[UDO ERASMUS]
Yes. And just like it is the sun’s nature to shine, it is our nature to shine our state of being. And if my state of being is that love or the piece behind it, then I become an influence automatically in that direction.
[VERONICA CISNEROS]
Hey girl. Imagine a life where you feel supported, connected and understood. I get it. Being a mom is hard, especially when you’re spinning so many plates. We exhaust ourselves trying to create the perfect life for our family. You deserve to enjoy your family without the stress perfectionism brings. On this podcast, I provide practical and relatable life experiences. I teach women quick and easy to use strategies to help them reclaim their identity, re-ignite their marriage and enjoy their children. If you’re ready to be challenged, then pull up a chair, grab a pen and paper because it’s about to go down. I’m Veronica Cisneros, a licensed marriage and family therapist and this is the Empowered and Unapologetic podcast.

Hey ladies, welcome to Empowered and Unapologetic. I’m your host, Veronica Cisneros. Today’s guest is next level. You are going to learn today. So make sure you grab your note pad and paper because you are going to take a whole bunch of notes. He is the founder of Udo’s Choice and author of the book of Fats That Heal Fats that Kill, which has sold over 250,000 copies. As an acclaimed author and speaker, Udo has an eight step process that takes into consideration all of the elements of nature and human nature, including physical health, mental health, presence and awareness. You can see why he is on here because he is covering all of it. Life energy, being in harmony with nature and humanity, Udo’s background includes studies in biochemistry, genetics, biology, and nutrition, as well as a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Please, please, please, welcome our guest, Udo Erasmus Udo. Thank you so much for coming on.
[UDO]
Thank you for doing this.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. Okay. So as a fellow clinician we’re going to totally go there. I want to get an idea of your health, wellness, mental health, you’re covering all of it. So right away the therapist inside of me wants to go into what happened. Like what was this? So what happened your life? What happened as a reflection of this? What happened to you? We’ll go there.
[UDO]
I was born in 1942 in Poland, which was in the middle of the 2nd World War and I was not yet three when we were refugees fleeing in horse-drawn hay wagons, mothers with little children, the men were all at war or in prisoner of war camps or wherever. We were fleeing down dirt roads, the communists were chasing us in tanks and trucks, and there was no military presence on those roads, just refugees. There are dead horses and dead people in the ditches and the allies, there’s supposed to be the good guys they were using the refugees as target practice, shooting at us from planes. And you can imagine this is probably not a really good situation to bring in two -year-old, to bring up to the world. So it was really chaotic.

My mother had to eventually get off the road and walk through the fields. It was in winter and she had six kids with her, six and younger, and she could only handle two when she’s walking, because she’s only got two hands. So she left four of us behind and so we ended up in an orphanage and eventually we got reunited, but you can imagine, like, I think two -year-old, like sorta in between two and three -year-old is the most delicate age for kids. They’re just getting to understand a little bit about the world and then it turns upside down. So what happened to me is I became very shy. I never felt safe. I didn’t understand what I could rely on. I remember hunger, I remember anxiety, I remember fear, chaos, confusion. I was toilet trained and then I was told to go in my pants because they didn’t have time to stop either to water the horses or feed the horses.

I mean, it was really crazy. I don’t think you can imagine what it’s like being in a situation in the crossfire. That happened. So what happened is I got my nose rubbed in what happens when people don’t cultivate peace and cooperation and harmony and friendship and all of the good things that people do together. When they don’t cultivate that in peace time, when they have the luxury to do it, then guaranteed, they’re going to have conflict and it’s going to get worse and worse and they’re heading towards war. And I think you can see it happen in the world now as well. It’s one of the reasons why I talk about what I talk about, because I realized that on 9/11.

Discontent people will always spread discontent. If those of us who think they know what contentment is, I’m one of those guys, if we don’t do more to spread contentment than they do to spread discontent, that’s where we’re headed. When I was six -year-old, we were in Germany, reunited and I was listening to adults arguing and it always, it really bothered me. I was really sensitive right to it and it occurred to me, there must be a way that people can live in harmony and then like a six-year-old who doesn’t know how complicated everything is, I’m going to figure it. I’m going to find out how. That’s been my driver all my life and that’s how I got, that’s the long story about how I got to health and then human nature and then human nature and environment because everything affects health. And a lot of it that we don’t take into account is in us rather than between us.

So in relationship we think of them as between us. But if there is, if I’m not fully present in my own being, what am I bringing to the marriage? So my story that I wanted to tell you is my marriage, how my marriage went, I saw her, never talked to her. I saw her, I saw the goddess, she was shining. I hadn’t heard any of the words of her self-denial that came later. And she saw me the same way. And it was like, oh my God, there’s my completion. And for her, it was like that too and she actually pursued me more than I pursued her. So she was really into it. But then somehow it didn’t work. The moment that I said, yes, the arguments began and I didn’t realize until later what was missing was I was missing in the marriage but from her perspective she was missing in the marriage because I was missing from myself.

I was not in touch with the peace that is an experience that is the foundation of my existence. And you have to go inward to find, to reconnect to that foundation. I was not in touch with the unconditional love that life is and I am for the body because I wasn’t in touch with that. I didn’t feel loved. And then I thought my love was going to come from her and she thought her love was going to come from me, but she couldn’t go in and find it to bring it into the marriage and I couldn’t go in to find it, to bring it into the marriage. So then in that situation, then you have to see where the hell is the love going to come from if neither of you can get to it. So my conclusion was, I’m not ready for relationship. I would say, you’re not for anybody is not ready for relationship until you have a solid relationship with your own life and then you bring presence into the relationship and then you can negotiate anything because you’re not, it’s no longer a need. It’s supposed to be based on love, but we base it on need. I need to feel fulfilled. She’s going to fulfill me. Well, if she doesn’t fulfill me, then what the hell? And there’s like, and then it goes crazy.
[VERONICA]
Well, that’s a perfect recipe for resentment.
[UDO]
Yes, of course, because I had expectations. I wanted her to do my homework for me fundamentally to what it comes down to. I hadn’t done my homework in that regard being present, in my own existence and I expected her to do that for me. Of course she can’t and she expected the same thing for me and I can’t. So we put an expectation on the marriage or on the relationship that the relationship cannot carry. And then surprise, surprise, 60% of our relationships don’t work. So it’s so important to be present, to do a practice where you sit with yourself and discover your own, you know what it feels like to be alive, what it feels like in the space that your body occupies. There’s not just liver and guts in there. There’s also feeling, there’s a light there and there’s love there and there’s sensations there and there’s sound there and you can listen, you can turn your senses inward to experience what life looks like, feels like, sounds like, and even tastes like.
[VERONICA]
And for yourself.
[UDO]
And then you feel whole, then you feel cared for. And when I feel cared for the only thing left to do is help because it’s not about me anymore. I’m cared for so now, okay, good. I’m good. What needs to be done? Okay, I’ll take out the garbage, no problem. I’ll wash the dishes, no problem. Okay, I’ll change the diapers, no problem. It’s like, it’s just about, then it’s practical, but until I feel cared for, every transaction I have will have an element of how is that going to take care of me? And if I can’t see how it’ll take care of me, I will do it because the biggest drive in human beings is to feel whole, is to feel whole again, because we felt whole in our mother’s womb but then we got disconnected from it when we went out through our senses, into the world to learn to survive physically in the world. Well, we didn’t need to do that in the womb. Everything was taken care of, nowhere to go, nothing to do. Just hang out in a little, I call it the Buddha tank because you hang out in the light, inside your inner presence and enlightenment is about going back there.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely.
[UDO]
So we’re all little Buddhists hanging out in that safe space.
[VERONICA]
I appreciate you saying that. When I work with couples, that is usually what I will say in my first session. It’s not about the marriage. If I focus just on the marriage, then I’m going to lose you both, however, if I help you identify who you are outside of the roles you play, if I help you identify who you are as a person, not as a father, not as a mother, a brother, a sister, a wife, none of those things. If I’m able to help you identify who you are as a person, well then that’s when all of the healing happens and change happens because you no longer have that expectation on each other to meet each other’s needs. Instead you’re able to enjoy one another and love one another because you feel supported, protected and understood.
[UDO]
Yes.
[VERONICA]
I agree a hundred percent. It is key.
[UDO]
And it’s not because we don’t really have cultural encouragement for self-knowledge.
[VERONICA]
No, not at all. Not at all. We’re so busy.
[UDO]
But it’s the most important thing in life because that’s what your bring. That’s what you are and that’s what you bring.
[VERONICA]
So think about it this way too though, you know, there’s so many of us that want to be perceived a certain way. We want to be perceived as an exceptional mom. We want to be perceived as a loving wife and so we’re so —
[UDO]
So you’re acting for a cultural image.
[VERONICA]
Bingo. Yup, yup. And that’s all it is.
[UDO]
Instead of acting for life.
[VERONICA]
Yes I’m glad that you were able to make that transition. So you’re six years old, you’re in constant chaos, you’re literally in war, constant chaos, which then now brings into that level of hyper-vigilance, constantly aware of your surroundings. I can see why you went into this sort of mute persona, trying to kind of take in as much information as possible to see who you can and can’t trust.
[UDO]
I read tons of books because you can read a book about war and nobody’s shooting at you.
[VERONICA]
Yes. And so trust during that time is very difficult, extremely difficult. Because even the person that you thought you can trust the most, your mom has left you.
[UDO]
Yes, and when you can’t find it outside, then one of the places where you can go to find it inside, because something inside has taken perfect care of me, 24/7 for now, almost 79 years now and has never misled me, never lied to me, and that’s the nature of life. That’s why foundation in life, foundation in awareness is so powerful.
[VERONICA]
So you were literally the father of fats, like you are the father of sexy health. How did that happen? So what I’m starting to hear is like, there were so many things going on to you, it sounds like you made this transition of, okay, I can’t control everything outside, but I could for damn sure as hell control what’s going inside. Can you tell me more about that?
[UDO]
Yes, that was part of it. And I had started, I had been doing, I do a practice. So the idea is you take time every day, just like you go take time for the toilet and just, like you take time for breakfast and just like you take time for sleeping and you take time for doing your job. You take time every day, five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, if you can. Take time to be as still as you can be and sit in that stillness and see how deep you can go into that stillness and see how long you can stay there, because the mind is very active. See how deep you can stay, how long you can stay there, breathe very lightly and slowly, and then be aware of what you see in that stillness and what you hear in that stillness and what you feel in that stillness.

And you will discover when, and it takes time, it takes time because we’re really good at going out, but we don’t practice much going in. So it’s kind of like learning to walk again. You know, but don’t ever quit. You know, the kid doesn’t see, walk-ins not for me. I just fell on my schnoz. So I’m not going to walk. That’s for you guys. I’m not going to do it. No, they crawl and they fall and they crawl and they fall and they get up on one leg and they fall in there and they cry and they get up and they get up and they get up and eventually they’re running around the block. How long does that take? Maybe a year, two years, depends on their developmental speed. And this is like that too.

If you don’t see peace everywhere in the world, it means peace in you is not looking. And it means that you need to go deeper and let peace do the looking. Because if you’re angry, you’re going to see a different world and you’re going to act different into the world. You’re going to create enemies and you’re going to fight enemies that you’ve created. If you’re fearful, then you’re going to see danger that you’ve created in perfect peace and then you’re going to hide from the danger and try to protect yourself from it. So your state of being comes to expression automatically. So what is the best place to go to bring a state of being to expression? And there’s got to be perfect peace and unconditional love that exists in your nature, whether you look at him or not, whether you feel them or not, whether you believe it or not. They’re just part of your biology.

So what happened to me, so I was already doing that and my marriage ended, the one I just told you about, and I was pretty upset and kind of wanted to kill something. It was a long story and I took a job as a pesticide sprayer. So I sprayed pesticides very carelessly for three years and I got poisoned by the pesticides. You know, it’s like a predictable outcome, carelessness plus stupidity equals bad deal. It’s a formula. And so I went to the doctor and said, “What do you have for pesticide poisoning?” She said, “Nothing.” That was the best diagnosis I ever got, because it was like, oh my God, my health is my responsibility. But it really is my responsibility. It wasn’t just a cute saying. But really the penny dropped and I said, okay, “What do I need to do to heal myself?”

I had the background in biochemistry. So I went and looked in the journals on health and nutrition, disease and nutrition, because I knew the body is made out of food, water, air, and light. That’s it. That’s how nature makes bodies. So I was looking at nutrition, particularly nutrition and health, nutrition and disease, got stuck on fats because they were really confusing and they were misrepresented and misunderstood. And then while I was, this happened, I got poisoned in 1980, I was in the journals in 1981, 1981, it was established that Omega-3s are essential nutrients, which means you can’t make them, but you have to have them. So you have to bring them in from outside. If you don’t get enough, your health goes down, you get deficiency symptoms. They are degenerative in nature. They get worse with time and if you don’t get enough long enough, you die.

This is like really important building blocks that life needs to create your body. It knows how to do that, but you have to make sure that the building blocks land through your mouth, in your body so life can use them. And I found out 99% of the population doesn’t get enough Omega-3s for optimum health. They’re a nightmare to work with because they’re super sensitive to damage by light oxygen and in heat. And every cell in the body needs them. So out of that came, oh my God, we could help almost everybody by bringing, first of all, creating a way to make them with health in mind. So they’re not damaged, like industry damages, they’re the cooking oils. So they’re not damaged and that they’re rich in Omega-3s and we bring them back and optimize them.

There should be a lot of things that get better because every cell needs them and 99% of the population doesn’t get enough. When that sort of came together, that observation came together in my head, it was like, “Oh my God, we could help so many people.” And I just got laid up like a firecracker. Then I had no business background, but huge enthusiasm, and it was like, I just found a purpose for my life because I was doing other stuff and it was like, yes, anybody can do that. But what is my purpose? And my purpose was always, I want things to be better. It doesn’t matter on what level, in what way you do that. Whether you bring flowers or you help old ladies across the street, or you come up with whatever, something on any level of your existence. You help people in the direction of peace, you help people in the direction of love, you help people go inside and discover their own magnificence.

So there’s lots of ways you can help people. But this one was like, oh, this is big. And I was already feeling taken care of. And when I feel cared for, I knew where to go, because that care for lives inside of me and it’s always there. Every time I go and look for it, it’s there and even if I’m not looking, it’s taken care of me. So it was like, okay, well now, all of a sudden I was open to doing whatever, the idea was how can I make the biggest splash for good in one body, in one lifetime. And so then the project became bigger because it wasn’t about how can I get myself taken care of like, how can I make, how can I take care of the world in a way? Because everybody could live their lives lit up because the lights already inside everybody
[VERONICA]
How did you do that though?
[UDO]
You just look in, instead of looking away from it.
[VERONICA]
Bingo. So that looking in, that’s self-reflection yes, that’s a part a lot of people complain about. “I want to work out, but I don’t have time. I want to eat right but I don’t have time. I want to pursue this dream, but I don’t have time to go back to school.” You had every single single reason to clam up, put your head down and just do what you’re told or continue life that same way. You could have went from that. You could have left that doctor’s office and said, “Oh, okay. Well, crap. There’s nothing to treat me. I’m screwed. This is just the way my life’s going to be.” But there was this level of resilience in you. How did it, how did that happen?
[UDO]
So let me tell you what I left out, because I’m telling you that story. But what happened to me is when I was 15, I had an experience where I was lying in bed, I was just lying there, I wasn’t doing anything. My parents were not religious. So I wasn’t looking for anything like that. My body was filled with light and the realization in words came. I know that I’m not that well socially adjusted, because I was a loner and I spent a lot of time by myself, reading books and stuff, but there’s nothing wrong with me inside. That was really helpful. And then when I turned 17, I was at university by that time, I started feeling an ache in my heart, in my chest, like an uneasy, uncomfortable, longing loneliness, a lot of words for it. I have 10 pages of words for that feeling, separated, isolated, lost feeling of loss, uncertain, and sorrow, sadness feels in there. Depression sometimes is part of that too, hopelessness, something’s missing.

Yes, and I started feeling that in my chest and I couldn’t shake it because what we usually do, we feel it. Everybody’s, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t know what heartache is and we feel it and we feel it in response to so many things. Grandma dies, the dog runs away, somebody betrays your trust. you, something that you thought you were going to do falls through, and now you have some empty time, and we feel it. And it’s the same feeling in the same place with a hundred triggers, with a thousand triggers. I didn’t understand what it was, but I couldn’t shake it because I couldn’t, what most people do is distract themselves from it or blame it on somebody or try to ignore it, deny it, or explain it away. Cleverly, explain it away. I couldn’t do any of it because I had already seen enough, given the war and I’d met lots of rich people now and they weren’t any happy that I was. So it wasn’t, so the things that we distract ourselves into to try and, driven by this feeling, this is really our drive.

I couldn’t take it anymore. And so I was going around with this feeling for like 13 years. And I didn’t know what was, and people said, don’t dwell on it. It’ll just make you crazy. I couldn’t not dwell on it. It was always there. They said, “Why don’t you get a job like your brother?” And it was like, “No, that’s just not going to work.” And then I met somebody who said, basically what he said was the piece you searched for in the world is within you and I could show you how to connect to it.
[VERONICA]
Ooh. Well, tell us, tell us, tell our listeners how to do it.
[UDO]
So that was, so the first thing, so the starting point, when you get all of these questions and excuses and why we can’t do what is, you’re not at the starting point, like addicts are famous for aching hearts. So they medicate it because they don’t like it. It’s uncomfortable and they don’t want to feel it. And drugs feel better than no drugs in that case. So, and then they tell them, don’t dwell on it. It’ll just make you crazy. And I say, no, no, no, no. When you feel it, feel it, sit with it. Be with it. Don’t judge it. Feel it. It’s a little uncomfortable. It might be pretty intense. You might cry. It’s all okay. It will not hurt you. It will not kill you because at less than a hair’s breadth behind that heartache is your wholeness.

So you’ve got to sit still with it in order to drop behind it. That’s really the process. It’s kind of like somebody says, okay, I want to win the thousand meter Olympic race, but I’m damned if you’re going to get my to feet no fricking starting line. I’m going to win the race, but I’m not going to go to the starting point. Well, you can’t do this race, if you don’t, you can’t do a journey if you don’t know where you are and acknowledge where you are and are clear about where you want to end up. So peace is the end up and heartache is the starting point and heartache because of that, and it’s intense and it will not let you go, not till you’re 70, not 80, not 90, not till you die, unless you take, unless you be with it. And every time something on the outside ends, you feel that feeling of loss. But the feeling of loss is actually the feeling of your loss, of your connection to the core of your own existence, which happened after you were born, when your senses went out to get to know the world.
[VERONICA]
If I can interrupt you for one quick, second, that part right there, if you allow yourself to feel it, if you allow yourself to process it and not run from it, like you mentioned, that’s the start of journey. A lot of people don’t trust that they are capable of withstanding that pain. They don’t trust it. They don’t trust that they’re capable of sitting in it and processing it, hence the reason why they avoid, distract or explain it away.
[UDO]
But when they tell themselves they can’t handle it, that’s just their head talking. That’s BS, because you felt that many times and you’re still alive.
[VERONICA]
Yes, and you’re prolonging, all you’re doing is prolonging the process. I mean, either way, it has to get done.
[UDO]
You’re putting off the journey and the journey is to your magnificence. Like the unconditional love in your life, it’s best, basically your life is solar energy. Solar energy shines on the green leaves and excites electrons and then they form bonds between atoms to make molecules. Those become your food molecules. You eat them, you break them down. This solar energy is released. That’s your life. That’s the objective, science view. If you sit in a dark room and you close your eyes and you sit really quietly and look into what you can see first, you’ll see darkness. If you go deeper into the darkness, you will discover the light. That is the solar energy. That is who you are and that is the light that all of the great masters talked about. There’s a reason why Buddha called it enlightenment, which means in-lightened, which means lit up from within. Or if your I is single and that means inside, inside your body will be filled with light. You are that light. You know, people, sometimes I say, “Hey, whose body is? I point appoint at you and say, “Whose body is that?” What’s your answer.
[VERONICA]
It’s mine damn it.
[UDO]
It’s mine, damn it. And you know what you’ve just done?
[VERONICA]
I owned it. It’s mine.
[UDO]
Well, no. Yes, that’s good, but you’ve done something else. You busted yourself.
[VERONICA]
How so? Take me there.
[UDO]
Because you’ve just told me that you are not the body. You’ve just told me you own the body. Then the question is, “Well, who are you who owns the body?”
[VERONICA]
I love that. Tell me more, tell me more, teach me.
[UDO]
You are life. Life weighs nothing and runs everything. Life knows everything about your body, so it’s omniscient. If you’re Catholic you know what that means. It is omnipotent, is all power in you, and it is all knowing, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. And that’s the definition of God. The light in you is the divine and all of the religions, or let’s say all the masters after whom the religions were named, is their religions have twisted the message big time. They all said, you all have what I have. If you do what I do, you will experience what I experience. And if you want to experience the experience of master in you, you got to be in touch with life. Life is that power, life is that knowledge, life is that light, life is that sound
[VERONICA]
So how would you answer that question?
[UDO]
Which question?
[VERONICA]
The question is —
[UDO]
Who am I?
[VERONICA]
Who’s the owner of your body? Or what was question?
[UDO]
Yes, whose body is that? It’s my body and that’s correct. It’s just that I understand that I am not the body. I am life. I am the owner of the body, weigh nothing, run everything. Know everything about the body, and then what you do is if you want to know who you are, then you have to take time to get closer into that energy.
[VERONICA]
That’s the exact answer, Udo, that’s exact answer I meant to say.
[UDO]
Yes. And that energy is your wisdom, is your insight, is your intuition, is your purpose because the life, that energy is unconditional love. When I get into that energy, I feel unconditionally loved. That’s why I can, I’m now free to do something and not immediately need something back. I’ve just gotten out of the world of horse trades and gotten into the world of giving. Until I feel whole, I will always take in my giving. And when I feel whole, I don’t need to take in my giving because giving is our nature from that place.
[VERONICA]
Gosh, I wish that was taught to us. I wish that was taught to us before we got married.
[UDO]
Yes. Well, it wasn’t so we can learn it now. So, and just like it is the sun’s nature to shine, it is our nature to shine our state of being. And if my state of being is that love or the piece behind it, then I become an influence automatically in that direction. State of being is so important. If my state of being is angry, I’ll just wreck shit. You can’t, but have that come to expression. So whatever, wherever, if my heart is achy, then that’s what I bring into the world.
[VERONICA]
Yes. And you mentioned that in the beginning, you mentioned that it kind of goes along the saying of hurt people hurt people.
[UDO]
Yes.
[VERONICA]
That’s so true. I remember in the beginning of my marriage, I didn’t know that. There was zero self-reflection. I wasn’t taught it. I wasn’t taught, to be honest, not even in grad school was I taught about self-reflection. I was taught how to do it with a client. I was taught about countertransference and all of those other beautiful, lovely mental health terms. However, it wasn’t until I was sitting across from my patients in group, or even one-on-one that’s when the self-discovery really truly happened. That’s when it was like, wait a minute, I can identify with my client. I can understand, there was this level of empathy. And then with that, I would go home and I would process it, wait a minute, yes, I might not have been as severe as where their current symptoms are at, might not have been diagnosed with the similar diagnoses. However, I felt that pain, I felt that anguish. And I remember allowing myself to really put that guard down and yes.

So what I’m supposed to show up as the expert, but that’s not working, I’m not connecting with my patients. I’m not connecting with my clients. So instead, let me show up as Veronica, a flawed human being that is willing to learn and grow and let me connect with that emotion that I used to run away from. Let me connect with that little girl inside of me. Let me connect with, with everything I ever feared and let me lean in a little bit, let me actually lean in and challenge those insecurities. And it was then that I realized, holy shit. Not only am I way more successful in my career, but it feels different. Like my whole state of being it’s, you know I’m not letting the small shit affect me. And the way I’m connecting with my husband, the way I’m connecting with my kids, it hurts. It’s uncomfortable. However, it’s so freaking worth it.
[UDO]
Yes. And behind I got to a point where I realized I was pretty insecure. Like rather than cover it up, I at least I’d like to feel it. And then I got into feeling the insecurity and I realized, just behind the insecurity, I feel completely secure. Well, my life is not insecure. No, my head trip is insecure. Somebody told me something, or I told myself something and say like, “Oh yes I always can’t do this and I’m not good at that.” You know what, maybe you just haven’t practiced and so, yes, it’s become so easy. The other thing is that within every human being, no matter what their trip is, what their state is, what their problem is, what stuff they’ve got going in their head, the peace in them, the wholeness in them, the unconditional love in them is not affected by their problem.

So it’d be a good idea to say to somebody who’s got problems, okay, give your problems the attention they need. Maybe you need to do something, maybe you need to change something, maybe there’s work to do, but give equal time to the fact that there’s nothing wrong with you, to the fact that you are magnificent, to the fact that you are unconditionally loved, and unconditional love, that your source is peace just like the universe’s source is peace. You are just a mini universe in your being. That is a reflection of the big universe, and that everything that you do and everything you think actually takes place in a sphere of perfect contentment and perfect peace. Even warriors on the battlefield. Pieces inside of them from top to bottom, not just like a little part of their head, completely in their being on both sides and the pieces between them and the pieces around them and the pieces above them and below them.

But their focus is not on the piece. Their focus is on an idea. You’re my enemy, I’m going to kill you. And other guys say no, you’re my enemy. I’m going to kill you. And so in a place of perfect peace, they have their battle where they kill each other. Now, if their focus was the peace in their own being, they would probably put down their weapons, share lunch and ask how they could help make your kid’s life better, make your family life better. You know, what way can I help you? Because I have peace. I have everything and more than everything,
[VERONICA]
Let me ask you a question. This ties into a question that I ask all of my guests. I’m going to ask it a little differently. So there’s two questions. The first question is, what are you doing right now to live the life you want to live? And I’m really curious on how you’re going to answer this.
[UDO]
I’m living it.
[VERONICA]
Yes, yes.
[UDO]
People say sometimes, well, if you could do, if you didn’t have to work and if this, and if that, you know what I’m living with it. I don’t need to change. If I won the lottery today, nothing would change, except I’d be giving away some lottery money or something. Bu I’m not from this place. There isn’t oh, I got to have this and, oh, I got to have, that because all the things we chase on the outside always have the conscious, subconscious or unconscious hope that when I succeed, when I accomplish what I’ve decided I want, then I will feel right again. I’ll feel whole again. I’ll feel okay again. Whatever it is that I feel that’s not right, that will get taken care of it. But I’ve talked to billionaires who are not happy and had that this conversation and said, “Let me tell you how your life goes.” I mean, I tell them how their life goes.

You feel discontent and you decide that you’re going to do some really big thing and the hope is that when you’ve accomplished that really big thing, then you’re going to feel right, feel okay again. So then you spend, you plan the thing and you do it and it’s like a, sometimes you spend 10 years or 20 years working it, building it to accomplishment and then when you accomplish it, then you have three days where you say, “Yay. I did it. I did it.” And on the fourth day, you’re depressed. You guys said to me, well I wouldn’t call it depressed. I would call it led down. Okay, equivalence with words. So feel let down and then I say, and then you figure out, well, maybe I didn’t think big enough, or I didn’t think in the right direction.

So you either change direction or you say, well, if I build five airports, then I’ll be happy because I only built one. Let’s say the guy had an airport named after him and he was like the incredibly accomplished guy and he said there’s still something missing. And I said, the mistake you make is that you think that you can fix what’s broken on the inside or disconnected on the inside or lost on the inside by something that you gain on the outside. But the truth is the disconnect that happened on the inside, that is part of every human being’s journey in getting to know the world. You know, they start from being present inside, absent outside, then they end up as present outside, absent inside. And that disconnect is where heartache begins. And to fix that disconnect, you have to bring your focus of awareness back inside to its source in life, in your body inside.
[VERONICA]
You just described all my therapy sessions. You described every single one that I, when I’m with my clients, that’s exactly where we go. The last question I have, what advice would you give to the mom who feels stressed with her kids and disconnected with her husband?
[UDO]
Exactly the same. The problem is not them. The problem is you.
[VERONICA]
Oh yes. Can you please repeat that for the people in seats? They need to hear that.
[UDO]
The problem is them. And that’s not a judgment, that’s an observation because the problem with you, because if you were in unconditional love and peace, and we’re all works in progress, it’s a tall order, but why not reach for the tall orders? Why not say I want to have the experience that the experience that the masters had that made them so wise and so lovable and so powerful and so able to heal. Why not aim for that? And you’re not going to be there and then you fall down and then you learn something and then you go back to it and then you fall down and you learn something. Next thing you know, you feel it pretty good all the time. But the work is home, the work in marriage and in raising kids is homework. A lot of people thought if they had kids, they’d be happy or if they got married, they’d be happy. You get happy from being happy. And happiness is built into you and you have to crawl inside for it and then you get an unconditional happiness just because it’s there.

So you don’t have to have an excuse to be happy. You’re happy because you can and because you’ve decided you want to, and you decide to go there. And then the other happinesses are all much smaller and conditional happiness. Because some people say I’ll be happy when everybody loves me. Well, good luck on that one. They’re not going to be happy much. What if you say I’m going to be happy, no matter what? That’s actually possible, because that exists within you as a state of being. So you don’t even have to talk yourself into, into reframing all of your mind chatter. You actually just have to walk from it to a deeper place, more in your chest, more in your body than in your mind.
[VERONICA]
Udo, I can be on here all day, all day. You are amazing. So where can the audience find you? Because I know these women are going to be all over?
[UDO]
Yes, udoerasmus.com or, theudo.com.
[VERONICA]
Okay.
[UDO]
And that’s, we have some educational stuff and some courses there. We’re just building that. The second one is called udoschoice.com. That’s where I talk about all of the products that I’ve developed, that we never talked about
[VERONICA]
We had said, we could do another one.
[UDO]
Yes, let’s do another one.
[VERONICA]
We could totally do it.
[UDO]
But I think I like this particular conversation because it is the most important not had conversation on the planet. And if people have this conversation, it will change the planet and we will begin to do what we’re not doing in environment and politics and relationships and health because it’s our foundation that we need to get connected to again.
[VERONICA]
Well, you put two therapists in the room and this is what you get. [crosstalk
[UDO]
And then I have a YouTube channel and I’m on Facebook and I’m on Instagram. I’m not hard to find. I’m around quite a bit.
[VERONICA]
All right. We will definitely include all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on here with us.
[UDO]
All right, Thank you. I thank you for being so, well, first of all, you’re an amplifier for a message. So I totally appreciate that. But also, in order to, for 8 billion people to live lit up from within, 8 billion people need to hear it. The fact that you’re open to it and we can have this conversation is awesome.
[VERONICA]
Thank you.
[UDO]
You are awesome. And you are not your body.
[VERONICA]
Not my body. Look at that. I’m learning, I’m learning. I will learn until the day I die.
[UDO]
And being is more important than doing because you can be without doing, but you can’t do without being. So we’re supposed to be human beings. We’ve become human doings. That’s another way of thinking about return to self.
[VERONICA]
Boom. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.
[UDO]
All right, thank you. Bye. Bye.
[VERONICA]
Many women lose their own identity in the shadow of being a mom and a wife. We are a community of women who support each other. We leave perfectionism behind to become empowered and unapologetic. I want to personally invite you to join our girl gang. It’s a free Facebook community for women just like you. Go to www.facebook.com/groups/empoweredandunapologetic. See you there.

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Empowered and Unapologetic is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a family of podcasts that changes the world. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom podcast, Beta Male Revolution or Imperfect Thriving, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.