling is to both bear the image of God and to restore the image of God. That's what it means for us to be called as human beings, and that we do that in multiple different domains of the world. And what I do for a living is I've been in private practice as a psychiatrist for the last 30 plus years. And that means that I am you know, I trained as a physician, but then also trained as a psychotherapist and do a lot of work with individuals and couples and groups in particular. And I would say that the work that I do, there are two things that I say. I say that I, you know, in working with patients, my work is to help people tell their stories more truly. But I also say in my life as a translator of this work at the intersection of neuroscience and Christian spiritual formation, I think my work is to preach the gospel in the language of neuroscience. So there's a couple of things that it's two general ways in which I think I work as a psychiatrist and work as a translator all under this canopy of what I would consider to be a Christian anthropology. So again, we say in the world, you know, one of the most important first questions that we have to ask no matter who we are, what we're doing is in what story do we believe we're living because human beings, above and beyond anything else are storytellers like no other living object in the world is. We don't know that elk or giraffes or mice tell stories like we do. Perhaps they do, but maybe only in a C.S. Lewis novel. Maybe that's true. But like we tell stories and we're telling stories all day, every day, and the story that we believe that we're living in and that we buy into and that we help collaboratively tell, is a crucial element of how we then come to understand the mechanics of that story and the mechanics of the story for me, or how we understand how the mind works with the brain is relationships, all those kinds of things. But just understanding neuroscience in and of itself doesn't tell us about the purpose of neuroscience. That purpose is going to be decided by somebody else who's telling a story about that. And I would say that, you know, when we read the biblical narrative, like there's a story that is more compelling than any story we could come up with on our own, and it changes everything. So that's long winded, but that's fly by.
Henry Kaestner: That's very good. I have to. I'm an ice cream guy. My family's sanitary business for 50 years. I think that the best ice cream in the world is in the state of Ohio. You talking about a small town in Ohio? Near is it near to Jeni's Ice Cream in Columbus or near to Graeter's ice cream in Cincinnati?
Curt Thompson: Oh, my gosh. I don't know about Jeni's in Columbus, so I haven't I can't tell about Jeni's. I've been to Graeter's on several occasions. All I can say is the kind of like the chocolate black raspberry is just like, I can have a cone of that and then just die a happy man.
William Norvell: I just this is a great example of our podcast format too, because for those that you can't see, I'm in tears thinking about things that Curt said and Henry is really holding on to the ice cream and just kind of come in cause he heard Ohio and ice cream and that was coming first. Right. And that's that's what we get here at Faith Driven Entrepreneur. You get everything.
Curt Thompson: Well, it's all about creating beauty and goodness in the world.
William Norvell: Amen.
Curt Thompson: Which was what we were made to do.
William Norvell: Amen. I didn't say that ....
Henry Kaestner: And the black raspberry chip is indeed that. And Graeter's is not a corporate sponsor, but.
William Norvell: Not yet.
Henry Kaestner: I always thinking. I just assumed that some number of our guests were thinking the same, and they're grateful that I asked, but probably most of them weren't. Which is why I want William to take the next couple of questions.
William Norvell: Not yet. As a sponsor, we haven't heard from them, you know. You never know. But yeah, you said so many amazing things. And of course, you know the story of the gospel being the most important. But so we're going to go into the entrepreneur. I want to set the stage for the soul of the entrepreneur with one question. You said the intersection of neuroscience and spiritual formation. I don't want to run pass that. What does that mean to you? I don't think that sentence has been said on this podcast before. What does that mean to you? And then we're going to dive into how it applies to an entrepreneur.
Curt Thompson: So my mind is drawn to Jeremiah, the 16th verse of the sixth chapter where we read thus says, The Lord stand at the crossroads and look, ask for the ancient paths where the good way lies. And you will find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not do this. We will not do this. And Curt how does that in any way answer William's question? And I would say that every single one of us entrepreneurs I mean, we are always like we're crossroads every day. Whether I'm trying to decide between Graeter's and Jeni's or am I trying to make this decision in my business, or I'm trying to make decide who I'm going to hire, how we're going to do all the things that we're trying to do. Like we were standing at the crossroads of all kinds of things. And what we read in this text is God is saying, you know, all these crossroads in which we're making decisions all day, every day. There's none that is more important than this crossroads in which we stand, where we're asking into what am I being formed and into what am I helping to form the world? There's no question that we are being formed all the time, all day, every day. The question is to what story, into what story am I going to submit myself that will form me? And so we've lived in a world now that has been forming us for the past 4 to 500 years, according to the kind of like rules and regulations of modernity, of post-Enlightenment. This notion that we can be we can continue to make progress, that there's always going to be a better idea, and that we're always going to get better and better and better. And as long as we're just smarter, we can harness more of all the things we're supposed to harness. And of course, we're now sitting, you know, watching Russia and Ukraine or we're sitting and we're watching suicide rates, especially in the mountain states that are just skyrocketing. We're like all the things that seem to be the antithesis of progress. And we would say, well, perhaps when we're standing at the crossroads, are we actually asking for the ancient paths? Are we asking where the good way lies? And we would say, Well, what is that good way? And we're also living in a world in which, because of modernity, if we want to say, Oh, the good way is the gospel, like, okay, I don't know what that means anymore. Or that doesn't seem very relevant. You know, these kind of mythological stories from something 2000 years ago and so forth. And so the gospel in many respects has been told in such a way over the last 400 years that everybody's kind of become tone deaf to it. And then we also discover that, oddly enough, in the last 20 years, there has been the emergence of new and what I would consider to be fairly exciting discoveries in the world of neuroscience. We're learning things about the brain and relationships that interact with each other. We're learning how we are actually formed. We're learning about the mechanics. We learn about the power of emotion. I don't know how many entrepreneurs who were listening to this think much about emotion, but I will tell you, there's nothing that you do that is not fueled by your emotion. There's nothing that you set out to create that is not a function of you're trying to regulate emotion. And if you don't know that, then I will tell you that your emotion is going to regulate you in ways that you don't even know that it's doing often, in ways that you don't actually want it to, but don't know that. But if I'm paying attention to these new discoveries, I get to learn a lot about, Oh my gosh, the way the mechanics of my mind are working and the fact that who I am, as it turns out, isn't something that I determine. There is no self-identified individual human being, as it turns out, because who I am is always in juxtaposition, in storytelling mode with somebody else. Somebody else's mind is shaping mind all the time. They don't even have to be in the room. Learning all these things is really interesting because it doesn't just help me feel better or no more. It turns out that the more I learn about neuroscience, the more that reflects what St Paul said to the Laconians in Acts Chapter 17 when he said, You all have been living on this land, which the water has been feeding and the sunshine has come and you've harvested your crops and it has spoken to you about what God is doing for you, because God never leaves himself without a witness. And in a world in which our kind of typical ways of thinking about how we proclaim the Gospel have fallen on tone deaf ears, we now discover that the world of neuroscience has become this world that God is using to talk about His Gospel in new, fresh ways. And so what happens when we start to pay attention to the way the mind works and many of the research elements that we like to talk about, attachment and emotion and neuroplasticity and all those things, and we begin to discover like, Oh my gosh, this is the way that the Lord has made the world to work. And we not only know that, but we discover how this is showing up in the texts themselves and how they help to refresh our understanding of not just the story of Jesus, but the most ancient stories of creation and the stories of regeneration and the stories of what does it mean for us to be dead in our sins, but alive to Christ? The more we're learning about the mind, the more we learn that as we talk about the mechanics, the way the mind works, it renews the very story that we've been living in, in the gospel that has been true from the beginning. And last thing I'll just say is that entrepreneurs, when I hear the word entrepreneur, I think about someone who is creating something. I think about someone who's building something. Somebody who's making stuff. And I want to say, that is what we are all made to do. To be made in God's image. Is to be first and foremost. We read in the gospel and we we read it in Genesis one that God is a maker. And then he says, we're going to make humans to do what we do, which is we're going to make things and we're going to steward them. We're going to create and curate things. And we want to create and curate things of great beauty and great endurance, and they give life to other people. But the Bible also tells a story in which we do not live in a neutral universe. And I think it's fair to say that evil has no intention of allowing beauty to survive, and it will come to devour us. And it's what it did in Genesis chapter three. And it's what it will do with our anxiety and our depression, all of these kinds of things. But we want to say that evil does not get to have the last word because of Easter. And because of that, when we talk about neuroscience and spiritual formation, we're really talking about the world that entrepreneurs occupy because of anything like what they are doing in creating things. You are creating the goodness and beauty in the world that God has predestined for you to create from before the foundation of the world.
Henry Kaestner: So I'm really intrigued there, maybe because I'm reading a book right now called The Dueling Neurosurgeons, and it's about what the interactivity between the brain and emotion and physicality. And it's kind of a history lesson. And it's I don't know, it's maybe not the most edifying book of all time, but I'm intrigued on it. But my firm belief, of course, is that the more that we know about science, the more we can uncover and know God and that science is not the enemy of our faith. And so all these things kind of coming together and making me really, really interested in the brain. And you touched on something. I'm wondering if you might be able to go a little deeper on and then we going to come back out. We're going to talk about shame and we're going to talk about more about emotion because there's so much there as well. But when maybe it's in the concept of neuroplasticity, when you talk about us being just dead to sin, tell me a little bit more about because this hole here is the gospel relevant or is it just like the same old broken record and it's not applicable? We now know that the brain has programed us to react this way and it then therefore jives with this. I just need a little more on that.
Curt Thompson: Well, I think, again, Henry, I want to say I can sometimes use language that makes it sound when we say things like the brain does this, the mind does that. You know, that's shorthand for having a conversation. But I think it's also important to remember that the brain isn't just some abstract thing or just some disembodied thing or some depersonalized organ on a stick. It's Curt does certain things, it's Henry does certain things, it's William does certain things. And we know that our minds, they are designed to operate in certain ways. We know that when we get to a certain age, if we have relatively healthy relationships with people, that what takes place in the right hemisphere of my brain is different than what takes place in the left hemisphere of my brain eventually because of how it practices, it's way into that. But, you know, we would say that, you know, it doesn't take much. This really gets into where shame plays a role. It doesn't take much for us to be aware that, you know, children come out of the uterus wanting things and then they want to make things. And by the time they're in third grade, we have helped them become anxious enough that they worry that they're going to make things in the wrong way. And so already their creativity and their longing starts to get like spliced together, if you will, with shame and with anxiety. And that part of us then that is afraid to create because of the mistakes that we will make. Now, some kids will overcome this and they will continue to create others will have more difficulty with this, and their creativity will be buried. But we would say when we say that we are dead, two things. And Saint Paul said that we were dead in our sin. You know, one way, I'm not a theologian or biblical scholar, but one way that I would say that the Bible characterizes in the way that it describes it, the way that you tell stories about it, is that sin is my proclivity to continually turn away from relationship. I will turn away from relationship and turn inward only to myself. And I do that in response to shame. And because I do that, I turn away from collaborative relationships. I turn away from being able to fully create. And I do it as a coping strategy to protect myself against the wounds that I've experienced. And then that very activity continues to turn me further and further and further away from people. And the further away from relationship I go, the more isolated I become. The more isolated I become, the more asphyxiating it becomes to my soul. And so we become literally quite dead to God's presence. And then God comes in. Jesus, actually, God comes in the beginning, comes to Noah. He comes through Abraham, he comes through Moses. He comes through lots of different ways. And I keep finding ways to stiff arm him. I mean, look, if will kill, Jesus will kill anybody. And I keep stiff arming him because his presence, his intimacy, his movement toward me, which is an act of re creativity. He's going to redo what he did in Genesis one and two. And I like Adam and made uncomfortable with his proximity. I like the intimacy is uncomfortable because he's starting to push into parts of my heart that I hate the most. And when you see it just like like you're not going to want to have anything to do with me. So I can't tolerate that. But it is in our willing to take the risk to believe that Jesus really does love me enough, that I'm going to take the risk to take at least the first step out of the boat. Just like Peter. And then the second step. And the third step. And there can be plenty of times I'm going to look around and be reminded of the parts of me that still don't believe. That still are afraid. Only to find that Jesus hasn't left the room, that Jesus is not leaving me alone. Yeah. So I'll stop.
William Norvell: No, no, you don't stop. It's fascinating. And what I want to dive into off of that is we spent a decent amount of time on the podcast talking about not as much probably as we should. I want to let you talk to this, too, about the potential lonely journey of entrepreneurship. Right. And I use the word potential because I think that's something we've been crafting lately, is that it's a lonely journey only if you allow it to be at some level. Of course, Jesus can walk with us. A community can walk with us. That's why our ministry exists, is to help people find people for that journey. And so I love in the context of your new book, which we're going to go deeper in in a second to of, you know, talk to us a little bit about those realities. Those are real entrepreneurs have higher levels of depression and anxiety and things like that. That is a soul level thing. That seems to be true. Right. It's not really arguable by data, but also it's it's my first time be an entrepreneur. Sometimes people ask me and it reminds me of children. It's because I will look. I can complain about my children all day if you want me to. If you set it up. I have three small children under four. If you set it up and said, Hey, I'm sure you're not getting any sleep. I'm sure this is really terrible. I'm sure this is awful. Well, I can get on the complain train with the best of them. Right. But recently I've started to rebut the complaining with. But it's the greatest joy of my life. Let me tell you about the joys. And as I've said in my entrepreneurial chair for the first time, I've been reflecting on people ask me the same thing. I mean, how's the stress of being an entrepreneur? How is this like? What can I tell you about the fact that I get to chase what God's dream for me? Can I tell you some of the positives before I tell you about some of the realities? So I wonder how you would balance those two things and how you would speak to an entrepreneur who's either on the journey or setting out on the journey to say, Here's some realities, but here's a gift of longing for beauty. And try to hold those.
Curt Thompson: Mm hmm. It's a great question. You know, we in our practice, we run what we call confessional communities and I talked about this in the book, and one of the pillars that we describe in these groups is that we say repeatedly over and over that we are a people of great longing, longing for beauty and goodness in all kinds of explicit domains of our life. And we are a people of great grief. That's what it means to be human. We are both of those things. And we will be both of those things until we're dead. But life and the creative act and being a father of three kids under four or being an entrepreneur takes place in the presence of both of these. Because running between and we hear Jesus words that says, I tell you these things so that in me you will have peace. Because in this world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer. For I have overcome the world. This sense that we were made with a longing. He's put eternity in our hearts, this longing for beauty and goodness, that we can name the things about the work that we do, that bring us joy that are good and are beautiful. And at the same time, we have to be able to simultaneously name the parts of our lives where we experience grief, where it's difficult. But what's most important about both of these things is that, you know, when I think about this well, I'm a person of grief and I'm a person longing and person of grief. What's most important is not just those things. What is important is that I am in a community with William and Henry in which we are naming all of these things together. And when I say to you, this is the part about parenting that is really hard. And you say man, and that is really hard and you share your experience with me and my mind is now not alone with my grief. The not being alone transforms the felt sense of overwhelm, sadness, rage, all the things that I feel. It is transformed by presence. It is transformed by my being more deeply known by my brain, knowing that it is not alone in this. And what is significant is that eventually, if we don't have a space where we can name our griefs in this way, I'm not just naming them by like listing them on the blackboard. I'm just not throwing it out, I am naming them in order for them to be heard and validated, in order for me to not be alone with it, to recognize that even if the reality of, you know, how much money I still owe, how much trouble my one kid is having, all the things if I am not alone with that. My mind has a completely different posture toward it, and I can move toward a posture of gratitude. I can move toward a posture of thanksgiving. I move toward posture of of hope and imagined creativity, even in the face of things that are hard, because this whole notion of let us make mankind in our image. This is where Trinitarian theology is so crucially important for us. And so it's not just a matter of, Oh, I'm going to pay attention to the parts about my life that I like the most and not pay attention to the parts that are hard. It is. I want to be in a community in which we can name all of these things because it is ultimately not just the longing or the grief that is most important. It is that I am with and someone is with me in the middle of all of it. And, you know, we notice that when you how many times throughout the entire arc of the Scriptures, when God is wanting to let people know that they're going to be okay, mostly what he says is, I am with you. He doesn't say, I'm with you and I'm going to do this and this and this and this. Jesus says, I am with you even to the end of the age. And he doesn't add on lots of other footnotes about what it means he's going to do. Just the whole notion of his presence reenacts recapitulates. It's not good for a man to be alone, recapitulates and the man and his wife were naked and unashamed. They were vulnerable with each other. They were differentiated and present for one another in the presence of God. And that this notion of creativity, in the face of suffering, in the face of painful things, can be sustained because of presence. Not just because I have more information, not just because I have new ideas, not just because I get, you know, a new business model plan. I mean, those things are not unimportant. But at the end of the day, if I am left feeling alone in my task. I'm not going to survive this because I can be really smart, have more information, have all the power I need, all the money I need in the world. And if I am alone, I am pushing against the Earth's mandate that it's not good for me to be that way. And so as we like to say, like even Jesus in Gethsemani, if he's coming back to the disciples and saying, guys like I need you to stay awake, if even he is asking for presence, I'm going to need presence. If I'm the entrepreneur and I'm about to do this, I need to know that I'm not alone in the room. And we may say, well, Curt, like, that's not the way these things work. Like, I've got a board that I've got to answer to and I've got this and I've got that. So all the things and I would say, if we don't have someone whose job it is to look after us, to be present for us in embodied ways, not in the abstract, we will not be able to continue to do the work that we are made to do, because that's not how we're made to do it in the presence of others.
Henry Kaestner: So it's incredibly powerful and I probably should wait to the end of the podcast to mention this. But I'm picking up so much about this, about the importance of being a community. And yes, if you are a frequent listener, you know that over the course, the last 30 or 40 episodes, we've talked more and more about the concept of the FDE group. And while, yes, we think that the FDE group, which is the foundation's course, going through the marks of a faith driven entrepreneur is a great way to do community. And there is no cost. There is no catch. Don't take away from what I'm hearing from Curt that it has to be a FDE group. It could be C12, it could be convener, could be a CCI, it could be ICBMC, it could be Praxis, Ocean Snap. There's so many others as well. But being in community is so incredibly important. I'd like for you to comment a little bit more about that. Curt, if you can because as I am following around, we understand that God is with us and we know from some 23 that God is with us.
Curt Thompson: Sorry Henry I am going to interrupt you. Interrupt you.
Henry Kaestner: Bring it, bring it.
Curt Thompson: And I want to suggest that we don't know that.
Henry Kaestner: That we don't know that God is with us because as as can say. So I want you to answer that. But a bridge to the last part of the question I was going to ask is we also know that wherever two or three are gathered, he is there. Does his promise of being with us increase when we're in community? Are they related? Riff on that. Riff on how we might experience God and how He might experience community by ourselves with others. Keep on going.
Curt Thompson: So part of the challenge is that we are having this conversation in 2022. We're not having this conversation in the year 60 A.D.. And in 2022, we are at a point where any time we say something like, we know that fill in the blank. We can presume that what we're talking about is abstract, posited truth. Now, we may not think that that's our intention. I'm just saying, like, this is the plausibility structure in which all of us have grown up. I mean, it has been a culturally grown thing in the West for 500 years. I think, therefore I am and with Descartes we start to separate the body from the mind. We start to separate the reality that if I don't feel something in my chest. It is not yet ultimately real for me. So when we say we know that we're two or more gathered in the room, there I am also, I'd like to say, well, when's the last time that you were with another Christian? And the first and 10th and 80th thing that you were thinking about throughout that time was like you were imagining Jesus in the room. You were actively imagining him like, Yep, he's got blue jeans and a t shirt and he's sitting in that chair. Like that's not a thing that we imagine. If we are not having the sense of God literally in our embodied selves, then we have yet to encounter or experience fully what we read about on the pages of the scriptural texts.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. So tell us more about that. So go back to you're an entrepreneur. It can be a lonely journey. But if you imagine Jesus with you and take the promises of Scripture as being as applicable in 2022 as they were in 80 A then, does it become real or is it real regardless?
Curt Thompson: Right. Let me just say so here's the example that I would give. And this is where things like neuroscience and attachment can be helpful. The newborn comes into the world and he or she becomes aware, like, you know, if you're parents, you know that you love your children and you say, yes, I love my children. And we would say, well, how do they know that? Well, they know. They know. They don't just know that. They know that because you've touched them, because you've spoken to them. They recognize your voice. They know the aroma of your bodies. They have the felt sense that I am loved by my dad. I am loved by mom. This is not some abstraction. I feel it when the three year old goes off into preschool. She takes mom and dad with her. In her mind, she picture because because they are in her. But literally they have taken up residence in her neural circuitry as they remembered thing. But so much of when we talk about what we talk about, what do you remember? I'm remembering an abstract concept. If I were to say to you for you have died in your life is hidden with Christ in God, it is Colossians three like I have no idea what that means. Like theologically. I can tell you, I can speak for days about what that means. But do I sense that? Do I sense what it means to like. Be dead and my light to be hidden in Jesus. However. Let's take this example. So one of the things that happens in these confessional communities that we run. At some point someone will say it tends to happen. You know, I had to have this conversation with my boss. It was one of the hardest conversations I ever had. And when I had it with him, every single, the other seven of you were in the room with me. And I know where you were sitting, I know where you were standing, and I could watch you looking at me. And I felt you. I could feel my heart rate declining because I felt your presence. And that doesn't happen merely because we say to them, I just want you to imagine having nine people be with you. I want you to imagine having Jesus with you being in the room. I don't just imagine something very well unless I have an embodied experience of it. Now I can imagine the Grand Canyon if I look at pictures of postcards. But if I go down the south rim and come out of the South Rim, I now take the Grand Canyon with me in ways that no postcard will like ever be able to match. And so when Saint Paul says that you are the body of Christ, like notice, like no other religious sect. Ever like comes up like you are the body of Zeus. You are the body of like whatever the Persian God was right that Artaxerxes was following. No, we when Jesus, like you, are my witness, the Holy Spirit, this whole thing that we are the tabernacle, we are the House of God. If it's true that I am Jesus' face, his voice, his pulse. You know, if I'm sitting in a community with you, Henry, and I look at you looking at me with empathy and like that, you become like you literally become Jesus to me. And I don't mean in some kind of, like, pantheistic way. I mean that you become the voice and body of Jesus. Well, I can imagine Jesus much more easily, because I see Henry. I see William in the room with me.
Henry Kaestner: Mm hmm. Okay. How does a Faith Driven Entrepreneur. I went with my middle son and went south and down and back up last fall. It was awesome. And yes, you're right. A completely different experience than looking in a postcard for that reason. In fact, I didn't go for my first 52 years because I'm like, okay, so it's a big hole. How special can it be? Well, as it turns out, it can be really special. And I want that experience with Jesus. And yet, if I'm honest, I do have some mountaintop experiences, but they're not nearly as frequent as I'd like. The entrepreneurs listening to this podcast want to know how do we have that South Rim experience with Jesus? My senses, you have a sense as to how that happens.
Curt Thompson: Right. We mentioned neuroplasticity earlier in our conversation. And, you know, I don't know if either of you have watched this kind of online TV series called The Chosen.
Henry Kaestner: Yes. We had Dallas Jenkins on the podcast.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. So I have found this to be extraordinarily meaningful series. I'm on the back end of my fourth time through. And one of the things that really strikes me about this podcast, you know, I don't know Dallas Jenkins. I'm not assuming that he's thinking about this. I mean, in neuroplastic terms. But one of the things that we tell people is that, look, if you want to become good at the piano, even as a 52 year old, as a 60 year old, if you want to become good at that, it's going to be far better for you to practice 15 minutes a day, six days a week than it is for you to practice 2 hours a day, once a week. Practice, practice, practice in small doses, but repeated over and over again. And why is that? Because neurons tend to grow and strengthen at about the rate of about two millimeters per day. But they are enhanced neuroplastic change is enhanced when we practice them over and over and over and over again. And so when people have in these confessional communities of ours where people have what we might call, you know, a big moment of insight or a mountaintop experience of some kind of we say like, this is great, but what's going to be really important is for you to go home. And when you go home tonight and once for the next seven days, I want you to take 15 minutes and I want you to replay what's just happened here in the room. I want you to write about it. I want you to tell two people about it. And when you tell them, I don't want you to tell them in generalities. I want you to tell them where the people were sitting specifically in the room. I want you to pay attention to where you feel it in your body when the change comes over you. I want you to embed this. I want you to ingest, digest and metabolize this. We ingest things in a period of minutes. We digest things in a period of hours. We metabolize things over the course of days, weeks, months in the rest of our lives. But we have to do these things purposefully on purpose. We still live as if spirituality is a thing that happens to us in most occasion. Or we're think like, I got to like behave properly so that Jesus will uncross his arms as he stands as the scowling coach on the sideline and then decide, yes, you get to be on the team. And I want to suggest that as a phrase that I heard not that long ago, that it would be helpful for us to continue to remember that, you know, without God, we can't do it. We can't change without us. He won't do it. And there is this sense in which Jesus wants serious people. He wants professional. He wants professional people. He wants people who want to be serious about becoming beauty and goodness in the world. And that means that if I'm going to be embody pulsating. Love joy peace patients kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self control. Even as I'm creating new things. As an entrepreneur, I have to practice on a regular basis. I have to practice allowing myself to be loved. I have to practice seeing Jesus gaze coming for me in the spaces about me that I hate the most. Because if I'm not doing that, if I'm not practicing allowing myself to be loved in the spaces where I actually need the doctor, right? This is Jesus. It's not the well, people who need the doctor. It's the people who are sick. If I'm not practicing that, I can guarantee you that evil is going to use that and is going to use that through its fulcrum of shame to undermine ultimately the beauty and goodness that I am colaboring with God and with others to create in the world, but with practice small things over and over and over again. I contribute to the neuro plastic change that my brain has been primed and built in which to act, in which to form. And so when Paul says, Don't be conformed to this world. But be transformed formed trans form. This is not magic. That happens in a moment. This is formation that takes over the course of our entire lives. Train by the renewing. A reminder, we would say that neuro plastic change is a neuroscientific emblem of that transformation, of that renewal, new neural networks that are being made and then made durable over the course of our being known, healed and recommissioned to do this work.
William Norvell: Wow. Okay. I love that. And I love the idea of just sort of that forming. It's so real. And I'm going to use a silly example, but it's probably more about your soul of shame book. But I have replayed this shot I missed in basketball so many times in my mind in eighth grade. This is how, like, tragic it is, right? Eighth grade. I know the score. I know who was standing next to me. I know how it came off the backboard. I know where my father was sitting in the stands. I know every single thing because I was so shamed by it that I replayed it. And still, I mean, this happened 28 years ago. And I can tell you the minor details of what happened when I missed that. And, of course, there's positive versions of that, and I just love that. And so two things. Unfortunately, we're coming to a close, which is very sad, and I don't think we got to the edge of the soul of desire or the soul of shame. So we are going to beg you humbly to come back and hang out with us again. But in the meantime, I also want to make sure people know that those books exist. And we, of course, covered a lot of topics that are in those books. You go on deeper on them and we are just so grateful that you would come and spend time with us in the way we love to end. Every episode is by pointing back to God's Word, and we would love to invite you to share with our audience. You know, is there a scripture that maybe you've been reading lately that is coming alive to you in a new way that you would love to share with our audience?
Curt Thompson: Well, I'll say this much. I for about the last probably nine months, I'm not able to quote the exact passages, but there are the passages where Jesus says two different versions of this, he says, and one version. It's one instance. Unless you change and become like little children, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And then there's another instance in which, you know, parents are bringing their kids to him to bless them, and the disciples are shooing them away. And he says the King James version says this not, the NIV, the NRSV, don't say, but the King James suffer the children to come in to me. Other segments from and I'm sitting with this because again, this is a place of intersection of what we're learning about neuroscience, what we're learning about the how the gospels inform that this notion that. The parts of us that as children were wounded but that were not healed. Are still waiting for that. And there are a number of ways in which the Scripture, it's very clear that Jesus is basically saying, unless you change and have a posture of child likeness. You can't really enter the kingdom of heaven. And that's true. And in addition, there is the sense of like, unless you're actually going to be willing to look at those parts of you that are still stuck in those developmental spaces and allow me to meet you in those spaces. Those are the spaces where evil is going to want to do its work, to keep you from creating the beauty and goodness in the world that you're here. So wherever we find ourselves in trouble, I can guarantee you that there is some part of our unhealed, underdeveloped, under commissioned childhood that has not yet had an encounter with King. And so, like, we're even talking here, William, we were like, Oh, I wonder how many conversations has that eighth grade you had with Jesus immediately after the game is over? And by this I mean like an imagined embodied conversation. And what would he say? Moreover, what would you say if you were the one who comes with Jesus to have a conversation with your eighth grade self? Because right now, to the degree that if we're replaying that over and over again and I got like my own boatload of narratives about the parts of me that, I mean, like my version of that. And the reality is I'm burning energy in my brain to contain that. I'm burning energy to contain. And that is energy that is not then available for me to use to create the beauty and goodness in the world. And this whole notion of suffering to children. I'll just say this suffering the children like to let are to encounter these things is a suffering. It requires things that are hard to do. And so I'll stop with that, that the invitation is for us to be willing to welcome those parts of us that are underdeveloped into the room in order for God to heal them, read it, all of them, and then recommision them for the work that we long to do together.
Henry Kaestner: That's outstanding. There's so much that is so important and I'm embarrassed that we need to come to close. But fortunately I'm going to do this is the presumptive close here. And William alluded to it. I've got to have you back on your background as a psychiatrist, uniquely equips you to talk about what it is that is driving the entrepreneur, the healthy parts and the unhealthy parts. I think back to the documentary I watched on endurance cyclists and they're talking about we're all running from something. Well, we know from other guests we've had on the Faith driven entrepreneurs have 2 to 3 times the proclivity or the occurrence of mental illness. What is that? How do we acknowledge that? How do we address that? How do we get to a healthy place? And then how do we lean into the unique aspects of our life that make us creators been out in the marketplace. And so there's so much more here. And so I'm grateful for your time. I thank you for coming on. I'm looking forward to the next one. If this is a podcast episode that you're listening to right now and you think, Wow, there's somebody that should listeners please share it with them, we we have a zero marketing budget and it may show, but we've now grown to 130 different countries and it's all been word of mouth. And it's you, the listener, finding something about this that helps you to know God and be encouraged by Him in your pursuit of what have you do in the marketplace that allows us to grow and spread these messages out there. So thank you, audience, for your participation, for listening, for your partnership, for your encouragement. Let us know how we can do it better. And thank you for getting out there and looking for God in the marketplace. May He bless you. May you find him, may bless you. Until next time. Curt Thompson, thank you for being with us.
Henry Kaestner: Thanks, gentleman. It's been great.