Today I had on psychiatrist, speaker and writer, Dr Will Siu. 

Will has a private practice in Los Angeles where he treats patients who have mood swings, PTSD, anxiety disorders, depression and much more with the help of psychedelics. He’s been been a featured speaker in Gweneth Paltrow’s Goop wellness program and has an important voice within the realm of psychedelic-assisted humanity and healing.

Will grew up in California, went to med school at UCLA.  Completed a doctoral degree at the University of Oxford and later joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Even through all of these external accomplishments, Will found him self depressed and suicidal until he discovered the power of psychedelics.

On the pod we talked about how much he had to unlearn what learned in school on his journey to following his own path as the therapist that he is today.

Will has helped countless people who have had severe mental disorders and he uses the inner healer of oneself to improve the general well being of his patients. 

This was a great episode guys! We talk all things psychedelics, returning to one’s wholeness, finding your soul purpose and Will’s viewpoint on “conscious” leadership and business from a macro standpoint.

If you like this episode, please share it with a homie, tag me on social and definitely subscribe. It truly means a lot to me. 

Enjoy the show!

LISTEN to this pod right here by clicking play or choose your favorite listening platform below. You can also WATCH the video podcast below that! Check out the show notes at the bottom to get more details about the contents of this episode. Enjoy!

Show notes as a general guide below. Somewhat in order and not written in perfect grammar because we want you to actually listen to the show!

  • Will’s last oh shit moment
  • Will tells us about healing and why it’s important
  • Does healing HAVE to happen?
  • Wholeness and healing
  • Will talks about his experience and learning curves
  • How psychedelics help with trauma
  • Will’s psychedelic experience 
  • Sebastian and Will talk about DMT
  • Will talks about psychedelics and how it can transform a leader into a conscious leader
  • Will talks about micro-dosing 
  • Will and Sebastian talk about mushrooms
  • Will talks about ayahuasca and LSD
  • Psychedelics vs anti-depressants 
  • Will shares his top two traits that a conscious leader must embody today.

Connect with Will Siu
Connect with Sebastian on Instagram
SebastianNaum.com

Below is a transcript of the video podcast created by Seb’s Robot buddy, Zekton. He tends to make mistakes so please forgive him if you find errors or some funky sounding sentences. For the real deal, watch the video or click on your favorite audio Podcast platform above! Enjoy!

Sebastian Naum:
What’s up guys? Today I had on psychiatrist, speaker and writer Dr. Will Sue Will has a private practice in Los Angeles where he treats patients who have mood swings, ptsd, anxiety disorders, depression, and much more with the help of psychedelics. He’s been featured as a speaker in We Paltrow’s. Goop Wellness Program has an important voice within the realm of psychedelic assisted humanity and healing will group in California went to med school, UCLA completed a doctoral degree at the University of Oxford, and later joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School. Even through all of these external accomplishments, will found himself depressed and suicidal until he discovered the power of psychedelics on the pod. We talked about how much he had to unlearn what he learned in school on his journey to following his own path as a therapist, as the therapist that he, that he is today. That the human that he embodies himself as today will, has helped countless people who have had severe mental disorders. And he uses the inner healer of oneself to improve the general wellbeing of his patience. This was a great episode, guys. We talked all things psychedelics, returning to one’s wholeness, finding your sole purpose and will’s viewpoint on quote unquote conscious leadership and business from a macro standpoint. If you like this episode, guys, please share it with a homie. Tag me on social and definitely subscribe and means the world to me. Enjoy the show.

WIll Siu:
Will welcome to the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m getting glad we finally Yeah. Made a meeting happen.

Sebastian Naum:
Happen. I’m super excited to have you on. I know you’ve been, uh, traveling if you were just in Peru. I’m pretty jealous about that. I know. It’s, it’s a very, uh, just sort of connected place to nature and, and I I’m, how, what was your experience like there?

WIll Siu:
Well, it’s, it’s always hard to summarize, uh, an ayahuasca retreat and to anything short, but I would say it was, uh, yeah, incredibly profound and powerful. And, um, you know, I was saying before we, we started recording, I feel like I, I got everything that I want asked for and, and more, which I don’t actually say every time.

Sebastian Naum:
That’s amazing.

WIll Siu:
One of these. So, um, it was a very unique experience

Sebastian Naum:
From a standpoint of your intention that you went in it with. You feel like you came out with particular, like answers that you were looking for.

WIll Siu:
Yeah, I mean, I, and I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily narrative answers. I’ve been working a lot on embodiment and, um, and a re-association from physical dissociation that I’ve experienced. I, I realize I experienced in recent years all of my life. And so really just coming back more into my body and sensations and feelings even deeper. So yeah, it was less of like storyline and connecting memories and more of just reconnecting to my body and experiencing what was keeping you from that.

Sebastian Naum:
So that’s super interesting. Do you wanna elaborate on that?

WIll Siu:
Um, not necessarily. I mean, you don’t have, we’ll end up getting into it a little bit after. Okay. Got it. Yeah, I mean, cuz I, I mean, I’ll say a little bit is just, you know, I think part of the healing journey, or the wholeness journey is about sort of looking at, you know, stories, memories, traumas of things that have happened. But I I also think the body really is, you know, a whole aspect of healing. Um, reconnecting to the body, getting familiar to the body, using, you know, the sensation and, and emotions that we connect to as, as sort of gauges and beacons of our journey, you know, which I think, you know, I don’t hear talked about too much and I think there’s probably many reasons why not. I think it’s just, you know, you know, people are still figuring out sort of what psychedelics are about to them. And so I sort of think of it as a, yeah, this stuff will start unfolding more in the coming years.

Sebastian Naum:
So. Well, I’m definitely gonna ask you a little bit more about that because I’m super interested in it because I am just personally with like, the aspect of feeling in my body, but I, I actually didn’t start the show how I always do it, but I’m gonna go back to it. W always ask my guests, what was your last oh moment? What is the la the first thing that comes to mind when I’m like, what was your last Oh moment.

WIll Siu:
<laugh>, I mean, probably, you know, since we’re talking about this Ayahuasca retreat in, in Peru, um, yeah, I mean, I think there’s always an oh moment after you drink ayahuasca and you’re sort of waiting, um, waiting for the experience to come. Yeah. And I would say in particular, there is during the fourth ceremony, um, you know, most places allow you to come up for seconds if you want. And I’m not someone that tends to do that. I sort of stick to the first dose I take and that’s it. But like on the fourth ceremony, it was definitely a, like, it needed to happen. Um, okay. And so, yeah, usually I go back and forth and, you know, should I take this much or this much? But I wasn’t so much in my head overall this retreat, and so I kind of just went up and took, you know, a second significant dose. And then once, yeah, after sitting with it for a minute or two, then I was like, oh. Like, <laugh> <laugh>, it’s, it’s probably gonna get real. And it did

Sebastian Naum:
<laugh>. That’s a solid one. That’s a real good. Oh. Um, well, just from a basic standpoint, why does healing have to happen?

WIll Siu:
Well, I actually don’t think it has to happen. Okay. I, I think it’s a choice, you know? And, you know, when I think of healing, I really, the word I think of more and more lately is wholeness. You know, I, you know, I think traditionally, you know, being trained in the Western system, I mean, I’m a medical doctor as a psychiatrist, um, mo you know, in early in some ways comes from a Freudian standpoint. And, and, and traditional psychotherapy, which is about there’s a problem and then we need to fix it. There’s a diagnosis and there’s a treatment. And I really started realizing, you know, early on in my psychiatry training about 10 years ago that that didn’t really seem to fit. Um, and then I started, you know, I was atheist at that time. I hadn’t read any of like, you know, spiritual teachings weren’t anything I was into, you know, Krishna Murti, Allen Watson, none of that was on my radar before.

WIll Siu:
Psychedelics weren’t on my radar. I hadn’t, um, taken any psychedelics 10 years ago. And then I, yeah, started working more with psychedelics, learning about Stan GRA was really probably the first major person. And then learning about the work of Krishna Murti and then ga, um, and then yeah, seeing the healing, sorry, sorry. Seeing the human journey more of one of like, like transformation and evolution and growth, other, you know, and not seeing it as something wrong we have to fix, but just sort of further, yeah, like I said, transformation, evolution just change and, and, and less about their being this problem we need to fix. And instead it just being, you know, um, yeah, change. And, you know, one thing that I think is very, very important, I think that’s, it’s a wonderful part of the human experience is free will. You know? So I think that that all these things, you know, many, many things are available to us, but what we, we choose them. And so I think there’s people that go through this journey and, and, and don’t choose to, you know, pursue things that, that are, you know, gonna expand them, to bring them more, to be more whole. And I don’t honestly yeah. Think that that’s a wrong thing. I just don’t think it’s for everybody. So

Sebastian Naum:
That’s gonna be great for you to be able to fully embody that free will with your name in it on it

WIll Siu:
<laugh>. Yeah. It has come to mind once or twice <laugh>.

Sebastian Naum:
So will you, you do have a PhD and you did a residency at, at Harvard, um, in the psychiatric department. How much of what you learned did you have to unlearn, you know, to become the, the type of healer that you are? If we can continue to use that word, healer in general? Um, did, do you feel like you had to unlearn a lot?

WIll Siu:
I would say, yeah. You know, um, because I think actually I just realized, I, I felt off and it’s, cause I don’t have my bracelet on. I usually have my, my morning routine of putting on my jewelry. So I was like, something’s missing here, so I’ll put on this bracelet <laugh>

Sebastian Naum:
Love that. I, I clearly I have my things going on.

WIll Siu:
Yeah. You know, I think certainly a, yeah, almost everything I think that I learned in my training I had to unlearn. Um, wow. But even further back to that, you know, it started, you know, I think, you know, the way I sort of think about this again, healing, transformation, wholeness journey. I’ve thought about this metaphor with, uh, a prism, um, in recent years where, you know, I think when we’re born, you know, we’re kind of like this clear prism and, and light comes into the prism, and then there’s this emanation, you know, this this spectrum of light that comes out, you know? And I think that of that, you know, spectrum of light that comes out is, is unique to every single human that lives and has ever lived and will ever live. You know? And I think that is, you know, our potential expression of, of ourselves during this life.

WIll Siu:
And, you know, I think that then, then narratives come right? Stories about ourselves, stories of what we can be or what we can’t be, or what we should be or what we shouldn’t be, which for me came through, you know, family culture. Certainly religion played a big role. I was raised Jehovah’s Witness. And so, you know, the way I start thinking of that is we start putting gunk on our prism, or we start putting films on our prism when we start saying, oh, my, my red is too bright. I want it to look like this. Or I want to get rid of the blue. Or, I don’t have any green. I wanna make that come out. But we start perturbing what is our natural prism and emanation, right? And, and if I think of that analogy, also, the reason I like the analogy of the prism is because if you start covering a prism and messing with it, it’s gonna hold the light, right?

WIll Siu:
And, and parts of it may heat up. Some of the light may get, you know, defracted into different pieces. And to me that is like pain and suffering, you know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which is this holding back of what we naturally want to be emanating, right? Which is a very different perspective than western medicine, which says, oh, these suffering, these pain, these symptoms are something to be g gotten rid of. You know? Versus like, when I think of the prism being perturbed, it’s figuring out why it’s being perturbed and, and, and almost allowing it freedom. They’re not almost allowing it freedom to just express, you know? And to me that is wholeness and healing. And so, you know, where, where I’ve had to sort of un unlearn, as you said, a lot of the stuff that I was taught in medicine Yeah. It was really an unlearning of much more than that.

WIll Siu:
You know, it’s, it’s a society, culture, family, religion, right? All of these things. And so I started realizing that medicine was no different. It was just some, another set of, you know, teachings that, that I had to unlearn that seemed very solidified, right? And we have buildings and institutions and marble buildings at that, you know, at Harvard that make it seem as if these things are real and, and, and fundamental and, and unquestionable. And so, Hmm. It’s sort of like in some ways being in the system had its challenges to not believe it, but it’s also given me a lot of comfort because, you know, I put so much time and energy into it, um, and I went, you know, to what are considered some of the best places for this. And then once I really started trusting myself, I had the confidence to then be like, this, this is not the way it works. Yeah. You know? And so yeah, it’s been, uh, it’s been quite the journey. I mean, it wasn’t that easy. Certainly when I was going through it, I would double sure, you know, go question myself and thought I was going crazy more than one time. Um,

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. <laugh> can only imagine. I, I love will the, um, analogy with the prism. Uh, I actually have a prism, uh, tattooed, uh, on my back, uh, with light going through it to me. Like I, long time ago, I was obsessed with the aspect of, uh, white light going through a prism and all of the, you know, all of the different colors being represented inside of white light. And to me that meant potentiality the potential to really be able to become who you want to become, who you’re supposed to become. And, and, and, and essentially, and in a different word of saying is, you know, being able to reach that wholeness of yours. But that’s sort of, uh, just interesting with the prism. But, uh, yeah. Yeah, I heard so it was obsessed with it <laugh> at a young age.

WIll Siu:
Yeah. You’re the first person that I’ve shared that story with, that as they have a connection to it and have certainly love prism tuts here. Have,

Sebastian Naum:
I love that <laugh>. That’s great. Um, so, well, for somebody who is just, you know, to be honest, uh, my audience is completely mixed, right? So there’s gonna be people that are super, uh, not super knowledgeable, but totally down with sort of this, the concepts of using psychedelics for healing. And then, uh, some are like, have never even heard of it or just starting to hear about it, and it’s kind of like becoming buzzwordy and all that. Um, so just, just basic, how, why and how can psychedelics be used for healing trauma? Why is it that people are able to access different layers through it versus traditional therapy?

WIll Siu:
Well, I noticed you said the word trauma, which we could talk about separately if that’s, that’s the question you wanna ask. Cuz I think healing and wholeness and finding that with psychedelics is different than healing trauma with it. Okay. It’s, it’s related, but it’s, it’s a little bit different. Um, okay. So, but overall, you know, when I think of psychedelics, I think about, um, you know, my, my favorite definition of them is, is that of Stan Gros, which he, he calls them non-specific amplifiers of the unconscious. And I, and I think that’s a really helpful and accurate way to start, right? Um, meaning they’re, they’re just

Sebastian Naum:
Non-specific amplifiers of the unconscious. Yep. Got it.

WIll Siu:
And so they simply open us up to things that are out of our awareness in a normal day. So, feelings that could be emotions, that could be, um, memories, right? And, and, and they’re, they just make it available, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it doesn’t mean that by experiencing these things that we become more whole or that we become, or that we feel better. You know, it’s, they’re just providing the experiences or access to the experiences. And so, and sometimes we have those experiences and we feel worse, right? So, so it sort of, I think his definition accurately sort of signifies how there’s simply a tool. There’s a tool, it’s a function that it, that it provides, and then there’s something that needs, then we choose sort of what to do with it, you know? Or we can choose ahead of time, whether to set ourselves up with someone helping to guide us or mm-hmm. <affirmative> putting ourselves in situations where, yeah, we can potentially maximize or make the, you know, be felt the most supported as we experience these things. And so that, that brings up the, the thought about unconscious. So why is anything unconscious, right? Which,

WIll Siu:
You know, if we look at the traditional psych psychology realm, which has, again, not, it’s not that medicine and psychology are all wrong, you know, this is one of the things that gets right. You know, so we suppress things, we push things aside, right? Because they’re painful. And we usually do that when we’re young and, and, and we don’t have a choice, right? Because, you know, it’s like perhaps we tried bringing up the issue with a parent and the parents doubled down, or, or, you know, we were so restricted by religion that, that we had no choice as children. So then we push these away so we’re not suffering sort of all day, every day. And so, um, you know, the other things that can help, or that, that aid this, pushing down things into the unconscious is things like morals, right? Um, what’s right, what’s wrong?

WIll Siu:
Uh, what kind of thoughts are we allowed to have or not? Um, you know, whether those are violent thoughts, sexual thoughts, you know. But another set is also in, in the realm of what we would call non-ordinary or spiritual. You know, like kids often, you know, see things or hear things or talk to things that are, that adults would say are not real or are not there in the western culture, right? And so those are other things that we can push away, right? We’re another cultures, you know, talking to spirits or talking to dead relatives, seeing them is very normal. And, and those things actually don’t get pushed down. So, you know, and then another set would be feelings and emotions, right? Boys don’t cry, men shouldn’t, you know, feel certain emotions. Women shouldn’t feel certain emotions. And so there’s a huge mixture of things that gets pushed into the unconscious.

WIll Siu:
And so, you know, when we take a psychedelic, you know, we don’t know what’s going to come up. Um, and so when, when, when thinking about healing in, in this word wholeness, it’s like bringing all of these things that we have sort of compartmentalized or put separately and, you know, attempting to then create, you know, a more complete version of, of who we always were. And, um, yeah. Then we can get into like, the different psychedelics. Cause I think the different psychedelics do this, uh, opening differently and, and they can open up different aspects of what’s been pushed down uniquely, depending which one it is. But that’s, that’s getting a little bit ahead,

Sebastian Naum:
I think. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll get into that. Yeah. Yeah. And Will, what was your very first psychedelic experience like?

WIll Siu:
Yeah, it was very,

Sebastian Naum:
I was very unconscious. Like, just truthfully, not much intention there. It was like in college freshman year, you know, just like wanted to do it, to have fun. And by the way, still had a, a beautiful, I had a, like, the worst time of my life, which was followed by a, an incredibly beautiful sort of download, per se, of like, oneness and love. And it was like, that was mine, <laugh>. But, uh, what was yours? Like the very first time

WIll Siu:
<laugh>? Um, well, it, mine occurred relatively late in, in my life. Uh, I, I was 33 if I remember, or 34. Okay. Um, you know, I at that time did not, you know, have long hair, piercings, jewelry or anything. I was a very conservative doctor, you know, in, in Boston, working at Harvard. Um, and yeah, at that time I was also atheist. And so, uh, I, you know, and having also the Jehovah’s Witness background, even though, so I stopped going to church in my early teens. Um, yeah, there was this history that these were dangerous and that these were scary and that, you know, they could take you to hell and, um, expose you to, to, you know, dangerous spirits and that sort of a thing. But, um, but yeah. So my first psychedelic was this one called N N D M T, um, right. Which was a smoked version of a a, you know, I’d say the, the arguably the most powerful psychedelic you can take, it’s the same active ingredient that’s in Ayahuasca.

WIll Siu:
Um, except that it all happens very, very quickly within, very quickly. Right. What are we talking about? Less than a minute? 20 minutes. I mean, it hits in less than a minute, for sure. And, and the, the peak of it probably is about two to three minutes in. Got it. But, and, and yeah, and, and how it came about for me is that I was in this, what I would call my second, you know, rock bottom of my life, uh, first being when my dad died about, you know, five, six years before that. But this was sort of a second rock bottom where I had sort of, you know, hit another period of depression. And I had also been feeling suicidal, but by then I had tried numerous antidepressants. I had tried a D H D medications, I had tried therapy, and I was feeling really, really miserable.

WIll Siu:
And, you know, I was like, I’m at the best institution in the world, arguably for this, and I’m not getting any better, and my patients aren’t really getting any better. And so it was a time where I was like, I, I was realizing, I’m like, did I waste my entire life? Did I, was I really not thoughtful about what I wanted to go into for work? Um, by then I had 15 years after high school straight of education, and I was like, I was really feeling like, like I, I, did I screw this all up? Yeah. And so, um, I thought about dropping out and it just happened to be synchronistically. At the same time, my childhood best friend, he started college, so he was different than me, me. Then af after high school, he played in a band. He was a blue collar laborer.

WIll Siu:
And, um, so, but then the oh 8 0 9 financial crisis hit, and then he decided to go to school. So he was in his first year of college, um, when I was going through this. And his physics tutor introduced him to D M T. And so for months and months, he was telling me about D M T telling me to read about it, telling me to watch these Terence McKenna videos. And I, I, I didn’t buy it for months. I was just like, he’s crazy. He’s doing drugs. I was actually pretty worried about him. Hmm. And, um, but eventually he got me to, you know, he was like, no, he is like, well, he is like, look this up. They used to do research on this, you know, in public research on these substances. And I was like, and I went to, to prove him wrong.

WIll Siu:
Actually, I was kind of being cocky. I was like, I’m gonna show you that you’re wrong. I ended up doing a search on our, you know, pub med system, and I was like, oh my God, there are tons of researchers that used to study this, and there’s some that are doing it now. And so that was the first time I was actually like, wow, maybe there’s something to this. You know? And this is long before Michael Paulen wrote a book. So, um, there wasn’t really a much talk around this stuff. And yeah, so eventually I flew home to California on vacation, you know, that’s where I grew up, and that’s where my friend lived. And then we all got set up and he, you know, prepared the, the pipe and, and the D M T. But I actually chickened out and, and I, I couldn’t do it. And I flew back, back to Boston <laugh>, and it took another few months of just feeling worse and worse and worse to where I was like, you know what? Like, I’m gonna go back and do this. I don’t care if it kills me. I don’t care if, um, you know, my, my, my life is so miserable, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, so I was kind of in this like, true,

Sebastian Naum:
True rock bottom, really. Yeah,

WIll Siu:
Definitely. I was just like, I’ve got nothing to lose, basically. Yeah. Wow. And so, yeah, it was a powerful experience, you know, and, and there’s a few things that I always remember from it, you know, af shortly after taking it, which were, are meaningful to me. Um, I always get the sensation that it was warm and, and significantly it was waiting for me. And again, I was not a spiritual person at all, not a religious person. All the bottom. And, and the other thought that came was, I, I’ve been there before. Mm-hmm. And it wasn’t, again, a thought, it was an experience. I was like, I, I have experienced that before. And so, you know, can I say that there was any, you know, day-to-day lasting healing from that? Probably not. But, but it was almost like having a, a felt experience that there was something more, and that, you know, there, there was something worth continuing to live for. Um, and I didn’t quite know what that path was gonna look like, but it was at least a, almost like a totem moment that, that of, of hope that I got.

Sebastian Naum:
Well, I would say that’s pretty last, I mean, lasting in this.

WIll Siu:
Yeah, fair enough. Powerful meaning day to day I was still feeling depressed and Okay. And things. It’s just, I had, I had some hope that was sort Okay. Got it. Interesting. Introduced to me cause of

Sebastian Naum:
That. How important do you think will for, for healer’s, therapist, psychiatrist to, to heal their own stuff, to really look inward, to heal trauma? I know we, we haven’t talked specifically about trauma yet, but how important is it for them to be good healers, to be good therapists, to be a good psychiatrist to do the work themselves?

WIll Siu:
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I don’t know if doing the work or healing oneself is ever done, you know, if it is, I’m, I’m not certainly one of those people Yeah. <laugh>. But I, I think one has to have done enough of it. Um, I, I do think that there is, there are a lot of people out there right now putting themselves in positions of being a healer that, that are not ready for it, you know? And, and I think that, um, you know, certainly I, for a long time, I mean, I was thrown in this position of being a doctor and a healer probably, you know, and I don’t, I don’t know if really, you know, my first sort of few patients in my training really benefited from working together. I, I’m pretty certain I didn’t hurt them, but, um, <laugh>. But, you know, definitely, you know, I, I wasn’t ready, you know, and I think that, you know, it’s, yeah, it’s interesting what we’re seeing right now, especially in the last couple of years where, you know, psychedelics, you know, went from this thing, especially doing underground work where it was all kind of in a whisper to people pretty openly advertising on social media that their psychedelic guides, you know?

WIll Siu:
And, you know, the thing is, you know, when I think back to other cultures, certain indigenous cultures where, where there was more community families stayed together com, you know, pe there was more of a longitudinal relationship with the community versus now where we moved for college, we’d leave our families. We, we like move all the time where, you know, there, there was always elders in the community, you know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there, there was, you know, kids were raised around their aunts and uncles and, and grandmas and grandpas and, and you know, parents had support and there was a, there was a system to it, and there was rights of passage. And, and so there, you know, this idea of elders and healers, which I kind of, you know, I think overlap some is, is something that I think I don’t, that I think about when you ask about this, because I think that, you know, we can only generally take someone so far in their own path as, you know, as far as we’ve really learned or understood ourselves. And I would say not understand from reading, but understand from our experience of life, um, you know, our own experience of, of working through things. And so, yeah. I, I would say that there’s something, yeah, there’s probably some amount, you know, that that is un that we’ve done enough of our own healing that we can really be there for others.

Sebastian Naum:
So, yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Uh, well, on my pod, we talk, I talk a lot about, uh, conscious leadership and business and conscious brands and all these things. And, and so a lot of what we’re talking about today really is, is mental health and being able to show up as a more whole human. Um, do you think psychedelics can be used, uh, in an approach to transform like a business owner or leader into a more conscious business owner, into a more conscious leader?

WIll Siu:
Um, what do you mean by the word conscious? I’m curious.

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of talk about what, what conscious means in this aspect and how it’s used. Uh, we can say more conscientious, but, um, conscious being more from a, a more aware leader. A leader that is, um, going to look at all stakeholders involved in, in the company, uh, gonna consider the environment, how it’s affecting the environment, his or her product, uh, that they’re creating, um, how, what the company culture is like, right. In terms of their employees, who they’re leading. Um, yeah. Just overall as all stakeholders involved, the conscious leader is gonna con consider all stakeholders involved and, and use business as a force for good, not just as a means to make money.

WIll Siu:
Hmm. Well, I mean, I, I certainly think, you know, that, I don’t know, I’ve sort of thought that that, and, and it’s kind of happening that psychedelics are just sort of percolating into culture. You know, I, I don’t think psychedelics should, should have and, and, and should ever just be restricted to healing and to therapists and psychiatrists, you know, I, I think of them just, again, as tools of expanding our awareness of, of, of, yeah. Of, of, of the vastness, of, of the human experience, you know? And I think that, so, you know, meaning, I, I think anyone, regardless of what their profession is, could have Yeah. Ongoing awareness and expansion of, um, I’d say most importantly themselves, you know, and their history, what motivates them, what has motivated them, perhaps in a way that is not, you know, in, in service and alignment to their most, to their soul, to their purpose, their real purpose.

WIll Siu:
You know? And I think that yeah. That, that would certainly be the case with people in, in business, you know? Right. Um, but, but I just, I hesitate to say, you know, it’s, it’s, yeah. Specific to any, any profession or industry, you know, but, but, and I think that it would be, yeah, it’s important to also say to, to continue to question oneself because I think that, yeah, these narratives, again, these stories that come on from, from culture, from family, from our religion, from current morality, ethics, uh, are sort of endless. And so, you know, we can remove 2, 3, 4 of these layers or most of them, and then think all of a sudden that, that we see completely clearly, you know, and I think it’s important to keep that, you know, the, the ongoing, um, openness that we, we still may be clouded and we still maybe, um, yeah, it’s important to continue to reassess ourselves, I would say, constantly. Um,

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. You know, on, on that theme of, of using businesses force for good and, and business in general, um, I think that, you know, when leaders have those experiences, it could really change how they show up, and that’s why it can change how they show up as leaders. It can even change their business models and, and ha you know, cause them to change what they’re doing and reassess, like you said. Have, have you personally worked with any like cor like truly corporate people, overachievers, uh, you know, people that are really just, you know, kind of go-getters? Um, is there like a psychedelic of choice that you think that you would, that you have, that you, that you like to work with? When, when you’re working with those type of people that maybe coming in with, they’re not very, like, very spiritual already. They’re not very open to it. They’re just kind of stressed out. They’re, they’re burnt out. Right? And, and maybe, you know, they are very kind of like sort of intense corporate overachiever type people. Is there something that you’ve, have you had that experience with people like that yourself?

WIll Siu:
I have, um, but also say, you know, a little bit more to what we’re, we’re just talking about, which I, I’ve seen people in that are entrepreneurs that end up, again, you know, there isn’t this, this, it’s actually probably less common, I would say these days, that someone does a psychedelic, even in a guided experience and ends up in a more aligned, open, expansive, thoughtful, you use the word good, I don’t use that often, but, you know, that relates to a lot of people, and that actually they end up becoming more effective capitalists. And they do end up convincing themselves that, um, of something that seems very misaligned. And especially, I don’t, I’ve seen groups sometimes of entrepreneurs do retreats together. And more often than not, when I hear about these, it’s, it’s actually seems that there’s almost a reinforcement of, you know, some approaches to, to work that are, you know, not so, that are less thoughtful about other people that are less thoughtful about the collective.

WIll Siu:
Because if you think about like, you know, there’s reasons why we carry the stories that we carry and do the things that we do, and, and there’s gonna be resistance to those ways of life falling away. You know, really saying, ah, maybe me doing anything at scale doesn’t make any sense because mm-hmm. You know, that’s not really allowing, you know, the more local business people to do something, you know, you know, maybe I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing at all. Mm-hmm. But it, you know, if that, that would be very, you know, that’d be equivalent of me when at the time when I was like, maybe I shouldn’t be doing medicine at all. Maybe I should drop out, which took a lot of self-reflection and questioning of myself, you know? But it, it’s a very painful thing to do. It’s much easier to, to find a reason in the mind to, to continue to reinforce what we’re doing.

WIll Siu:
And so I’ve seen some of these, you know, high end re expensive retreats and, and you know, again, where it’s entrepreneurs getting together and, and I’ve, I’ve seen many times where the entrepreneurs that are then feel like even more sort of supported and justified to continue to be Yeah. Very extractive of, of in, in the way that they work, you know? And it’s because there’s group mentality of like, yeah, okay, so you get this. Yeah. A bunch of people Yeah. Who are struggling with the same thing that end up reinforcing their own struggles in the end. And, and actually interesting, are, are less aware, I would say, of interesting mode of how they’re working.

Sebastian Naum:
I wanna ask you, because you, you said effective, you used the word effective capitalism. And so for example, so I’m a, I’m on the board of Conscious Capitalism Los Angeles, right? So this is an organiza, it’s a worldwide organization, uh, that is meant to promote using business as a force for good. And I know good is kind of a generalistic term, but essentially, uh, conscious capitalism being one where profits are not the sort of the end, right? Th that’s, they’re not the end goal, right? Um, that that business is being used to help communities to, uh, help curb, uh, global warming to help the environment think, you know, all those things. So when you said effective capitalism in that sense, you’re saying that you’ve seen where entrepreneurs and leaders sort of can get together and actually do psychedelics, but sort of having a, um, sort of continue their traditional capitalistic ways or bad capitalism, just to give it a simple word. And that’s what you meant by, by that,

WIll Siu:
By, I mean, I, I’m not sure if I, I, I can’t remember saying effective capitalism if I said that. I don’t, I don’t think I, I, I made a mistake. I, I’m not sure if I, I mean, again, I don’t even know what the real, if there is a, a an agreed upon definition of capitalism. But, but my, my, my overall feeling is I’m not even sure if capitalism is something that, that is, you know, can be something that, that, that is helpful or good, or, or, or, you know, cause I just think that, you know, if we think about, you know, most, most, again, traditional indigenous cultures lived in groups of about 200, you know mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and, you know, everyone had a role. Everyone ha you know, played a role. You know, the, the people who clean the, the plumbers, everyone was, was, was significant.

WIll Siu:
And I think importantly, people knew each other, right? You live together, you know, you wouldn’t, you know, nowadays you have people who you have had jobs for a long time, have played important roles in companies for, for a long time, and they lose their job because of a decision that’s made on another continent. You know? And to me that I, I don’t know if there’s a, a really, a good or effective way of doing that at all, you know, is, is it that we’ve gotten just we’re trying to do too much, or you’re saying, you know, oh, you had said something, you know, I can’t remember exactly what you said, but it’s like, oh, okay, like, you know, this group is trying to help this group, or, or they’re, they’re gonna help people in the, the poor communities or the, the people of color com.

WIll Siu:
And it’s like, who’s to say anyone? Like, you know, the Bill Gates or anyone should even be trying to do that. Who, who says that that’s your problem to solve? How about, uh, just allowing them and, and, and having more, you know, instead of these larger companies accumulating money and then saying, oh, I’m gonna do something with this. How about just saying, oh, let’s use that to just pay the people more and let them sort it out. You, you know, and, and, and, you know, cuz there’s this, now this, this bigness, everyone wants to have an impact. And, and it’s quote, and, and, you know, good, they wanna have a good impact, or, or, but, but it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s still this like scale thing where people are like, oh, I want to, you know, impact thousands of people or millions of people with my idea or my product.

WIll Siu:
And, and to me, even that’s like, I think missing the point of, of, of people’s autonomy, you know? And so it, it’s still, you know, maybe moving from, oh, I wanna make this thi this amount of money to then think, oh, I wanna have this amount of impact. But even just saying that sometimes I even wanna have this amount of impact on this many people could still be just a perturbation of this thing of, I am so this and I wanna create this thing, you know? And so yeah, I’m not, I’m not sure if I, I

Sebastian Naum:
Think that’s a really, really

WIll Siu:
Interesting topic.

Sebastian Naum:
Capitalism, uh, it really is an interesting topic. Um, even in, in, in books that I’ve read about conscious capitalism, it actually talks a lot about sort of the just giving and how negative giving can be as opposed to enabling. Right? Um, and I think that’s super interesting. Like you said, people maybe an area, a particular area that ha that is in need and just going there and dropping a ton of stuff, right? Donating a ton of stuff as opposed to enabling skills, um, to allow people to essentially be able to, to be, feel valuable or doing something that matters for their communities. Um, yeah. In, in that sense. So I, I think it’s like a, a very interesting topic.

WIll Siu:
Yeah. But even enabling, you know, when I think of enabling that still has the potential to again, be, be this self-serving perturbation, you know, when I, when I think about say things in the US we have this stuff, I don’t know, these like international scholarships. We have like the, you know, the, the Fogerty fellowships and all these things of, oh, going to the poer is going to the undeveloped countries. Like, like let’s teach them English. Let’s teach, let’s help them start businesses. And it’s like, we’re, we’re basically saying, let’s go over there. Like by teaching them English, we’re saying, let’s have them buy in more into Western culture, and now they’ll be able to speak the language of capitalism. Now they’ll be able to, to read the ads on social media. Now they’ll be able to understand our yeah. Explanations of our products more, you know, having them, let’s make, you know, them more entrepreneurial that that’s still instilling that, that they, that they’re somehow behind for not having more of an entrepreneurial mindset. You know, like, like that meaning like, do we even need that? Like, do they even need that? You know, based on our scale of what is success and, and what is is good and, and what is modern and where people should be evolving to, but that’s still very much imparting our, um, system on, on another people’s, you know, and, and so I dunno, those are some of the thoughts that come to mind for you. Yeah,

Sebastian Naum:
It’s really interesting. Uh, you know, I was reading, uh, a study on just happiness, uh, a couple years ago and, and seeing that one of the places in the world with the most amount of people reporting happiness is in Brazil mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And they were seeing that the level of poverty is, are massive in Brazil, so mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the poverty and happiness wasn’t, uh, correlating necessarily in that sense of, you know mm-hmm. <affirmative> unhappiness with poverty. And, uh, a lot of the things they were finding was that one of the things that they did the most was dance and sort of dancing mm-hmm. <affirmative> and dancing with their communities. Yeah. Uh, and how much happiness they had from that. And it was completely uncorrelated, uh, to money. Yeah.

WIll Siu:
You know? Yeah. And, you know, and that, I’ll go back to your other question. So yeah, I mean, I’ve, I’ve worked with some, some of the most famous, famous people in the world, some of the wealthiest people in the world, some of the most powerful people in the world. And, and it’d say easily correlates, you know, with, with less happiness, um, mm. You know, the lives that these people are living in and we’re talking billionaires and, and yeah. People on all the covers of the magazines and in all the movies. Yeah. So it’s, you know, this isn’t, it’s interesting cuz it’s just reinforced kind of a knowing that I’ve had before that, you know, that, that interesting. It’s, again, I, I, I <laugh> I guess again, capitalism. I don’t know quite what it means, but again, I don’t, I don’t know if they’re really, if we’re doing some, I think we need to start scaling back, you know, and I think we need to start just focusing on community and not, not trying to do so much.

Sebastian Naum:
Do you feel the same if we take it to extremes then, and, and we talk about, okay, somebody who is born in a incredibly poor village of India, just to throw something out there with no access to clean water basics, basic necessities for, uh, uh, a decent human experience from a physical standpoint, do you feel that even those types of communities shouldn’t receive help and they should figure it out on their own?

WIll Siu:
No, I mean, and I wasn’t saying to help or, or, or, you know, figuring things out on our own. I mean, but one would say that those communities at this point exist not because they were allowed to evolve on their own. If you’re talking about India, it’s like, you know, the British, when they went there and they, they extracted most of the, the, the wealth and the resources from that country, and then, um, imparted a lot of their own ways of governing and then they left. Right? So, so those slums weren’t there Right. In Mumbai before the British got there. You know, so, so, so it’s not as if that was their natural, um, evolution. Right? Right. They lived a very, very different life before the British arrived. And so, you know, I think that that, you know, I, I do think that the, the basics, you know, if people wanna try to help others have the basics, I think that, that there is Yeah.

WIll Siu:
Room there. You know, um, where I would say, yeah, it’s food, clothing, shelter, and I would say a fourth one that I don’t get here, heard talked about, it’s usually for food, clothing, shelter that you hear. But, but fourth, I think as important is the ability to express yourself. You know? I think that, and that’s one thing, and, and to express oneself uniquely Right. And authentically and freely. And I think that’s one that, that’s, it’s interesting because, you know, when you said the word poor, you know, and I think, now, I don’t think of the word. I always wanna know what someone’s talking about. Poor what so, so poor in terms of resources. But most people in India are much richer in their interpersonal connectedness, right? Mm-hmm. And they’re much richer in their, their community and their connection with their families, where that’s where I see in the western world a tremendous amount of material wealth.

WIll Siu:
And there’s, there’s a lot of, of interpersonal poverty there. There’s love poverty, there’s poverty there, there is, um, yeah. You know, and that’s the thing that I think, you know, we, I don’t hear or talked about very often that, that, and when we have that we, we, we are much less focused on Yeah. The amount outlet we create, the impact that we have and all these other things. And I think that if people focused more on their yeah, their, their interpersonal richness and their safety and lovingness in their life, they just seem to direct less energy towards all of these

Sebastian Naum:
Hmm.

WIll Siu:
Outside things that they think they need to do.

Sebastian Naum:
Interpersonal poverty, man, that’s the, the real pandemic of, of the western culture. Yeah.

WIll Siu:
Yeah.

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. That’s, that’s really, i, I love hearing that. Um, yeah, that’s true. There is a lot of that. There is a lot of that. Um, so switching back into, to psychedelic talk here, uh, will, there’s so much talk about microdosing and it’s become, you know, sort of like cool and popular and there’s so much around it enhancing creativity and there’s just a lot around it. What’s your, what’s the 1 0 1 on microdosing?

WIll Siu:
Yeah. You know, again, I, I just go back to non-specific amplifiers of the unconscious. So we can take psychedelics and they open up a lot, a large volume and intensity and, you know, perhaps to the point where we can’t, you know, where we can’t even move sometimes and then we can take smaller amounts, <laugh>, you know, so, I mean, I don’t even like microdosing at this point, most of you know, or originally the, the definition of microdosing was taking something that was sub perceptible so that it’s an amount that you wouldn’t even feel. Right. Which is not what most people are doing when they microdose, say they’re microdosing these days. So people are just taking smaller doses of psychedelics. Right. So, um, yeah. And could it enhance creativity? Again, it depends on the person, and again, it’s just unlocking something. And so I, I don’t believe anything that I’ve seen or read where it says that, you know, just taking it alone every two days is going to just lead to some positiveness. You know, I think it’s gonna depend on the day, and I’ve again, experienced it myself for people that I know. Yeah. That some days it can be very uplifting and energetic, and some days it can help creativity and sometimes it enhances that intense feeling of anxiety in our chest and

Sebastian Naum:
Sometimes that’s what I was gonna ask you. Yeah. In regards to anxiety.

WIll Siu:
Yeah. You know, it can increase rumination, so it’s just bringing up stuff that we’re not hmm, you know, aware of. And so, um,

WIll Siu:
You know, and I think that that’s not a bad thing, you know, I think that in some ways, microdosing, depending how it’s used in the intention can actually be a helpful thing because it can open things up in relationship to another person, you know? Um, yeah. People certainly not in the creativity entrepreneurial area that want to do healing work. You know, often, especially men are, are wanting big experiences and how, oh, how many cups of ayahuasca did you drink? And what did you see? What was, what were the visuals that you saw? And you know, but you can also do microdosing with a partner who you’re struggling with and saying, okay, well we’re gonna Sunday evening, set aside our phones. We’re not gonna talk no small talk for four hours, and let’s take a small dose of mushrooms and, and let’s sit here and, and, and let’s talk about, you know, what we’re struggling with.

WIll Siu:
Or, you know, sometimes some of my patients will come in and they will have microdosed before they come and see me, you know, because if they have trouble connecting to their emotions or to their authenticity, um, or some feelings or memories, sometimes taking a small amount allows them to come in and see me and, and open up more. So, um, yeah. I would just say thi I would think of it more as not a separate thing from taking a psychedelic, it’s just taking a smaller dose is gonna have a different impact than taking a higher dose.

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. Yeah. Will, how do you feel about sort of this wide use of, uh, recreational mushroom use for partying or a night out? Uh, it seems like it’s become a lot more normalized because of sort of the higher acceptance in the medical field, um, in a sense, or whether or not that’s correlated. How, how do you feel about that side of it?

WIll Siu:
Yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know, psychedelics to, to have fun and to open up I think are great. You know, I, I think that, you know, I, they should not just be, again, restricted to the realm of healing and therapy and medicine and, um, you know, the only the issue I would have is if people are mistaking that for healing, you know, and, and again, sometimes having more fun and and pleasure is certainly a healing experience. Yeah. But if, if that’s the only way it’s thought of to use these, I think then that’s where, you know, perhaps it’s, it’s being limited. Um, so yeah. But, but I, I think, yeah. Yeah. As long as I think we are not being harmful to other people, I think we should have the freedom to explore our consciousness Sure. However we like. Yeah.

Sebastian Naum:
Well, I’m, I constantly hear from friends, acquaintances, all kinds of people where they, they basically come back and they’ll glorify a very heavy, deep psychedelic experience, but admittedly, um, seem to not really be integrating the learnings that came from, you know, what has come up. And obviously I, you know, I find it to be so important to integrate the learnings, otherwise, you know, why, what’s the point? Right. So, um, how much do you feel like if we had to put a percentage of importance in the psychedelic experience itself versus integrating the learnings that came from it, or integrating the downloads that came from it, you know, is it like it’s 50% doing it and 50% the integration in the work, or it’s like 90 10? Or like if you had to throw something out there, how do you feel about that aspect?

WIll Siu:
Um, yeah, integration brings up a whole, you know, that’s also become a buzzword I feel like these days. So I mean, maybe to illustrate the point, I would say it’s about one third the experience, one third what you do with it after. But, you know, the, the one third that I would say is not talked about often is what the one third of what you’re doing before you even take it to begin with. Okay. Because I think that, you know, if we’re thinking of our journeys overall as this, again, wanting to become more whole, trying to see what’s cluttering our prism to begin with, and we’re already working on that. You know, I would say that to me, you know, when I work with my clients, like the integration or again, what people use as that word of, of what they’re working on after is no different than what we’re working on before. Mm. You know, it’s just we have a solid idea of what they’re working on before they ever take a psychedelic to begin with. And so, mm. It ends up becoming more just the, the experience itself is just more of this part of this longitudinal process that they’re undergoing and it’s less about taking it and after it’s, it’s just honoring the entire journey. And I think if we’re looking at it that way, you know, all parts are important.

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. That’s really interesting. The before is so interesting, the intention going into it, the work that you’re doing before you, you mentioned that when you went to Peru just now you feel like you essentially, you, you got what you kind of, you wanted because you probably had a lot of work prior to it in what you were

WIll Siu:
Yeah, I mean, I think I had a lot of clarity of what I was seeking before. Yeah. You know, and I, if, you know, I don’t think, you know, I like to say that, that psychedelics are neither sufficient nor necessary for healing. Um, cause I really don’t believe that they are, you know, but I think coupled with, you know, the, the right help, the right approach that, that they’re the most powerful tools that we have. And so, um, yeah. I, I, I really don’t think that that, that they’re necessary. And so I think that, um, you know, I think the places they really help is if, is if we have a solid sense of what we’re working on, where we’re stuck, yeah. What patterns we’re repeating, and then we can add to it. Like we, we need a bit of help, but we have a good sense of where we are and where we want to go. I think that’s where we see the sort of maximal benefit from it versus just taking them.

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. Yeah. You kinda just answered a question that I wanted to ask you because, you know, with with Ayahuasca, uh, you know, it’s said that you should really feel called to do it. Um, and you know, I was gonna ask you if you felt that in general with psychedelics, do you think that pretty much everyone should approach it as something that they feel called to do it? Or do you think it’s something that like everyone should try, you know, no matter what and it could really help anyone?

WIll Siu:
Yeah, I mean, I certainly, I remember this question I kind of <laugh> Yeah. I mean, I, I certainly would never say everyone should try, and I, I don’t think that that’s the case. Um, that’s an easy answer, but no, I mean, the word called also is another one. I don’t, I don’t know what quite, what that means. I mean, in the, we wellness spiritual world, people are, use that word all the time. And I don’t know what that means. I, I’m called to this, they’re called to that. I mean, I think that, you know, I think perhaps

Sebastian Naum:
Like, perhaps it’s, it’s having a yearning or a a a sort of a deeper knowing feeling that you want.

WIll Siu:
Yeah. I mean, I, I think, yeah, I think again, ha having some yeah. Significant awareness or, or desire or something that we’re looking for. Again, even if that’s fun. Um, you know, I, I think to have a reason to do it and to have like a yeah, clear reason, I would say is is, yeah, prob probably a good idea. <laugh>, um, instead of just having, you know, just taking it out of nowhere. Yeah. I suppose.

Sebastian Naum:
But, yeah. Right. Well, uh, you know, there are many great thinkers, musicians and TI scientists that have partly given credit to L s D to their success. Do you feel that, um, there could be potentially more breakthroughs scientifically or, or more creative music happening if psychedelics were even more regularized in the workplace and things like that? Is, is that even like a possibility or is that like a, just sort of an out there sort of concept or,

WIll Siu:
Yeah, no, I, I think certainly, again, these, these expand our, our awareness, our consciousness. So, I mean, even maps, um, maps the nonprofit, so now there’s like maps. So for those that don’t know, the multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic studies, which is really leading the charge. And so the nonprofit arm of them, which is run by the founder Rick Doublin, they actually have a, um, it’s, it’s in their sort of, uh, you know, their employee manual, that they’re allowed to be high at work. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, as long as it’s not getting in the way of their work. And, and, and it’s also saying, uh, honoring that, that it may even be helpful to their work to mm-hmm. <affirmative> to take psychedelics. And so I think it’s an nice example of an organization that, that is open to, yeah. These, uh, substances being Yeah. Potentially helpful for Yeah. Creativity and, and in the workplace.

Sebastian Naum:
So, yeah. Um, you know, will, we’ve seen antidepressants, SSRIs, and a lot of mood regulating drugs be very addictive, incredibly addictive. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, do you think that M D M A ketamine or other psychedelics can be addictive, uh, when being used to, you know, with depression, for example, or something like that?

WIll Siu:
Yeah, so addiction is a very specific word for me. So I think, um, can they be abused? Can they be used to escape? Um, I would say yes, that’s true of all psychedelics. Um, I’d say ketamine specifically has the, the addictive potential though in the classy way that we think of it with alcohol, cocaine, opiates, benzos, and other things.

Sebastian Naum:
So more from a, a physical dependency type

WIll Siu:
Addiction. Yeah. I think ketamine definitely has that potential and psychological addiction as well. Okay. So, um, where the others not so much, so.

Sebastian Naum:
Got it. Um, well, you know, I, I really want to acknowledge you for, for pushing through all those years, particularly back in the day when you had sort of this calling and you had to follow you, you know, your sole purpose. And you had, you were in Harvard and you had probably so many naysayers, and there’s all this internal dissonance of, what am I doing? Like, am I crazy? You know? Yeah. I, I really wanna acknowledge you for that. Uh, thank you Will. Yeah. Uh, will, do you see, um, the entire country accepting, uh, psychedelic assist therapy at some point in our lifetime?

WIll Siu:
Uh, I, I do think the decriminalization movement, we’re already seeing it happening in some states and many cities, so I, I think I, I, I foresee that happening, you know? Yeah. Probably pretty widely in the next 10 to 15 years, so.

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. Right on. Well, we’ll probably let you go. I wanna ask you, what do you, what do you think are two traits that a conscious leader must embody? And you can give conscious whatever definition you’d like to, to give.

WIll Siu:
Yeah. I, I think being self-critical I think is very important. You know, and like, look, looking at ourselves, and I would even daresay judging ourselves, you know, I think being so critical about what we’ve done and, and, and if it’s in, in the, uh, in light of wanting to be different, you know, but, but I think of self-criticism as different as self-hatred. You know, I don’t think it should be self-loathing and, and, and imparting a lot of guilt and hatred. So I, I think, you know, uh, healthy, you know, sometimes what I see in the, the entrepreneurial coaching realm is almost like this. I keep going like, like everything you know, happens for reasons and, and keep pushing. And I do think it’s, it’s worthwhile to, to be able to be self-reflective and even self-critical.

Sebastian Naum:
There’s a probably a fine line there, right? I mean, I, I absolutely

WIll Siu:
Myself.

Sebastian Naum:
Yeah. I call myself a recovering perfectionist as someone who always wanted to do everything right and have beaten the crap out of myself over it. Yeah. You know what I mean?

WIll Siu:
But it’s the beating the crap out of that’s the different, right. That’s a self-hatred, right. In terms Exactly. Versus just the self, self-critical and saying, okay, I, I’m gonna do different next

Sebastian Naum:
Time. Yeah. Well,

Sebastian Naum:
Thank you so very nice to chat. Thank you so much for being on. Appreciate you. Absolutely. Keep being you. Thanks so much. That’s

Will Siu:
Fun. All right, peace.