Episode 179: Jord Cuiper - The Power Of Self-Actualization In Business

Tell us more about what you do.

My work is unpopular, and the reason for that is we have the spectrum of personal development, and the first 98% is people are still just gaining self awareness but they're not really changing.

So that journey starts with reading self-help books. We pick the books because it's written by Google executive and we like to associate with that, right? And then we start to listening to podcasts. We might go to a seminar if you're really into it. We go to Tony Robbin's seminars. We do all these things and we get like super inspired and motivated, but like on a deep, deep level, nothing is changing.

And I think the problem nowadays is that we can do so much on our own. We can read, we can listen to podcasts. We can go to these events. But the problem is that it gives us an idea of control. It gives us the illusion that we know ourselves.

So we actually get this false arrogance thinking that we know ourselves. But what people tend to forget is that 95% of of all our behavior comes from the subconscious mind. And so we don't know ourselves.

And that's where my work comes in. That last 2% where we really start digging into the shadow psychology, which often includes core wounds, weaknesses, insecurities.

It requires the people that I work with to have a more open and vulnerable approach, and that's why I call it the last 2%, because people are only willing to do it when they're ready to do it, and they're only ready to do it when the pain of staying the same is harder than the pain of changing.

What does self-actualization look like to you?

My reference point is maslow's hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy of our basic psychological needs. Obviously at the top, there's the self-actualization and that's what we're all looking for. We want to actualize our potential. We want to be impactful. We want to be successful, and for some reason we're missing out.

We think we're actualizing things, but we're not really because we're burning out. It's not the long-term game. It's not the infinite game. And so working on self-actualization is actually not a bottom up process.

It's a top-down one, because in order to actualize our potential, we need to look at where you lack the capacity to live in alignment to honor your psychological needs, to honor your values, to honor your desires. Otherwise, we operate from a place of lack of authenticity.

For example, something that comes up a lot is, we have experienced in our childhood, and many people in today's society have experienced this, where we have experienced a lack of true love and true belonging.

You've learned that we had to do something in order to be liked, loved, accepted, and approved, and we go into the world with a core wound. And we're still looking for validation of the outside world and that often becomes our driver for success and achievement, which is holding us back from actualizing our potential.

Then there's another thing about self-actualization. It's a lifelong process. Some people think, oh, like the Tony Robbins example. I'm going to go to a Tony Robbins event and I'm going to actually actualize my potential. And from there on, I am actualized, I'm enlightened, I'm living my purpose.

It's an ongoing process. Every new door that we open or every new level that we enter is challenging us to actualize our potential, and it's infinite.

How do entrepreneurs typically behave before they realize that they are not self-actualized?

We start these companies with the best intentions, just that we don't consciously know that we're driven by a lack of love or by a lack of self-esteem, or maybe by a lack of safety.

Maybe in a childhood, there wasn't enough money. There was always this scarcity and we're just driven by this - more and more and more. I need more, even though we have 20 million, I still need more.

And that could be a lack of safety, but that cost could also be that you relate money to your self worth, to love and belonging. So even when you have 20 million, you still need more.

It's just interesting looking at these motivations, and the people that I work with often don't know it yet, but they know that there is something fundamentally wrong. They they've been building their companies, they've been on their journey. They are successful. They are earning six or seven figures.

But they've come to the realization, hey, something is wrong. And if I continue to push the same strategies - the personal strategies and business strategies - something is going to crash. It's going to lead to a break that could be of their performance, could be of leadership, could be of their relationships, but they know there is something wrong.

That's one of the things, and that always goes back to, "I climbed that first mountain and over and over again. And every time I reach the top, I still don't get what I long for, because we have these psychological needs. And if we don't fulfill them, they just keep yearning and yearning, and becomes bigger.

The more we sacrifice the values in our journey and the more we sacrifice ourselves, then the less fulfilled we become and the more frustrated we become. That climb is going to be more heavy and more difficult.

Another thing that comes up a lot is... whether they are entrepreneurs, influencers, top models, they reach a certain point and they identify themselves so much with their performance, their achievements, and their role. They're so afraid of starting something new from the bottom, of being small again. So it's also guiding them through that process and allowing them to just be human again, allowing them to make mistakes and failures and to try new things, allowing them to be human.

What has your journey been around self actualization? What were some challenges that you had to overcome in your own life?

From a young age, I've always be super driven, and I've had this innate drive to do things differently, whether that's in my personality. Whether that is conditioned, whether I became rebellious for whatever reason, I don't know. From a very young age, I've been like this.

That got me a little bit in trouble in school because of my personality. Actually I'm super introverted, super sensitive, and intuitive, and our whole education system is not focused on that.

So at a very young age, I felt unseen. I felt unheard. I had to sacrifice my authentic nature in order to fit in into a system. And I think that's what created this drive for me to become the best, to show the world that I'm good enough.

I wasn't that successful in school, but I was playing sports and those four sports I learned if I'm the best, everyone likes me. So it reinforced that pattern. When I went from one hockey club to the next hockey club, in the beginning, people don't like me since I'm the new kid. But then when I become the best, everyone likes me. Coaches likes me, people like me, girls like me.

And I started applying this later on everything that I did. After my studies, I first went working in a few corporate jobs and I quickly noticed that I was hitting the ceiling every time, and that was in conflict with the drive, both my healthy and instinctive drive, and on the other hand, my unhealthy drive to be the best.

Because I couldn't be the best that I was, I was just limited by my responsibilities. That was when I started my startup company. During that time, a lot happened in my life. My best friend died in a car accident, that looking back, I couldn't connect the dots at that moment.

But after his death, it seems that my success became even more important. I relied so much on being successful because I thought that I needed to be successful in order to get the love and belonging that I needed to grieve. So I became addicted to success. And that was all about raising investments and working as hard as you can, getting as much media coverage as you can.

And obviously it's like drugs. It works, but it is extremely harmful on your body. I started noticing is that I started neglecting my biological needs and my psychological needs, and I was sacrificing my value - the things that are really important to my well-being and to my fulfillment in life.

That's another problem when you do it for a couple of months, but it is a problem when you do it for a couple of years. That really threw me down onto the point where I ended up in the hospital with a nearly fatal breakdown with my health with a blood poisoning.

I knew that my life was toxic. That's how I got onto this journey because I remember being in the hospital, I had to be quarantined for a long time. So it was like a silent retreat for me. And I was looking back through my life and I was like, wow, that's interesting. I've been reading self-help books and personal development and leadership from the age of 14. I really thought I knew myself, and I burned myself all the way down.

That triggered something in me that I wanted to understand the systems in me and in my environment, the causation of my breakdown, and that's basically my journey of what got me on this spot.

I had a few opportunities to jump on after my breakdown, because I had to step down as the CEO of my own startup company. I decided to move away. And that's when I jumped on a plane to Bali.

First to recover, and I never had the plan to start living here for me. It was really just distancing myself from a system that got me sick, to understand myself better, to understand the patterns of society that we grew up in. And that's what got me into studying the source of personal development, first positive psychology.

And later on, when I noticed that a lot of those techniques and tools are not really touching the core wound, I started studying developmental psychology.

What would be your biggest tip around helping us get closer to self-actualization and getting past that harmful entrepreneur little hamster wheel that many entrepreneurs are on?

For many people, they're probably like it's very black and white thinking, but some people are like, what is this guy talking about? Burnouts don't exist. I know because I was exactly like that. Especially when you are a guy, you have this thinking like I can overcome everything. I am untouchable. They literally need a challenge that's bigger than themselves and they will get it at some point. Keep on living your life like this and you will encounter it.

There's another group and that that's the group that we already discussed. It's the people that slowly start to realize, hey, something deep down is fundamentally wrong. And if I continue to live my life this way, if I continue to lead my business this way, it's going to lead to break down of something that's pretty important for me, because I know that when I'm going to climb up that mountain one more time or five more times, that I'm sacrificing my values, that I'm neglecting my needs, and that no amount of money or no amount of status or power can compensate for it.

And my biggest tip is to get curious and to allow yourself to be small. That often includes - I'm definitely not saying that this from a marketing perspective - but just seeking a safe environment where you can speak with people, seeking someone that can see the things that you can't see, because if we don't take ourselves out of that toxic environment, out of that toxic way of building businesses and living our lives, we're not going to see whenever we're too deep in it.

Another tip is to not try and keep up with life. Really question and get curious, "is this working for me?" I'm keep mentioning the word, curious. Curiosity. It's a nice way of saying to just question things, ask yourself, why am I doing this? Ask yourself, why do I want to keep up? Is this actually serving me?

Because so much of today's personal development, self-growth, leadership, you name it, is all about keeping up with something that no longer works for you. So anyone who recommends you to meditate more, it's finding that middle ground.

Meditation is a great tool. Breathwork is a great tool. I like all these things. I actually implement them in my life. I do breath work on a weekly level. I meditate every morning. I go to silent retreats. I work with ayahuasca, all these things.

But we need to work on both sides of the spectrum. So on the one end of the spectrum, where we implement meditation, breath work, we also need to do something on the other end. And on the other end, we need to start eliminating the things that no longer serve us so we can find that middle ground. We can start operating from a place of wholeness and flow authenticity. Look at both ends of the spectrum and to not only compensate for something, but really adjust your lifestyle to what works for you.