Your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain that does logic, planning, and future-thinking) is what we think of as the "you" who makes decisions. But it has a much older rival living in the same skull. Your hindbrain is an ancient circuit that runs survival calculations in microseconds. It is always scanning for threats. It's really good at what it does, and that's how our species made it this far.  It doesn't care about your spreadsheet or your five-year plan. When it decides you're under threat, it hijacks the controls and locks the prefrontal cortex out of the loop entirely. No logic allowed. Only: Am I safe? Can I survive this? Will my group reject me? If the answer is yes to that last one, your hindbrain screams the same alarm it would if a tiger was actually running at you.

This is the first thing you need to understand, because until you can name the system, you can't overwrite it.

Three Survival Levels (and We Conflate All of Them)

There are actually three distinct survival threats your brain is tracking:

Level 1: Actual Death. Yes, this is real. This is why we don't drive cars without safety gear or throw ourselves off cliffs. Your hindbrain is correctly calibrated for this.

Level 2: Social Rejection. Because humans are social creatures, complete expulsion from society feels like death—and for most of human history, it was. If you got kicked out of your tribe, you had no access to medical care, food, shelter, or protection. You would die. So our brains adapted to optimize for survival within society. We learned to calculate: What are the rules of this group? What gets you kicked out? Make sure you don't do those things.

Level 3: Financial Disruption. This is where modern tech culture lives. You might lose your job. You might not land the next gig. You might not have health insurance next month. You might have to move somewhere cheaper. These are real consequences. But the question we need to ask is: will you die?

Your hindbrain doesn't distinguish between these three. When you face potential social rejection from the group that pays you—the one providing your health insurance, your stability in society—your lizard brain boots up the same full-system alarm it would for actual mortal danger. And because the prefrontal cortex is now offline, you can't run the actual numbers.

How This Cascades in VC Founder Culture

Let's talk about how this becomes insidious.

Founders optimize for the VC group. The rules of that group are: fundraise, grow users, present pristine P&Ls, act confident, move fast, break things, and defend the decisions you've made to investors who have money in the game. Your founder's hindbrain is constantly calculating: If I break these rules, I lose funding. I lose survival. And because the hindbrain is running the show, this isn't really a choice, it's a hijacking.

But founders aren't solitary. They have employees. And employees are a completely different group with completely different rules. Your employees don't run with VC bros in San Francisco. They're not going to lunch in Palo Alto. They're trying to figure out how to do their jobs in a way that makes sense within their group's logic.

What we don't realize is that because you get paid by the founder who is abiding by VC group rules, you unconsciously adopt those rules too. And we're very, very good at this. We don't plan it or think about it. We pick up on the unstated things we're "supposed to do" and we do them without ever deciding to.

So the founder's survival calculation cascades down to the employees. The employees start making decisions based on rules that were never meant for them. Rules that, when followed, make perfect sense to investors but look insane to customers, users, and the people actually trying to do the work.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard your employees push back, no matter how many times they tell you the approach is broken, you don't hear it. Your group (that one where you get your money, your validation, your survival) is telling you these rules are non-negotiable. So you defend them. Down. To. Everyone.

How I Got Out (Without Ayahuasca)

I know there are founders out there who fly to Ayahuasca retreats looking for ego death. And sure, maybe they have some insights in the jungle. But y'all. They are (usually) still with their group. The hindbrain doesn't care about temporary retreats. It cares about whether you've actually extracted yourself from the system.

You have to leave. Fully.

Your hindbrain is going to hate this. It's going to tell you you're in danger. It's going to feel like you're dying. Because, from its perspective, you are! You are leaving the group that keeps you alive.

In 2012–2013, I did this. I left a community entirely—the radical unschooling, natural parenting world where I'd spent years. I joined the tech world. I wasn't immediately in startup culture; I had a buffer zone at Cultures for Health first. But when I got to Olark, I was in it. The startup community. A completely different culture with completely different rules.

I adapted. I let go of things that had kept me alive in the natural parenting world. I sent my kids to public school.I bought gasp processed foods. My kids grew up, my life changed, and I integrated into tech culture fully.

But I had a crucial skill in that I'd done this before. I'd already experienced leaving a group. So when I started seeing the way the tech world actually worked – when I started seeing how Facebook, Meta, and Amazon operate, and how startup culture internalizes those values –I was better positioned to notice it. To question it. To run the calculation again.

And this time, I decided differently.

Ego Death Is Just Refusing to Let Your Hindbrain Run the Show

Ego death gets mystified, especially with psychedelics involved. But it's not mystical. It's just what happens when you stop letting your protective instincts make your decisions for you.

It can be sudden. It can be drug-induced. But it can also be a decades-long process of feeling that panic, naming it when it comes up, and choosing logic over fear.

You'll know when your hindbrain is activated. It looks like being scared. It looks like being angry. It looks like wanting to thrash against something. It feels like being trapped in a cage. Sometimes it's a tightness in your throat, a tightness in your chest, or a constant churning in your gut.

Pro tip: If your gut is always churning, your hindbrain is running more of the show than your prefrontal cortex. 

The prefrontal cortex is very calm by nature. It uses logic. It can recognize emotion without being hijacked by it. This is learnable. It's a meditative skill to be able to say, I recognize this feeling of fear. I recognize this anger. I recognize this terror. These are not me. These are my protective systems that have kept me and my ancestors alive. But are they serving me right now?

Recently, I did this with the entire AI tech world. Everyone's doing "do more with less." Everyone's throwing five different tasks at Claude and letting them all run in the background, without asking if that's actually sustainable or good. I looked at that entire system and said, "No. I'm not doing this. I cannot do what I want to do from within this system."

And because I had a safety net, I was able to walk away. I'll be honest. My hindbrain kicked in immediately with protests of "You're in danger! You need income! What are you doing?" but my prefrontal cortex had training. I knew what the arguments would be and, more importantly, I knew my runway. I knew I could handle it.

How to Actually Run the Calculation

The secret is knowing the weakness of your hindbrain. It cannot do math. Your prefrontal cortex does the math.

So every time your hindbrain is screaming that you'll die if you don't follow the group's rules, your prefrontal cortex can ask, "Is a tiger actually running at me? No. If I run out of money, am I at greater risk? Yes. But how close am I to that? Do I have access to a safety net? Do I live somewhere with food banks, sliding-scale clinics, state assistance? What's my actual runway?"

There are concrete ways to calm your lizard brain and let your prefrontal cortex take the wheel. Find what works for you — meditation, yoga, hiking, fishing, a hobby you are really good at…

But also, non-negotiable: Get a financial planner. Seriously. If you've worked in tech, do this. Figure out your personal runway the way companies do. What do you actually have? What are your cars worth? What's your emergency fund? If you had to cut back dramatically, what would that look like?

Make a spreadsheet. I made one to decide whether to relocate. I know that sounds boring, but remember: your hindbrain doesn't do math. The moment you start running actual numbers, the prefrontal cortex comes online. The panic quiets down a bit.

Know your values. Read Suneet Bhatt's book Making Sense of Purpose or do whatever practice helps you clarify what actually matters to you. Because once you know that, the calculations get easier. Do you need the BMW or are you okay with a Honda? Do you need to live in Palo Alto or can you work remotely from somewhere with a lower cost of living? Do you need those new Halloween decorations every year, or is that spending keeping you trapped in work you don't want to do?

Ask yourself three questions. Every time you're making a decision: What's my real fear here? What am I really optimizing for? What's the unspoken risk I'm calculating?

The Cost of Opting Out

I'll be real with you. If you do this, you will start saying no to things. No to jobs that look prestigious but feel wrong. No to the hustle narrative. No to the ecosystem you've been told you need to survive in.

Does this put you at a disadvantage for making money? Absolutely. Does it put you at an advantage for listening to your prefrontal cortex and letting it run the show? Absofuckinglutely. And it gives you space to decide what your actual boundaries are. What you're willing to put up with. What you can recognize and speak to in the moment.

Previously, I worked with some very intense people who didn't always think rationally; they reacted. Now I'm better positioned to see that for what it is and stop the room and call it out. "That's a very reactive thing you're doing. Yes, it feels urgent. But is anyone actually at risk, or are you making us think we will be? What's the real risk here?" Good for me. Maybe not so great for my reputation? I dunno.

This does put you on the outs with some people. Some people don't want you running these calculations, because humans who are actually doing logical calculations spend less. They need less. And when we need less, we gravitate toward people instead of consumption. That sure threatens the entire machine.

But it also frees you.

The Path Forward

Ego death isn't some mystical thing only accessible through drugs or retreat centers. It's the work of extracting yourself from a system that's been running your hindbrain on overdrive, and then – slowly, carefully, with actual numbers and real boundaries – deciding what you actually want to optimize for.

It's terrifying. Your hindbrain will tell you you're in danger. And depending on how loudly you buck the rules of the group that pays you, you are taking on real risk. You might not be able to go back. That's a real consequence you should consider with open eyes and a great spreadsheet..

But that's also a calculation you can run. Once you can name the system, once you can see the difference between actual death and social rejection and financial disruption, once you have your numbers and your values lined up, you can make an actual choice instead of letting your ancient protective systems make it for you.

That way leads to freedom.