Remembering What We Are: Philosophy, Presence, and Human Flourishing, with Rodney King
In this episode of Spirituality in Leadership, Andrew Cohn sits down with Dr. Rodney King, philosophical coach, former martial arts practitioner, global educator, and scholar to delve into meaning, leadership, and what it really takes to live well. Rodney shares his extraordinary journey, from growing up in poverty in Johannesburg and surviving a violent environment, to becoming a globally respected martial arts teacher, and ultimately facing a life-altering health crisis that forced him to rethink everything.
Rodney reflects on how martial arts first became a way to survive, then a profession, and eventually a doorway into something much deeper–philosophy as a lived practice. After decades of physical training, travel, and high performance, a diagnosis of CTE-like symptoms brought his fighting career to an abrupt halt. What could have been the end instead became a turning point. Through philosophy, solitude, and reconnecting with nature, Rodney began to ask different questions, not “How do I push harder?” but “What is the meaning of this moment?”
Together, Andrew and Rodney delve into how modern culture’s obsession with speed, optimization, and productivity often pulls us away from our inner wisdom. Rodney challenges listeners to do the opposite of what the modern world demands, slow down, embrace unstructured time, and rediscover awe in everyday moments. From walking without a destination to simply being bored, these “unoptimized” practices become gateways to clarity, creativity, and healing.
This episode is a thoughtful invitation to leaders, and all of us, to rethink success, listen more deeply, and reconnect with what truly matters. It’s not about having all the answers, but about learning to ask better questions and creating space for wisdom to emerge.
Key Takeaways
From Toughness to Wisdom: Early survival instincts may build strength, but true leadership requires reflection, meaning, and inner authority.
Crisis as Initiation: Health breakdowns and life disruptions can serve as powerful invitations back to purpose and authenticity.
Philosophy as a Lived Practice: Philosophy is not theory. It is a way of engaging life, suffering, and leadership with depth and clarity.
Doing the Opposite: Many leadership and wellbeing challenges are eased by resisting hustle culture and embracing slowness, patience, and presence.
Asking Better Questions: Transformation begins not with answers but with reframing the questions we ask ourselves.
Unoptimized Time Matters: Solitude, boredom, awe, and walking without goals create space for wisdom and creativity to emerge.
Environment Shapes Behavior: Much modern anxiety and burnout stem from environments misaligned with human nature.
Leadership as Remembering: Flourishing comes from reconnecting with our innate wisdom, not adding more tools or strategies.
In This Episode:
[00:00] Opening reflections and Rodney’s early realization about toughness
[01:24] Introduction to Dr. Rodney King and his global journey
[04:11] Growing up in poverty and discovering martial arts
[08:18] Military service and early leadership formation
[09:58] Building a global martial arts practice
[12:34] Health crisis, CTE-like symptoms, and identity collapse
[15:01] Recovery, reflection, and returning to philosophy
[17:36] Philosophy, martial arts, and the hero’s journey
[23:24] Coaching through questions rather than answers
[27:28] Meaning-making during crisis
[31:08] Nature, solitude, and unoptimized practices
[36:00] Awe, walking, and embodied wisdom
[41:30] Modern culture, burnout
[44:47] Doing the opposite as a leadership rebellion
[50:52] Rodney’s work, resources, and closing reflections
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
Rodney King
Andrew Cohn
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Transcript
Rodney King: Early on I recognized that it really didn't matter how smart you were. What really mattered was how tough you were. I got diagnosed with CTE like symptoms, which is in essence it's traumatic brain injury, right? They can't definitively say that you have CTE when you're living. So having this health crisis in a way made me reorient myself back to the reason why I started it in the first place right? Because if it was only ever about learning how to fight, then getting that diagnosis is a nail in a coffin.
Andrew Cohn: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership podcast. I'm Andrew Cohn. Spirituality in Leadership is a platform for conversations with leaders at all levels about bringing our spiritual dimensions to our leadership, our teams, our workplaces, and all areas of our lives in order to achieve greater success and fulfillment and build and sustain healthier organizations. If you'd like to connect with me to talk further about these topics and or about individual or team coaching, leadership workshops, or team alignment, please go to my website lighthouseteams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so happy to have with me in this episode Dr. Rodney King. Rodney is a South African born man living in the U.K. He talks a bit about where he lives and how he got there and his story from poverty in Johannesburg to running a global connection of martial arts studios around the world, and his journey from martial arts to philosophy as he defines philosophia, the love of wisdom and what real wisdom means. He talks in his work about the impact of the modern world and how we need to slow it down, essentially do the opposite of what modern culture is driving us to do, particularly in the working world, in order to hear that inner voice. His story is a fascinating and powerful one. He is wise and resourceful and interesting and engaging and I hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I did.
Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership podcast with me today, tonight, depending upon when you're listening, is Dr. Rodney King. I first spotted Rodney through a LinkedIn post that maybe we'll discuss a little while back, but we have a number of mutual contacts and I think mutual intentions and direction and you have a wonderful story both to tell and from looking back and also looking forward. I look forward to that, but mostly first, primarily. Welcome to the podcast, Rodney.
Rodney King: Andrew, thank you for having me.
Andrew Cohn: And you are speaking to us today from where? From Whence?
Rodney King: This is always an interesting part, right? It's like most people have no idea when I tell them where I'm at, so I'll kind of situate it. it's an island in the middle of nowhere. It's called the Isle of Man. So for people who have no idea where that is, if you know where England is and you know where Ireland is, in the middle of that is the Irish Sea. And if you went on to Google Maps and you keep kind of zooming in, zooming in, zooming in, eventually you'll see this little dot and that's the Isle of Man. So that's where I'm at.
Andrew Cohn: As I understand it, it's really between sort of England and Ireland. Is that correct?
Rodney King: Yeah. In the Irish Sea.
Andrew Cohn: In the Irish Sea. There you go.
Rodney King: I mean, on a good day. On a good day, yeah. When. When the weather's nice, which does happen from time to time, depending on which side of the island you're on, you can see the mainland, so you can see England and then you can see Ireland and you can even see Scotland. So that's on a good day, you can in the distance. It's there.
Andrew Cohn: Okay. But that's not where you're from. Or it is where you're from now. So please tell us a bit about your story. And I mean, where we're getting to, of course, is your work, especially given your education and your work and the connection between philosophy and meaning and coaching and leadership, which is a lot of what this podcast is about. We will get there, but please take the time you need to share what needs to be shared.
Rodney King: I'll give you the Cliff Notes version.
Andrew Cohn: Okay.
Rodney King: So I'm originally from South Africa. I was brought up on the south side of Johannesburg. It's, in essence, it's government housing. I guess the closest thing I could think about what most people would recognize it as the projects in the United States.
Andrew Cohn: What would they call it in the UK? I know we would call that then in the US what would be a more UK?
Rodney King: I mean, it's a good question. I'm not really sure that there is a specific name for it. Right. I mean, it's an impoverished neighborhood. Right. I grew up poor as many of those neighborhoods are dysfunctional. Broken up families, drug dealers on the corner, schools weren't great, surrounded by bullies. Yeah, that was my,that's kind of where II grew up, you know, so it was a tough, hard upbringing. So the outside world, my neighborhood wasn't safe. At home, it wasn't safe. My mother was a raging, abusive alcoholic. So, yeah, not a very fun experience, let's just say that. You know, it got me to where I am. So we'll be talking about that for sure.
Andrew Cohn: Okay, so how did it get you to where you are? And by the way, if you want to work from current backwards or I'm sure you've told the story many times before, but what's the best way to walk us through?
Rodney King: Well, like I kind of hinted to, right? I mean my neighborhood was pretty rough. And early on I recognized that it really didn't matter how smart you were, what really mattered was how tough you were. And so from like the earliest age, six years old already, I was thinking about, you know, how do you survive? It's one of the reasons why I started martial arts. And that became a very integral and important part of my life.
Andrew Cohn: And what age did you start that? I'm curious to know.
Rodney King: Six.
Andrew Cohn: Six. And how did you find that, was that unusual in your family? Or how did you just manage to find that or did it find you?
Rodney King: Well, that's interesting question. So actually the blame is my uncle. I don't know if this is a really good thing, right, for a four year old to be watching those old Chinese kung fu movies on. This is how old I am, right? That's giving away my age. But we used to watch it on the real. So this is before like beta VHS DVDs. I mean, I remember when you wanted to watch a movie at home, you'd go down and you would hire the movie on a reel. You'd find a, you know, a white wall in your home, switch off the lights, little terrible little speaker, and you would play the movie that way, like almost like you were in a cinema, right? Like in a movie house.
Andrew Cohn: with the sound. The tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
Rodney King: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And you know, he was a big martial arts movie fan. And, and so I was watching martial art movies since I was probably 4 years old. And so once I kind of realized, you know, how bad my neighborhood is and, and how rough it was and the whole idea of being tough, obviously my mind went to. Okay, well, I've watched the movies, right? So the way to deal with this is in essence to learn martial arts, to learn how to fight. So I looked around and the only thing I could find at the time was a karate school. So I kind of begged my mother and reluctantly she allowed me to go and that's where I started. So I started karate when I was six.
Andrew Cohn: Wow. Siblings. Anybody else in the house involved either along with you or against you in that new effort?
Rodney King: No, no, I was a single child. I grew up without ever knowing my father. So there was also another reason for the kids to bully me. So yeah, so, I mean, I started training martial arts. That's what I spent the free time that I had doing. And I continued to do that. And then when I was around 17, things came to a head. My mother, in another drunken rage, kicked me out of the house. So I was actually homeless for a while, sleeping on the inner city streets of Johannesburg and not having any prospects for the future, not knowing what I was going to do. And I definitely didn't want to be homeless. I enrolled into the military early. So back in those days in South Africa, military service was compulsory and you could go in at 17 if you had parental consent. So all I did was I forged my mother's signature on the forms.
Andrew Cohn: I'm sure no one else has ever done that.
Rodney King: Oh, I'm sure, yeah. Actually I have a very close friend who we met in the army. He did the exact same thing as me. So yeah, definitely not the only person they did that. So I turned 18 in the military and you know, it was kind of a formative experience for me. It was kind of like my first real experience of being an adult, if you want to call it that, having to grow up really, really fast, as the military does for most people who've had that experience. But also my first real experience of leadership. And I actually excelled in the military. I did really well and I rose to the rank of platoon sergeant. And I was also, because I had the martial arts background, I ended up becoming the lead hand to hand combat instructor for my unit. So I taught my unit self preservation skills. Once I got out of the army, not having a high school diploma because I never finished high school, having some military experience, I wasn't really employable. There was nobody that would give me a job. So I did the only thing that I could do at the time and I started working the doors. I became about what we call a bouncer, a doorman. And I did that for several years. I worked outside some of Johannesburg's most notorious nightclubs. All the while thinking about how could I make martial arts my everyday job? How can I make it my profession? And in 1998, end of 1998, I took the plunge and I started my first martial arts school. It grew actually really quickly. And before I knew it, I had close on 300 students which in Johannesburg, which at the time was the largest martial arts school in the country.
Andrew Cohn: Amazing.
Rodney King: Yeah, it was fantastic. And I created my own programs. We would say today they Went viral, even though that didn't exist back then, you know, but they went viral. People picked up on it and people wanted to learn the methods that I had created. So I followed that stream and then that became my extension of my profession as a martial arts teacher for the next two decades. For the next two decades, I traveled the world everywhere from Hawaii to Alaska to Perth, you name it, teaching my programs and teaching a very wide spectrum of students all the way from tier one special force, military operators, law enforcement teams, close protection groups, because that was my background in the military, airline cabin crew, all the way through to world combat athlete, world champion combat athletes, to the everyday person. So I did that for two decades and that was kind of my bread and butter. That's what I did. That's what I got known for. But probably around, I want to say 40, because I'm 52 now, so around 40, I started feeling not so great. I wasn't feeling well. I just thought that the reason I wasn't feeling great was I was just not managing the pressure, the stress of being on the road all the time, you know, running this global program because at its peak I had people teaching my program in 15 countries around the world. I thought I was just basically not, you know, managing the stress. And I got really depressed at that time and I wasn't feeling good. And it continued and it just got worse over time. Eventually to the point where 2019, beginning 2019, I kind of thought, look, I need to figure this out. I need to find out what's actually going on. And I went down the rabbit hole, the medical rabbit hole. I was diagnosed with depression. But more than that, through X-rays and scans and everything else, they were like, listen, your cervical spine, your neck does not good at all. You've got cervical degeneration in your neck. Because I've been suffering from headaches constantly, like non stop. And that was the kind of, the first thing. And then the next thing was, you know, there was a lot of stuff happening that I couldn't account for. I'll give an example of that. So same year, 2019, end of the year, I was in Thailand. I'd been teaching for a couple of weeks, I'd been running some retreats. And one morning I woke up, I looked down and I couldn't remember how to tie my shoelaces. Just couldn't remember. And so for the next couple of weeks I just put flip flops on. I didn't want to say anything, you know, I didn't.
Andrew Cohn: Managing the problem.
Rodney King: Managing the problem. I Just thought it would clear up. But it didn't. And each day it didn't get any better. And I kind of put two and two together. I had been sparring like I always did, live sparring. I'd been rolling because I do jiu jitsu as well. And that seemed to have made this whole thing worse. And then I noticed that that seems to have been a recurring theme for the last few years. Every time I put myself under that kind of pressure of sparring, taking punishment, you know, to the head and things like that, things weren't so great afterwards. So I went even further down the rabbit hole. Long story short, I got diagnosed with CTE like symptoms, which is, in essence, it's traumatic brain injury, right? They can't definitively say that you have CTE when you're living. It's something that right now is really only diagnosed when people pass on and they do an autopsy. But the neurologists and so on have kind of got to the point now where they'll say, okay, you know what? All these symptoms you are expressing, these are CTE like symptoms, right? Mood swings, depression, headaches, memory loss, all these kinds of things. And the consensus from all the experts, which is what sideswiped me, was, look, you've got to quit what you're doing. You can't carry on doing what you're doing. You can't continue to be on the mat performing as you're performing, because there's going to be a severe long term consequence. Your neck is shot, your brain is not doing great. You need to find something else to do with your life. And I'm not going to lie, that spiraled me even worse. You know, I fell into even a deeper depression. Everything that I had defined my life by was literally taken away. And I was like, okay, what now? And at the same time, there were a bunch of other small, well, not small, big changes that happened in my life. 2019, I got divorced. I moved in 2020 to the Isle of Man where I am now. Then got that news. Then there was Covid. It was like, you know, it's just getting punched from left from one side to the other. And so, yeah, the last few years have just really been a recovery. It's been trying to get back to a healthy state.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, well, thank goodness for that. I mean, we hate the messengers, but the healthy state is a good thing.
Rodney King: Sure.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. So how is your health now?
Rodney King: It's better. It's not perfect, you know, as we said, you know, as I was talking to you before we started I said, I haven't been feeling so well the last week or so. It's one of the reasons why most of the times I don't do a lot of podcast interviews because I have a lot of problems trying to remember words. So I'll be like, mid conversation. I know what I need to say, but I can't find the word, so I'll just kind of slot in another word. And normally it's the easiest word I can find, you know, so those kinds of things. But I'm working on it. I'm working on it. And, you know, initially when this happened, happened as I think anybody would, it was a fatal blow, right? I was like, okay, what now? I mean, what do I do? But as a few years have passed on, you know, as you look back, actually, it was probably the best thing that could have happened, and it needed to happen when it happened. And it's inspired me to come back to my second love, which is philosophy, and kind of recalibrate myself. And although I have a lot of academic credentials, hadn't been really using it because I didn't really need to in the fight world. So I'm kind of like, bringing that back. And I think that's also been an important part of my healing journey because just basically exercising my brain, right? Just reading, researching, writing, especially writing, has been very, very good for part of my recovery. Even though I'm not 100% there, I do feel I'm a lot better. If we were having this conversation a few years ago, I wouldn't even be able to talk to you more than a couple of minutes at most. My brain would be all over the place. We're really hard to have a conversation. I wouldn't be coherent. So I've definitely. I've definitely improved. And that's really what I'm sharing with people. All right. I'm saying, look, you know, as dark as things can get, there are ways out of it. And here's what I'm experiencing here is what I found works. And that's really what much of my work is about today.
Andrew Cohn: Well, I certainly want to move towards what works. And what do you typically talk with people about? And I'm also curious to know. So take whichever direction you choose. So your other love is philosophy. When did that love develop? When you were in the military? When you were traveling the world doing the martial arts stuff? Or maybe I know for some martial artists, including for me, to a lesser degree, there's a philosophy, of course, behind the martial arts that attracts some people to it. But in any case, so for you, when was that philosophy introduced? How was it activated? And also, of course, how does it relate to the work you do now?
Rodney King: Sure. I mean, that's a lot. So, I mean, I think it's a little bit of all of that. Right. I mean, I can speak to all different points that you raised. I mean, for sure, again, we have to obviously talk about when we talk about philosophy, what do we mean by philosophy? I use the word philosophy because that's just the word that most people recognize. I prefer philosophia, the original Greek word, which is the love of wisdom, because I think then wisdom is far more encompassing. It goes beyond just what most people would think about as philosophy proper. Right. So pulling back the curtains, going back in time, interesting thing that happened to me was two weeks before I got kicked out of the house, I had read Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning at 17. Well, yeah, 17, yeah. I was always interested in those kinds of topics, Right. I was always interested in, we could maybe call flourishing. Like, how do you. How do you become the best version of yourself? So that's always been something that I've been interested in. But I credit reading that book as saving me when I was homeless, because the kind of one of his most perennial quotes just stuck in my mind. You know, the last of human freedoms is your ability to choose your own given attitude and any set of circumstances. And that was playing on my mind as I was homeless, sleeping on the inner city streets, which kind of gave me the fortitude to move in the direction I did and ended up being in the military. As far as the martial arts and the philosophy of that, absolutely. It's something that I could say maybe I lost for a while just because so much of my martial arts practice as a professional was so geared towards teaching people how to survive. That philosophy took a back step, Right. It was something on the periphery. But if I go back in my memory recounting those martial art movies, if I'm really honest with myself now as an adult, I didn't recognize it when I was a kid, but now I recognize it. Right? Is that, yes, of course. You know, watching those martial art movies and the hero in the movie and just the physical capabilities and skills, Amazing, right? Of course I loved it. But actually, the thing that I loved more was how this unassuming hero to be somebody that had no skills, not a great mindset, but through the practice of martial arts, and often in those stories, right, he goes to a temple, knocks on the door, the monk opens up and goes, nah, no thank you, you know, and he persists and he persists and eventually they let him in and he thinks, okay, now I'm going to learn real cool martial skills. And they're like, no, no, no, no, you're going to carry water up and downstairs and you're going to wash the temple floors. And he's like, what the, you know, I came here to learn how to kick ass. That's right, right. Because back in my village there's a bunch of bad guys that moved in and they're picking on everybody and pushing in on the girl I really like. And I feel completely hopeless. And this is my way to turn things around, right? And so anyway, reluctantly does all those things. And then there's always this kind of teacher on the side that sees the, this young person, this young guy, the hero, to be persistent, working through and says, you know what, if you really want to learn the martial skills, meet me every morning at 5am, miss the session, I'm not teaching you anymore and I'll give you a few things and kind of how the movie carries on, right? And eventually he learns his martial arts skills. He comes back to the village, the bad guys have taken over, but now he's reluctant to fight. He doesn't want to fight. He has the skills, but he doesn't want to. So he tries to find a different way to solve the problem, right? And then when all else fails, then he fights. What I really see there, and what was I didn't realize at the time was this hero's journey. And in all those movies the teacher always made that point that it wasn't just about coming here to learn how to fight, but it was you were coming here to learn how to live, you were developing the capacity to have wisdom in your life. So it was a philosophy and that had, had always been an integral part, especially on the traditional side of martial arts. But in the modern interpretation of martial arts where the focus tends to be either on competitive success or on self defense, the philosophy has completely been taken out and I fell into that trap where exactly, as I noted earlier, I was just teaching people how to fight. And so having this health crisis in a way made me reorient myself back to the reason why I started it in the first place. Right? Because if it was only ever about learning how to fight, then getting that diagnosis is a nail in a coffin. That's the end. But if it's more than that, and it actually is a practice that will enable you to flourish in Life, then it's still available to me. Maybe not in the way that I used to do it, but I can do it in a different way. And that to me is the lived philosophy. Then, of course, I have always had the interest of reading philosophy proper, right? Be it Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and so on. So, yeah, I don't know if that answers the question, but, yeah, it's a combination of stuff, but it's always been there. It's always been there in the background. And now it's no longer in the background, it's now in the foreground. And is a central part of what my mission is in life is to bring that to people and say, look, you know what? Philosophy isn't this kind of dusty old book stuck in some academia. It's actually something you can take and you can apply it to your everyday life, but here's how you can do it.
Andrew Cohn: And so now, these days, what does that look like for you? People call you and they're asking for what?
Rodney King: Yeah, it's an interesting question. So, I mean, I would describe myself as a philosophical coach, you know, so I use philosophy as my kind of bedrock to help people navigate life's existential crisis. And I am a sucker for punishment, I guess. Even though I've been going through all of this kind of difficult time. I'm now doing a second PhD. And my second PhD this time around is actually in philosophy. And that's my focus, is that I'm focusing on the meaning crisis that I believe is real and is happening right now. It's very evident if we look around the world and what would the role of philosophy be in helping people navigate that meaning crisis? And I can definitely see that in my work that when I have clients that come to me and they want to just awkward. I'm not offering therapy, and I'm not even necessarily giving specific answers. It's really about allowing them to ask better questions. And when you ask the right questions, it's amazing what becomes available to you, what you see. Right. So it's about going from. Oftentimes people tend to be quite restrictive, black and white thinking. And I'm going, hold on. What happens if we step out of that and we open it up and you open yourself to the possibilities, what could there be? And again, you know, all of my recovery steps have been about that, about asking better questions. If not what then. Right. And so really, that's what. What philosophy is great for, is that it allows you to explore the meaning. What's the meaning held in this experience? And I Could have got really negative. And of course I did. I mean, I got really down on myself. I was depressed, all those things, but I didn't stay there. And I think part of it was that I was willing to say, okay, this is a bad place that I'm in right now. But how do we reframe this? How do we look at it in a different way? What meaning could there be? What lesson is there to be taught coming out of this? And I think that's a powerful place to be, and I think a lot of people really need that right now.
Andrew Cohn: I would definitely agree with that. You're also pointing out the important difference between I'm in a bad place and I'm bad, or there's something wrong with me or something like that. Change my location. I could do that. And you're also reminding all of us that as coaches, we don't give advice. We ask good questions, hopefully. I was reading something recently. I'd never heard this put this way before, but it was brilliant. It just really rang my bell. I read this book in which the author said, could questions subvert mindsets?
Rodney King: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Fix mindsets. Right. Because it's so easy to fall into that trap of having a fixed mindset. So if you explore the questions, it opens you up to different answers and to perspectives that you may have not held previously. And that's a really good thing because I think sometimes we fall into that trap, that dictumy of, like, black and white, like I said earlier. And so asking the right questions or having somebody that can help you ask the right questions can be a powerful way to open yourself up to potentialities that you may have not even thought were even possible before. Right. You know, just. Again, coming back to my health crisis, it's very easy to just give up. And for a moment there, that's kind of where I was until I started asking the right questions of myself. Then things started changing, and of course, I had some help on the way. You know, I did different things. I mean, I've been doing certain things that I feel have helped me on the road to recovery, even though I'm not there. And maybe I will never 100% be there, but at least I'm moving in the right direction. I'm happy to talk about what those are, too, of course.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Well, I. If I could ask you a personal question, and if not, you could tell me to edit it off the recording. The beauty of modern technology. But. But you talk about. I asked myself the right questions. What were the most important questions you asked yourself if you don't mind sharing.
Rodney King: It's difficult to say precisely how those questions unfold, but it's definitely a question of meaning. What is this moment in time? What is the meaning held here? And what potentialities could there be coming out of this? What are the possibilities? Rather than looking at as this is a restrictive space, this is what it is. It's the end of everything, right? What could possibly come out of this? And I think that, I know it sounds very simple and maybe not as lucid as most people would like it to be, but I also think that a lot of times what we tend to do is we over complicate things.
Andrew Cohn: Yes, sir.
Rodney King: And sometimes the simplest approach is actually the best kind of Occam's razor. And I've always believed that. Right. And I also think that you need to have, and this is very hard, you need to have patience. You need to also trust that even if you can't answer that question now, it will emerge if you allow it, right? So you have to be open to the possibility of seeing the situation that you're in in a different way. I mean, if you're not going to, then I don't think anything is going to arise for you. You're going to stay stuck. You're not going to move past where you are right now. So is that kind of analogy of a. You need to have an empty cup. You can't have a full cup because if, now, if you start pouring into that, it's going to overflow. You need to be open to the possibilities. And that requires patience, which is very difficult in our modern world where that is seen as a waste of time. You know, it's like, let's hustle. Let's get from point A to point B as quick as we possibly can. And I think that's where a lot of the dis. Ease that people are feeling in the modern world is coming from, is what the modern world says to us we should do in order to be successful, right? So compete, move fast, gain materialistic wealth, so on and so on and so on, and actually work all the time. Hustle, right? All these things. Optimize everything, you know, optimize your sleep, track your heart rate variability and go on and on and on, right? And in my experience is that moves you further and further from your true nature, from that deep inner teacher that we all have that is there, but has been so squelched by all this modern narrative machine kind of logic that we expected to be, that we no longer hear that Inner voice. And in order to hear that inner voice, you have to be patient for it to arise, but you also have to set up your environment in such a way that there is a possibility for it to arise. Right? So I've spent time over the last few years spending time alone in nature. And I'm lucky, of course, that I'm on the Isle of Man, which is a UNESCO biosphere. So once you move out of the little city and towns, it's rolling hills and great woodlands and streams, and, you know, it's beautiful. So I've spent inordinate amount of time just immersing myself in solitude, in nature, without anything, you know, without the phone, everything else, just dropping all of that stuff, right? Just stepping out what I call unoptimized practices, because I'm not optimizing it. There's no intention other than to just go into the woodlands. Whatever arises, arises, I will. I'm putting my faith into the. To. Into nature that nature will provide, and nature will present the lessons and the answers that need. Need to be there at that moment in time. And that. That's what I've done.
Andrew Cohn: You go to the school and you trust that nature is the proper teacher with the proper lesson at the time. Beautiful. And it's. It's handy for you now, which is lovely.
Rodney King: Yeah, good. I mean, it is. And again, you see, because if you look back, if I look back on my life and I look back at all these things that have happened, if I ignored all these things, I wouldn't have ever reached those conclusions, and I might have not have been able to heal as much as I have. I definitely wouldn't have achieved this if I stayed on the hustle treadmill, if I just ignored everything. And I said, well, I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing. I'm just going to keep pushing. I'm going to push even harder. I would never have reacquainted myself with that inner voice that only really comes out in moments of unoptimized experiences, like solitude, in daydreaming, in moments of awe. Right? All these things that oftentimes in the modern world we are told are frivolous and a waste of time. Because every moment has to be optimized. Every moment has to have a meaning. Every walk has to have a destination. And then I go, no, no, no, no. My experience is walking without a destination is the best teacher. So I literally do that. And often not just when I'm in the natural world, because people say, well, maybe I don't have access to the natural world. But even if I'm just going walk through the main city, which is Douglas, it's not really a city, but whatever you Metropolis. The Metropolis, yeah, it's hardcore. You don't know it. You know what I mean? It's like. But I just go for a walk without an intention, without a goal, without. I have, you know, I'm not counting my steps. In other words, now I've been that guy because I came from that world where everything was optimized, right? I was optimizing everything. Hrv, heart rate variability, you name it. But in hindsight, I recognized that there was a huge part of my health degrading. It wasn't actually improving my health in a way. Sure, I damaged myself by doing way too much contact and everything else, but at the same time, my body kept the score, right? It was trying to tell me something and I just refused to listen. And eventually it said, well, you don't want to listen, I'm going to make you listen. And that's exactly what happened. Now, again, I see people fall into two places. They either get deep into despair and they can't get themselves out of there, which I, you know, I have a deep understanding of that and I feel that. Or they go, I'm just going to push harder. And I think either way is a road to nowhere, and it's not going to get you where you want to go. If anything, it's going to make things worse. And so when people say, well, in a sentence, can you tell me what to do? All right, here's my sentence. Whatever the modern world tells you to do in order to be successful, do the complete opposite. That's my boss, right?
Andrew Cohn: Because the complete opposite will be the route that is more open, more full of possibility, as opposed to moving towards certainty. We'd be opening up. I mean, tell me how to reword this. I'm just throwing out terms here, how we are discovering our own path rather than being told what that path is. Using time transactionally. The purpose of using time is to get some future benefit from it. Certainly not. The purpose of time is to enjoy it. Oh, my goodness, that's blast.
Rodney King: Oh, exactly, exactly. So, and then, like, you know, in practical terms, I've already kind of hinted to it, right? It's like moments of solitude, just daydreaming, making something with your hands that is not to be shown, not to be sent out into the world on Instagram, just for yourself. A conversation that has no real goal, just to have a conversation, going for a walk Without a destination, right. Moments of awe. Finding moments of just pure awe in the simplest things, in the things that you would just take for granted. So that's another thing that is a beautiful thing of the practice of just the walk to nowhere is you. Invariably, because you're not optimizing it, you tend to slow down. Not, maybe not immediately, but over time, do it enough times, you slow things down. When you slow down, you notice things you never noticed before. And it could be that little notice of something that before you would have just walked past that becomes an opening, a moment of awe. And in that moment of awe, you relinquish this need to control everything. And suddenly you see the world in a different way, in a much open way than you did before. I mean, I can give you example of this. I mean, it was a while ago. I was in Norway actually. I was teaching a seminar, a jiu jitsu seminar. And it was a day I had off and I went and I sat just in this open plaza area. The snow had been melting, so there were little puddles of water everywhere. And there were these birds that were playing around in the puddle and then jumping from the puddle into this little bush next to me and back and forwards. And I sat there for probably. I mean, I didn't time it, but it was definitely over an hour just watching this back and forwards. And it just kind of made, you know, what I was stressing about was worrying about it. Just kind of put it to the distance and it was a very mindful moment, a mindful in action moment, right where I'm fully present to that, that experience. And then coming out of it, I noticed that everybody else around me were rushing from point A to point B and would just walk right through the birds, disturb them, not even, not even notice them. And this is what I feel is like lost when we are just rushing all the time. We don't. The simple things that can warm the heart are completely lost to us because we are so busy trying to get from point A to point B. And if we really sit with ourselves, most of it is pointless anyway.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, well, it's pointless and it's not what comes up for me as I put myself in your story, and thank you for that, is that I wouldn't have even noticed this because of the routine and practice and habits and treadmill hamster wheel that I might be on optimization, et cetera is just how optional that briefcase, marching, walking through the birds, head down, missing what's around me, arguably missing what's within me as well. But how Optional it is, because when I'm in it, it feels like it's the only way I could possibly be. The only choice I have is do I choose this productivity hack or this productivity productivity hack? That's my choice. So what you're talking about, as you talk about, I hear you're talking about philosophy as a way of introducing possibility and then perhaps inviting people, among other things, to this experience of what else is possible, including nature, different ways of seeing, feeling, et cetera. Is that fair to say about some of 100%.
Rodney King: And that experience that I just described, in that moment, I had a very keen under–I wouldn't even call it understanding. There was a deep connection to the natural world and my place in it, that I was actually part of something beautiful. And so beauty was there too, right? All these ideas that we read in a philosophy book but will never get as close to the actual experience of it. And so really, what I try to do with my clients is go, okay, look, you know, read your favorite philosopher, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, whoever. But how do we bring that into existence, into the living experience, into the embodied experience? I mean, even just talking about walking, most people probably don't know this, but some of the most famous philosophers walked, and they actually walked countless hours. Nietzsche was walking. He was a rambler. He rambled everywhere. Henry David Thoreau rambled everywhere. And it was actually in their walk where they had their best ideas. So it's kind of a weird paradox, right? We want to show up in the world, and work at our best, we want to perform at our best. We want to have great ideas. But the paradox is, is that if you want to have those ideas, those creative ideas, sitting there and trying to force yourself into it doesn't work. But when you go for an, you know, unoptimized walk, suddenly those ideas emerge. So there's something to be said for that. And of course, I mean, there's research around this where, you know, research shows that moments of boredom are necessary to the creative process, especially if you're talking about innovation and things like that. Right? Which is great. And as a researcher myself, I can appreciate the research. But it is kind of sad that we've got to this point in the modern world that we won't do something unless research says it. We have to be told, you know, oh, this is good for you. Then we go and do it, right? Actually, once you start kind of engaging in these unoptimized practices, in my experience, there is a remembering. It's like coming home, right? And it's hard to put into words. I mean, I always remember this just going off on a bit of a tangent, but it kind of speaks to this. So when I was doing my first PhD, it was in mindful embodied leadership, and I was struggling really hard to put the things into words. And I remember my one supervisor saying, yeah, the problem with the things that you are trying to express, they don't lend themselves very well to words. And we want everybody to give us the definition to define things for us, right? Step one, step two, step three. That's why, like, seven habits of whatever sell, you know, it's like, oh, there's seven steps. Okay, I'll do that. Because we know that the human brain doesn't like ambiguity, or at least it feels that way to us, right? But I would make the argument that actually it's the opposite, is that that's where the best of ourselves emerge. But how it's sometimes really hard to convince people of that because it doesn't lend itself that well to language. And so what I often say to people is, okay, look, you know what, maybe I'm talking absolute nonsense, but just go and try it. But not just once. You have to at least give it a good go, right? I tried a few times and see what happens. And almost always, without exception, that once people kind of relinquish the controls that they feel the modern society has on every moment of their existence, they come back and they go, wow, that was really powerful. That was amazing. And I get what you mean by remembering. What I mean by remembering is my body craves that now. Now it will tell me when. That's the beautiful thing. It'll actually tell me. It'll go, you've been sitting too long. You've been sitting behind this, this computer too long. You need to get up and you need to go out. And that's what I do. I know, I know it's not possible for everybody, and I understand that. But at the same time, right, it's like what most people focus on and what they worry about. I can guarantee you that in your last moments on this, on this planet and your final throes of life, you're not going to be sitting there going, you know what I really regret not answering more emails. I really regret not, you know, doing more spreadsheets. I really regret not going to one more meetings. What are you really going to regret? I think it's going to be all of those things where people often talk about the regrets that they have or things like, I wish I was really Just more of who I really was. And I wasn't always putting on this kind of Persona. I wish I spent more time with the people that I love. I wish I spent more time just doing the things I wanted to do just for the sake of doing them. But they didn't have to have any specific reason. These are the things that people talk about when they're in their final moments on the planet. We have to remind ourselves while we're still healthy and alive. That's what we need to do. And that's kind of what I try to do every day. Because just like everybody else, I can quickly get back stuck into the whole performance cycle, right? Okay, you got to get this article out. If you don't get out. So I go, I got a substack, right? And I haven't written an article in a few weeks. And there's a part of me that goes, oh, shit, I better put one out, you know, Otherwise I'm going to become obsolete and the few hundred people that are reading my crazy thoughts are going to forget that I exist. That's when you have to remind yourself, right, that what are you playing into here? And that's the stuff that keeps us on the hamster wheel. And that's the thing that actually causes much of our stress. I go even out on a limbia. limb. And I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination that I do not believe in mental illness, because it is real. I've been there. I know what it's like. But I'd also say that much of our disease in the modern world, and it's very evident that there is a mental health crisis is largely generated from the expectations that modern society places on us. And a constant striving to try to achieve these in hopes that what they tell us is true, that that will lead to us being happy. And the second horizon, that just keeps moving. The closer you get, it moves again. The closer you get moves again. And so what happens if we just come back to a more simple state? What happens if we come back to what I would call our natural wisdom? What would that mean if we stop exactly as I said earlier, that's that kind of one sentence, right? Do the opposite. If modern society is saying, you got to hustle faster, hustle less.
Andrew Cohn: And what I'm hearing too is do the opposite and be the opposite.
Rodney King: And be the opposite. Yes, Being human being, not human doing, right? So, you know, we have to be, what is it? What is it? I mean, you could run like thought experiments too, right? I'm sure you, you know, in philosophy, people would know thought experiment of like, you know, what is it like to be a bat? You know, well, think like, okay, imagine if you were. You suddenly found yourself in the. In a woodlands. Everything was. Was taken care of that you needed. You have, you know, you have a roof over your head. You have, you know, which plants to eat, which ones to avoid. There's a beautiful stream nearby so you can get fresh water. I mean, all your survival needs are taken care of. There's no mobile phones, no WI fi, no nothing. It's just you in the woodlands. What would you spend 90% of your time doing? What would you spend just your time doing?
Andrew Cohn: I don't know. I'm stopped in my tracks with the notion of that I'd seen. No, no phone to check. No something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Rodney King: I think, I think, like, that's a powerful starting point to say, okay, much of what I'm doing right now I wouldn't do. I wouldn't waste my time doing. Are we doing other things? What would those be? And it will be the things I've been talking about. You would go for walks to explore the woodlands. You would sit and look at the light change in between the leaves and the tree. You would notice the seasons. I mean, you would be deeply, deeply connected to the natural world, which is all our ancestors were for most of our time on this planet. My argument is that the further we move away from our nest because that's our original nest, the more dissase we're going to feel because there's a mismatch between this place that we are now and where we came from. I mean, just another example, and that would be if I owned a zoo and a chimp that I had in the zoo was showing not so great behavior. Pacing up and down, pulling out its fur, me just rocking back and forwards. And I called in a professional, a zoologist, and I said, hey, give me some advice. You know, how do I deal with this? The zoologist is not going to say, oh, there's a problem with the chimp.
Andrew Cohn: Medicate it.
Rodney King: Yeah. It's going to say, well, there's a problem with the environment. The environment is what's causing the disease that you see in this chimpanzee. Right. For obvious reasons, it's called zucosis. You've taken a wild animal out of its natural environment, put it in an artificial environment, and then expect it to act as it always would normally act. Of course it's not going to. So we're suffering from a human Zucosis where we're in this unnatural environment with unnatural light, we can carry on. You can just fill in the blanks. And then we wonder why people are struggling, why people are not feeling healthy. We are no longer wild and free. We are meant to be wild and free. But when you sit with the reality of modernity and I get it, you know, like anybody else, just like everybody else, I recognize that I've got to pay the bills, I got to keep the lights on. Right. So it's maybe something that most people don't want to hear, but you think you're free, you're not, you're a slave. To be free would be to be on this planet as a human being, as we are meant to be without these constraints. But we have all these constraints. Of course you can say, oh well, you know what, I'm not going to abide by the system, I'm not going to worry about that. But then you're homeless. And being homeless in the modern world, in the modern environment isn't a fun place to be. I've been there, so I know, so I can actually speak to this. Right. But we're slaves and we don't want to recognize that. And I don't think there's a solution, easy solution to it that I'm not saying we should all pack up our bags and go live in a, in a jungle or in a woodlands or you know, in nature. I mean, it would be awesome to do that. I hate to tell people that also cost money to do that. Right, right. It's like this, it's a double edged sword. It's not feasible for most of us, but I've got children, two young adult boys. I'm still responsible for them. I've got to help them as much as I can. I recognize the constraints. So my approach is there are constraints, they're a reality. But within the constraints, what can I do as best as I possibly can to bring back some of that wild freedom back into my life? And it just seems that being a dissident, like being against the kind of status quo, doing the opposite is a rebellion against you being a rebel against the normativity that we have to face every single day, even if it's just for 10 minutes, it gives us some of our kind of wildness and our freedom back to ourselves before we get consumed again back into the system. And then we have to constantly remind ourselves to make these ideas, these practices available to ourselves wherever we possibly can. Even if it's only for a couple of months.
Andrew Cohn: And I say this with a bit of a smile because it's like, duh, but. And the research supports this 100%.
Rodney King: Isn't that interesting? So I mean, I, geez, I could fire off a bunch of research findings, right? I mean, I posted one the other day where this very well known researcher was talking about, as I said earlier, just the value of being bored. Right. So it's fascinating to me that the research shows that, but yet we still don't do it.
Andrew Cohn: Well, the pull of the culture and the system is very strong, Very strong, very strong. And. Well, let me ask you this just in the few moments we have left here. So I always, of course I need to ask you, if people want to learn more about you and reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Rodney King: Well, off my website, coachingphilosophier.org that's the best place to go, I think if they want to hear some more of these ideas and explore it further on that same website, if they go to the store section, I have two free ebooks. I made them totally free. Living in the absurd, which is kind of what I've been talking about, and then flourishing in the absurd. Is it possible within the constraints to actually flourish? Which is a question I ask myself, but also have deep conversations with my two young adult sons about this. My eldest was just here a week ago for a week and we spent the whole week, you know, he's 24 and he's asking those questions. Even we do in our 50s and 60s and 70s. What's the point of all of this? Is there any point to this whole existence? And is this really as good as it gets? Am I always going to be chasing a paycheck? You know, is that, is that how I'm going to live my life?
Andrew Cohn: You know, and it's beautiful that it's beautiful that he's asking those questions now. Oh, wonderful.
Rodney King: So clearly I didn't.
Andrew Cohn: Well, but I'm sure that you have a big role to play in him asking those questions. And good for you. For him. He's a lucky young man.
Rodney King: So I give him hope, right? I give him hope. I give him hope.
Andrew Cohn: Oh yeah. Well, and I give you hope and us hope in part as a result of conversations like this and the invitation that they provide. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, if I could use that word, and your time and look forward to continuing the conversation in different ways. My mind is already stirring up on what we might talk about. Thank you so much for your clarity and wisdom and sharing your story and for being a part of this conversation. Greatly appreciate it.
Rodney King: You're most welcome. Andrew, thanks for having me.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you for listening to Spirituality in Leadership. If you want to access this wealth of knowledge and insight on a regular basis, please subscribe to the show. Join the network of leaders who want to do and be better. You can go to the site spiritualityinleadership.com or your preferred podcast platform to catch all the episodes and learn more. Until next time, take good care of yourself.