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[Music] you all right welcome to spiral dynamics stage yellow if you hadn't seen the other parts of this multi-part series make sure you go back and you watch spiral dynamic stage blue orange and green so that you have some context for some of the deep stuff we're gonna be talking about today I'm excited about this one because stage yellow is one that I'm really passionate about if you resonate with actualize that oral content and you like the stuff that I talked about chances are it's because you resonate with yellow there's something special about yellow something magical yellow is rare it's rare to find yellow thinkers in our society it's very rare to find them in the media on TV etc yellow tends to be very deep stage so the way that spiral dynamics works is of course let me just remind you the stages first we have beige purple red blue then orange then green and finally yellow now yellow is special because yellow is now called tier 2 there are two tiers the first tier is all the stuff underneath yellow all the stuff we've talked about up to now and that sort of conventional thinking that's how 99% of all of mankind thinks so most of mankind doesn't know that there is such a thing as tier 2 so what is tier 2 tier 2 Claire Graves described as a quantum leap in one's awareness of reality it's an awakening to systems thinking and holism seeing how everything within reality is deeply interconnected in ways that Tier one couldn't even imagine tier two is opening up to awareness of the spiral itself now you don't have to know spiral dynamics to be in tier two but it sure helps and tier two thinkers look back upon human development they start to see these these natural levels emerging which is what spiral dynamics talks about tier two is a shift from survival into being have you know that most of mankind is not really interested in being they are interested in survival and of course this notion of survival means a lot more than just keeping your ass alive it means all the stuff that normally people do which is have families and have children and go earn money and buy house buy a car and hang out with their friends and all the entertainment all of that comes under the label of survival that's what that is that's not being being is something else which we'll talk about there's a shift in tier 2 from needy perception into being perception I have an older video that talks about this difference between these two different modes of perceiving being perception is looking at a thing for what it is whereas needy perception is when you look at a thing as to how it can serve you so literally your entire perceptual system is corrupted and distorted by your self survival agenda so if you're afraid of having violence done to you getting abused being manipulated being exploited being cheated being left broke and unable to pay your bills you know these are survival level fears and anxieties and concerns if you get angry about this sort of stuff and you have trouble just basically managing your survival within life then that colors how you're able to perceive the world and basically you're not able to perceive the world as it is you perceive the world as it relates to you so what you need is how you perceive the world and it turns out the stuff that you don't need you don't even see you don't even realize it's there you overlook it that's how your ego distorts your entire perceptual system so with tier two you're moving beyond that and finally you can look at the world in what we might say is an objective manner tier 2 derives its values from the magnificence of existence itself rather than from selfish interests or group interests with tier two there's a much wider and deeper perspective of life you are no longer just concerned about your own petty little problems or how to be successful in life but you're concerned about the problems of mankind and even beyond mankind you're concerned with the problems of existence ideas become multi-dimensional interior - there's a lot of layer and complexity to things there is now an awareness of one's own perspective so you see that you're looking at the world from a perspective just like everybody else and that every perspective is partial including your own so you no longer give yourself special excuses and justifications that everyone in tier one was giving see the problem with Tier one fundamentally is that everyone is looking at the world from their perspective and they think that that is the truth and daddys reality so whether you're blue or orange or green that's basically how you look at the world and then you believe that people who aren't looking at the world from that same perspective as you that there's somehow deluded or wrong or crazy or insane or criminal or whatever other label you give to them in Tier two you realize now that's an illusion we all have a perspective to be alive is to have a perspective and there's really no stepping out of one's perspective there's no such thing as objectivity per se the way that Tier two develops objectivity is by realizing that there really isn't such a thing as objectivity that religion you thought was the absolute truth is no longer the app so there's just one perspective and that scientific model you thought was the absolute truth that's also no longer the absolute truth in tier two there's a lot more relativity and subjectivity and perceptions and perspectives become the entire name of the game in tier two there's a following a way of judgment criticism blaming and scapegoating which is very common in tier 1 fundamentally that's the biggest problem with tier 1 because everyone has their own perspective but they don't realize it it's just a perspective they end up judging and criticizing and blaming and scapegoating everybody else and then you have this giant food fight between all the different tier 1 colors fighting over each other trying to gain dominance and tier 2 is going meta and seeing that whole dynamic and noticing like oh I don't have to play that game I can rise above that at tier 2 demonization becomes untenable nobody looks like a demon to you anymore evil ceases to exist and it's recognized just to be a a selfish illusion tier 2 is non moralistic in tier 2 fear is replaced by curiosity and care and tier 2 is really what Abraham Maslow talked about as the self actualizing individual I have a fairly old episode called self-actualization where I give you a long laundry list of characteristics that I took notes on from from Abraham Maslow's work and it's a really powerful list and what I'm describing there and what Maslow is describing is the self actualizing individual and what is that well you can go and look at that video and it'll tell you all about that you can also read Maslow's work and and study that in depth but if that concept of self-actualization and all those qualities of a self actualizing individual if that resonates with you and it probably does because that's what actualize that org is about then that's tier two see there's something different there's something a little bit more elevated more transcendent about the self actualizing individual he's not like your typical guy who's just worried about work and sex and money and these sorts of things so that's what we're talking about so now we're gonna get into the the juicy stuff of explaining yellow now what I described just now that wasn't yellow I was describing tier two so tier two includes yellow and it also includes turquoise which we'll be covering next that was a general description of the difference between Tier one tier two so again I want to give credits to Clara graves dawn Beck and Christopher Cohen for developing the bulk of this model and many of the examples and information I'm providing to you in these episodes come directly from them so what is the essence of yellow then yellow we could call systemic integrative and multi perspectival yellow takes many perspectives upon reality that's one of its most defining characteristics and I was thinking about this in preparing for this talk and the image that came to mind for explaining this is well several images one is it's the difference between looking at the world through a spyglass the way that a pirate looks through the world or through a telescope that's looking at the world through one perspective one lens that's Tier one yellow is now looking at the world through the eye of an insect one of those compound eyes or through a camera that uses multiple lenses there's a camera that came out recently a few years ago that has like 15 lenses in the camera and each of these lenses is a different lenses positioned in a different place and it's a different size and it's a different aperture in different different settings and all of them you take this camera is a digital camera of course so it's going to interpolate using some kind of digital process can interpolate all the different 15 or so lenses that are there and it's going to produce one really high-resolution image to me that's the perfect metaphor for what yellow is doing that's what multi-perspective evil means and also you might be familiar with this phenomenon with telescopes there are radio telescope arrays which use multiple dishes and combine the the data for multiple dishes to create one image and that actually gives you a large it's as though you had a lens that was much larger than the sum of all the individual parts so that's what yellow is really about and you can tell when an individual is coming at the world from that kind of multi perspectival approach that's a different type of thinker than you normally see yellow once again shifts its pendulum from the green which was collective back to individualistic so every stage alternates orange was individualistic blue was collective green is collective and now we're swinging back from green into individualistic but it's a different kind of individualistic whereas orange was all about personal success damn the costs damn the collateral damage is too damn the environmental damage yellow is about expressing the self but not at the cost of others there is now a sensitivity and awareness to excessive self-interest and yellow strives to to limit that and yellow is now aware of its own footprint aware of its carbon footprint aware of its footprint within relationships yellow is is careful not to hurt people's emotions too much that it learned from green but also Green was a little bit too much of a bleeding-heart so yellow softens that and tempers it and brings it back down to a sort of a nice balance between orange and green because orange was too excessively selfish and green was perhaps too excessive excessively self-sacrificing so yellow finds a nice balance between those two yellow is about understanding the magnificence of existence so yellow is all about exploring reality using your mind every perspective is partially true to yellow there's a kernel of truth to be found in what everybody thinks even if they think something crazy and in more and wrong you can still find a kernel of truth there this of course makes yellow extremely open-minded yellow is able to consider all sorts of radical perspectives that normally stage blue or orange or green would just shut down and dismiss yellow is about designing integrated and open systems yellow is seeing life as a kaleidoscope of natural hierarchies systems and flows yellow people are the information elites and they are caring yet at the same time realistic not overly emotional like green so that's the essence of yellow when does yellow emerge yellow emerges from the limitations of green green becomes very communal istic and green goes into the excesses of mob mentality into the excesses of emotionality and so yellow brings that back yellow comes when green develops an increased discernment so not all perspectives are equal some are better than others and there's a recognition now after you've done the whole green thing of breaking down hierarchies now you start to realize wait a minute maybe there are such things as natural hierarchies sure they're artificial ones that man has constructed which are problematic and need to be broken down and maybe they're inefficient or they're oppressive but then there's also natural hierarchies what about those and then that moves you from green to yellow green ultimately becomes frustrated with fruitless activism there's a frustration with criticizing and protesting and joining movements and sitting down and talking and sharing our feelings yeah you can do that all day long you can do that but what does it get you does it actually solves the problems of mankind you might find that it doesn't and then that starts to get you to thinking like well what about the actual solutions let's actually come up with the actual solutions rather than just talking about it and sharing our feelings and that moves into yellow at the tail end of green you start to see the wreckage of the entire spiral it starts to become apparent to you that every stage is fighting with itself and with other stages above it or below it and so tier 1 is basically contributing to the indane well it's basically endangering and jeopardizing all of mankind and so as you see this you realize that you're not going to solve mankind's problems at Tier one you need to move to tier two you need to figure out how to get all of these different perspectives to work together in a healthy manner which then becomes the obsession of yellow ideas become more interesting to yellow than community which is what green was interested in yellow becomes really interested in how the other side thinks rather than just criticizing and judging and yellow now has an awareness of its own perspective so you could say that yellow emerges when Green becomes self-aware of itself as a perspective and green realizes oh yeah I'm just one out of many perspectives and no perspective is complete and even though Green was about exploring different perspectives to a certain degree Green was multicultural and green value diversity and Green was a bit relativistic still yes Green was doing that but it was still doing it from its own perspective and if someone wasn't agreeing with green then Green would get pissy about and get triggered about it and try to exclude that one yellow now starts to see oh my own perspective is not special Green held the position that greens perspective was somehow special and superior to all the other perspectives let me give you now a list of yellow values you're going to resonate with all these if you are in yellow values nuance and complexity open-mindedness perspectives of course novel concepts and points of view yellow values generating fresh insights understanding systems thinking nonlinear dynamics sustainability and long time horizons yellow values going meta yellow values big picture understanding versus technical analysis so orange tends to be very technical with its science whereas yellow still relies on science but now it's a more holistic approach and it's not so much about analysis but it's also about synthesis bringing things together you're not just dissecting everything you're bringing things together you're connecting the dots which yellow loves to do yellow is an expert a master at connecting the dots between things that normally people would think were not related yellow values penetrating to the core of an issue identifying and solving root problems one of the problems with the lower stages like orange and green is that they they didn't get to the root of the problems yes Green has a problem with excessive capitalism and yes orange has a problem with with whatever and usually though though their solutions are short-term and they're surface level which is why these problems keep recurring and nothing really gets solved but yellow now cares about getting to the root yellow doesn't want surface level solutions yellow values taking a multidisciplinary approach which often means mixing perspectives from the hard sciences with the soft sciences the physical science with the social sciences there's not some clear-cut line between those two and for yellow a lot of the most interesting research is happening at those intersections between the hard and the soft sciences in between different disciplines yellow values creativity and outside of the box solutions now orange would use the word thinking outside the box but still orange mostly thought inside the box because oranges box was usually like the corporate box so in a corporate boardroom you'll hear them talking about let's think of it outside the box guys but still they're thinking inside of the corporate box yellow now is truly able to think outside the box and find it unique and creative solutions to two problems yellow values ecology responsible ways of being studying models and modeling things yellow values spiral dynamics because of course ball dynamics is a model one out of many yellow values natural hierarchies yellow values education knowledge research and reading and when it comes to reading and knowledge yellow values diversity so like really diverse perspectives looking at how a problem might might be solved by some indigenous culture in Australia or in Africa or whatever you know that perspective and then combining that with some hard-nosed scientific perspective from quantum mechanics or from from chemistry or from some insight from mathematics so it's merging all these things together yellow values clean content and concentrated information yellow is like an information absorber any piece of knowledge any nugget of wisdom yellow just absorbs it puts it into his giant database into his commonplace book yellow values lifelong learning and yellow is proactive about learning so yellow will teach himself yellow is not gonna sit around and wait for somebody to explain something to him and he's not just gonna be learning in university when he's inside of a classroom yellow is learning all the time it's a dedication to lifelong learning because there's so much to learn yellow knows that if he spends the rest of his life learning every single day he's not going to even 1% of all there is to learn about reality that's how complex reality is yellow values expertise competence and experience yellow values complexity yellow values context and learning from history yellow values developing skills to become an instrument for the greater whole yellow values independent thinking neutrality being objective and impartial designing solutions for the entire spiral rather than just for one's own color the way that Tier one does yellow values meeting people where they're at building bridges social engineering ecological designs reducing the suffering of living systems pulling ideas from many different sources combining different ideas models and theories yellow is left brained where Green was sort of a shift to the right brain yellow is now a shift back to the left brain yellow values vision purpose and being a visionary oftentimes yellow people are great visionaries they can they can see all sorts of things far into the future yellow values requisite variety and mental flexibility yellow values self-actualization paradox uncertainty responsibility independence and autonomy and being a lone wolf because yellow is moving away from the sort of group hive mind that was characteristic of green now let me warn you that it's easy to confuse yellow with orange so let's help you to distinguish between why yellow is different from orange these are actually two radically different stages of or - two different attitudes really of understanding life first of all yellow is beyond concerns for self survival like we talked about whereas orange is wrapped up in them orange is often driven by personal success the need for money and achievement and recognition and earning prizes and awards yellow doesn't care about these things anymore yellow is beyond that sometimes I hear people say Oh leo you criticize Trump for being an orange and even red type of person but what if he's really stage yellow because after all Trump is great at manipulating systems and you Leo you say yellow is all about systems thinking so what if Trump is actually yellow but he's pretending to be orange and he's pretending to be green to manipulate the system that's yellow right no that's not yellow that's that's orange and red make sure that you don't confuse manipulation of systems with systems thinking these are two totally different things red and orange is brilliant at manipulating systems to manipulate a system you don't need to understand how the system really works all you care about is selfishly exploiting it for your own purposes and agenda to put yourself at the center or at the top of the system that's what orange and and red is about that's not what yellow is about systems thinking is not about how to manipulate the system to your advantage Systems thinking is about understanding the system seeing life in reality as a set of complex system interacting with each other and it's about caring about the health of the entire system it has nothing to do with you it's not about how you're related to the system it's just about maintaining the system you see like if you're a park ranger or you're some ecologist that's looking at some eco system you care about preserving the eco system you don't care about exploiting the eco system for your own you know benefits to line your own pockets so this is very different Trump is the opposite of yellow he's an anti systems thinker he doesn't think in terms of systems he's impulsive and he doesn't study anything the way that a yellow systems thinker would if you really want to understand systems thinking then I recommend you check out my video intro to systems thinking which is a long and juicy video that talks about all the intricacies of that and also check out my book list I have an entire category my book list called systems-thinking with several books that just talk about systems thinking it's good to read those because then you'll understand what a yellow person thinks like yellows attitude is non manipulative that's the key distinction between yellow and orange yellow cares about ecology and yellow cares about collateral damage unlike orange yellow has a long time horizon and orange has a short time horizon if an orange Wall Street broker or an orange CEO can manipulate next quarters profits to be as high as possible even though that's gonna cost the company down the road ten years down the road it's gonna destroy the company's infrastructures but hey if it gets me higher profits this quarter that's all that I care about because I'm only gonna be CEO of this company for the next three years and if I can just get a consecutive twelve quarters of constantly rising profits I'm gonna earn a hundred million dollars in stock options and everyone's gonna love me the the boardroom is gonna love me and and then I'm gonna be out and then what happens in ten years with the company who cares it's not my problem that's how orange things yellow doesn't think like that yellow is also non-judgmental and neutral in a way that orange isn't yellow is aware of the entire spiral in a way that orange isn't and yellow is aware of itself orange is not aware of itself yellow designs creates designs that accommodate for the entire spiral whereas orange schemes and manipulates to put himself at the top of the spiral at the top of a hierarchy to gain maximum benefit and profit for himself even if it hurts the spiral orange is not gonna care whereas yellow will care and yellow will try to avoid actions that will hurt the entire spiral so there you go now let me give you some more in-depth characteristics of yellow yellow is non-ideological yet highly principled yellow acts from an inter directed core yellow has a strong ethical core but this ethical core doesn't derive from some religion or some some set of Commandments or some book but just his his own inner wisdom and his own understanding of life that he has developed by assembling a big picture from many different perspectives yellow feels that understanding other worldviews is critical to navigating life there's some kernel of truth in every worldview for yellow and so sometimes yellow will study some obscure or arcane or otherwise distasteful worldview that normally a tier one individual wouldn't care about because he's gonna pick out that one diamond that's there and added to his repository of understanding for yellow few ideas are sacred all ideas are subject to revision and upgrade so yellow is about being inside of an evolving universe and being a reflection of that so if the universe in the world around you is evolving if society is evolving if culture is evolving then our mind needs to be evolving all the time to reflect that and so yellow becomes highly flexible whereas the lower stages are more rigid for yellow the world has come is a complex self-organizing natural system that requires integral solutions yellow sees the complexity of life yellow appreciates just how complex social issues are political issues like poverty and health care and the economy all of these are very complex nuanced issues there are no simple black-and-white answers to solve these which is why you require making lots of fine nuanced distinctions in yellows opinion and you require lots of knowledge because you need to do lots of research on every single topic which you wish to to somehow redesign so that it works better yellow introduces lots of ideas and connections and complexity so if you bring a yellow person into your team in your business or in your company or whatever they're gonna bring in all sorts of these complicated ideas they're gonna complicate your situation yellow has an overarching view of system of living systems yellow takes effective action to support the whole yellow integrates science religion and personal development yellow doesn't really care what others think about him what others think about you is not critical it's only interesting - yellow - yellow nothing is evil or purely negative there's a higher wisdom - even the bad stuff in life the yellow will look out for - yellow every system has value but that doesn't mean that every system is equal or every perspective is equal in the sort of sense of false equivalency which was a problem for green certain perspectives are just downright wrong and and very unhealthy and yellow will recognize that but even so there might be some little kernel of truth there that he'll still pluck out lessons to be learned you know from mankind's greatest atrocities there are lessons to be learned for yellow everything is constantly evolving and changing and yellow has given up clinging to tradition or the old status quo ways that we use to do things yellow believes in being adaptable adapting to your environment that's how you survive otherwise you destroy yourself or you go extinct yellow seas deep common threads everywhere yellow is able to hold two contradictory perspectives at the same time which most of the other stages are not able to do that just doesn't compute for them for yellow it's not a problem yellow has a greater degree of behavioral freedom than other stages yellow is very adaptable yellow believes in flexibly flowing with change in condition conditions yellow sees a need to develop natural living environments to support human evolution yellow has an overarching vision about a system and then determines what the system needs to grow into blossom so if you think of systems as plants then yellow is the gardener and a system what is a system a system could be something like an education system a university or some eco system like a natural park National Park or it could be some political party could be the government it could be a religious organization you know there's all sorts of these systems basically every every social institution as a system and many natural biological things our systems as well yellow moves freely between different value systems yellow can kind of jump in and out yellow believes in acupuncture interventions which means taking a small action to make a big impact yellow is all about finding those high leverage points yellow is aware of self bias and self-deception in a way that the lower stages were not yellow looks beyond merely human oriented interests there are larger concerns there global concerns universal concerns yellow has a large vision about the future for Humanity and yellow can have a lot of revolution and visionary ideas to actualize those ideas yellow tends to have an enormous drive and focus yellow recognizes the importance of consciousness and spirituality although yellow is not yet fully immersed in true spirituality yellow is still operating on the level of mind and intellect and analysis so true spirituality will begin to flourish at the tail end of yellow and into turquoise yellow sees the limitations of reductionism pragmatism behaviorism logical positivism rationalism materialism and libertarianism all of these sorts of isms these these rational scientific isms which orange was really hot on because orange was was developing these as an antidote to blue to blue fundamentalist religion yellow sees that these isms of science and a secularist of secularism that these isms are also limited and they're also not completely true yellow is able to be curious without judging and keeps asking questions for yellow there's a constant flow of new ideas and ways of thinking yellow understands how everything is connected and works together yellow is good at distinguishing between the essential and the ancillary and yellow is always keeping an eye on the big picture because that's what matters not the technical minutiae yellow loves learning and is a quick learner yellow is able to get in there study research a thing and then learn how it works yellow is open to learning from any source yellow has an attitude of open questioning and discovery for yellow every experience is a learning opportunity yellow has strongly humanistic and inclusive values yellow enjoys paradox and uncertainty and is adept at resolving paradoxes yellow is really good at that yellow can enter the point of view of all the lower spar stages and yellow sees all the lower stages as legitimate they have a right to exist they serve some kind of function so of course they don't need to be demonized yellow is able to facilitate the movement of people up and down the spiral yellow is able to dialogue with every stage of the spiral below it and yellow is here to help build systems for Tier one to evolve upward at its own pace one of the biggest differences between green and yellow is that Green try to get everyone below it to jump up to green so green might go to Africa or to the Middle East to cultures where the majority of the people there are still at stage purple or red or early blue and green tries to convert those people to becoming green hippies and that's just not going to work for them because they still need to go through a full blue cycle through a full orange cycle before they can get to green yellow is now aware of this problem and so yellow is not going to try to get everybody up to yellow immediately but to go through the right process to get there at their own pace yellow sees each system as the next step but not the best or the final yellow is nonreactive yellow is able to listen deeply yellow recognizes layered dynamics yellow is able to entertain an idea without believing in it yellow has a knack for gathering information from diverse sources yellow is continuously changing it's a conceptual world that it lives in yellow prefers elegant simplicity and functionality versus opulence and displays of power or status red and orange and blue to some extent they like these sort of displays ritualistic displays of power of hierarchy yellow is beyond all this yellow has no need for status or exhibitionism yellow is not concerned with comparisons rather than comparing itself to others yellow compares itself to itself which is unlike orange because orange was all about besting the competition being better than everybody else the gym that sort of mentality being strongest the buffest the richest the sexiest whatever yellow cannot be coerced bribed or intimidated now of course this is a generalization here this doesn't mean that all yellow people are completely immune to coercion or bribery or intimidation but generally speaking yellow is beyond that because to intimidate or to bribe somebody that person has to be at a level of self survival right because that's where you have fears and that's where you have personal needs whereas when you transcend out into the being level then you transcend the ability to be intimidated and coerced yellow doesn't get involved with criticism or controlling behavior yellow doesn't desire to control or to be controlled yellow doesn't create enemies and doesn't scapegoat yellow is immune to radicalization you can't brainwash yellow because yellow thinks from so many different perspectives that you can't trap him into a into one paradigm or into one way of thinking you can't trap them into a cult yellow is drawn to hot spots where the evolving crisis demands new insights so what is that area maybe within politics maybe within some discipline of science maybe within some environmental movement there's a hot spot or something new is happening there's a crisis going on people are bickering back and forth they're not able to resolve the problem because they're there looking at it from the wrong perspectives that's where yellow can come in he can see that and figure that out yellow has a meta understanding of human nature and conflict yellow is aware of backfiring mechanisms that's a lot of what systems thinking is about is looking forward at how a system is going to move such that the system is gonna cycle back in and feed into itself systems are all about various kinds of feedback loops so this is very important for example for Public Policy and for for running a good government because a lot of times you create some sort of law or you you make some sort of change in public policy but then that ends up actually worsening the problem in ways that weren't expected so yellow is good at anticipating those mechanisms yellow has a non candidate uncanny skill at resolving complex issues yellow has a sense of awe and playful delight with the new and the novel I can relate to that one for yellow Authority is contextual which means that the leader is gonna be the best equipped and the most capable so if you get a small group of let's say ten yellow people all together who's gonna turn out to be the leader well they're all gonna talk amongst each other and they're gonna decide okay what's the problem we're working on let's say these ten people are working on mmm green energy okay green energy which one of us has the most knowledge who has a PhD in green energy here who's read the most books on green energy oh you did okay so now you're gonna be in charge that's how yellow determines the leader whereas at the other stages it's not about that like for orange for example or for or for blue the leader is gonna be the one who is in next in line in the hierarchy in the chain or what that's for blue for orange the leader is gonna be the one who is the most ambitious and probably the most ruthless and the most manipulative so every stage is a different leadership structure hello favors minimal consumption yellow enjoys human appetites but doesn't become a slave to them yellow can be gentle or ruthless conformist or non conformist it's hard to pin yellow down because yellow is kind of slippery and a bit of a chameleon yellow is good at finding win-win-win solutions what is a win-win-win solutions a triple win solution what's the triple win so the first two wins is like if we're dealing together let's say we're doing a an oil deal the oil company the government or doing some kind of oil deal with environmental regulations or something like that right so of course one party could win the other party could lose or both parties could find a solution that's winning for both parties that's good but at that's usually what orange looks for if it can but then there's the third level which is finding the third win the third win is that the entire spiral wins it's looking out for the entire spiral so can we find a solution that's good for you and for me and for the entire ecological system as a whole see that's an extra dimension of thinking 3d thinking rather than 2d thinking yellow doesn't join wholeheartedly and group experiences does not join so yellow tends to be a bit of a lone wolf yellow prefers to keep a low profile and to stay on the edges of an organization yellow doesn't usually like a lot of attention yellow tends to work in the background yellow will not sacrifice himself for the commune the way that green would and yellow has a softened masculinity in orange masculinity was all about being alpha and being macho and demonstrating your macho nests with various kinds of gross material displays so you would display your your muscles or how much you could benchpress at the gym or how expensive your sports car or how hot your girlfriend was that was sort of what masculinity was about at orange but once you pass through green green softens you up makes you more compassionate more empathetic puts your you as a man if you're a man puts you in touch with your feminine side a bit more so your masculinity becomes more integrated and at yellow you can be masculine still have a feminine side and that only heightens your masculinity women of course love this because women actually don't like jerks who are just flaunting their masculinity around that only they only like that in the short term they don't like that long term and so really this is the best of both worlds orange you might say is a sort of juvenile immature masculinity whereas yellow is a is a is a more mature softened masculinity and that that's just the right balance they you should be looking for as a man so let's go into some examples of yellow people and various domains and things that are yellow so first what I have for you is Abraham Maslow he's a really good example of a stage yellow thinker another great example that I love is Epping pagan heaven pagan he's not a very well-known self-help guru and person of almond guru and sort of business marketing guru but he has some amazing courses and he has he does some amazing workshops I don't know if he still does them but he used to and he's just like the perfect perfect example of what a stage yellow person is like he's very neutral he's very balanced and fair he's able to to think at the wart and look at the world from multiple perspectives from a scientific perspective from the business perspective from the emotional artistic perspective kind of blended all together and is just perfect mix Noam Chomsky I mentioned him in the green episode about how he's an example of green and he is because he has a lot of liberal progressive sort of ideas but also he's beyond green because also what I noticed in Noam Chomsky which I find so remarkable and and beautiful is that he's able to be very neutral now of course if you're a right-wing or you're conservative you say to yourself Leo what are you smoking how can noam chomsky be neutral when he's so progressive and he has all these radical socialist ideas well you have to understand what neutrality really is neutrality doesn't mean that you take the middle ground between all perspectives so if you have one person in a debate arguing against slavery and one person arguing for slavery neutrality doesn't mean that you just say oh okay yeah we'll just we'll just go with something in the middle that's not true neutrality true neutrality is about being very careful to step outside of your own self biases your own egoic agenda and looking at the situation and deciding what the real facts are based on a sort of a unbiased look and sometimes what that means that you'll side with one side doesn't mean that you'll go down the middle on every issue so what Noam Chomsky is good at he's looking he's good at looking for example at American foreign policy and seeing how selfish it is which of course disturbs a lot of stay Georgia sage blue people who are Americans because you tend to be blind to the selfish policies foreign policy of your own country but Noam Chomsky is good it's kind of stepping outside of that so he's a real good thinker to model in terms of that whether you agree with his political ideas or not that's a separate issue what I'm talking about here is he's a sort of attitude it's an attitude of looking at the world from outside of your own perspective and gathering information from lots and lots of diverse sources this is something that stage blue-and-orange just cannot really do other examples Fritjof Capra is a really great example of a systems thinker he has a lot of books that he's written specifically about systems thinking Carl Sagan quantum mechanics as a field and the fathers of quantum mechanics like David Bohm Albert Einstein Niels Bohr or Schrodinger Arthur Eddington Richard Fineman Freeman Dyson John Archibald wheeler all of these people and others like them these tended to be the most cutting-edge scientists and actually many of these people were even beyond yellow they were at the at the highest end of yellow starting to peek into turquoise which is why many of them became mystics or at least they studied mysticism and they were very they're very open and ultimately favorable to mysticism and if you want to know more about that then go check out my episode about quantum mechanics the two-part series in part two is where I give you a lot of quotes from them which shows the evidence of how receptive they were to the mystical perspective and they were able to find a really good balance between the science the cutting-edge science of quantum mechanics a hundred years ago that was being developed and mysticism and spirituality uh other examples Paul fire abend Kurt girdle Obama President Obama now again if you're conservative a right-wing you're gonna have a problem with this because it seems like I'm putting Obama so high it's likely oh no Obama wasn't that high and you might even criticize me from the left here by saying that no Leo how could you say Obama was yellow when in fact Obama was he sold out to the capitalist and the corporate Democrats look I don't want to make this a political discussion this is this is we're talking about something way beyond politics we're talking about attitude if you look at interviews with Obama look at how he talks look at how he analyzes issues he's a very complex thinker he turned he thinks in terms of systems he thinks in terms of ecology not just I'm not talking about the environment ecology is more than just saving trees or saving the rainforest ecology everything in government should really be about ecology is about how do you create systems that sustain themselves that don't ultimately end up cannibalizing or backfiring now of course I don't know Obama personally I don't know the the intricacies and the details of how he thinks but just the idea I get by looking at interviews with him is that he's a yellow type of thinker now you have to understand though just because you have a yellow thinker doesn't mean you put this guy in office and all the sudden he solves all of our problems that's not how it works at all because when you take a yellow person and you put him into a giant bureaucracy which is predominantly blue and orange and is completely corrupted by lobbying and corporate interests and religious interests and all sorts of other things then you have almost no chance of success in that kind of situation which is what Obama ran into he was obstructed and and really he was ahead of his time right now America is not ready for a yellow president America needs a green president first before it can get a yellow president even a green presidents gonna be problematic because the right wing is gonna resist him so much and that's that's that's fine that's just where we're at that's okay and of course Obama I'm sure he has a lot of green in him as well and I'm sure he has still plenty of orange in him and I'm sure that he he was influenced by corporate interests and stuff like that so again let's not get into all the nitty-gritty political debates here because this is taking our eye off the ball speaking of which we've got George Soros another example of a yellow thinker now again you might criticize George Soros because you disagree with his political views but that's not what I mean what I mean is think about how he thinks about the markets think about how he thinks about public policy and you're gonna start to see that he's a a long term systems thinker Joseph Campbell is a really good example of stage yellow the psychologist Erich Fromm Claire graves of course Don Beck and spiral dynamics these are the epitome zuv yellow thinking Elia pergamene chaos theory cybernetics biomimetics NLP Alfred Korzybski the leading edge of academia tends to skew yellow futurists and an example from Star Trek is the humans or the Vulcan so what's interesting in Star Trek is that the humans in Star Trek they they don't behave like normal 21st century humans there's a certain elevation with which they talk with each other how they relate even when they have a dispute or a problem on the enterprise or whatever ship they're on they're always resolving their problems in a sort of yellow metal level way and the Vulcans are also sort of logical left brained and and kind of sophisticated complex thinkers and for the humans in Star Trek what do they have they have the prime directive what is the prime directive don't interfere with the goings-on of other species and races that's their most important rule that's a very yellow sort of rule right because the humans in Star Trek they're conscious enough to recognize that if hey if we get involved with all the stuff that's going on in the in the star systems and all the galaxies that are out there then we're probably going to create more damage then then if we just let those people naturally evolve so even though the humans and Star Trek they they run across all sorts of primitive races that are fighting with each other tribal warfare and racism and all these sorts of problems but they don't get pushy about having those people change because they know that those people need to evolve on their own terms so they sort of they try to help where they can where they see that a sort of strategic active punctual intervention is available but if it's not generally they just try to let this thing run its course that's a very yellow attitude other examples of yellow sustainable living ecology eco cities and these modern versions of urban planning that are happening now in certain cities like in the Middle East in Dubai and other cities in the United Emirates and Qatar they're developing and building these sort of like totally new cities in the desert from scratch and there designing it to make sure that they're eco-friendly and all the roads and everything is built in such a way that is perfect for human life and like it's well organized and design that's a yellow sort of design conflict resolution Shinzon young's mindfulness system if you're familiar with that one now Shinzon yung himself I would place at turquoise actually but also there's a certain facet of Shenzhen and his teachings which is very very yellow he's very nerdy he likes to bring science into it he likes to analyze it to death and he has this whole complicated matrix of different meditation techniques and here's what you do this way that way you know he's turned into this whole system which strikes me as a very yellow approach to the Poisson uh Wikipedia is a yellow sort of project Ludwig Wittgenstein Jacques Derrida Buckminster Fuller Willard Klein Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google strike me as very forward-thinking visionary yellow strategic thinkers and Steve Jobs from Apple Paul Allen from Microsoft these are similar type of minded people Ella and musk even though I've mentioned him before when I was talking about orange for example I think musk is a is also a systems thinker he's a nuance thinker and so he definitely has plenty of yellow in him it's just a question of how much orange how much yellow how much green he's somewhere somewhere in there Joe Rogan I think is a pretty good example of someone who's green and Beyond it's interesting because Joe Rogan has a lot of fans who follow him who are in the blue slash orange because Rogan has the sort of macho appearance and also sort of talks about macho topics sometimes he's a comedian so he he's very easy to relate to and just people find him interesting and kind of charismatic but um but well I think a lot of viewers misses how evolved Rogan is you know Rogan is into psychedelics ro to spirituality Rogen is into looking at reality from all sorts of perspectives that's why he's very open-minded he's able to listen to people talking about this politics and that politics and this technology in this science and that history and this archaeology and it's like everything you know just like this Mortgage Board of stuff and he's able to to maintain his sort of neutrality on all that stuff which is which is really remarkable that's not easy to do not easy to do in in in a position like he has he could easily just be have become an ideologue like Alex Jones but he's not because he's more evolved than that whether that's because he's takes in so much psychedelics and weed and all this sort of stuff edibles five Meo I don't know what it's from but um but it's great and you know sometimes people people think all but he's so macho and all this yeah he's macho but at the same time look like he hunts his own meat so even though he's not a vegan he himself has said that he's so disgusted for example with factory farming of animals that if he didn't hunt his own meat he would be a vegan so he made like a decision should I should I go hunt my own meat the way like our ancestors did he find that to be integral with with his philosophy and way of living life and that's fine that's exactly the kind of yellow move that you would make you would say well I don't like factory farming so either I'm gonna become a vegan or hey maybe I'm just gonna go like hunt my own deer with a bow and arrow and then that makes a little bit more challenging and it's both fun for me and it also maybe actually helps helps overcrowded populations in certain areas where there's too many deer and they're just shooting them and they're you know they're they're going to waste so maybe I can go hunt there you know so it's it's a very kind of systems systems thinking approach I should also mention Sam Harrison Jordan Jordan Peterson again I've talked about them in the past has exhibiting stages of orange maybe even stages and shades of blue but really if you want to give the most charitable charitable evaluation of these two thinkers then I think you have to say that they have quite a bit of yellow in them now are they 100% solid yellow I would say no and the reason I would say that for example for Sam Harris because I feel like he doesn't quite for example know how to integrate Islam properly I feel like he demonizes it and judges it I feel like he's also kind of moralistic and he still I feel like he's not seeing the entire spiral I feel like he's still reacting against certain lower stages in the spiral and not fully integrating and not really finding a way to bridge those those different gaps he still stuck on some sort of ideology there's still some sort of rationalism in him that he's kind of like pushing and trying to get get in there he's not truly able to be neutral so that's holding him back so maybe he's like 50% yellow and also got plenty of green and orange and him and as far as Jordan Peterson also I think Jordan Peterson he is a sophisticated and nuanced thinker he does pull from many different sources he does read a lot he does study a lot he brings in a lot of information into his lectures and so forth which is great so in that sense he's yellow so maybe he's 50% yellow maybe he's 80% yellow I don't know I ultimately don't know these people well enough to make a fully accurate evaluation of them only they can know where they're really at but again I think Peterson is stuck in certain regressive elements of orange and blue because he's he sort of stuck on this pushing the sort of masculinity agenda I don't I don't know what that is about that seems very regressive to me he's also stuck on this sort of moralization in the same way that that same hair Sam Harris is not willing to admit that morality is an invention of the human mind and and there's still a sort of ideology there just like there's not a recognition of of the entire spiral there's not a recognition of really like trying to to truly see the world from from different perspectives it's still kind of a pushing of his perspective on the world which you see him doing so that's holding him back now again I'm I'm giving you lots of examples of people in every one of these spiral episodes that I do and the reason I do that is because I think that it helps you to see how practical spiral dynamics is and how you can actually apply it in your own life because if I just came up here and just gave you a bunch of abstract principles and values you wouldn't see how it connects that's why I give you all these political examples and controversial examples and all the sort of stuff a lot of these people I don't know them personally and I haven't read and studied all of their work in depth so my evaluations of them could be misguided or maybe I'm only seeing a certain facet of their personality but not the full thing that's because I'm just kind of throwing this out there loosely for you you should take this model and apply for yourself and you might have different evaluations you might look at some of these people that I've categorized as yellow or orange or green or blue and you might say no leo they're really something else they're higher they're lower okay fine that's what I want you to do don't just take these examples blindly from me think through them for yourself and ultimately remember that it's not about evaluating other people it's mostly using this as a tool for growing yourself so the person you should be most concerned about evaluating is yourself and that's why I'm giving you all these examples and of course the last example is actualized org actualize that org is I think a really good example of what yellow looks like I try to present to you many many different perspectives if you haven't noticed yet a very multi perspectival approach I can talk to you about insights from Christianity from Zen from Buddhism from yoga from Tantra from from Judaism from Islam from science from quantum mechanics from evolutionary theory from for mathematics from logic from you know like from psychology from business from stuff I learned from pickup and stuff I learned from online marketing and and video game just like all of it all of it all of it comes together into this giant melting pot and from that you get the most rich and diverse perspective that's really my whole secret to getting a deep understanding of reality is that I recognized a long time ago back when I was about 16 or 18 years old when I first started to really think deeply about the metaphysics and epistemology of reality is I noticed that the biggest problem that I see people all around me making and people throughout history is that they get stuck in one perspective in one paradigm and then they're not able to break out of it so my solution to that was very very simple and very pragmatic what I decided is that I'm going to scour hundreds of different sources very diverse sources which challenge my opinions and that's why I was able to grow so much over the last five or ten years because when I started out ten years ago I was a materialist an atheist I didn't believe in God I just blindly accepted evolution I dismissed intelligent design I dismissed psyckadeli there's so much stuff I dismissed but the one thing I had going for me which allowed me to correct all that stuff when other people are not able to correct it I see them getting stuck all the time in this stuff is because fundamentally I didn't lock myself into any one perspective and so I just kept reading and researching and staying very open-minded and trying different stuff exploring psychedelics exploring different religions call your different retreats talking different people interviewing you know flying around the country flying around the world doing yoga and doing this and doing that I watching a lot of diverse videos reading tons of books having my own insights doing a lot of contemplation and through that entire process just like a whole new world opened up to me stuff that would would be completely unimaginable ten years ago for me and the one thing that made it happen is simply my open-mindedness and my my yellow attitude of looking for more and more diverse perspectives you have to love looking at the world from alternative points of view let me give you a couple of final examples that will really help you to understand yellow so let's take the example of vegetarianism what does vegetarianism look like at green versus yellow a green vegetarian is usually sort of an obnoxious proselytizing vegetarian so the green vegetarian she has her epiphany that eating animals is wrong and factory farming is horrible and disgusting and so now she's very empathetic and sympathetic to so she joins the vegetarian movement and and now she goes out there and she protests and she's an animal rights activist and all this and any time she sees someone eating meat this triggers her this makes her emotional she says how could you and she judges them and she tries to convert them and she tries to tell them about all but the benefits of vegetarianism right and she's a little bit over the top with it whereas a yellow vegetarian still basically understands all that same stuff but is more mellow and tempered and has an additional higher level understanding a meta understanding that you can't just take a meat-eater who is hooked and addicted to eating meat and just moralize to them and proselytize and convert them into a vegetarian that's not an effective strategy yellow understands that yes we can discuss all these issues but I'm not going to go out of my way to force anybody to become a vegetarian and so yellow is more laid-back and chill about the whole process so yellow cares but yellow is not a bleeding heart and yellow understands that product that that that person who is a meat-eater he has to go through his own process see he's not gonna learn from my experiences he has to learn from his own experiences so maybe I can I can float that balloon out there and I can bring bring up this possibility to one of my meat-eater friends or something if I'm yellow if I'm a yellow vegetarian I can kind of put that idea out there for them but I'm not gonna push them too much and I'm gonna kind of let them to come to their own conclusions right because I'm sensitive to the fact that they need to move up the spiral in the same way that you have a small child you can't just proselytize or browbeat that child into learning calculus the child will learn calculus once he goes through arithmetic and he learns his multiplication tables and he learns geometry and trigonometry he goes to to high school and maybe at the very end of high school he can start to learn calculus he has to grow into it he can't learn at first grade and there's nothing wrong with him for not being able to learn it in first grade let me give you a few more examples of yellow specifically let's focus on yellow political solutions public policy solutions in the Middle East with the economy with the education system and with the health care system so here's how a yellow person would look at problems in the Middle East and there are lots of different problems in the Middle East there are problems with the Israelis and Palestinians there are problems with in Iraq their religious problems and human rights problems so there's so there's a lot of stuff to tackle there but let's take the israeli-palestinian problem so an orange or blue person would look at that problem and he would take a side you would say oh the Israelis are right or the pastilla Palestinians are right and then he would support one of those causes whereas the yellow person will look at the entire situation and first before jumping in with any kind of policy prescriptions yellow is say let's actually get down on the ground let's go into you some Israelis and Palestinians and lest let's see where they're at where are they in the spiral what percentage of Israel and what percentage of Palestine is at stage red blue orange green and so forth so let's first do that let's have interviews with these people let's really understand their perspective let's understand the Israeli perspective and the Palestinian perspective let's see where there's common ground and let's see where the differences are let's see where there are common values so yellow will try to take all the stakeholders into account making sure not to exclude anybody yellow is not going to come in there and act opinionated and push his own political agenda because yellows highest agenda is just to have a healthy system how do we get a healthy system working in Israel and in Palestine that works for both of them so after yellow assesses all the values then yellow will try to establish a super ordinate goal that both sides can agree to and some common shared values that they cannot both work on and yellow will try to teach both sides about spiral dynamics and how this model can help them avoid the various traps and one of the things that yellow is going to be very careful about is making sure to defuse ideological polarization which is so common in the Middle East especially with Israelis and Palestinians and if you think that what I'm describing here is some pipe dream that only works in a textbook you're very wrong because actually dawn Beck the developer spiral dynamics and people that he's worked with and students that have studied under him they have actually done this exact process that I'm describing with the Israelis and the Palestinians they they worked there for 10 years in the early and middle 2000s doing exactly this process and they were having some great results but of course some you know the situation there is very political and it's much difficult more difficult than it seems and they ran into some obstacles with funding because they need funding to run this project they ran into a problem because they they had funding for a while they were doing this whole scheme there and they were getting good results and they were actually able to teach spiral dynamics to stage purple and red and blue Israelis and Palestinians which the majority of them are but they ran out of funding in 2008 when the the the stock market collapsed and the global recession happened and so that that derailed their plans but spiral dynamics is one of the best tools we've got for example if you really care about solving via israeli-palestinian conflict and many other conflicts in the Middle East so it's a very powerful system I'm actually gonna add a book to my book list in the future that describes how spiral dynamics for example applies specifically to Middle East problems and also add a book about how spiral dynamics applies to economic problems here in the United States speaking of which let's talk a little bit about how a yellow person would look at the economy the problem with economy is that most economists and politicians have strong opinions about how the economy should be and so basically they're ideologues they're either staunch capitalists the milton friedman's of the world or staunch libertarians or the sort of I and Randi ins or they are like the socialists and the Communists and whatever else the progressives right so people take sides and the difference between doing all that and a tear to approach a stage yellow approach is that a stage yellow person again would come in there and say okay what are the systemic problems in our economy who are all the stakeholders the people at Wall Street what are their what's their value system what level are they at what are their fears what are their concerns and what about our you know the religion the religious right in this country what are their concerns what are their values what are their opinions on the economy and what's the what's the average person's opinions in New York or in California about the economy and what are the different value systems and what is actually causing these recessions and and and and problems that we have in the economy or the sort of capitalistic exploitation cannibalism that we start to see what's causing this and so he will actually do studies do research not just take ideological positions but actually do the study do the science figure that out and then come up with systemic solutions for that see but in order to do that notice how neutral and objective you have to be you have to not be biased and you have to not be ideological you could imagine a similar type of approach with the education system again with the education system people become ideological they say well I'm for public schools and the other person said no I'm for private schools and then they'll have somewhere to debate about this this doesn't solve anything a yellow person would look at the systemic issues within our education system actually take a look where are the problems what solutions have we tried in the past that haven't worked let's go to different corners of the world and analyze different systems that they have and find the best system maybe in Europe maybe in Asia maybe in Australia you know where do they have the best test scores maybe in Scandinavia let's go find those let's see what they're doing right let's try to integrate that into our system and then what would be the obstacles how do we make sure that all the stakeholders are satisfied here not just so that we're jamming our own ideological position down someone's throat and of course the same thing with the health care system so there you start to see just how practical spiral dynamics can be and that if you really care about solving these problems notice that these problems like in the Middle East the economy the education problem the health care problem these are intractable sort of problems these are problems that have existed for probably fifty or a hundred years or maybe even more and no matter how much we try whether Republicans come into power Democrats come into power whatever we're not able to solve them which tells you there's a deeper systemic issue we're not getting to the root of it so yellow would actually focus on doing that now of course that doesn't mean that yellow would succeed in every situation yellow isn't flawless but you can see that this is a much more intelligent approach all right let's take a quick intermission don't go anywhere because I'll be right back all right let's talk about how to know if you are really yellow I think that there can be quite a few people who are starting to shift into yellow but they're not quite solid yellow and as I was studying yellow and a lot of depth in preparation for this episode I really started to become aware of certain areas where I still have more growing to do to really become solid and yellow and so I came up with just for myself some pointers to test myself to see am I really solid yellow or am I still regressing back into the first tier so I think this is important to cover so here's how you know this and I cannot stress this enough are you non-judgmental this I think is perhaps the most important quality of being solid yellow and this one is really tricky because it's difficult to give up your judgment ality is it's just it's just something you've been doing your whole life it's something that you see in the news it's something you see all your friends doing all around you it's been done and your family has been doing it so this is one of those things that's very counterintuitive to surrender all of your judgments because your ego is telling you know I got to keep judging leo if I stop judging then all of this bad stuff will happen to me which of course is just a trick that's not true at all to really get to the highest levels in life you have to stop judging have you stopped demonizing people have you stopped debating and arguing with people this is completely pointless as a distraction have you stopped moralizing and blaming and scapegoating have you stopped crusading this point about crusading is very important Tier one people go on intellectual ideological Crusades I'm not talking about physical violent Crusades most of us are way beyond that at least I hope you are but many of us still get trapped in ideological Crusades where we go on rants against people and we have our favorite enemy whether it's the right or the left or it's the progressives or it's the neo-nazis and the alt writers or whatever it is you got some sort of ideological bug up your ass and that's driving you that's preventing you from becoming solid yellow let it go and that's hard for some people to do because people build an entire career out of crusading against something so that's very tricky so make sure that you don't corner yourself into a career where you have to do crusading in order to pay your bills because if you if you paint yourself into that corner then guess what you're gonna justify your crusading and you're probably gonna keep doing it because it's paying your bills and what else are you gonna do watch out for that also are you able to be impartial like really impartial really be able to step outside of your own agenda that's so important for yellow can you see the world through the lower stages do you see the validity of the lower stages or do you think that the lower stages should not exist that's a key differentiator between tier 1 and tier 2 do you see that every perspective is partially true there's something you could learn from every perspective I don't care how vile it is I don't care how ridiculous it seems there's something there you can learn if you can just let your own agenda go actually step into the shoes the other person see the world from their perspective and there was something you will learn from that now I'm not saying that you should go become a Nazi what I'm saying is that you can look at the world from the perspective of a Nazi and learn something that doesn't mean that now you are a Nazi and that now you will think that that is the only true perspective all right so be careful about that because it's very easy for the ego to say aha leo so what you're saying is that every perspective is partially true that means all of my ago--at perspectives that other people are criticizing they're actually true and so you're just justifying what I've always believed is true no I'm not that's not what I'm doing I'm actually trying to get you to step outside of your perspective so whatever you believe let it go and go explore other perspectives and if you are having difficulty doing that then you're not really solidly yellow yet yeah more growing to do and the more you are able to do that the more yellow you will become also are you genuinely curious to explore other points of view this isn't just something that you do because I'm forcing you to do it it's not like a bitter pill you have to swallow a yellow person actually enjoys jumping between different points of view it's actually fun it's exciting it's interesting you're looking at the world from different perspectives that means you're always seeing something do you're learning something new that's exciting that's interesting rather than just being stuck in your boring Christian perspective or your boring Muslim perspective or your boring rationalist logical perspective also are you able to go meta are you able to by going meta what I mean is stepping outside of whatever dynamic you're observing seeing the meta mechanism this could be whether you're in a university or whether you're reading a book or whether you're exploring religion or something at you you need to be able to step outside of the thing that you are participating in to really be able to observe it impartial II do you see that mankind's problems are not personal but systemic and they are really nobody's fault that's huge to be able to see that until you can see this you're gonna scapegoat and blame people because you're gonna think oh it's the it's the Liberals fault or it's the Arabs fault or it's the Christians fault or is it's the evangelicals oh it's those ignorant people it's those people it's that that's really not the issue the issue is systemic we have systemic problems of ignorance of lack of education we have systemic problems in the medical industry we have six emic economic problems we have systemic racial problems and gender problems and cultural problems and religious and spiritual problems and scientific problems and they're all systemic so if you want to solve them we need to first of all acknowledge that stop blaming people and then we can get serious about understanding the system studying the system right because when you take an issue personally when you think that the israeli-palestinian problem is a personal problem because of those ugly Palestinians or those ugly Israelis you're not getting anywhere that doesn't that doesn't lead to any serious solutions and it's not really true that that problem exists because one or the other side is ugly or bad or evil there is a systemic issue there that you haven't recognized yet here are some common sayings from a stage yellow perspective we cannot are solve our problems with the same level of thinking that we use to create them the map is not the territory every perspective is part true and part false wisdom is knowing what you don't know perspective is everything the better the model the bigger the problem new times require new thinking different strokes for different folks it takes all kinds that last one is important what that means it takes all kinds is that when you're a systems thinker you understand that not everyone in the world can be nor should be exactly like you and in fact if the world was that way then it would be a terrible problem it would be a terrible problem if every human being was a Christian or a Muslim or an atheist or a libertarian or a Marxist or whatever else that would be a terrible problem the world requires specialization the world is like a giant ant colony and in an ant colony you have your worker ants you have your warrior ants you have your breeding ants you have other kinds of ants and they all work together there they all specialize in different things different kinds and they all balance out in the end but there are these interesting asymmetries which lead to the smooth functioning of this entire ant colony so you've got to start to see mankind in that way and when you see human societies that way then you stop trying to proselytize everybody to be just like you to think just like you to believe just like you to have exactly your perspective hmm so that's um that's a that's a that's a good little tip there for becoming more yellow what triggers yellow well what's interesting is that there's a difference now between tier 1 and tier 2 and how tier 2 gets triggered tier 2 is not easy to trigger but of course yellow is not perfect so it does still get triggered but usually it'll take more to trigger yellow and yellow will not get triggered in nearly as severe and emotional ways as the tier 1 colors will so in a nutshell what triggers yellow is the blindness and the infighting of tier 1 because yellow has this amazing vision for how mankind could be if we could just all get together stop fighting stop scapegoating each other and really wake up to what's going on wake up to all the systemic dynamics but of course even though yellow understands all that yellow also understands that a Tier one hasn't gotten there yet but sometimes yellow can forget that and can get frustrated nonetheless so at Tier two maybe it's not so much about getting triggered it's more about being frustrated with the lack of progress or the lack of awareness that exists all around the world has the stage yellow you're gonna be pretty lonely you're gonna be less than 1% of the entire population so it's gonna be hard for you to find like-minded individuals although you can so don't turn that into a limiting belief but generally you're not going to be understood by the average person on the street and your views are not going to be represented in the media in politics on online forums in magazines and and so forth so we've got to be ready for that what else triggers yellow black and white thinking because yellow is the exact opposite that yellows a nuanced thinker non systemic thinking people who think to short term yellow can be triggered by excessive rationalism reductionism and scientism people who turn signs into a religion or a dogma and of course yellow is frustrated with all kinds of dogmatic and ideological people of which there are plenty of on all sides including in universities and in churches and in different countries everywhere you find ideological people yellow is frustrated by conformity and groupthink yellow is frustrated by polarization demonization and radicals one of the biggest problem for yellow is radicals because every every group tends to have its radical elements whether it's the left or the right or the Muslims or the Israelis or whoever else there's going to be a small core of radicals these are the ideologues so usually stage blue maybe stage orange or so or stage green sometimes these are the radicals and they will try to radicalize the average members of the group who are not radicals and turn them radical such that the radicals now have this crusade because the radicals are on a crusade and so what this this antagonizes both sides and nothing can get resolved in this situation so one of the biggest enemies for for yellow is these radicals and they can frustrate yellow because these radicals will spoil yellows plans and in fact what the radicals will do is the radicals of course will demonize yellow and call yellow a radical because that's what radicals do they just project onto everybody else of course yellow is not a radical but when you're a blue or orange or green radical you can't see that and in fact the radicals for criticize yellow yellow is is too neutral yellow isn't passionate enough yellow is just trying to take the middle road everywhere and that's not actually true but from the radicals perspective that's how it can look what else frustrates yellow is people who don't understand spiral dynamics that can be very frustrating spiral dynamics is a pretty complicated system it takes a long time to explain it a long time to really learn it and so once you do have spiral dynamics in your tool belt and you use that as a lens to look at the world you can see so many problems that are just so obvious and you can see all the solutions from within spiral dynamics but of course nobody else out there knows spiral dynamics the way that you do and so they are gonna be blind to the obvious things that you see and actually they're gonna be in denial about it - because Tier one is generally in denial about spiral dynamics yellow is triggered by consumerism and profiteering religion can trigger yellow fixed structures which offer no space for knowledge development analysis or conceptualizing that can really frustrate yellow red tape and bureaucracy can frustrate yellow working in groups can be frustrating for yellow because yellow is a visionary yellow kind of just like gets down to the nitty-gritty does the research kind of gets his hands dirty and figure stuff out whereas in a group usually people are waffling and they're just talking and wasting time and that can frustrate yellow yellow is frustrated by myopia the lack of vision that people have when you're a visionary it's pretty lonely because most people don't share your vision and so you have to cultivate that vision within yourself and that's what my life purpose course is about is to help you to do that and I feel like a lot of the content that i release is really about helping you to kind of cultivate your own vision for yourself whether it's for your own enlightenment your own awakening your own development or for some impact you want to have in the world your life purpose and then kind of push that through despite the fact that the world around you is not going to be supportive of those efforts generally speaking yellow can be frustrated by how most people are focused on short-term petty human issues rather than the higher issues of well I would call these the spiritual issues the metaphysical issues the existential issues the global issues that face mankind yellow is frustrated by people who lack an interest in the big picture people who are overly technical and focused on trivia and yellow can be triggered by politics and gamesmanship and manipulation because yellow wants to rise above all that and yellow doesn't like being sucked back in to politics what are some of the limitations of yellow in Prior episodes I talked about the unhealthy excesses of each color with yellow it's not there's not much in yellow that is unhealthy but there are limitations to yellow which keep it from growing into turquoise so here's what they are yellow is still stuck in duality in most cases and there's no deep mysticism possible within yellow because yellow is still way too much in this thinking mind too much thinking too much modeling and as a result even though yellow could be aware of the problem of confusing the map for the territory yellow still will probably fall into the trap of confusing the map for the territory it's just such a tricky trap to avoid and really to avoid it you have to escape the mind but yellow is probably not ready to do that yet because yellow is still so fascinated by all these concepts all these models all these systems that yellow is analyzing and synthesizing and so to move beyond that you're gonna have to start to let that go and of course that cielos bread and butter that's probably how yellow earns a living so that might be a little tricky for yellow yeah yellow could just be unwilling to transcend models and concepts I know that's something that I've wrestled with over the last couple of years as I've been trying to transition to turquoise it's tricky it's tricky because you've amassed all these great models and concepts including of course spiral dynamics and then what you need to do is you need to let it go and that's one of those really counterintuitive moves that will probably take you a few years to figure out yellow can get bogged down in complex analysis yellow can develop an intellectual hubris because yellow does know a lot of stuff yellow does understand much more than your average person but then that can lead to a form of arrogance another limitation of yellow is that yellow can invent beautiful futuristic solutions but that are not pragmatic they might look great on paper but then he can't actualize them another problem for yellow is not being able to finish something because there's always some new great vision that comes to you the next day to really actualize those visions you got to work on them for years but yellow has so many different visions always thinking about new ideas making new discoveries in the conceptual mind scape that it can become difficult to actually actualize something tangible and produce the results that yellow nose are possible yellow usually needs a team of people to help him to actualize his results but the problem for yellow is that yellow tends to be a cold individualist and a loner and yellow becomes too isolated and this becomes a limitation because then yellow can't really actualize his vision and also because again yellow starts to feel a little lonely and disconnected yellow can be limited in that he can't build a community which is really what's necessary to solve the world's problems yellow can forget to connect with people because he is too focused on models and ideas rather than relationships so what's necessary for your yellow is again sort of a swinging of the pendulum back a little bit more towards the communal side which of course is anticipating turquoise yellow can be emotionally distant and in the end yellow has to realize this fundamental limitation of this stage which is that all this understanding that you are developing and amassing still does not equal happiness no matter how well you understand the world no matter how good your models are no matter how correct you are you're still not happy why is that well because happiness is not found in the mind and yellow might hit his head against the wall for many many years before he finally admits to himself that he's not gonna find happiness inside his mind with all of his models another limitation of yellow is a lack of embodiment yellow can know all this stuff about the world and about politics and about psychology even even about spirituality even about mysticism because yellow can read a bunch of books about mysticism but there's a big difference between reading a bunch of books about non-duality and actually being able to embody it which is also something that I've been wrestling with as I've been trying to transition to turquoise from yellow the last couple of years is that embodiment is really a much much much harder than simply understanding and modeling and conceptualizing and so I've done a lot of that because I need to to share this stuff with you but also I need to work a lot on my embodiment and so that's what I've been doing lately through yoga and psychedelics and meditation retreats and so forth and of course the embodiment is the really hard part and that's what will take you decades to do and it's frustrating because as yellow you you you have this vision of who you can be and how you can awaken and how you can transform the world but you lack the embodiment to do it you lack the spiritual purification necessary to do it you lack the selflessness that's necessary to do it you lack and maybe the discipline maybe you lack the socialization skills some of these communal building skills that are necessary to do it so that that that can be scary because that shows yellow oh my god there's still so much work to be done I can't just rest on all my models and all my concepts and ultimately the limitation of yellow is that yellow cannot solve the world's problems alone yellow needs a community to really address all of these problems and to enact the systemic solutions that yellow came up with and so that's ultimately what's going to push you into turquoise some yellow stats for you about one percent of the adult global population is yellow and yellow has about five percent of world influence through the media through books through government programs and through think tanks and stuff like this the style of government under yellow is systemic flow its knowledge centered governance the dawn of systems thinking within government and rule by experts and intellectuals which of course blue is going to be very opposed to which is why whenever you see some intellectual who goes into government what is the common demonization and critique that blue / orange might have of that it's like oh he's the elite they're the elites yes they are the elites they're the information elites that's what yellow is information elites this is not a bad thing this is actually what's necessary but of course blue orange may not realize this may be mine eyes it so how do you go about transcending yellow well that's basically what I've been doin over the last couple of years is trying to transcend yellow the transcendence of yellow is going from self-actualization into self transcendence what a lot of people don't know about Abraham Maslow is that towards the end of his life I mean he developed that pyramid right you should be familiar with that and in that pyramid of needs the hierarchy of needs there is the top cornerstone of the pyramid the pinnacle which is self-actualization and that is like yellow but then Maslow in his later years he actually had some self transcendent experiences himself he had some mystical experiences himself and then he realized that there's another level beyond self-actualization which is self transcendence so if you take that triangle and you sort of just intersect those lines and you you carry them forward extrapolate them forward what you get is you sort of get this inverted triangle at the very top like a light shining out from the pyramid and that that top part that is the self transcendence that's when you have to release and let go of developing yourself and start to undo and deconstruct yourself and this is a big radical transition from doing and thinking into the being level it's accessing the absolute through direct consciousness and that's what's gonna move you beyond yellow that's what yellow is really missing to transcend yellow you have to deeply realize that understanding and the mind will never bring you happiness in fact your happiness in many ways is directly or inversely proportional rather to how much you think transcending yellow really requires enlightenment Kundalini awakening psychedelics are a great way to go beyond yellow as they will give you mystical experiences and profound insights that shatter all of your models and all of your concepts and show you that the map really is not the territory oh I can't I can't tell you enough how important having a five Meo DMT breakthrough would be for you if you're at yellow - transitioning you into turquoise that five Meo DMT breakthrough is gonna show you the full glory of what turquoise is like and what's so special about that is that you might not get to that level naturally just through meditation or through contemplation for decades so to be able to tap into it if only just for for 15 minutes if only for 60 minutes that will be enough that would be enough for you to to actually get at ang taste of what turquoise is really about and it's a huge shift like it's a it's a is beyond a quantum leap other ways of doing that if you don't have access to five owned you Meo DMT is through Kriya yoga meditation self inquiry Vipassana all these spiritual mystical practices are good solo meditation retreats long periods of isolation are really helpful for going beyond yellow realizing the limits of concepts and the mind and beliefs it's one thing for me to just say that it's another thing for you to really grasp and very deeply what the inherent limitations are there to transcend yellow you need to go beyond models into a deep in embodiment of these things you've been reading about in the books these things that I've been talking about in my videos be more emotional be less logical yellow is still a little bit too left brained he needs to bring that back and merge it with the right brain again opening up the heart chakra is very important for transcending yellow loving-kindness meditation can be a good technique for transcending yellow practicing more compassion yellow cares but yellow still doesn't have that unconditional deep mystical love that only comes after ego death yellow still doesn't have that to transcend yellow be more human be even more intuitive than you've already been being surrender all control like a deep surrender of control totally deconstruct your ego break it down so there's no ego left deconstruct your web of beliefs and your emotions deconstruct all your models and all your concepts deconstruct even further materialism and dualism you need to get to the point where you have deconstructed reality so much that you actually do not believe in a physical external reality at all anymore you don't believe in time you don't believe in space you don't believe in in life or death like these things become just fantasies for you that's how much you need to deconstruct materialism most yellow people are still stuck in the materialist paradigm this paradigm is very deep and no matter how much I talk about it and how much you think you understand what I'm talking about you are still stuck in the materials paradigm you still have all these assumptions and fundamentally you still believe in a tangible physical external reality in brains in neuroscience in atoms and molecules in the Big Bang you still believe this stuff is real and what you need to realize is that it's not real it's just a it's just a hallucination you're inside of a dream and you will awaken from this dream and you will realize that all of this stuff that you thought was real and tangible that it has no substance to it whatsoever no reality to it whatsoever to help you transcend Yello start to read a lot of books about non-duality start contemplating there's lots of stuff to contemplate see my episode called contemplation where I tell you how to contemplate in different topics to contemplate you need to transcend language to transcend yellow start to notice the limitations of language mindfulness practice is really good mindfulness above and beyond just sitting down and meditating for 60 minutes but mindfulness all the time mindfulness in the shower mindfulness while you're brushing your teeth mindfulness while you're eating mindfulness while you're doing your work and everything else it can be really useful for you to transcend yellow to start to model saints and sages find those turquoise saints and sages there are plenty of them still alive you don't need to go to the history books they're still alive today men Lemar you can find dozens hundreds of them even and well meet them face to face ideally get their energy get the vibe off them get the love off them get the wisdom off of them that stuff just radiates they use that stuff if they're really good st. or a really good sage and start to model that and start to include incorporate that into your visions of who you're gonna become because that's what you're aiming for melt into the now you need to become very very present to go beyond yellow also heal your energetic system you might have blocked chakras energetic blockages various emotional kinks and stuff which are still left from tier one that you need to iron out to really go turquoise do enlightenment intensives you can get Shakti pot which is a transmission of energy from a saint a sage or saint join a spiritual network or a community so now as yellow you're probably a lone wolf and you do a lot of stuff by yourself and maybe you think you're very effective doing it that way but also think into the future think about what that is gonna evolve into that's something I definitely face because I like to be a lone wolf I like to do a lot of stuff myself but then also I see the limitations of that and I see that if I want to really have the full impact that I could have with my life and my life purpose then I need to start preparing myself for how to be better at navigating and dealing with people maybe creating a community or joining a spiritual community bonding with people having compassion for being able to develop that sort of patience that is necessary for dealing with all the social issues because in a sense it's a lot easier to just be a lone wolf then you're not dealing with that entire social domain and in a sense that's nice but also in a sense is kind of limiting because then you're not growing you're not developing yourself as a leader sure you can develop yourself as a leader as a lone wolf you can do a lot of stuff that will improve your leadership abilities but to really test your leadership abilities that will only happen when you're actually live in the field bonding and relating to people and dealing with all their shenanigans and all their nonsense and all their ignorance and all their misunderstandings and all of that kind of messy stuff and ultimately to transcend yellow you need to enter a state of no-mind where you can literally sit and not use your mind for long periods of time that's sort of the ultimate end goal of course you're not gonna get there quite yet it'll probably take you years maybe decades to get there but that's that's a goal you should kind of keep in mind and start working towards it with baby steps alright that's yellow basically for you in a lot of depth now in conclusion what I want to say is that if you're orange then your ego will want to claim that you're yellow be careful about that you're probably not it's very easy to overestimate yourself on the spiral even if you think that you are yellow and you're pretty sure about it remember that there's many degrees to yellow and yeah maybe you are yellow but how solidly and deeply are you into it and I already told you earlier what the metrics are for for gauging that so my suggestion to you is don't try to skip yellow to jump to turquoise but rather go deeply into yellow really work on building your yellow foundation work on your ability to jump between different perspectives to be non-judgmental to be neutral to be aware of your self biases and self-deceptions and so forth really learn the entire spiral go back and revisit tier 1 of the spiral and learn how to communicate with stage blue with stage orange with stage green and even go back into those stages and ask your what haven't I fully integrated what haven't I fully mastered and embodied from those stages and you might find that there's still some stuff that you're hung up on from stage blue maybe you're still moralizing because you had a stage blue upbringing or maybe you're still hooked on sex or on chasing money that's a stage orange hang-up or maybe there's some stage green hang-ups in you where you're still participating in some of the excesses excessive relativism or excessive breaking down of hierarchies or maybe you're you're too compassionate too emotional to pacifistic or whatever else like that really go beyond the stereotypes and try to understand all of the stages below you because you're gonna need to design systems as yellow for those stages which means that you have to completely let go of of any kind of negative emotions you have towards any of the stages a deep understanding and the only way to get that is to be able to really step inside the shoes of those people to see the world from their perspective to be able to empathize well how why that person is stuck in that perspective and is unable to move up to the next level and to understand that oh maybe if I tell him this thing in this way that will help him to open his mind to the next level and then the next level and the next level and then maybe he can become yellow be careful not to just directly try to teach yellow to blue people or to orange people because oftentimes they won't get it and I want to give you some warnings in the end here firstly don't make the don't don't make the mistake of thinking that yellow is infallible yellow can make mistakes yellow can subscribe to one bad perspective too much then he needs to or then then he should or yellow can make factual errors all right so yellow is not perfect also understand that yellow doesn't mean that you can't hurt people yellow can still hurt people in relationships maybe yellow can be able to callus little too cold-hearted or when dealing with a community yellow can can miss read their emotions or their feelings or whatever that can still happen also understand that just because you're yellow it doesn't mean that your policies won't hurt people just because you understand spiral dynamics doesn't mean you can't come up with a bad public policy a bad economic policy a bad education policy or something like that you still can and you probably in fact will you have to be very careful it takes experience takes know-how and you're gonna make mistakes and yellow doesn't mean that you can't still have human frailties and weaknesses or addictions for example so one of the problems that I might cite an example of someone yellow and then someone in the audience says oh Bollea but that person has an addiction that person is addicted to alcohol how can he be yellow well there's nothing that says that yellow can't be addicted to alcohol and there's nothing that says that yellow can have a sex addiction or some other kind of addiction now of course it's less likely because tier 2 people tend to be a little bit above that stuff they've tended to work that stuff out those very crude gross addictions you're probably not gonna find a stage yellow heroin addict probably not cuz if you're at stage yellow you don't need heroin at this point you're actually enjoying the beingness of life you're enjoying the magnificence of existence to the point where you don't need hard drugs but you can still succumb to many subtle addictions maybe have a media addiction cellphone addiction porn addiction whatever else you know so make sure you don't over idealize any particular stage all right the next stage is going to be turquoise and that one's gonna be really interesting because that's gonna be the the top of the spiral at least for this series alright that's it I'm done here please click that like button for me don't forget that helps to improve the visibility of the videos and come check out actualize that org that's my website you will find special resources there unique content that you can't find anywhere else check out my blog check out my book list check out the life purpose course check out the forum where you can discuss all this stuff speaking of which I'm going to be creating a mega thread for yellow examples we're gonna have lots and lots of videos of yellow examples so find that link down below click on it go to the forum and you'll find it there we also have mega threads already created for stage blue with tons of video examples which are interesting and fascinating and funny and outrageous and also for stage orange and also for stage green so we'll do that for all the stages that we talk about that's it the last thing I want to tell you is this the danger with me talking so much about spiral dynamics is you sort of just kind of fall into this hypnotic trance of just like yes leo yes leo yes they're just spoon-feed me more wisdom more golden nuggets and that becomes a danger because you start to first of all you just blindly accept everything i say after a while you stop really questioning it and you blindly accept the entire spiral model and and then you just become this sort of spiral zombie that's not the objective here you need to start thinking for yourself think critically start applying this model for yourself in your own life and you will see that it's difficult to apply it's not always clear-cut sometimes you see a situation or a person or a book and you're not sure how to classify it maybe you miss categorize it and that's good because as you go through that struggle you start to learn the limitations of the model and that's right spiral dynamics is just a model and it has limitations and it is not the territory so start thinking for yourself a stage yellow person doesn't just blindly read and believe models from other places which is cool but you got to actually think through it yourself realize the limitations maybe take this model and try to connect it with some other model that you discovered somewhere else that's what you got to start doing you got to start doing that with every single video that you watch for me it's so easy for you to just fall into this trap of believing me beliefs are our enemy nothing within actualized org can be taken as an ideology or as a system of belief that's going to limit you that's going to be way too restrictive you need to be able to be completely fluid with your mind so that you can jump between perspectives between models you can throw them out throw them away hold contradictory ones have paradoxes in your mind and be able to wrestle with all that and not be confused to not be lost and you certainly can't take anything I say on faith because it's not it's not about what you believe or what kind of model you possess that is gonna get you the results that you ultimately want in your life it's your ability to think critically and independently for yourself that's what it takes so watch out for that trap and I'll see you in the next one you