🎙️ From Overdrive to Stillness: Finding Your True Self with Larry Kesslin

Emotional intelligence and leadership deepen through stillness as Larry Kesslin reveals how identity and inner peace drive fulfillment.

In a world driven by performance and constant doing, true transformation begins when we slow down. In this episode, Larry Kesslin shares how letting go of overdrive, releasing external identities, and reconnecting with who we truly are leads to peace, clarity, and a more grounded, authentic way of living and leading.

Larry Kesslin is a transformational guide and thought leader focused on helping individuals move beyond performance-based identities. His work centers on stillness, self-discovery, and uncovering the authentic self beneath societal conditioning, empowering leaders to live and lead with deeper fulfillment.

👉 Connect with Larry here: 
Website: libr8.net | larrykesslin.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/larrykesslin

✨ 🌎 Want to reach your peak potential?

Discover nervous system mastery through Dr. Campbell's trainings and explore how emotional intelligence transforms your performance:
👉 Visit Dr. Campbell's website: https://drjacquelinecampbell.com/self-mastery-tools

🔗 And stay connected as we build a community of growth minded visionary leaders: https://linktr.ee/drjacquelinecampbell

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Who I am and why I exist, and the what is an extension of who I am and why I exist, then you're taught that why you're here is more important than what you do. And that changes the dynamic of how we experience the world. And there's even one level deeper than that is this idea that I'm a being that has thought and has feeling. So when I work with clients, I use the analogy of the sky, the clouds, and the weather. Like I am the sky, my thoughts are the clouds, and the weather are my feelings.

SPEAKER_04 0:36

Welcome to the Resilient Minds Podcast. Stories of grid, growth, and success. On this show, we focus on the real stories behind the success, the struggles, the resilience, and the courage it took to keep moving forward even when times got tough. My goal is to provide you with stories of hope and transformation, showing that no matter the challenges, there is a way forward, and you can find it. This is Resilient Minds.

SPEAKER_05 1:09

Hey, I'm your host, Dr. Campbell, and I'm here with Larry Kestlin. And he is a speaker, author, and coach. And what he's spending his days doing is redefining success for leaders. I'm really grateful to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Thank you very much, and uh pleasure to be here and looking forward to a beautiful conversation.

SPEAKER_05 1:29

Sure. Um, for those that are seeing it um on YouTube, you can see the visual. But for those who are on all the other platforms, it's only audio. But behind uh Larry, he has his two books, Success Redefined and the Joy Molecule Molecule. Please tell me what those are about. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Um, Success Redefined was written in 2015, about two and a half years after coming back from a month-long trip in Africa. And you're big on talking about transformational moments in people's lives. I would say that was the biggest transformational moment in my life was spending a month in rural villages in eastern and northern Uganda and seeing people happier than anybody I've ever met in my life and filled with more joy. And I got back from that trip. So when I'm on stage, I start out basically August 17th, 2012, standing in JFK Airport, wondering what the hell did I just see for the last month and questioning everything in my life, especially the way that I had defined success. So when I was 28 years old, I started defining a lot of things in my life. I started giving structure to the things that had no structure. And there's a lot of words in our vocabulary that we don't have definitions for, and everybody's definition is different, yet we throw them around as if everybody understands what we mean. And success is one of those words. So when I was 28, I defined success as the ability to do what I want whenever I want to do it. And you would think that success would bring happiness. Yet I had just spent a month in some places around the world that people would consider poor. And I saw people that were infinitely happier than I was, that had so much less than I had. And when I got back from that trip, I'm like, okay, I'm done with success. If success, if if what I'm doing is success, then I'm missing something. And I said, it's time for me to become significant. So I went on this journey. I had already read Halftime by Bob Buford. I was looking at Second Mountain by David Brooks and all these other books that we're talking about. The first wave of success is achievement and the second wave is giving. And I started to redefine my perspective on the world. And I said, the reason why I needed to redefine success is about a year and a half after I got back from Africa, I did a TEDx talk about the disconnected, connected world. And I believe that success without significance, which is I had said I'm done with success, I need to be significant, that success without significance isn't success at all. So the new definition in the book, Success Redefined, is the ability to do what I want whenever I want to do it, while being part of something greater than myself. And that second piece is the piece that brought was the beginning of my journey to finding peace. The joy molecule is the part that has brought the most amount of peace, which is helping me understand what I am, who I am, and why I am, which is what I define joy as being. And I say joy is synonymous with inner peace. So that's what I've been seeking. And when I got back from Africa, everybody kept telling me, I bet you can't wait to go back to Africa. And I'm like, actually, I can. And it's been 14 years and I still haven't gone back. I might go back later this year or next year. Somebody's trying to get me to go to speak there, but I don't need to see what I saw again.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

To feel what I felt there. I want what they had there here. So I've been breaking down what it is I experienced and all the people I've talked to that have been to Africa, at least sub-Saharan, Eastern Africa, many times. And I think the same is true of Rwanda and Tanzania and other countries around that area, that the people just have a sense of peace and joy that is unique compared to us in the United States. And I went to Nicaragua, and the same thing was true there. I've been to Southeast Asia, and the same is true there. Is the simplicity of life makes it easier for them to be joyful. And I come to the conclusion that it's about human connection, which is the theme between both books. Is when I was writing Success Redefined, I thought purpose was our destiny. And I was in my early 50s, and I'm like, okay, it's all about purpose. And when I realized that purpose was a doorway to deeper human connection with others that have shared purpose. And when I got to joy, joy is combining your purpose with your value set with your work. And knowing those three things together, that is a sense of joy. And when you have joy and you connect with others that have joy, that's some of the deepest connections you can find in life because you're not posturing, you're not trying to be something that you're not. You're being authentically yourself and you're meeting somebody who is authentically themselves, and you have shared whys. That to me is genius. That is why we're here. The Harvard study over now 85 years that were the Good Life was published 10 years ago after 75 years of studying 400 plus Harvard grads and 400 uh plus uh Bostonian men. And over the 85 years, they've said based on one criteria that can tell whether somebody will be happy at 80 when they're 50 years old. And it's based on the quality of their relationships. The deeper the relationships they have at 50, the happier they'll be at 80. So I believe we're here to connect as humans, and that's what I experienced in Africa, and that's what I've been seeking here in the United States. But we're so busy. We're so busy being busy that we don't have time to connect with the ones that we love and care for.

SPEAKER_05 7:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Even I think that's part of the challenge. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 7:17

What I've noticed is that a lot of leaders they tend to carry a lot of stress and obligations. So they're very task-oriented. They're not very connection-oriented. And you and I were talking a little bit about this before the show, but they're constantly doing. So when they do get to connect, they're usually giving, which means talking instead of being, which is the part of listening. And when you're in connection with people, it is a two-way street. You have to give and you have to be able to receive. And it has to be fluid and authentic and you have to go with it. But a lot of individuals carrying a lot of stress and burden, they're so quick to just go, go, go, go, task this, task that. If I do get connected with a person, I just got to give really quick before I move on to the next thing. And so their system never gets to be just still. You know, and it's that shift like you're talking about. I've never met one person who has inner peace and has fulfillment that didn't have to learn that, that you have to learn to be still and just be to connect with people in order to find that.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Well, my journey has taught me that most business leaders, entrepreneurs, don't have a lot of peers and they live in isolation and they live in their own head. They live from their own thoughts. And as a culture, if you were to ask me the biggest difference between the cultures that I've visited that were filled with joys and the one and the ones that don't, it's the idea that I am my thoughts versus I am a being that has thought. So if I'm taught from a young child, as a young person, that what I do is the most important thing and defines me, then I'm going to be dissatisfied most of the time. If I'm taught who I am and why I exist, and the what is an extension of who I am and why I exist, then you're taught that why you're here is more important than what you do. And that changes the dynamic of how we experience the world. And there's even one level deeper than that is this idea that I'm a being that has thought and has feeling. So when I work with clients, I use the analogy of the sky, the clouds, and the weather. Like I am the sky, my thoughts are the clouds, and the weather are my feelings. And when I mistake myself, when the sky believes you're the clouds, you're lost in thought. But when you know you're the observer of those thoughts and the observer of those feelings, that you're a being, the whole idea of success redefined, of being part of something greater than myself, it doesn't mean ego greater than myself. It's knowing that I'm a being having a human experience versus a doing that is trying to accomplish all these things. The American society is a very fascinating. I've been to 42 countries. I spent six months with my now ex-wife and children traveling for six months in 2015. And we visited 12 countries, 27 Airbnbs. Oh, wow, and we saw a lot. And I got to visit 25 different rotary clubs around the world, spoke at some of them, talked to a lot of Rotarians, which are giving, caring people. And we all want the world to be a better place, even though the world doesn't need to be any different than it is. So I've been told many times that the world is perfect, and I agree. I have no uh need to say that the world needs to be changed. Yet there are some of us that are born with a gene that just says, I'm here to be of service. And I continue to tell people that I think giving and being of service is the most selfish act we can do. And everybody says, No, that's selfless. I'm like, no, it feels really good to give to others, so that's selfish because it feels good, and everything we do is selfish. It's just we don't teach it, we don't teach philanthropy, we don't teach giving, we teach consumption and we teach do have be or have do be. Have what you want, do the things you want to do, so you can be the person you want to be. And it's the opposite. Be the person you know yourself to be, do the actions that that person does, and you'll have everything you want. Having is a byproduct. I created in the in the joy molecule, it's eight stories of eight different people I've met since I got back from Africa, and five lessons I've I've learned from those eight people. And the first lesson is circumstances not define my joy. I met a young man in Africa that I ended up sponsoring and moved him to the United States and the stories in there about Armstrong. And he taught me, as well as Trinity, who's the last story in the book, who I met 12 years later at a conference in Mexico where I was asked three questions. And so I went to this conference called Opportunity Collaboration 2012, 13, 14. And then I didn't go back for a decade. I went back in 2024. And in 2012, I was asked three questions, and it was basically less than two months, maybe seven weeks after I got back from my trip to Africa. And the three questions I was asked in the first workshop on the first morning was three questions that blew my mind that changed my life that still I remember to this day. And those three questions is what is poverty? Who gets to define it? Yeah, and why are we trying to fix it? And I realized that the people I met who I thought were poor were not poor. They were just impoverished. In many ways, I think we're poor. We're poor in human connection, we're poor in peace, we're poor in connection to the land. If the system shut down, if gas, electric, and trucking shut down, most people would die because we have no idea how to farm. We have no idea how to make our own food. All we know how to do is go to a store and buy things. In Africa, they take care of themselves. And the community takes care of them. The young man, the first story in the book, Armstrong, uh, I moved into the United States in 2014. He's been here since February 6th of 2014. I remember picking him up at the airport in my car. He had never been off of the continent. Well, I shouldn't say that. Most most 99.9% of his life was in Africa. He went to Israel for a few days. Long story. But he's on a 10-lane highway in an Audi A4 convertible, driving on this beautiful road. And like dumbfounded. I mean, this is a kid who grew up walking everywhere, mud roads everywhere, and seeing what he saw. And then I dropped him at my friend's house because my ex-mother-in-law was at the house for the weekend and she left the next morning. So I took him to my house. I pick him up the next morning. He's looking at the sheetrock and the corners and the recess lighting. And then he comes to my house. He says, Mr. Larry, he says, Can I build a fire? Like Armstrong, why do you want to build a fire? He says, I'd like to make some tea. And I said, Armstrong, come with me. So I took a cup and I went over to the hot water heater, to the cooler. I push the red button, I take a tea bag, I put it in the cup, and I push the button and the hot water comes out. And he's looking behind the water cooler, saying, Where's the fire? Like he had never seen anything like that. And then he'd showing him a dishwasher and a refrigerator and a washer dryer. This is a 24-year-old adult who had never seen modern appliances or recessed lighting or sheetrocked homes or anything.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

He lived in a different world. So our circumstance does not define our joy. The second lesson for me is my work needs to matter. It's a story of Carrie Rich who was handed$2 million of 26 to go change the world. But the third set of stories is three challenged athletes. They're people that one is a blind gentleman who I spent a lot of time on a bicycle with, tandem bike. I was in the front, he was in the back, the blind guy. So we rode from San Francisco to San Diego and we trained a lot together. And I spent a lot of time with him. The second story in that set of stories is Moon Tucker, who lost her arm in a motorcycle accident, and is a world champion archer. And the third one is Joe Delagrave. That whole section of the book is called the identity illusion. And to me, that is where our society is stuck.

SPEAKER_05 15:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

We are stuck in this idea that our identity is us. If you listen to Jim Carrey lately, um, he's been on this kick for a while now, but he says, uh, I don't exist. Jim Carrey is a character, an unintentional character. But my identity was built from the time I was born by my parents and everybody else around me, but it's not me. It's an identity I've created, yet most of us and most of the people I meet, and the reason that I have work today is because most people are stuck in their identity, and I help them get past that. And I help them realize that their identity is something they created. I mean, think about it. You're a doctor, and where does your belief system come from?

SPEAKER_05 16:21

So are you really asking me?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah, where does your belief system come from?

SPEAKER_05 16:26

Well, it's programming, whether it be from you or the people that raised you. But at the end of the day, the identity that we have, it's usually old stories. They're not intentional either. So as we deprogram that, and then we take intention in our present reality, and then we can tell when we're getting stuck in that old programming because it's wanting to come back, because it's so deeply embedded, then we have to wrestle with it to fight for the opportunity to even have a real identity.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

But let's even go a little bit past that. Is your belief system based on what happened, or based on your interpretation of what happened?

SPEAKER_05 17:06

I personally believe that it's a little bit of both scientifically, then it's your perspective.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

So you're one of eight billion creatures on this planet, and you're having one of one eight billionth of all the experiences of humanity in this moment, and you believe that the interpretation and the experiences you've had over your lifetime define reality. That makes no sense. You said your identity defines your identity and your reality for most people, because most people's identity is their reality, they don't believe there's more than their identity.

SPEAKER_05 17:39

I believe that's true.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

So if that's the truth, if you work with really smart people, which I do, I can help them deconstruct in simple language. Do you really want to hold on to that?

SPEAKER_04 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

And what is, I just had a dinner party two weeks ago. And the question I asked, I had one this past Saturday night, and I had one two weeks ago. I do these podluck dinners, I bring together people just to have conversations, not about what we do, but who we are and why we exist. The question I asked is, what is what is it costing you to be right? What does right really mean? And I think in many ways, right is about disconnection. I need to be right to make the other person wrong so I can feel better about myself.

SPEAKER_05 18:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

What does that do?

SPEAKER_05 18:21

And the way that I look up at being right at this point in my life, because it wasn't the case before, is that's my perspective now. Because last year it could have been something different, and then I learned something new about myself or about the world, or in five years from now, it could also be different. So that's why I usually, you know, tack on, you know, from my perspective or the way that I see it, or you know, I feel dot dot dot, because it can always change. Would you be able to tell me the the hardest thing about your personality or your identity that was the hardest for you to reprogram?

SPEAKER_01 18:58

My need to perform. My need to be seen. So I raised myself as a child. When the pandemic hit, my brother and sister and I all got on Zoom calls with my parents every week on Sundays. And about two months into it, I asked a question to both my brother and sister, and my parents are on the line at the same time. I said, I've been doing a lot of reflection over the last five and a half decades. And did did your childhood suck as much as mine did to my brother and my sister? Because mine was pretty bad. And my dad went broke when I was 10, and my sister was 13, and my brother was 14. And uh they both said to me, Yeah, my our childhood sucked too. So I moved when I was six months old from Queens to Long Island. I moved when I was five to Florida, I moved when I was six to New Jersey, I moved when I was 12. I moved a lot, and I didn't really have parents that taught me anything. I was a latchkey kid who raised myself and I did a pretty crappy job. So as I became an adult, I never had the tools. And the part that was the hardest for me to get past where I had the deepest depression. So I've been through multiple episodes of depression in my life. And the last one, which I think is the last time I'll get depressed for that reason. I might get depressed for other reasons, but the reason I was depressed most of my life was I was waiting for someone to take care of me.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

And what I realized at the end of this last depression, at the end of 2024, was that um the only person who can save me is me.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

And then I went through some journeys through psilocybin and some other things that made me realize that I'm more than what I thought I was.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

When I saw my spirit leaving my body and going on its own little journey and realizing, oh my God, I live in this body, but I am not this body.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

That was the most transformative experience of my life.

SPEAKER_05 20:51

I love that you say that too, because we we tend to forget about life in the bigger perspective. And we lose sight of that because we are so limited in our human form, right? And so this is also part of my perspective that I had to learn the hard way is that when we're trying to perform and we're trying to get people to see us and we're trying to be good enough, really, it's only because you're trying to give yourself what you need, anyways, whether it be external validation or worth or love or acknowledgement. And once you start realizing, oh, that does come from me, then what you do is instead of having your awareness projected externally, which means that you're not even fully present, but you're fully present with yourself because you're giving yourself what you need, then you actually are full of your own energy and your own awareness. And that's actually what creates our contentment and our inner peace because we're actually fulfilled, but it was with us the whole time. That's all it needed was ourselves, which is interesting. What you just said, I've heard from a lot of individuals. Myself included, but it's very common.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Well, being able to get past my thought and Alan Watts talks about it all the time, you can't think your way out of the thought problem. You can only be your way out of it and realize that being has more value to me at this point in my life than thinking. And I'm a being that has thought, that my being actually has agency over my thought. And I can observe a thought and say, nah, that's not valuable today. And I've been playing around with AI and I've been asking it lots of questions about humanity and stuff like that. And one of the questions I asked is what percentage of thought is positive versus negative? And the numbers they came back, which were lower than I thought, but even still significant, 50% of all thought is negative, only 10% is positive, and probably 40% is neutral. So if the majority of people are having negative thoughts on a regular basis, and 70% of all humans, according to what I've researched, are having negative thoughts more often than positive thoughts, then we're living in this mind that doesn't serve us. And Michael Singer talks about the whole idea of separating our mind, we are not our mind, and our attachment to expectations and all those pieces cause us to create our own reality. And I've had the opportunity to see past that. And whether it comes from meditation or yoga or plant medicine or whatever it takes to get past our mind, it's not something you can think your way through. It's an experience, it's a knowing, it's a being connected to one source that you know that you're more than what you thought you were. You don't think you're more than you thought you were. You can't think your way to spirituality.

SPEAKER_05 23:47

Yeah. And what you said right now is when you know it, because you've experienced it, that becomes your identity because you realize, to me, the way that I explain it is you're awakened to who you actually are. And it's like, oh, oh, well, then I'm fine. Like it doesn't matter what happens in the external world, I'll always be fine.

SPEAKER_06 24:08

Completely different shift.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Well, the next book I'm working on, which so I'm working on four books, three that'll come out of the joy molecule, The Identity Illusion, is going to be the next book from this series. But I've been working on one myself. My daughter asked me this question about two and a half months ago. She said, Dad, why are we really here? She went through her own little uh journey at the end of last year, and she's struggling with her identity. And I basically wrote a book. It's a fable of a father talking to a daughter, answering that question. And my TED talk in 2014 started to challenge Abraham Maslow. And I'm not sure how much you know about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but according to all the research I've done, Maslow never created a hierarchy of needs. Um, Maslow talked about survival, food, water, shelter, he talked about safety, talked about love and belonging and self-esteem. And he talked about self-actualization. But before he died, he was looking into self-transcendence, which is oneness with God. And the hierarchy was created by some consultants that wanted to use his work in the in the business world. And they never got to self-transcendence, they stopped at self-actualization. And my challenge is that those are not needs. We need food, water, shelter, safety, love, air, and health. Those are the things we need. Everything else is a want. So love and belonging and self-esteem and self-actualization are not needs, they're wants. We're not going to die if we don't get them, but we could die if we don't have food, water, and shelter. If the animals can eat us, we're going to die. But Americans, and where I grew up, there's two different types of survival. There's survival in Africa on the plains, getting eaten by a lion. And there's survival in the United States, which is keeping up with the Joneses and having as nice a house as somebody else. So there are two different parts of survival. So this book basically says that if we take Maslow's hierarchy and redefine it, it's no longer a hierarchy. It's all about awareness and what you said, waking up. So I'm calling this thing the ascension ladder because it's broken into three sections. There's the section of survival, food, water, shelter, and safety. Those are the bottom two. The middle two are what I call me. That's love and belonging and self-esteem is all about me, trying to make the outside world fit into a pattern that makes me feel okay. And the next shift is to ascension, which is self-actualization and self-transcendence.

SPEAKER_03 26:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

It says I got to stop looking outside for the world to be okay, for me to feel okay, and start looking inside and see where the wounds are, so that no matter what shows up, I'm okay. And that transition is from external solutions to my own inner problems to working on my inner solution, which is ascension. And I'm calling it the ascension ladder. And the truth is that no rung on the ladder is any better than any other. So higher on the ladder is not better. It just is. And when we're on the ladder, our journey is to reach down to the people below us and help them up.

SPEAKER_03 27:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

And to reach the people above us and saying, what is it that you see that I don't see? And to me, that's the simplicity of life. It's not about accumulating, it's not about winning, it's not about having the biggest house or the nicest car because most of those people I've met are not nearly as happy as the people I met in Gulu and northern Uganda.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

It's like, how is that possible that we've set up this entire society on winning and achieving and accumulating the most? And it doesn't bring any peace. The only thing that brings peace is mindfulness, connection to source, being of service. I mean, the happiness advantage by Sean Aker outlines it perfectly. But we don't believe it. We can we want to chase, and you know why? I think it's all due to the brilliance of Madison Avenue, the brilliance of Hollywood, that they have brainwashed an entire society to believe that having stuff will make you happy.

SPEAKER_05 27:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

And I think it's a broken method, it's a broken model.

SPEAKER_05 28:00

I think it also goes into the way that systems have been created to make you think that you need something, other than authentically being yourself and living your own life. And um, instead of being dependent, because then when something or someone is dependent, there's a control factor in there. And if you can keep people who are controlled, then you are always in power, right? But when when somebody evolves enough where they don't need anything external to them, they have everything that they need within themselves, it gets very scary for people around them who have to have control because you can't control a person like that.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

No, there is no control. Yeah, there's just being. And once you figure that out, then there's no need to have people around you that don't live in that paradigm. Like when I got divorced, I was looking for two major aspects in a partner. And those two major aspects, the first one was the most important, that they needed to own their own feelings. And I could say to somebody, I feel this way. I'm not blaming you to saying I feel this way. And you can share your feelings with me too. And I know it's not about me. Now, once you share what's going on, we have a choice. I can either expect you to solve it yourself, I can totally adapt my behavior to make you feel okay. Neither one of those solutions is productive, or we can find a middle ground. I ask you to work on your wound because it's your wound. I understand how I contribute to the friction that it causes, and we can work on a solution together. And to me, that's the way to be in a relationship. And the other thing that was important to me was physicality. So I'm a physical being and all that stuff. So I said we needed food, water, shelter, safety, love, air, and health. And some of us need sex too, but that's a whole no, I love it.

SPEAKER_06 29:48

I love it. That's a perfect ending for today's show because everybody on the air is like, yep, yep, me too.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Not all of us, though. There are some that don't, but that's it is what it is.

SPEAKER_06 29:59

Thank you so much, Larry. I really appreciate your time today.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Thank you very much, Doctor, and appreciate uh what you're doing to help others find their peace on their own journey, which is I think why we're here.

SPEAKER_05 30:11

Likewise. Have a good one.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Thank you.