There are parts of us that learn to survive before they ever get the chance to live.

In this conversation, Wai Poc invites us into the quiet, complex terrain of identity—where visibility and invisibility coexist, where inherited fear shapes connection, and where the longing to belong meets the courage to be fully seen. From growing up as one of the only Asian students in his school, to navigating life as an “invisibly gay” man, his story is not linear—it’s layered, tender, and deeply human.

What unfolds is not just a story about identity, but about the masks we wear to feel safe… and the moment we realize we can no longer live inside them. Through friendship, self-love, and a willingness to stay curious about others, Wai Poc shows us that connection is not something we find—it’s something we allow.

And maybe the invitation here is simple, but not easy:

to take off the mask… and trust that who we are is enough to be met.

The Treasures in the Trash:

1. Survival isn’t the same as living - What helped you navigate early environments, whether inherited fear, silence, or self-protection, can quietly limit your ability to fully connect, express, and thrive. At some point, survival patterns need to be reexamined so life can actually be lived.
2. The mask that protects you can also confine you - We learn to shape ourselves in ways that feel safe or acceptable, but over time that version of ourselves can become the very thing that keeps us from being fully known and expressed.
3. Self-love expands your capacity to connect - As you begin to accept the parts of yourself you once hid or rejected, your ability to understand, relate to, and genuinely connect with others deepens.
4. Needing people is part of being human - The belief that we should be completely independent can keep us isolated, when in reality connection, support, and understanding are essential to a full and meaningful life.
5. There is more space for you than you think - The idea that you need to shrink to belong is often internalized, and while not everyone will understand you, there is far more room for your full self than you’ve been led to believe.

About the Guest:

Wai Poc is an Executive Coach in the high-tech, biotech, and finance sectors, including for VPs at companies like Google, Facebook, Genentech, Gilead as well as for C-levels in pre and post IPO Series A to D companies where he is based in Silicon Valley. His expertise includes strategic influence, leadership development, and organizational dynamics. Many moons ago, Wai studied cultural anthropology at Stanford University before moving onto a MBA and into business. He is part of the teaching and coaching team on EQ at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. A sabbatical field expedition to Madagascar led Wai to meet Patricia Wright, with whom he is now writing a book on power and politics in the workplace. Their goal is to decode the primate roots of human competition and collaboration with Unleashed: A Field Guide to Power and Politics at Work.

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

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Mentioned in this episode:

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Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: It feels painful to me to have been harboring something that didn't feel okay to talk about back then, whether that's, you know, talking openly about what it's like to be an only and to be Asian, what it's like to talk about being gay, all of these ways in which we weren't given the full palette of expression.

Absolutely, yes, and it was painful, it was lonely at times. I think it got in a way bad. And what I mean by that is I even constructed an identity whereby I thought, well, I can, not only can I get by, but that I'm independent. And also there was a level of, I don't want to say rebellion, but if society is pushing me in one direction and saying, Hey, like I'm not going with just whatever society wants me to be, I had to kind of be able to stand alone. And so I prided myself on standing alone.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: What if real, lasting transformation happens when we're willing to face our shadows, the messy, uncomfortable parts of ourselves we'd rather not look at, and what if the things we avoid out of fear or shame are actually the treasures that wake us up? I'm Cari Jacobs-Crovetto, executive coach and meditation teacher, and this is Finding Treasures in the Trash through raw, unfiltered conversations. I invite you to turn toward what you've disowned and begin integrating it back into the whole beautiful human you were meant to be. Your treasure doesn't always live in the light. Sometimes it's buried in the trash, so grab your gloves. Let's go dumpster diving.

Hello everybody, and welcome to Finding Treasures in the Trash. I'm Cari Jacobs-Crovetto, and today I am just delighted to introduce my colleague and friend, why pock to the show. Say hi. Why?

Hey, Hi, Cari,

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: hello, and just so you all get a good flavor for why is on the show today. First of all, he's an amazing human being, and you're going to hear a little bit about his story. But as amazing has been his professional career, he started off doing work with companies like Genentech, where he was in biotech. He was an internal organizational development consultant at Genentech, he started when they had just 2000 employees, and was there for over a decade, leaving when they had about 22,000 employees. So for a long time, he was in that role, and then he's been an executive coach based in Silicon Valley since 2016 he coaches vice presidents and CEOs. He coaches at great, big, awesome places like Google and Facebook, and we're so excited to have him on the show. And I'm also hoping he's going to maybe share a little bit about a book he's been working on that includes decoding the primate roots of human competition and collaboration. So why we're going to get into it, but welcome.

Yeah, thank you, Cari, really happy to be here.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: So happy to have you. So why you and I have known each other through Stanford, where we are both facilitating interpersonal dynamics. So we've known each other in a very particular capacity, which is to help students with their own emotional intelligence. And I would love if you're willing to just give us a flavor for a little bit about why you got into, like, going from biotech and from, you know, sort of strategic consulting and organizational development, how you then, what drew you to working more in coaching and emotional intelligence and sort of the sort of more emotive side of things.

Yeah, in that decade when I was working in biotech, there was, for example, a lot of scientists, engineers, and these days outside of biotech, some of my clients are still in biotech, but also in high tech, also working with very technical people, engineers. And the other sector that I'm involved is finance. You and I know each other from Stanford, the business school, so a lot of MBA types. I mentioned that because these are very data oriented people, however, for what they want to get done, the reality is, even with all of the technology and today's AI, you still need people. You still have to figure out people. You still have to work with people. So it's a whole space that I've always been fascinated by, curious about. Where people's beliefs come from, the values that they have, how they feel about each other interpersonally, but also in group settings and larger organizational settings. So those filters are all have always been very interesting to me, and so I've kind of just followed my passions. It's what has interested me, and it does add a lot of value, because I continue to be in demand.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I saw a great t shirt last week that said humans are lit and I loved that in the face of AI that like now, we actually are branding humans and humanity and what it means to be emotional and connected in a way that only humans can be. So I'm really appreciating the side of you that leaned away, not necessarily away from data, because I think that coaching and emotional intelligence is very data supported, but moved more into the side of of business that really relies on the more emotional aspects of leadership. But I'd love to back up just a little bit so you know, we know based on your resume that you've done some great things and you've been very successful, and that's apparent, but I know that you're it hasn't been like most of us, just kind of this swimming upstream perfectly in life. And I'm wondering if you could share just a little bit about your life path.

Yeah, well, as I've grown more middle aged, too, what I've learned is that there are layers of all of us and there are layers of me. So for example, I am visibly Asian American, and I'm invisibly gay, and those are just a little bit of my own identity and my experiences, but I share that to that path has been nowhere straight, and it's been a journey of self discovery as well, and that's a nice way of saying it, because there were times when I'd say I didn't even know myself. I was hiding aspects of myself. And so part of it is has been a journey of learning about myself so as to be able to connect with more people that are out there in the world and happy to share what you think your audience might be interested in.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Cari, sure. I mean, I just am touched by invisibly gay like I just, you know, so many of us are watching heated rivalry right now, for example. And you know, this is like modern times, right? This was, this came out in 2025 right, when sports figures are still feeling like they need to be closeted. And I can only imagine when you were growing up. And as you said, your identity is you were born in China, right?

Born in Shanghai, in Shanghai. I grew up in

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Miami, but grew up in Miami. What a change there. Like you were, like, how old were you when you came to the US? I was six. You were six. So one to six or of your formative years in China. And then you land in Miami. Bam, I can only imagine what that was like. And then you're moving through your life as a quote, unquote, invisibly gay person, but an outwardly Asian person, and I'm curious, like looking back seeing where we are today. What changes and shifts Do you see have happened, and what did you go through to kind of get where you are?

There's a lot from the Asian side. There's a lot from the gay side, which is the part that you'd like to hear a little bit more about.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Cari. I think both are important. They're all one. You your why,

I think the deepest roots are actually being Asian, and in my in my version of being Asian. And the reason why I say it like that is because at that time I grew up in a place that, yeah, I went to a high school of 3030 of us were Asian. And that meant you could be Korean, Vietnamese Chinese, which is my heritage, South Asian, meaning, like, of Indian descent. So there were literally 30 of us. We were very much a minority.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: And it's incredible why I just, I'm letting that sing, and that's like, 1% right? Yeah, that's 1%

of your school. And I will also say I found ways to connect beyond, as I am sharing with you, hearing where I began to where I ended up. It was a long journey, even those years. And what I mean by this is I was a child of parents who came out of. The Cultural Revolution in China. So it was like not the same of today. And the reason why I anchored there is because in those days, my parents had to get through that period by really protecting themselves, and that meant that they couldn't trust people around them, because if they trusted the wrong people and over sharing, over communicating, over disclosing, it could really endanger their lives and their livelihood. And that, in a way, there was that kind of intergenerational trauma whereby they avoided people in order to survive. But surviving is not thriving. They come to this country, to some extent, they were able to not enculturate in me, that level of scrutiny of people in relationships, but it wasn't like that. It was easy for them, and it made it so that they were always just a little bit too suspicious of people. And I think that then fed into me a level of distance from people. You know, you're always trying to build trust. Now, I think some of this is also my personality. My personality is kind of, I think by nature, I'm a little bit more open than most people. I'm curious about people, and so they didn't keep me completely at bay. You know, I went to that high school of 3000 I became student body president, so made a lot of connections between the jocks and the nerds and and just across the board, and maybe I just had to do that.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: But all great, by the way.

Well, the favorite movie back then was the Breakfast Club, if you remember that? Oh yes, I sure do, yeah. But I was friends with all of them, and you know, that was my outlook on people. But there's a difference between being theoretical and kind of what my own personal life is. When I say it like that. I mean, theoretically, I was open to everyone. Everyone was my friend, and then behind a door, I was not as connected because I kept my own door closed. And if this isn't just about being gay, but here's where being gay also plays a variable, because you mentioned kind of at that time. It wasn't heated rivals, it was there. You just didn't see things on television about gay characters, and if you did, it was very negative. So, but yet, I knew who I was, and I was very fortunate, because right ahead of me was the student body president who then, when he went off to college, he came out. So theoretically, I knew of someone who was well regarded by a lot of people, who was also who now was out so he left off to college. I actually didn't even know him. I just knew of him. So I knew it was possible. And I think always, for me, it was always having some sense of what's possible, even though, again, I've done a lot of things in life where I'm an only by some definition.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: And just to go back to you, said something that hit my heart in a way, which is, you know, that your parents avoided people to survive and that that wasn't thriving. And then here you come, and you're this sort of naturally more curious. And not that your parents weren't curious, but they had to do what they had to do right to survive. And so you had more this intergenerational trauma, but you also had a playground that was being in the US that was wider than what they had. And so even though you were 1% in that school, you kind of stitched and wove communities together, and you ended up becoming the president of your high school, which is just extraordinary. But I'm also hearing this sort of, I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I don't it feels painful to me to have been harboring something that didn't feel okay to talk about back then, whether that's talking openly about what it's like to be an only and to be Asian, what It's like to talk about being gay, all of these ways in which we weren't given the full palette of expression.

Absolutely yes. And it was painful. It was lonely at times. And I think for me, I think it got in a way. Like bad. And what I mean by that is I even constructed an identity whereby I thought, well, I can, not only can I get by, but that I'm independent. And also there was a level of, I don't want to say rebellion, but if society is pushing me in one direction and saying, Hey, like, I'm not going just whatever society wants me to be. I had to kind of be able to stand alone. And so I prided myself on standing alone. So here you're what you're hearing is I ended up constructing myself in that way too, and that, I think, also at some point that got problematic because it did not make me curious enough about people. So, for example, I went then off to college, and at some point I had a freshman dor mate. We decided that we would be sophomore draw mates together, meaning that we would live in same residence the next year, and he was Mormon, and he was straight. And the reason why I bring him up is because and his name is Greg, and I did ask Greg, hey, you know Greg, like, Can I share this story? He was good with sharing it.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Hey, Greg, if you're listening, you're just shouting you out. Hey Greg, you were roommates with him the freshman year.

We were, well, we were in the same dormitory, freshman year dormitory,

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: and then you decided to draw together, but, and so here you are. You know he's Mormon. He doesn't know you're gay, right?

He knows I'm gay. Oh, he does, but yeah, he knows I'm gay. So the reason why I bring this up is because we were friendly, but ultimately we weren't really friends. In fact, we didn't spend so much time together that sophomore year or for the remaining years of our undergraduate years. Fast forward. Then 25 years later, we're at reunion, and this is several years ago. Now, lots of emails are going around. We're all happy to see each other. I was happy to see Greg. Greg reached out and said, Hey, you want to take a walk. And you know, in the back of my mind, I always harbored good feelings about Greg. He was a good guy, that's why we were drawings. But yet I didn't really know him. And yeah, you know, sure, let's take a walk. And it was in that walk, and I don't know who said it first, but one of us expressed some regret about not forming the friendship and not developing the friendship. And pretty quickly, the other of us agreed, like, gosh, you know, it'd be good to get to know each other, because I thought you were a good guy. And, you know, I look back at that, I could see now like we did share, even though superficially, we had differences, but at its core, Greg's a good guy. I'm a good guy. We're certainly interesting guys. 25 years later, of course, I had developed my own comfort in myself more including my relationships with straight men. And because I've chatted a little bit about this with Greg too, he had developed comfort in himself and in his ability to form friendships in general, and then with men, and then with gay man like me. So we both come some distance and then brought each other closer. And I'm so glad that we rekindled that friendship at the time, because what happened subsequently is we're more middle aged. I subsequently had elder care issues. Actually, he had elder care issues first with his dad, and then it was my dad who was having elder care like they both have now subsequently passed away. He's Mormon. He's got eight kids,

and so we've chatted about his kids. There are differences, but then there's so much that is that we share, and so now we talk regularly, and it's been a wonderful friendship, and it has opened me up to further friendships with straight he's not the only straight male friend. Of course, I encountered them through work and also through just my regular life, but whereas in the past, I might not pursue the friendship. These days, I I engage with straight men, recognizing, oh, like, potentially, this could be a friend.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I love this beautiful story, and it really like we talk a lot on the show about parts disowned, and I've been shifting my conversation around, quote, unquote, the shadows, or the things that we sort of hide, like, you know, like there's something wrong with them, or they're shadowy or and I've been shifting my dialog around this just a little bit that we're born like, with our truth. Intact, like we come out as souls, with our truth intact. And then over the course of our early life, usually we adapt our own truth so that we can feel safe and we can feel seen so less about shadow, more about the truth, the totality and the truth of who we are that gets maybe shriveled away, or, like you said, put behind a door. And so I'm curious when you hear me share about a disowned part or things that have been put away, or a truth that hasn't been fully expressed, how does that land on you?

Cari, I think you're You are so right on. And framed in my home is a beautiful image of two kids, and this is from Trinidad and the Baguio carnival, and they are wearing masks. And there's a quote from James Baldwin, the great and now deceased civil rights activist of his time in the 60s. And if I recollect the quote, It goes something like, love takes off the mask that we fear we cannot live with out and know we cannot live within and I share that James Baldwin quote, because, you know, it was my journey. At some point I thought, oh, no, I have to live with this mask because I can't live without it. How will I be accepted? But at some point for myself, I realized no I cannot live within myself with this mask without taking off and being who I am. So really, what this is about loving myself, and it's from loving myself, then it actually for real for me, it opened up my capacity to then get to know and get to love, in this case, my friend Greg. So it's the stance right between loving myself and loving the people around me and expanding that love

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: so beautiful. I love this sentiment, and I love you know, I'm imagining you like in college, and that sort of college, until that connection point where Greg said, let's take a walk, right? And the work that you did to love yourself, and so much of what we talk about here, like that's it kind of boils down to that right because we're told these parts of ourselves might not be lovable, or we're shown right that these parts of ourselves, whether it's an Asian identity, whether it's being gay, whether it's secrets that we have at home about being abused, or, you know, whatever it is, it doesn't even have to be that dramatic, right? It can just be somebody's told that when they act out or act too hyper. My brother was really hyper, and he was told, you know, when you act this way, no one wants to be around you. So he's suppressed and suppressed, like his energy as a kid to like, just, know, I'm just imagining what it took to love yourself.

It's a journey, not overnight. Good therapy, good friends. Building the capacity to love myself is a big piece, I think of the puzzle. I have a wonderful partner in life, my spouse, right? All of those are very helpful, but I do believe that, you know, you alluded to this, but others also have some aspects of themselves that are put aside put away, which is why the theme of your podcast, it so resonates with me like, you know, I mentioned my friend Greg. Well, he is Mormon, and as I've come to know a few Mormons through the years, sometimes they feel like they have to hide that aspect of themselves, depending on the crowd that they're with, and including the religious side. And I'm actually a very spiritual person. I know you are too Cari, and you know, even though I'm not in a prescribed religious way, but I find myself very drawn to sometimes religious people who are spiritual. And so it's in that overlap that there's the connection. And I think, you know, in these days and times, it's really important for us to connect across whatever identities there might be, because there are shared values, and in a way, yeah, we're different, and yes, celebrate differences, for sure, I'm that way, and there's actually a lot of similarities too, despite superficial differences. So I'm all about you know, I'm not a kumbaya. The time you know me, Cari, but at the same time, I really do celebrate people in all of our diversities

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: well, and I'm just really enjoying in this present moment, like experiencing you in all of this, because we do when our work at Stanford, I think we're sort of, yes, we're holding emotional space, but there's an aspect to us that's still sort of bringing our careers or our work with us, and to be able to hear you talk about just, you know, the road of loving yourself. I'm wondering for listeners out there, and we've come a long way. I get that we've come a long way, but we haven't come far enough yet. We really haven't. So do you have I mean, I heard one of the things is like spiritual connection, connecting to people. But do you have advice of maybe there are other people that are not only hiding aspects of their sexuality, but maybe it's just other aspects that they feel, being Asian, for example, like or other aspects or things they hurt over or are shameful about, like, what do you recommend?

You know, I do sincerely believe sharing more of ourselves allows others to express more of themselves, and the world is made better through all of that. I there's a Marianne Williamson quote that I I wouldn't be able to recite off the top of my head, but I really love it, and the gist of it was something like, the world doesn't need you to play small, the world needs you to play big. And I absolutely believe that. And there's so many ways that we can, in my opinion, mishear what the world is saying, which is that we don't have enough room for you to reconnect that back to my own biography that you're hearing a little bit about I think the world is much bigger than we think it is. The world actually has much more space for us to express ourselves. That doesn't mean everyone's gonna like us, that everyone's gonna like me. I don't think they will. Some people will just look at me or listen to me, and they're gonna turn me off. I'm somehow I'm turning them off without knowing. I've definitely had those kinds of experiences where I speak up and they expect that it's an Asian who's not articulate, for example, and they're a little bit floored that not only do I have an opinion, but I might be so particulate about it, and non apologetic about expressing it. And, you know, but I'm not trying to. So there's a bit of me that I'm about to say, I'm not going forth into the world trying to please people left and right. But this is a both and carry and this is where I've come to in life. You know, I said that early on in life, there was a part of me that was like, ah, if you don't like me, then so be it. I will be who I am, and I don't need for you to like me as if I don't need people. But, you know, I looked at that and these days, for sure, even last 20 years, I would say that's just foolish. The reality is, we all need people. I need people. And does that make me needy? No, it does not make me needy. It just makes me human. Doesn't mean that. That doesn't

mean everybody, but that means I need people around, and I want to understand them. I want to understand where they're coming from. I want to understand if I'm saying something that somehow is not sitting well with them. I want to understand my impact on others, because that's not my intent to hurt people or to push them away. And I have found that as I've taken the time to do that, to help me understand myself, explain myself to others, and then try and understand other people who might be very different from me, differently motivated, maybe even have some different values than I do that as I've gotten to know them, it's only brought me closer to more people, and it's only enriched my life, and only when it caused me to want to do it more, not do it less. And in many ways, that's my message to the world. If you ask me, you know what it is, I do it into some degree professionally, when I work with people, but in every aspect of my life, really trying to bring people together.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Well, I want to just not leapfrog but build on that, which is that your love of people, your curiosity of people these, you know, sort of part of you that the I love the bull fan, right? The part of you that said, Well, I don't, I don't need people. And then the part of you that realized, well, wow, that's foolish. I really do. And understanding, we all feel those moments, both of them and so. Like, I may know I need people. And then there are just days when I'm like, I don't need everyone to like this podcast. I hope they do, though, so, but I want to just build on this curiosity for people. So you're a big traveler, and years ago, you went on a sabbatical, a field expedition to Madagascar, and you met Patricia Wright? Yes, I did. Can you tell us a little bit about her and about that trip, and now you're you were inspired to write a book about, yeah, your time meeting her that she inspired you.

Yeah, Patricia Wright is actually a MacArthur Fellow. She's kind of Jane Goodall of lemurs. So Jane Goodall studied chimpanzees, and some people heard of her, and Patricia Wright actually studied Borneo orangutans as well as Amazonian New World monkeys. But for the last 30 years, she has been in the island of Madagascar off the southeast coast of Africa, studying lemurs. Lemurs are really interesting because they are female dominant and female leading. I know right,

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: when you said, I just have to say for a minute, when you were like, she's studying lemurs, and I'm like, Oh, I am fascinated by how people find a niche that becomes their path. And like, how do you just end up studying lemurs? But now I understand so they're they're female dominant,

and they're female leading. So to me, it was very interesting, because so at some point, I was on a sabbatical. You mentioned, you know, I worked at Genentech, and so I went far away for a few weeks, living in a tent in the middle of the rain forest, and hung out with Pat right? And this kind of covered her with lots of questions, because I thought, Oh my God, when am I ever going to get a chance to talk with a real world primatologist? And she found me curious, too. And so what happened was, when I left the corporate in house, corporate world and became an executive coach, Pat asked if I would consider writing with her, and so we've been collaborating on a book, not just about the lemur, but about some other primate species, because there are some that are male dominant, male leading, but then there are also those that are not, and male female is just one angle. There's a number of other angles around primates that make it interesting. And my interest in this is because I'm always interested in the human being in organizations, and because we are primates too, and what's motivating our behavior, and in particular, how do we compete, and how do we collaborate? And in many cases, sometimes we're doing some of the same behaviors with each other. So I might be competing with a collaborator or collaborating with a competitor. So to me, that's all kind of interesting, because I see that that and sometimes what happens, I think, in the in our the regular world, is we just kind of think of people as one or the other, and I think that there's helpful ways to put different lens on as we engage with each other,

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: and those two lenses being competition and collaboration, those are two, yeah, those are two. So square this away, like, with the part of you that learn to love yourself like how do those two parts of you and parts of your life, the part that's writing this book on Power and Politics and collaboration and competition and primates, and the part of You that went from high school into sort of early late 20s, when you began to love yourself and were able to take a walk with Greg.

Yeah, so interesting. You should ask this question Cari, because I share with you my my deep roots. I had parents who, from very young, were saying to me, don't get into politics. You know, avoid it as much as you can. What are you being? What are you doing? Being student body president, that is not a good way of life. It's scary to them.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I was gonna say, probably safe. They're like, that's not a safe way.

Well, what was safe was study math, study science. I was not good in science. I was good in math. Be an engineer, you know, like there were kind of, like, kind of prescribed path. And clearly I did not take the prescribed path, even though I do work with engineers, I do work with scientists, that's the part where the parents are proud, curiously, but I took my own path, and that path did lead me to trying to understand people more, the motivations of people, how people come together again, where people collaborate, where people compete, where competition is good, because competition can also lead to some amazing things. That's kind of what's rooted in our capitalist society here. And there's an aspect for which, you know, we come together to do big things together. You know, it's been, for me, endlessly fascinating, and it's been a long journey I'm still on. It still exploring. But the good news here is that the parents, now they get what I'm doing, they recognize, oh, he's working with people, and people are actually very complex, and now they now they can kind of concede that, well, the reason why they didn't choose my path is because they felt it was too complicated. So and I've shared my learnings with them, so I've kind of decoded some of the ways in which relationships and organizations, communities can be it didn't come natural for them. And in a way, that's kind of what I'm doing for my clients. Work wise. I call

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: it healing backwards too. It's like you're, you're healing the generations before you. And I always hope I'm doing that just a little bit too, you know, in my in my world, with with my family, like I'm just paying it backwards in a way. Okay, well, I have one last question for you. I don't know if you know this, but we do something called the trash can cards on finding treasures in the trash. So I'm going to grab my I call it spin the wheel, but I really don't. I just grab a sheet of paper and I close my eyes and I pick a question. So hold on, okay, okay, I'm going to close my eyes. You ready? I'm ready

for your virtual spin.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: My Virtual spin. Here we go. Ah, and your question is, what's one truth you'd offer someone still standing in their own wreckage?

You're here for the for a reason, even in all the messiness, pain and suffering, there is meaning in all of this. You will get through all of this, and what you bring to the world from all of this will be all that much greater.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I love that. Why? As spoken from your own path,

yes, absolutely.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I'm so happy to know you. You make likewise all the sweeter.

Thanks. So glad you're doing this podcast for the world.

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Cari, me too. I it's virtuous and heart filling work, that's for sure.

Thanks for spending time with me and for having the courage to listen inward. If you'd like to continue the journey, you can find me at Brave directions.com and there you can sign up for my newsletter and something really exciting if you're ready to begin exploring your own inner terrain. I've created something called five days to truth. It's a complimentary five day meditation journey that helps you start gently digging into your own trash and discovering what's there waiting for you. So until we meet again, be kind to yourself and trust what's emerging, because inside the muck lives the gold, the.