Welcome to What What Amber Do with your host, Amber Howard, your weekly dose of guidance, inspiration, and strategies to have your small business and whole life thrive. We bring you incredible guests who share their real life experiences of being an entrepreneur so you can have your whole life work. Now, here's your host, Amber Howard.

Welcome back, everyone, to What Would Amber Do? It is really a very special honor and privilege today to have Chris Sade here, who is an author, life coach, and psychological and spiritual teacher. Chris grew up in Lebanon and experienced firsthand the devastating effects of war. And he's gone on and has continued and continues to create really a lasting legacy of peace building, love, and respect for diversity and a passion for justice. And it shows up in the many books that he's written and the other humanitarian works that he's done. And Chris is co-director of the Olive Brand Center with his wife Jessie. And Chris, just thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Thank you for inviting me. I do need to say that the Olive Brand Center has, I have four four or five years ago we ended our marriage and then we we closed the center. So though, but that's but anyhow, thank you very much for uh for inviting me, Amber. And uh already I I from the discussion we have, I sense how caring and loving and giving you are and what a gift you must be as a coach. So thank you for uh being in dialogue with me. I really appreciate that.

Yeah. So, Chris, we were just actually before the show kicked off, we were having a bit of a conversation getting related and sharing about, you know, some of my experiences to get to today. And and often when I start these conversations with my guests, I start by like asking the question, like, how did you get to be here today? And it and it's kind of a conversation about the external events. And and I'm sure we could probably talk for a very long time about the different things and experiences that you've had in life. But I'm I'm really interested in in just because of who you are and what what was that in what has been your internal journey that you've gone on to be someone who I just like a fierce advocate for love, I you know, is what comes to mind, and just someone who is such a stant for people to really be their authentic selves and and and show up that way. And I'm curious about what was your internal journey to become someone who's like that, because that is, in my experience of human beings, not ordinary.

Thank you. Well, I'm definitely committed to authenticity and the heart. That's a huge commitment for me, is to help others like I have helped myself free my authenticity and free my heart. You know, the the last book that I published that the title is called Rebellion of the Heart. And um and that title kind of summarizes my internal journey because I grew up in a very dysfunctional and abusive family, and uh, like so many others, I have experienced a devastating abuse, and I survived only by the grace of God. I mean, I can clearly say that that I survived by the grace of God, and my journey has been, but my heart kept on rebelling. My heart kept on rebelling. My heart kept on saying, no, it's uh abuse and oppression and control and manipulation cannot be, they cannot be the basis of life. That cannot be what we came for. So my story has been kind of an in intentional self-resurrection because I was so uh in my 20s, my 30s, having survived all this abuse and survived the war that happened in Lebanon. I served in the peace movement for about 10 years and saw the devastation that the insanity of war, but also came from the insanity of an abusive family. Because abuse and oppression and violence are insane, so to speak. So 20s and 30s were a very difficult time for me where I had internalized a lot of shame about myself, a lot of judgments about myself, a lot of rejection of myself. And I had to resurrect myself, I had to liberate the self that I was given at birth, and so it was about finding the path of authenticity and asking the question: who am I? Who am I? Who am I in a unique way? Who is Chris? I want to know that guy, and I want to free him, and I want to celebrate him, and I want to serve the world, but I want to serve the world while freeing myself and celebrating myself, so my service becomes an act of generosity and not an act of self-sacrifice. So, in a nutshell, this this is what it was about. About uh, and that's why I think authenticity is so so important, because without without uh being faithful to who we are, you know, we can we can live as human beings, animals are what they are. I mean, if you have a dog or a cat, I used to love horses, every horse is uniquely what it is, and it never tries to be anything else, right? I mean, it's they have that innate gift, but human beings, we can live next to our life, we can even succeed next to our life. I mean, I in my 20s and 30s I was blessed, I was really good in business, and I was blessed in business and did really well, but I was betraying my authenticity in so many ways. I wasn't living in the river of my life. And it was only when I started going back and reclaiming who I am that I started feeling life then uh thrive in me. And I started tasting what it means to be aligned, to be aligned and to serve the world from a place of inner alignment. So I you know, of course I could say much more, but I will stop right here and see where we are in the conversation.

I um I think that's a very beautiful way of looking at it. And I mean, uh living next to your own life. And when you talk about serving from a place of generosity, and I I can share for my own experience for you know, so much like living inside of so much shame, yet at the same time, you know, like I was someone whose life was of service, but it was really about proving and validating myself in order to fill myself up and and because I I didn't love me, but I couldn't let that be seen because that was weakness and I needed to be strong and and I needed to be strong for a lot of people. And so, like being cut off from myself and and so alone in it. And and someone asked me the question on the weekend, you know, what would you tell, you know, your younger self? And and the thing was like, you're not alone. And and it's so funny because I think a lot of people in my life would be like, what do you mean, Amber? You're alone, you're surrounded by so many people. But I think when you live, you know, like you're saying, beside your life, when you're cut off from the self, your authentic self, because of shame, and and and then you can't even talk about it because we live in a in societies and cultures that don't openly talk about shame. And so, and and we're so desperate for connection and belonging, it's like we're hardwired for it. So we can't even admit publicly the things about ourselves that that disconnect ourselves from other beings, but yet we have to pretend like we're connected, and you know, and I just think having been on this journey over the last couple of years of like really discovering who Amber is and falling in love with myself, um, my capacity for love has just like grown immeasurably.

Definitely, definitely.

Yeah, and so I think that for and like what you said, Chris, about you can be successful and live beside your own life, like live outside of your life, and yet by all intents and purposes, by all societal measures, whatever they may be, you look like you're living a happy and successful life, and yet you're cut off from your true self. And and in your experience as a psychologist, and and just with like, I mean, you've you've delivered workshops and coached so many people throughout your life. In your experience with, you know, what does that do to a human being when they live beside their own life or outside of their own life?

That's very, very important what you're saying. Uh, first of all, I want to underline something you said was very important. When we liberate the authentic self, the heart grows in dimension, and we have so much more love to give. And so much, then then giving doesn't fatigue us anymore. Actually, giving gives us energy. But you're right, the price of uh living from a persona, you know, living from a mask. We can build masks, and we live in a in a modern society that that has so many masks, you know, where people develop a mask of who they are, and and we can become very uh skilled at having a mask. The mask could be smiley, and I'm doing great all the time, and I'm charismatic, and I'm this and I'm that. But behind that mask, we see that the authentic self can be crushed, the voice of the authentic self can be muted. And with that mask, we could succeed, we could succeed big times, but the price of it is bouts of depression, if not depression, but at least bouts of depression, generalized anxiety, a sense of that nothing can satisfy me inside, that I can get and get and do and do, but nothing can really fill that big hole, because that big hole is where the authentic self wants to live. And uh when we don't when we don't live from our own authenticity, we violate the self, right? We violate who we are, and that violation is a violence that will end up violating other people, and even those we love, not meaning to do that, but we cannot violate ourselves without violating others. You know, one thing that helped me really speed the work on authenticity was the birth of my daughter, and and you know, I was so lucky that when my daughter was born, I was the first one who held her and saw her eyes, and I fell in love with her in an unbelievable way, and I still am, and uh and she has been so so precious to me, but I realized that day when I went to sleep that evening that I've got to really stop any violation I do against myself because I don't want in any way to emotionally hurt my daughter, and uh the reality is that if we hurt ourselves, we hurt others, it's just a it's a mathematical proportion, not that we abuse others, but we hurt them, and um and so I realized it is so crucial, so crucial to get to know who I am. But that means that I have to get to know my personality, and I have to come to love my personality, I have to love my lacks because any unique self has gifts but has lacks. You know, one thing I told my daughter at one point, I said, you know, there's a lot I want to give you, but you know, there's a lot I cannot give you as a dad, it's not who I am. I mean, every occasionally I could do that just to, you know, to to you know, as a gift, but but it doesn't flow from me. So to accept my limitations, to accept my lacks, to accept my wounds, that my wounds are part of who I am, to accept my unique calling in the world, and not to just do things just because they make sense or they make money, but to follow what I have been called to do. There's all of that around authenticity, right? To accept my mind, what I think, to accept what I like and to accept what I don't like, to to be at peace with like I wish I like this and I wish I could do that, but I don't like it. It's not me. I want to follow what is me. So that's a whole arena of liberation. Then, you know, there is anxiety we're gonna always have in the world, and there is grief we're gonna always have in the world, because we are in a world that is is carries a lot of pain, a lot of violence, a lot of abuse, a lot of brokenness. But there is a self in there, there is a there is an extra level of of uh anxiety and grief, and that is the result of self-abuse. That we can get rid of. That we can get rid of. And it's important to do that. It's really important because that is that is what life is about ultimately, is that sense of being at peace with who we are and coming more and more and more to really fall in love with who we are, and then falling in love with others as they are in their diversity, in their uniqueness, in their individuality, in their authenticity, with their lacks, with their limitations.

I really do personally believe that loving someone is is granting them being just as they are and just as they're not, and accepting like love is accepting someone, and that takes something as human beings at times to love other people that way. And and I've discovered on this journey that the more I'm able to do that with myself, the more I'm able to accept the good, the bad, the ugly, like Amber in in her totality, all of it. And you know, I I don't know that there's that there's any ever anywhere to get to with that. I think that was one of my other really big discoveries since over the past year is I used to have it like that was somewhere to get to. That like someday, one day, like I would do the work and I would love myself and my self-image would be there and and it would be all taken care of. And then I could be like, okay, like I love my to-do list, right? Check off the to-do list, on we go with life. And um, I'm discovering that it's it's it's part of the journey of what it is to be a human being is and it's ongoing.

Totally ongoing, because we we live in a world where there's a lot of oppression, and we have to understand that the basis of oppression is denying the self because you cannot oppress people who have a strong sense of self. So to be able to oppress and manipulate, if it is from um uh you know uh mega corporations of its empires or or abusive families, you have to destroy the sense of self so then you can control. So we live in such a world, in a world that is uh invested in destroying our sense of individuality. It wants us always to fit in boxes, fit in this box as a woman, in this box as a man, in this book box as a consumer, and so forth and so on. And this reclaiming of the freedom, the rebellion of the heart and the freedom of authenticity, you're right, is uh a life journey, a life journey, and it never ends because the world doesn't end in trying to rob us from who we are. You know, there are books on how to love, how to have sex, how to eat, how to this, how to that. And it's like, what about me? You know, uh uh romance is individual. There's an individuality to romance, there's an authenticity to romance, there's an authenticity to sexuality, there's an authenticity to health. But we are bombarded with this uh making us a cookie cutter product rather than the individuality and liberating that individuality. And the more and and the other thing is understanding the place of lacks, because the the the the number one uh block is oh my god, if I'm gonna love myself, what about my lacks? What are what are what are the things I don't have either in my body or in my mind or in my uh psyche or personality? But when we understand that lacks are what creates our highest creativity, we have a whole different relationship with our lacks and the lacks of others. You know, you take a piece of marble, and then you see that piece of marble become a beautiful statue. How did it become a statue? By shaving pieces off, right? It's the lacks in the piece of marble that takes it from being this huge piece of marble to this beautiful statue. It is the same with us. We compensate for our lacks with our great gifts. So the great gifts are related, they are brothers and sisters to our lacks. Once we start understanding, same with our wounds, like our passion, our our our uh vitality is is related to our wounds. Once we understand the the the relationship between these, we start reversing shame. And we start becoming proud of our lacks, proud of our lacks, and proud of our wounds.

It's like accepting ourselves at a like at a whole different level, is what I can hear in what you're saying. It's like the you know, beyond even like there's this, you know, I've I've been studying and learned, like, you know, we're all born born perfect, whole, and complete. We come into the world that way. And when you're sharing about your daughter in the first moments you met her, like I've said it before, I challenge anyone to actually be with an infant child and think for a second that they there's any anything that but perfection in in that creation. And yet at the same time, like as we go through our life and we have experiences, whatever they are, we pick up stuff and you know, and um to be able to get to go beyond like having to fix something, like it's not even it's not that's not even that conversation, it's about uh loving every every bit of myself, loving, loving the the lack, because like the darkness creates the light, and the light creates like it's I wouldn't be able to, and like if you if you look at my you know mine or your experiences and the abuse that we went through or families went through, you know, I wouldn't have the passion I do today. I wouldn't be someone who's such a fair stand for humanity and for people and and willing to give my life over to the service of that, like the generous service from a place of love, if I hadn't been through those experiences. And so um, yeah, it there's there's nothing, it's it's almost like emptiness on the other side of that.

Yeah, yeah, very well. But Amber, I think we we need to um complete this this um this look we're having on on the self with two things. First of all, let's let's make a difference between abuse and between lacks and wounds. That if if if some if I have internalized abuse, I want to get rid of that. That is not part of me. You know, the voices of abuse and uh the behaviors of abuse that I might have internalized, that is not part of me, and I have to get rid of that. I have to fight against it. But when it comes to the self with the wounds and the lacks, I think we need to um rethink the word wholeness and that wholeness, the beauty of human wholeness includes lacks and wounds. It is not some etheric wholeness. I mean, when you look at paintings, for example, some of the most striking paintings in the world, you see in them harmony and chaos, you see dark colors, light colors, you see imperfections in it, but the whole totality of that painting is just amazing. And that's what makes it amazing, is that it has all of that. So, aside from abuse, once we put abuse out, then it's understanding that my wholeness does not mean that I will not have laps, I will not have defeats in my life. Defeats are part of my wholeness, and I have to love my defeats because it's my attempt to be able to free my heart and have my place in the sun. And the only way I can have it is by having many defeats. It is, like you're saying, uh, it's it's a it's it's a whole other level of understanding the self. What is sad a bit is that a lot of spiritualities that haven't done work on shame of the self, they cannot continue that by saying we have to transcend the self, we have to go beyond the self, we don't have a self. They don't realize that they're continuing the same message that abuse gave us. You know, abuse told us that you cannot love yourself. And then if we are told then that spiritually we have to transcend the self, we have to go beyond the self, we have to reject the self, it's a continuation of that same message, I believe. I think it's very important to realize that spirituality is is is loving what has been given to us in our body, that our body as it is, with its with its form, whatever its form is, is sacred. Our personality is sacred, our history is sacred. And and understanding and accepting that, wow, that's a whole other level than trying to transcend it or reject it or go beyond it. It's going in it and through it that we discover then the sacred and the divine, and it's an encounter. Love, I mean, when when we love others, like you started by saying, you know, we want to love them in their authenticity. And for me, the divine love wants to love me in my authenticity. It doesn't want me to get rid of myself to it loves me, it wants to love me in my I amness, in my reality, in my realness. Because that is that is the beauty of love.

Yes, like speechless, like, and it doesn't happen to be very often for anyone who knows me. Um I just uh what a beautiful way to be with with ourselves. Like, can you imagine a world? Like, can you just imagine a world where everyone loves themselves that way?

That would be that one would be the end of violence.

It would be. Yeah, you know, many years ago, I I grew up in a Christian home and had very, you know, strong relationship to the word morality and this notions of good, bad, right, wrong, and you know, definitely spent, and this is still a pattern I'm breaking in my own life of you know, beating myself up if I'm not, you know, meeting some kind of expectations I have or performing at, you know, in various different ways. Even until yesterday, I'll just be honest with everyone on the show. Like I had to get coaching last night because I was having a moment. And you know, I'm glad that I have surrounded myself with people who can be there and um when my tools or my ability to self-kind of move myself out of those spaces. But um I remember being in a seminar, a seminar many years ago, and and the the seminar leader was talking about morality and standards of you know, success and happiness and how these things are created in language. And even though they have a real impact on our life, of course they do, they don't they're not real in the sense that you know a rock is real or you know, some physical object in space and time is real. And I remember when I when I actually got the morality was an agreement created in language, it was like the gravity was sucked out of my life for a moment. And I was like, well, because for me it was just it was it was real in a way, like, and in looking back on it now, I'm like, oh, of course it was created in language, and like we've all agreed that the morality is this thing. Not again, not to say that morality doesn't have an impact on people's experience and and their lives. But in that moment, I asked myself the question then, well, if human beings don't harm one another or other living things because they're good, bad, right, and wrong, like if that's not at the source of why we harm, then why do we harm each other? Right? Why do we, you know, why do we harm each other? Why do we harm ourselves? Why do we harm other living things? Why do we harm this planet? And my truth is that we do that because of disconnection. And the more disconnected we are, and I'm getting like I would have languaged it before this conversation, uh, Chris, in terms of disconnected from our humanity or disconnected from others. But I actually like now see in this conversation with you, it's more the more disconnected we are from the self, like our authentic self, is what will cause us to violate or cause harm to ourselves or other people.

I I fully, fully resonate with your words, fully. And I think it's so important to understand that. It's so important to understand the roots of violence and the roots of the times where we feel, oh, I cannot take it anymore. And we feel we're like, you know, we we we we we lose control, you know, and and we we start acting in ways that we don't like how we are acting, but we feel like there's no way to control it. We're we're we're out of it. The the root of that is is um being in misalignment, misalignment with our authentic self. You know, um two things I would say here. This the issue of aligning with the self is so so important because we when we're not aligned with the self, we act out of forcing ourselves. Oh my god, I've done so much of that. I should have 10 PhDs in forcing, you know, like uh an expert. And I mean, I'm really good at that. And and I'm you know, I have I've been gifted with a lot of wit strength, and I I can like, okay, you know, I don't really want to do that, but I'll do it. You know, they asked me to write a paper on this. I don't really want it, but hey, I'll do it. So I'll force, I'll force, I'll force myself.

And then my guy recreated over here, yep.

Then the price that I have paid for it in my health, especially getting older, where the body is not as resilient as it was, that forcing shakes the self and and hurts the body and hurts the psyche. So and forcing based on expectations, like you were saying, and expectations of professional or whatever, whatever. And we cannot live without expectations. But what I've discovered is I had to change the whole software of expectations. My expectations have to become that I am aligned with me, and I have to ask myself, was I aligned with myself? Yeah, okay, great. Or if I wasn't aligned with myself, go back to what yourself really wants, not expectations from outside, because these will end by suffocating our spirit, ourselves, and thus our love, our ability to love. People say, Oh, I'm restrained, I don't have anything to give. Why don't you have anything to give to your partner, to your children at night in the evening? Fatigue is normal, but we can be fatigued and still be very romantic, for example. It is because I have forced myself during the day so much that I'm really spiritually exhausted. Just to give you an example, uh, you know, when I started writing in my profession in books, I would write linear books. Like, you know, most books are linear. You start with a chapter in the second and the third and the fourth. And I discovered that that was not, I was doing really well at it, and I was doing good at it, and I was well received, but it wasn't really aligned with me until I had to ask, how does Chris write? And then I found that I love to write in nuggets. So my my latest book that I mentioned, Rebellion of the Heart, is made of nuggets and paintings. So paintings from Katie, uh Katie Cassette that does uh amazing paintings, and then I write nuggets. Once I started writing in nuggets, it's like a whole deeper sense of liberation and joy entered the picture. But I had to find how I write. Somebody else writes in linear ways or in circular ways. I write in nuggets. This question of how do I parent, how do I do romance, how do I write, what is it I like, what is it I don't like, and then out of that place, give generously. Give generously. But it is, like you said, it's a life journey. But it's an exciting life journey because every time we liberate an inch of ourselves, we can feel, we can feel the beauty and the pleasure of that.

I I really resonate with what you're saying. I think one of the things that brings me the greatest sadness is how many human beings go to their death without ever knowing why they were uniquely created. It's like every single one of us is here for a unique purpose. And whatever that looks like, it doesn't have to be some grand true dream to transform life on the planet, but whatever that that expression is of your unique self. And I think, um, and I'm just getting at a whole new level in this conversation, Chris, that it's not just about like it's gotta start from like uncovering, discovering, connecting with ourselves. And then from that place, we can then look at, okay, well, what is what is my Amber's unique or what is Chris's unique expression? And how do I want, like, even like creating down to, okay, yeah, I'm an author, but how do I want to write? What's my self-expression of writing? And I I've had a book in me for a long time. And then and you know, I know it's something that's gonna make a real difference, but I haven't been writing it. And I, and I'm like, I now have a new access to go back and look at, well, how does Amber want to write a book versus like, you know, 50,000 ads on social media telling me to sign up for someone else's program on how to write a book? Like, what how do I want to express this story to other people? And it is a conversation. I call it yardsticks. It's this idea that we could create a life of our own design based on our own measures for success and happiness, not on the ones that I say are like gifted to us, you know, in quotations from our families or our society. But what does it look like to create a life that you love that's based on what you want? And for I think for many of us, and I know this was me for a long time in my life, we can't even get past the how to express what it is that we want because we get so stuck. It's like, well, I want freedom in this area, or I want to be creating more wealth, or I want to be pursuing, but we don't know how to make it happen. And so our desire muscle is so kind of weak because we we're not taught. We don't live in it, you know. I think part of that oppression of the self is also a stifling of us as creative beings, and and many of many human beings don't see ourselves as creative beings.

That is beautiful. That is beautiful. I really look forward to the book you write. If all of that is going to be in your book, that is so exciting. It's gonna be a really gift to so many. Um, I yeah, I thought it uh resonated with you because you know that the issue is um, you know, we pursue, we we are taught by the structures of oppression to pursue a program, right? And the program is for success, you know, how to be a successful business person, for example, how to be a successful parent, how to be a successful wife or husband. And that well, we don't realize that these, like you were saying, these are this is a programming, this is trying to enslave us under some idea of of uh of success. But if we if we look at history, uh tyrants and uh dictators have always promised success to people. The question has to be not to start with success, but to start with authenticity. How do I do it? And then that authenticity will not lead you to a panacea. It's not like the world is gonna all of a sudden become a garden of evil. No, we still are of Eve and Adam, but we still are living in a difficult world and everything is imperfect, and struggle is part of our existence, but we would be much more aligned with ourselves, and then the success that is part of our destiny will come. So we start with authenticity and then success will come. But if we start with success, the pursuit of success, we are entering a path that will enslave our spirit. It's very, very important. I have to start with how you know. Um parents uh are uh can be like soul, like, oh my god, I have to do this, I have to do that. No, stop. How do you give love? How do you parent? It's enough, it's more than enough. You don't have to go by the book of what a parent does. Your children want you and how you parent, as long as you do it with love and with integrity and with respect. But the difference between I want to be a good parent, like, oh my god, that word is dangerous. I want to be the me parent, me, an authentic parent that loves a great deal. I want to be an authentic business owner, not a successful business owner. It's it's it's the turning of the tables, really, because it's going from a place of subjugation to a place of freedom. And uh, and and but that has to come, Ember, with the acceptance of lax. That as an authentic parents, I'm gonna have a lot of lack. Like an authentic lover, I'm gonna have lax. And I must, I must do the work of loving my lax. Because then, guess what? I love the lax in my children, I love the lax in my lover, I love the lax in her body, as I love the lax in my body, and I the path of authenticity and the path of lax are very tied together, very tight together. And that's what takes us to that other dimension you're talking about. That understanding the place of lax and loving lax, like we want the pursuit of the perfect body, for example. Well, that's what oppressive system wants us, that's what created Playboy and so forth, and and you know, play girl all over the other the pursuit of the of the of the perfect body, but that perfect body loses the soul. What we want is the authentic body and to be able to enjoy the authentic body of ourselves and of others and free ourselves from the idea of that perfection or wholeness that is disguised as perfection. If wholeness means authenticity, yes, but if wholeness is a form of perfection, then it's very dangerous.

Yeah, you remind me of a comment from a loved one of mine many years ago who doesn't, you know, like many of us, have that kind of stereotypical, like whatever the standard of beauty is right now in magazines and in society. And and I remember her saying to me, I I've never been able to even decide for myself if I love my body, because from the moment I've had one, it's been wrong. So I've never even been able to ask to choose for myself. And we do that in so, and not just in terms of aesthetics and what people look like and what standards of beauty, but like we do that with life. We, you know, and and I believe in taking personal responsibility. I think it's important for us to always like we're a choice. We we we always have a say in the matter of how we choose to see things. And at the same time, like we live in the inside of these structures as human beings that rob us of the choice of knowing for ourselves authentically what what it is that we want, because we're constantly told that a successful, happy life or you know, a loving relationship, of being a good parent, all of these things, being a good employer or an employee, all of it, whatever those those standards are, looks a certain way. And if you're not that, then you in somehow you're separate, and being separate means you're not you're not connected. And and so it it's so damaging to us as human beings to keep living inside of those conversations. And and it's funny because I'm I'm in this conversation, it's always a discovery. And in this conversation, I'm like, you know, my business is about people helping people live a creative life and create new definitions of success and happiness. Like, is that even the conversation I want to be in? Because, you know, and I'm not saying I don't, but it's like I'm I'm in this moment here with you, Chris, going, wow, like what is beyond success?

Well, and and I think it's wonderful that you want to help other people succeed. I mean, for me, the word success means to bring fruition to the tree that I am. You know, if I come to you and I'm an oak tree, you want me to be success uh to succeed, to become uh to to have fruition as an oak tree, or fruition as a uh, you know, a weeping tree, or or any any tree that I am. But it is it is about the conversation about one, what is success? Success is fruition, it's not the attainment of a certain goal. For some people, success means $10,000. For some people might mean $10 million, but it's not that $10 million for everybody. For some people, success might mean that they have uh a large family and they're able to provide for it and spend a lot of time going on on vacations together and doing barbecues together. So the the issue of success is fruition, and then what is the necessary ingredient of success, which I think you you are definitely talking about all the time, and I I really value value very much how you you you think about that stuff and what you bring to others, because the the ingredient is authenticity, what leads us to success, but but again, it's like I don't want success, I want my success, and that's different. That's different, you know. I want my success, you know. I I mean I I have come to a place in my life where I surround myself with art in my house, and I have a lot of paintings and colors, and and I feel like wow, it's like I've created I lived in Paris for five years and I adored living in France in Paris. It was just so, but I feel like I've created my own little Paris here in my own house. And that for me is much more important, for example, than some other definitions of success. So everyone has once we ask the question, what is your success? What tree are you? Tell me first, what tree? What authentic tree are you? Because different trees have different paths of fruition, right? I mean, um, and uh I love palm trees here in San Diego. We have so many palm trees, but palm trees like keep on going up, up, up, up, up to heaven. But then you have some trees that stay, you know, only two feet on the ground. That's success for them. They don't want to go up to heaven. Palm tree, they want to go up to heaven. Great. Um, once we enter into the conversation that, you know, what is my success, and therefore, what is my authenticity that leads to my success, then I'm all for it. But the problem with books that say, like, oh, if you do this and this, the secret to success and so on, again, it's a box. It might be a golden box. You know, my father was extremely, he was a lawyer, and he was extremely successful as a lawyer, uh financially, extremely successful. In his old age, he gave me a huge gift. He said to me, son, I want to tell you, I am like a lion in a golden cage. Because I have never lived the life I wanted to live. I said that, but look at all the money you generated. He said, Yeah, I've created a golden prison for myself. So the question is, you know, gold is not enough. Gold is not enough. But if gold uh is used in a way to bring uh fruition to yourself and your family, that's great. That's awesome. Wonderful.

Yeah, I I like one, I love the analogy of the tree. I just think that's so beautiful. I think I'd be a weeping willow. I just think they're so beautiful and graceful. And I just like and and they're I love water, so they're always near water, right? Like they love weeping willows love to be near water. And uh I just love the idea of sitting underneath one by a stream reading.

Weeping willows give a lot, a lot of their branches and their, I mean, leaves, they get they're they're big givers, big givers.

You shouldn't think about it that way. Yeah, but I I love and I I think we'll maybe we and this part of the this conversation here for today, and I would love to keep talking with you and creating with you over time, Chris. But I think for like in the space of discovery for people listening to this conversation, what what what tree are you? And what does success look like for you? What is your success? And and you know, if you need permission, because I think sometimes in life we need permission, um, you know, because we've been inside of these oppressive structures for so long, if you need permission to really go look for yourself at what is it that you want, then have all of that permission and go and be in that discovery of that question of, you know, what does my success look like as a as a parent, as a business owner, as a woman, as a man, as a just as a human being. And and Chris, I, you know, for those of you not watching the show, I've been like almost moved to tears multiple times in this conversation. You are just um such a lovely human being to be with. Thank you so much. For those of you listening, we're starting a book club. We didn't even talk about the book, um, but we're starting a book club on a book that I'm just like, I go gaga over. It's called Evolutionary Love Relationships or Passion Authenticity and Activism. And so if you're interested in participating, and Chris has generously offered to meet with us at the end of reading the book, we've got 11 people in the club already, and it's growing. Um, and we're really just gonna study this book. Yeah, we're really gonna study the book together for 11 weeks and then wrap it up with talking with you. And and uh I've got a number of people in the club who've already read the book and they're just like equally like me, gaga over it. So uh Chris, just thank you for your time today, and and just thank you for um just who you are and and and the gift that you are.

Thank you, Amber. And I want to thank you, thank you for the presence that you carry in the world and uh the heart that you bring to the world and and your view of things. Thank you. It's uh I know having heard of your story that you have carried your your share of uh of pain and and how you have turned that in a in a flowing river of giving to others. I mean, I can sense that. And I thank you for who you are, for what you bring, for your presence, and thank you for the work you do and all the people that you are helping. Um, you know, the work of a coach is something we a good coach, we we never forget in our lives. So there's so many people who will never ever forget you.

Thank you for that acknowledgement. For everyone listening, have a wonderful week and thank you for joining us for this conversation.

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. For show info, visit what wouldamberdo.com. And for information about Amber Howard and Associates' offerings and services, visit AmberHoward Inc.com.