Speaker 1: You have to protect your strengths. You're calling your passions,
Speaker 1: your interests, your skills. You have to protect them like
Speaker 1: a precious jewel, because the whole world will come at
Speaker 1: you and tell you that it's worth nothing, and if
Speaker 1: you don't protect it, it can't protect your value back.
Speaker 1: The cat eyed mystic is in the house a favorite
Speaker 1: phrase of mine, coined by her friend Russell. Yes. Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Russell has a lot of names to me over the years.
Speaker 1: He seems to come up with them relatively spontaneously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does, he does. He I mean, that's who he is, right,
Speaker 1: He's one of the worst, one of the most spontaneous
Speaker 1: people have over them there. I know, he's great. Welcome,
Speaker 1: great to have you here. Thanks for driving all the
Speaker 1: way out here. It's spent a long time in the works.
Speaker 1: It's my pleasure. I'm so grateful to be out here. Rich.
Speaker 1: I know we've become recent friends and I'm excited. I'm
Speaker 1: excited to bond more and get to do this. Likewise
Speaker 1: two times in like two weeks, because I was did
Speaker 1: your show the other day, so this is great. We're
Speaker 1: on the precipice of your book coming out, which will
Speaker 1: be out when this comes out, which it's got to
Speaker 1: be an exciting time for you. It is, man, it's
Speaker 1: I feel like every year I try and do a
Speaker 1: new first, and this time it's the book. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I get all the nerves, I get anxious,
Speaker 1: and in a good way. I love it. It's cool.
Speaker 1: In preparation for today, I was poking around the internet
Speaker 1: and you know, I've been following you for some time,
Speaker 1: but just trying to get up to speed. And I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, I'm falling in love with your wife.
Speaker 1: She's adorable, so you know, I get literally, so this
Speaker 1: is the story of my life. Basically, people like me
Speaker 1: to some degree. I hope they spend time with me,
Speaker 1: and then I introduced them to my wife and then
Speaker 1: they go oh, and then it's over. Yeah. Literally, no
Speaker 1: one ever wants to see me ever again. It happens
Speaker 1: all the time. Saw my wife, Yeah, and she's amazing.
Speaker 1: Like we talked about it with you with your wife too,
Speaker 1: and it's my wife is amazing. She's incredible. I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised that people love them more than me. We both upgraded,
Speaker 1: which I feel good about. You know, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: be with someone who's better than me. It's it's a blessing.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I've had that experience many times over. We
Speaker 1: do this I was telling you earlier. We do this
Speaker 1: retreat every year in Italy. Uh And and people show
Speaker 1: up from all over the place, you know, forty people
Speaker 1: for this week long experience, and most of them arrive
Speaker 1: under this idea that they're gonna like a trail running
Speaker 1: with me, and they're gonna learn about plant based cooking
Speaker 1: and maybe do a lot of little meditations. She's gonna
Speaker 1: be fun. Like, expectations are low, and then it becomes
Speaker 1: like a whole Julie experience. They're like, I didn't know
Speaker 1: that we were going to get this, and then they
Speaker 1: all fall in love with her and I become very
Speaker 1: secondary to the entire experience. Okay, so we've got a
Speaker 1: lot in common. Yeah, we've got a lot of comment.
Speaker 1: What's the plant based thing? I urvadea all this stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeahs cool. Yeah, No, my wife is she's a real
Speaker 1: she's a real, genuinely powerful soul. And yeah, she does
Speaker 1: everything from a huh. And she's always been that way.
Speaker 1: And you guys have been together for a long time.
Speaker 1: We've been together for seven years and been married for
Speaker 1: four and we just feel like we've got stronger and stronger.
Speaker 1: It's been really interesting for us because our life literally
Speaker 1: turned on it turned it on its head when when
Speaker 1: my career really started to take off. And so in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, we I move job three times, we moved country,
Speaker 1: we bought our house, put it on rent, found an
Speaker 1: apartment to rent, and got married all in the same year.
Speaker 1: And it was a It was a lot, but it
Speaker 1: was also a lot of bonding together and forming and
Speaker 1: I think we had a moment where I think it
Speaker 1: could have gone either way, like it literally could have
Speaker 1: broke us or it could have made us. And thankfully,
Speaker 1: because of how she is and how I am and
Speaker 1: what we both wanted from our relationship, we've we've really
Speaker 1: been able to build something special. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's taken a lot of work, and that was definitely
Speaker 1: a tough time. Yeah, I have no doubt. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that level of change could easily and most
Speaker 1: likely splits apart most couples, especially when one person in
Speaker 1: the relationship suddenly goes on a crazy trajectory that isn't like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't where the other person isn't kind of in
Speaker 1: a in a parody type situation, you know, and without
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of relationship skills and communication that
Speaker 1: ends up, you know, planning the seeds of you know,
Speaker 1: the demise of many a relationship. Yeah, exactly. And you know,
Speaker 1: we had our tough times. Like I remember knowing that
Speaker 1: every time I went out to work that my wife
Speaker 1: was at home, my new wife, like as in my
Speaker 1: you know, very new in terms of time, she's at
Speaker 1: home crying because she's just been moved away from her
Speaker 1: family and her home, and you're off like in your
Speaker 1: bliss totally. I'm trying to follow my bliss, as Joseph
Speaker 1: Campbell would say, and just like trying to build my purpose.
Speaker 1: But in the back of my mind, I'm feeling the
Speaker 1: pain of the fact that I'm like, my wife doesn't
Speaker 1: have any friends here, we don't have any family in
Speaker 1: New York, we don't have a community here, Like we're
Speaker 1: feeling that gap and then me trying to play both
Speaker 1: roles and wanting to I used to set up on
Speaker 1: these dates. So I would literally set up on dates
Speaker 1: with women that I've met that I thought would get
Speaker 1: along with her, and she Why you keep trying to
Speaker 1: set me up on dates with women. But it was
Speaker 1: just I was trying so hard and I really made
Speaker 1: it my priority that she became my priority. I was like,
Speaker 1: if she's not happy here, if she doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: this is her home, if she doesn't feel satisfied here,
Speaker 1: then it doesn't matter what happens with my purpose. So
Speaker 1: I would say she actually became my top priority when
Speaker 1: we lived in New York, and when we moved to La,
Speaker 1: it's actually been the opposite. Where she loves La and
Speaker 1: has made the best friends of her life and has
Speaker 1: an incredible community around her, and I haven't had to
Speaker 1: have that, whereas in New York, I really felt that
Speaker 1: sense of pressure to help her feel at home. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because usually it's the other way around. New York
Speaker 1: is a place that that feels it easier to get
Speaker 1: socially acclimated than La. I think La can be an
Speaker 1: incredibly lonely place. Interesting when you arrive and you're new
Speaker 1: and you don't have a community because everybody is so
Speaker 1: dispersed and in their cars, it's just not as spontaneous
Speaker 1: as New York or or it's difficult to connect. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the onus is on the individual to really
Speaker 1: make something happen. Yeah, I think we were lucky we
Speaker 1: had we had a couple of friends here who really
Speaker 1: opened us up to their world and their friends, and
Speaker 1: that led to us making friends. But also just I
Speaker 1: found in New York. And I guess it also depends
Speaker 1: where you are in your career and all of that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff too, But I felt like in New
Speaker 1: York people like came late to meetings and left early
Speaker 1: and always had thirty minutes to see me. And also
Speaker 1: one this was the biggest one, and this is huge.
Speaker 1: It's it's a weird one, but when you think about it,
Speaker 1: really it really resonates. People in LA have homes or
Speaker 1: they have larger apartments, and so people invite you to
Speaker 1: their home, like today, we're in your home, and you
Speaker 1: have a beautiful home. And when people come to your home,
Speaker 1: you end up spending more time with them. So I
Speaker 1: remember the first weekend we came here, my friend threw
Speaker 1: a party and we went out and we spent eight
Speaker 1: hours with someone, right, And I was like, well, we
Speaker 1: just spent eight hours, So I never spent eight hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're in New York, you'd meet at a borrow,
Speaker 1: a restaurant totally. And I think that's it Pop and Run,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a big thing about it. I
Speaker 1: think when you meet people in their homes, when you
Speaker 1: meet people in their genuine, natural habitats and environments, I
Speaker 1: feel like you get an opportunity to really see them
Speaker 1: and they feel exposed in a genuine, natural, vulnerable way
Speaker 1: to you as well. Yeah, that's part of the reason
Speaker 1: why I like doing the podcast at my house. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like having people over. And I have this theory
Speaker 1: that each person that arrives and spends time here deposits
Speaker 1: this place with their wisdom and their operation, and it
Speaker 1: just elevates, you know, the whole experience of living here.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. It's like it's like a deposit. You must
Speaker 1: be very careful about who you allow it. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that I snuck in this is I try to,
Speaker 1: you know, I try to be mindful of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've been holding onto your crystals ever since to make
Speaker 1: sure I don't. Yeah. So when I when I take
Speaker 1: a ten thousand foot view of who you are and
Speaker 1: what you do, it seems to me that your your gift,
Speaker 1: or your your real facility is this ability, this facility
Speaker 1: for taking Asile's wisdom, these spiritual precepts, these philosophical tenets
Speaker 1: and ideas, and translating them in an entertaining way and
Speaker 1: a digestible way for a very broad mainstream and and
Speaker 1: perhaps young you know audience. Is that fair sounds good
Speaker 1: to me? Yeah? No, it's you know, it's there. There's
Speaker 1: a statement by Albert Einstein which kind of underpinds all
Speaker 1: my work, and it's if you can't explain something simply,
Speaker 1: you don't understand it well enough. And when I was
Speaker 1: exposed to the Invaders and all these spiritual texts that
Speaker 1: some of them date five thousand years back, I was
Speaker 1: reading them and I was like, there is magic in
Speaker 1: these texts, Like there is so much energy in these texts.
Speaker 1: There's so much weight and gravitas, and there's so much power.
Speaker 1: But guess what, most people will never be able to
Speaker 1: experience it because it's in another language. And when I
Speaker 1: say another language, I don't just mean Sanskrit or Hindi
Speaker 1: or you know, and you know Chinese, I mean another
Speaker 1: language of it's speaking to a different age. And there's
Speaker 1: beauty in that, and I love that and I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: But I could see that I wanted to try and
Speaker 1: see if I could explain these things to people that
Speaker 1: I grew up with. And I was always connecting with
Speaker 1: the person who grew up in London. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: born and raised in London. I grew up liking anything
Speaker 1: an average londoners into. But I got so fascinated because
Speaker 1: of the way the philosophy was presented to me, and
Speaker 1: I felt a responsibility to want to do that for others. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's a pretty good breakdown in
Speaker 1: ten thousand foot view, And I appreciate you saying that
Speaker 1: because that's what fascinates me. That's where I get my
Speaker 1: buzz from is how do I read, study and learn
Speaker 1: so that I can share, support and serve. And that's
Speaker 1: that's where I get my meaning from. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: crystallizing these texts down to these kernels of wisdom or
Speaker 1: teachable moments. There's no small thing. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: you know, if you read the Bug of our Guida,
Speaker 1: I mean, it takes a prodigious mind to just keep
Speaker 1: track of all the characters. Like these stories are insane,
Speaker 1: you know, So it's like, all right, you know, our
Speaker 1: Juna is doing this, and you know, so and so
Speaker 1: is over there do it's spirit, you know, killing these people,
Speaker 1: and what's the lesson that I'm supposed to get up?
Speaker 1: So I leve to send you when I when I
Speaker 1: studied it, I made a family tree, so I literally
Speaker 1: had to physically. For anyone who doesn't know what we're
Speaker 1: talk about, we're doing about the bug Geta, which is
Speaker 1: part of the Mahabara, and there are million characters, and
Speaker 1: I remember having to not million literally, but I remember
Speaker 1: having to literally piece together the family tree because I
Speaker 1: was the same I couldn't and and the messages are
Speaker 1: so profound and so powerful, and you know, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a blessing to be even be able
Speaker 1: to be exposed to them, let alone trying to share them. Well,
Speaker 1: let's take it back. Tell me about you know, what
Speaker 1: it was like being a kid growing up in London,
Speaker 1: North London. Yeah, North London. So I grew up in
Speaker 1: the most common place that people would know is a
Speaker 1: place called Tottenham more specifically you know, yeah, North London
Speaker 1: for anyone who doesn't know. And I grew up as
Speaker 1: a you know, I was a very obedient kid growing up,
Speaker 1: especially in my up to four teen years old, I
Speaker 1: was very I would say I worked very hard at school.
Speaker 1: I was a good son, I followed the rules. I
Speaker 1: was very overweight at that time as well, so I
Speaker 1: got bullied a lot. So I was bullied for my weight.
Speaker 1: I was probably one of the few Indian kids at school,
Speaker 1: so I was bullied for being Indian and parents first generation. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just was very fortunate because I guess it
Speaker 1: was a mixture of love at home but also resilience.
Speaker 1: I never really felt that affected by any of it.
Speaker 1: I just I kind of accepted it as normal. I
Speaker 1: didn't see myself as different. I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just what kids must go through. And I
Speaker 1: kind of got it. And then at fourteen it kind
Speaker 1: of switched where I was like, well, being good doesn't work, like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't add up to anything. I'm not happy, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make me more successful. I still experienced racism and bullying,
Speaker 1: so I might as well be a jerk. Like and
Speaker 1: I don't mean the jerk is a bad person to people.
Speaker 1: I meant like, I might as well not follow the rules.
Speaker 1: I might as well experiment with everything else, whether it
Speaker 1: was getting drunk or whether it was you know, experiment
Speaker 1: with smoking or weed or whatever it was at the time,
Speaker 1: and just feeling like I wanted a thrill in an
Speaker 1: experience in life, and that being good didn't stack up
Speaker 1: to what I was told. I was told if you
Speaker 1: were good, that you'd be successful and things would work,
Speaker 1: and I didn't feel that. So I kind of you
Speaker 1: have a conscious memory of making that decision. What's that
Speaker 1: meaning at some point when you were fourteen, thinking like
Speaker 1: I'm going to change tack here. I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: a good question. I don't know if it was conscious
Speaker 1: in the sense I was like, oh, this is not working,
Speaker 1: let me try this. It wasn't like that. In hindsight,
Speaker 1: I can see my reasoning behind wire because people of
Speaker 1: like I've I've always considered myself to be a well intentioned,
Speaker 1: good person, Like that's that's who I am at the
Speaker 1: heart and the core of it. I could never hurt anyone.
Speaker 1: It's not who I am, and so it's it was
Speaker 1: weird when I when I got involved in the wrong
Speaker 1: circles and I started doing things I can never imagine,
Speaker 1: and I became the opposite. And when I reflect on that,
Speaker 1: that's what I feel is the reason. So no, I
Speaker 1: don't think it was a conscious decision at the time,
Speaker 1: but when I reflect on it in hindsight, it's very
Speaker 1: clear to me that that was the reason that brought
Speaker 1: it out. Right. So you're getting into a little bit
Speaker 1: of trouble, but not too much trouble. You're still you know,
Speaker 1: are you the eldest son. I'm the eldest son. There's
Speaker 1: a certain mantle that you have to carry, yeah, exacertain
Speaker 1: level of expectation and you know, academic prowess that you
Speaker 1: have to demonstrate to your parents to remain in good steady. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I didn't good at that because my parents, you know,
Speaker 1: Indian parents are generally like, if you do well in school,
Speaker 1: that's all that matters, and so I kind of took
Speaker 1: that too literally. I was like, Okay, as long as
Speaker 1: I'm doing well in school, I can do anything I want.
Speaker 1: So I was performing well in school, but I started
Speaker 1: to really when I was fourteen, really dive into what
Speaker 1: I was fascinated by. And I found that there were
Speaker 1: three subjects that really took my attention. So it was economics,
Speaker 1: art and design, and philosophy, and those became my three
Speaker 1: favorite subjects. At school and it was very different to
Speaker 1: what my parents wanted or what I thought at primary school,
Speaker 1: where the maths and sciences were more stressed. But I
Speaker 1: started to see that I was connecting. I would talk
Speaker 1: to my art teacher for hours about different art that
Speaker 1: we would, you know, dissect together and think about why
Speaker 1: the artist had juxtaposed those two items like that, and
Speaker 1: the meaning behind certain brushes and strokes. And I loved
Speaker 1: like breaking something down philosophically. And I really own my
Speaker 1: art teacher a lot for that because he made me
Speaker 1: gain that taste for questioning why things were the way
Speaker 1: they were rather than just accepting them at face value. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that seed kind of was under germinated. It seems
Speaker 1: like finance originally kind of want out in that race war.
Speaker 1: I would say that I thought that I would go
Speaker 1: off and do graphic design or marketing at university, or
Speaker 1: I really was about to apply, remember for Central Saint Martins,
Speaker 1: which is an incredible art school in London. And I remember.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that because I remember applying, and
Speaker 1: then my art teacher, I think messaging me or saying
Speaker 1: to me at the time however we did at that time,
Speaker 1: I can't even remember, but I guess emailing me and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you sold out and just like calling me out on it.
Speaker 1: And it was just it was just my young Indian
Speaker 1: mind in London of just feeling that there were a
Speaker 1: finite number of options and that I didn't really even
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that there were other careers, like genuinely,
Speaker 1: like if you asked me then, like what careers existed
Speaker 1: in the world. I literally could only think of medicine,
Speaker 1: law and finance, like I didn't even know that anyone
Speaker 1: did anything beyond that, or that anything beyond that was
Speaker 1: even available. And so for me, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well can't do the first two, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: end up doing this one. And so it wasn't that
Speaker 1: it won from the heart, It's that it won from
Speaker 1: a safety, security, stability, reliability platform. And the reason why
Speaker 1: this is so important to talk about is I think
Speaker 1: today people look at me, or may perceive my work
Speaker 1: if they're aware, to be quite risk taking. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think I'm very different now, But there was a
Speaker 1: time in my life where I made decisions based on
Speaker 1: feeling I wanted a secure future and a stable future,
Speaker 1: right medicine, law, law or a failure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I had three options growing up. What about engineering,
Speaker 1: That seems that that would have passed the test, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't know, But I wasn't. I think that's
Speaker 1: very India centric. But like British Indians, I feel, are
Speaker 1: not as good as engineering, so you don't find it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe maybe it's just me, but but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was just I was always I never, I never.
Speaker 1: I realized very very early on that I didn't engage
Speaker 1: with the same things as the people around me, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't even force myself. My intuition was so strong,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know it's called intuition at that time,
Speaker 1: but I knew that it was so strong. It was
Speaker 1: dragging me towards art in design and philosophy and all
Speaker 1: of this kind of stuff. But you're a social animal.
Speaker 1: I suspect that you had lots of friends and ran
Speaker 1: in popular circles. I did in my teens, but not
Speaker 1: up to my teens and even in my Yeah, I
Speaker 1: did in my teens, but I felt that I felt
Speaker 1: at that time that you know, you're just finding yourself,
Speaker 1: Like when you're in your teens, you don't know who
Speaker 1: you are, you don't know where you stand for, you
Speaker 1: don't know where your values are, and everyone at that time,
Speaker 1: I mean I went to a school where majority of
Speaker 1: people were probably smarter and smarter than me that you know,
Speaker 1: super smart kids in my school and really accomplished and
Speaker 1: getting the best grade and you know, best resumes and
Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff, so you never really
Speaker 1: it was good. It was very humbling being at my school.
Speaker 1: You got a very every year, they would literally we'd
Speaker 1: get a report which would rank you in every subject
Speaker 1: one to one hundred and eighty. So we had one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty students in my year and for every subject,
Speaker 1: and it would you'd get it sent to your parents
Speaker 1: to you and you get a number one to one eighty,
Speaker 1: so you can know when you're at one forty four,
Speaker 1: and there were some subjects where I was at one.
Speaker 1: That's true ceremony. It was so bad, but it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was humbly. But the good thing about
Speaker 1: it was very early on my school was able to
Speaker 1: show us what our strengths were and what wasn't. And
Speaker 1: now when I look back and behind something like wow,
Speaker 1: My school really pointed out to me what I was
Speaker 1: going to be successful in, what I wasn't to the
Speaker 1: point that my school didn't allow us to take certain subjects.
Speaker 1: Later one, between ages sixteen age, you're done with that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not going to work for Yeah. Literally, that's that
Speaker 1: you would go into this room with your parents and
Speaker 1: the teacher would sit you down and they'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't think Jay can take chemistry. It was literally
Speaker 1: salis that I'd be so scared of those meetings because
Speaker 1: you'd be scared of how your parents are going to react.
Speaker 1: So you go to university and you study business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I studied management science and I focused on behavioral science.
Speaker 1: So all of my thesis and my dissertations and all
Speaker 1: of that, I was focused on analyzing behavior. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what I got fascinated. So walk me up
Speaker 1: to this pivotal monk moment. Yeah, I think you know,
Speaker 1: I've talked about it before, and this is a great
Speaker 1: conversation already because I'm telling you stuff I've never said before,
Speaker 1: which I always loved. So you know, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is this is really fun for me right now, and
Speaker 1: I want to approach this as well, I'm always whenever
Speaker 1: I tell this, I'm always trying to relive its It's
Speaker 1: this thing, you know, I'll enter apologies for interrupted that.
Speaker 1: When you're in the process of telling and retelling your
Speaker 1: story time and time again. What I always I'm always
Speaker 1: sitting here thinking when I'm doing it, myself thinking because
Speaker 1: I'm just repeating because I have, like, you know, I
Speaker 1: know the thing, and I know what to say, and
Speaker 1: I think, is that really what happened? Yeah? Can me
Speaker 1: really be honest with myself? Did this happen differently? Or
Speaker 1: is my is my memory playing tricks on me and
Speaker 1: telling me that something happened? Because I've just repeated it
Speaker 1: so many times, I'm always kind of like using that
Speaker 1: as a reference point. Absolutely, Yeah, me too, And I'm
Speaker 1: always trying to what I find is I know? And
Speaker 1: I've asked myself that question as well, And i know
Speaker 1: that I'm telling what happened, but I'm always trying to
Speaker 1: discover a new truth about it. So whenever I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, what can I discover this time about me?
Speaker 1: Ask let's do it this way though, I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: as the story goes, you developed a proclivity for seeking
Speaker 1: out interesting people to go here, talk businesspeople, sports figures, etc.
Speaker 1: And suddenly there was this monk who was going to
Speaker 1: be speaking. You were initially not interested in hearing what
Speaker 1: that person had to say, and you agreed with your
Speaker 1: friends to attend only on the assumption that you guys
Speaker 1: would go to a bar afterwards. That that is the story.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this. Let's talk about where
Speaker 1: that resistance came from. The resistance just came from I
Speaker 1: think this skeptical version of me that didn't really believe
Speaker 1: there was anything beyond success. And that's partly why I
Speaker 1: called the book Think like a Monk, because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people look at them. Why would I
Speaker 1: want to think like a monk? Like? Why? You know?
Speaker 1: But that's the point, Like, I'm trying to break through
Speaker 1: that barrier of I think so many of us have
Speaker 1: been conditioned to believe that success looks a certain way,
Speaker 1: and that happiness looks a certain way, and that joy
Speaker 1: looks a certain way. And I was one of those
Speaker 1: people that was very skeptical about anything else outside of
Speaker 1: my space, Like if someone wasn't pulling up in their
Speaker 1: fast car, or if someone wasn't pulling up in the
Speaker 1: best clothes, did I give them the time to really
Speaker 1: share their perspective. And I love the fact that that
Speaker 1: the best moment of my life, that moment uptil that
Speaker 1: point was also the most humiliating moment of my life
Speaker 1: for myself, because I was being humiliated to myself, like
Speaker 1: it was so humbling to walk out and then and
Speaker 1: be like, ah, you had it all wrong. And so
Speaker 1: I love that. I really celebrate the humbling that that
Speaker 1: moment gave me. And it's exactly that that when you
Speaker 1: hear someone speak and they speak about things that you
Speaker 1: never knew you were interested in. You never thought that
Speaker 1: you'd be fascinated by someone talking about service. But when
Speaker 1: he spoke about service, it just penetrated my soul and
Speaker 1: it just spoke so deep to my core in a
Speaker 1: way that nothing ever has. That I could hear about
Speaker 1: someone talking about making a billion dollars and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: feel the same way. What was it that he said? Specifically,
Speaker 1: he was quoting another writer and he mentioned this phrase.
Speaker 1: He said, plant trees under whose shade you do not
Speaker 1: plan to sit. He said that the best use of
Speaker 1: your talents and skills is not to use it to
Speaker 1: become rich, famous and successful, but to use it in
Speaker 1: the service of others. When he said that, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: like that's a pretty bold statement. And I think for
Speaker 1: me it was, you know, it was partly my openness
Speaker 1: just came because and I've said this before, but I'll
Speaker 1: repeat it because it really hit me. It's like when
Speaker 1: I was eighteen, I'd met people who were beautiful, I'd
Speaker 1: met people who are rich, I'd met people who are strong,
Speaker 1: and met people who are powerful, but I don't think
Speaker 1: i'd ever met anyone who was truly happy. And he
Speaker 1: looked and I still know him. He's really happy. What's
Speaker 1: his name, Goads So's. He's like, he's just like this big,
Speaker 1: joyful like anytime I spend time with him, and he
Speaker 1: has a crazy schedule, like the way he lives and
Speaker 1: how powerfully like he's He went, you know, he went
Speaker 1: to I went to the Indian Institute of Technology. He's
Speaker 1: super smart, like one of the smartest people in his year,
Speaker 1: like very accomplished, and he gave it all up. And
Speaker 1: I was like, either he's really smart or he's really crazy.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to find out. And I think that's
Speaker 1: all I had is that. I was like, he must
Speaker 1: be onto something because if he had it all lined up,
Speaker 1: but he gave it up and he's really happy, what
Speaker 1: is it? Right? Like that's that's kind of where the curiosity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds more like confusion, like I don't understand,
Speaker 1: you know, I need, I need, I need to square
Speaker 1: this equation. Yeah. Yeah, partly confusion, but partly all curiosity
Speaker 1: in the sense of just like he must be really smart,
Speaker 1: he must be really crazy. Like if he's smart, he's
Speaker 1: onto something Like how did he gain so much joy,
Speaker 1: satisfaction and contentment in not chasing the dream that everyone
Speaker 1: around him was chasing and that society is constantly sort
Speaker 1: of pushing us towards. Absolutely absolutely, and I was I
Speaker 1: was fascinated. But what was his or he's still young?
Speaker 1: What's his uh particular genus of you know, spirituality? Like
Speaker 1: what tradition? So he's a Hindu monk. He's a Hindu monk,
Speaker 1: and he's what I would consider I in the book,
Speaker 1: I break down and think like a monk. I break
Speaker 1: down dharma and purpose and calling. So he would probably
Speaker 1: sit under the leader type of individual. He's very ambitious,
Speaker 1: very focused. He can get a lot done. He's a
Speaker 1: powerhous to be around. At the same time, he works
Speaker 1: up a two am to meditate every day, takes care
Speaker 1: of his health. He's just he's one of these like
Speaker 1: all rounder types of people who's just yeah, really good
Speaker 1: at taking care of his mind, body and spirit. But
Speaker 1: at the same time he really wants to do something
Speaker 1: for the world. He has that energy. There is something
Speaker 1: about certain individuals I'm reluctant to say the word enlightened,
Speaker 1: but people who are carrying a higher level of consciousness
Speaker 1: that when you're in their presence, it's undeniable, like it's
Speaker 1: you can't you can't reduce it to words, but there
Speaker 1: is a sensation of what it feels like to be
Speaker 1: in that person's presence. And he introduced me to his
Speaker 1: spiritual teachers, also one of my suppositual teachers rather than
Speaker 1: at Swammy, who's been a monk for forty years now
Speaker 1: and he's in England, in India and India, and he's
Speaker 1: older as well, and it's like I feel like that
Speaker 1: when I'm with him every time, like it's just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that undeniable presence. And I always say to people,
Speaker 1: you need to you need to feel it to believe it,
Speaker 1: like you need to be there. You can't, like you said,
Speaker 1: you can't reduce it to words. And yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: that now when even when I go to temples. When
Speaker 1: I was in South India particularly, and your home reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of South India because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of these stone statues and the mountain out there. We've
Speaker 1: had we had some proper swammy here or while we've
Speaker 1: had lots of swammis past career, over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one of them looked out of the mountain across
Speaker 1: the way and he said, this feels like my home.
Speaker 1: And in his home is anah yeah, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: a very kind of like powerful spiritual for attack absally yeah,
Speaker 1: and vortex is the right work. So when I went
Speaker 1: to South India, it's a city with these powerful gates.
Speaker 1: So if you look at South Indian architecture, it's like
Speaker 1: these in you You've got a lot of in your home.
Speaker 1: But it's like this incredible kind of like almost like
Speaker 1: Avengers Marvel meets spiritual culture kind of like spaceship kind
Speaker 1: of these these doors and gates and and it's you
Speaker 1: know the temples that are like five thousand years old.
Speaker 1: And when you walk through those corridors, there's one that
Speaker 1: literally feels like you're going to walk through it and
Speaker 1: be transported to another dimension because the way the pillars
Speaker 1: are built. And this is a bolt a thousand years
Speaker 1: like Star Trek. Yeah literally, yeah, exactly, it's just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's super what's it? What's what's some more up to
Speaker 1: date reference point kind of like Doctor Strange because like
Speaker 1: Doctor Strange but on steroids, Like it's just yeah, it's expansive.
Speaker 1: And I think that is one of those things that
Speaker 1: you have to sit in that present. You have to
Speaker 1: go there to believe it. And and I think anyone
Speaker 1: who has whether they have a faith or not. And
Speaker 1: and that's really what's important to me is how do
Speaker 1: we share these ta teachings in a way that it's
Speaker 1: not bound by faith or religion or spiritual tradition even
Speaker 1: for me, Like this book isn't about becoming a spiritual
Speaker 1: tradition or a particular philosophy. It's it's about living like
Speaker 1: you and thinking like a monk. Right, That's that's the ballet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean two things, there's two powerful precepts here. One
Speaker 1: is you can't transmit something you haven't got Like when
Speaker 1: you're in the presence of somebody like that, you know
Speaker 1: it and you know there are a lot of pretenders
Speaker 1: to that type of vibration, but it's pretty transparent, like
Speaker 1: who's really carrying that kind of wisdom and who's pretending
Speaker 1: to And second to that is this idea that you
Speaker 1: really fully embrace, which is meeting people where they're at.
Speaker 1: Like if you show up in robes and you're you're
Speaker 1: framing your presentation in a way that creates a distance
Speaker 1: between you and the person you're trying to communicate, then
Speaker 1: you're already you know, basically behind home plate in terms
Speaker 1: of like trying to connect or transmit. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there's two things you were about there which I think
Speaker 1: are really interesting. It's the first is it's all about
Speaker 1: the frequency you're operating at. So if someone is fooling
Speaker 1: your pretending or trying to be something, if you're operating
Speaker 1: at lower frequency, you may follow for a while and
Speaker 1: you may not know. But when you start upping your frequency,
Speaker 1: that's when you can really see that, Oh right now,
Speaker 1: I can see the difference. And it's not in a
Speaker 1: judgmental way or a critical way. It's just frequencies, and
Speaker 1: at the second point, you're making there around, you know,
Speaker 1: really really speaking to people about where they're at, or
Speaker 1: meeting them where they're at and connecting with them. For me,
Speaker 1: it's just I think compassion is not expecting people to
Speaker 1: be more advanced than they are. And that's what people
Speaker 1: have done with me. I mean when I went to
Speaker 1: the usherroom and when I split up with these monks,
Speaker 1: I mean I am in no way and even now
Speaker 1: I'm not. I mean, their compassion even to spend time
Speaker 1: with me now. And I feel like when you've experienced
Speaker 1: that level of compassion where people see you, they look
Speaker 1: through your so they watch you and they just think
Speaker 1: they can see everything about you that you don't like
Speaker 1: about yourself, and they will still find that spark of
Speaker 1: potential and the spark that makes them believe that we
Speaker 1: should invest and serve and help this human being. And
Speaker 1: for me, when you've experienced that level of compassion, even
Speaker 1: if you are still dealing with stuff yourself, you want
Speaker 1: to pass it on. And so when I see anyone
Speaker 1: at any level, I don't judge anyone because hey, hey
Speaker 1: I've been there before. Hey I'm still there kind of
Speaker 1: in some ways, and I know how hard it is
Speaker 1: to get out of that mess, and so how can
Speaker 1: I judge someone just because there are three steps behind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have this experience with this spark. Yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: everything changes. So how does it change? Well, my lifestyle,
Speaker 1: and I've talked about this before, like my personal lifestyle
Speaker 1: styled the same. I was still dating. I was still
Speaker 1: I'd given up alcohol by that time, and they'd given
Speaker 1: up like you know, drugs and stuff. So I wasn't
Speaker 1: really playing. And I was always very experimental. I've never
Speaker 1: been an addict or a regular consumer of anything. I've
Speaker 1: just been an experiment in my whole life. But for me,
Speaker 1: it was my Yeah, I was still dating, I was
Speaker 1: still doing everything that anyone ever did. There was nothing
Speaker 1: changed in that, but I was now mentally curious and
Speaker 1: checking it out. So I spent the next four years,
Speaker 1: half of them in my summer vacations interning at financial
Speaker 1: companies in London, where I thought I would end up
Speaker 1: working just because my university recommended that. And the other
Speaker 1: half of my breaks, I'd spend them living in India
Speaker 1: with the monks to experience that lifestyle. So I would
Speaker 1: literally go as I explain it, from steakhouses, bars and
Speaker 1: suits to robes, sleeping on the floor and meditating every day. Right,
Speaker 1: So was that was that this Monk's teachers ashram. Yes, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's two hours outside of Mumbai, so it's in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. But it's yeah, that two hours, said Mbai. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And were there other Westerners there, Yeah, yeah, yeah, plenty, yeah,
Speaker 1: plenty of visitors from all over the world, people from Australia,
Speaker 1: people from Europe, people from London, and yeah, they'd definitely
Speaker 1: have a lot of visitors even to us. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: initially it was a couple of years of half the summer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't It wasn't long. I'd go there for like
Speaker 1: two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, like I would go
Speaker 1: there for short bursts of time and just just experiencing,
Speaker 1: just just live like them and live with them. And
Speaker 1: for me, and I didn't know this again, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: it was me really getting to live both options of life.
Speaker 1: Like I was getting to live in the city, I
Speaker 1: was getting to wear a fancy suit to work every
Speaker 1: day and get to perform well in the workplace and
Speaker 1: you know, go through all of whatever that is networking
Speaker 1: and meeting people, and then I would get to do that,
Speaker 1: and I just got so much more satisfaction from it.
Speaker 1: I felt satisfaction from the service we did, I felt
Speaker 1: satisfaction from the meditations, and if I'm completely honest, the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that that got me at that time was
Speaker 1: I didn't have to think that ego and humility and
Speaker 1: vulnerability and empathy and compassion, these weren't just going to
Speaker 1: be concepts anymore. These were going to be real practices
Speaker 1: and weaknesses, yeah, weaknesses, These could become focuses that I
Speaker 1: could really wrap my head around them. Because when I
Speaker 1: was back in the city and I was trying to
Speaker 1: perform and I was trying to show my boss who
Speaker 1: was the best and who was performing well, it was
Speaker 1: hard to maintain that level of gravity because not because
Speaker 1: it's impossible, because it's not that that's what I lay
Speaker 1: out and that's what I'm trying to teach right now.
Speaker 1: It was harder because I hadn't had that training. And
Speaker 1: so now that I've come out of the astroom, I
Speaker 1: feel like my Monk training has allowed me to continue
Speaker 1: to practice those principles in the real world. Whereas at
Speaker 1: that time I was just an eighteen year old kid
Speaker 1: who was still conditioned by everything else. I suppose the distinction.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to make a decision after you'd lived
Speaker 1: as a monk during that like three year period, making
Speaker 1: this hardline decision Okay, I'm going back into the world,
Speaker 1: But when you kind of have one foot in both worlds, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I suspect that it probably became progressively more difficult to
Speaker 1: relate or connect with your friends back in Wonder. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I was very open with the
Speaker 1: closest friends. I remember one of my friends saying to me, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, he was always we would always talk about
Speaker 1: women together, right, We would always talk about girls, like
Speaker 1: which girls we liked and who he was dating and
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I don't time, I would come back from being a monk.
Speaker 1: I'd have a monk moment and and you know try
Speaker 1: and like resist the urge to just talk about women
Speaker 1: in that way and the way it can be done.
Speaker 1: And my friend would just be like, what We're not
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about it? You know, it's
Speaker 1: just like confused, like where's this life going? And other
Speaker 1: parts of other parts and having to say, And I
Speaker 1: want to give credit to my friends too. Some of
Speaker 1: my other friends were just really intrigued and so they
Speaker 1: actually wanted to learn. And so I ran a society
Speaker 1: at university called Think out Loud, and every week I
Speaker 1: would present a topic based on philosophy, science, and psychology.
Speaker 1: So I would take a movie, I would dissect the characters,
Speaker 1: I would we would watch half the movie together and
Speaker 1: then would break down the roles and I would talk
Speaker 1: about philosophy, science, and spiritual reality and psychology to students.
Speaker 1: And when I started it, we had like ten students.
Speaker 1: By the time we finished, university had one hundred students
Speaker 1: coming every week. And it was totally free. There was
Speaker 1: no catch, there was no followers, there's not nothing. It
Speaker 1: was just this beautiful experience. And that's kind of where
Speaker 1: I got into the habit of everything I learned as
Speaker 1: a monk, I would teach it. So if I was
Speaker 1: learning about karma, I would teach it that week. If
Speaker 1: I went that summer and I learned about ego, I
Speaker 1: would talk about ego. And so I just started sharing
Speaker 1: what I was learning because I found that to be
Speaker 1: the best way of letting people connect. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I got fascinated with this whole thing. So
Speaker 1: this whole trajectory gets planned then, like you're you're starting
Speaker 1: to teach and share even before you go off and
Speaker 1: be a full time mom way before, and that experience
Speaker 1: of reviewing movies and discussing it really is, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the germination for these videos that you do now,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent like that, that really was the beginning.
Speaker 1: And that was when I was eighteen years old, so
Speaker 1: fourteen years ago now, and I just loved putting on
Speaker 1: a session every week. And then I got invited to
Speaker 1: other universities, so I go to the London School of
Speaker 1: Economics in present and I go to this other university
Speaker 1: and I was just loving the fact that I was
Speaker 1: finding so many young people in London that wanted this
Speaker 1: over anything else. Like that's what I was impressed by
Speaker 1: the most, that there was a need, and that convinced
Speaker 1: me very early on that if presented effectively, there wasn't
Speaker 1: community for this, and people really were searching. It's very
Speaker 1: similar to Andy Pottocomb's Andy's yeah, yeah, I mean he's
Speaker 1: the only other person who's had right I know, but
Speaker 1: him coming back from that experience and returning to London
Speaker 1: and then kind of hosting these salons. He meets rich
Speaker 1: and then they start kind of you know, basically doing
Speaker 1: informal get togethers that then you know, become and grow
Speaker 1: into Headspace. But the idea started in a similar way
Speaker 1: to kind of what you're telling about. Yeah, exactly, And
Speaker 1: this was I actually remember I told Andy this. I
Speaker 1: said to him that the year I first found out
Speaker 1: about headspace is the year I became a monk. And
Speaker 1: I told him this. I was so impressed by what
Speaker 1: he was doing. And I said to him, if I
Speaker 1: would have had the money, I would have invested, but
Speaker 1: I had no money. I've said this Andy. He's been
Speaker 1: on my podcast and we've done a few panels together.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's amazing. I love Andy, and I said
Speaker 1: that to him. I was so impressed by what they
Speaker 1: did because I was just starting that journey and I
Speaker 1: saw what he'd done. I was like, Wow, that's fascinating,
Speaker 1: you know, it's so great to see that. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is the reason why I'm sharing this
Speaker 1: too with you Riches. You know, I've been doing this
Speaker 1: online for like three to four years, but in my
Speaker 1: life I've been doing this for fourteen years. Like I've
Speaker 1: literally done this every single day of my life for
Speaker 1: the last fourteen years in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: whether I was reading, studying, or teaching or sharing. And
Speaker 1: so for me, it's become my life. And when I
Speaker 1: left being a monk, I didn't want to not do
Speaker 1: that anymore. And what I get to do now is
Speaker 1: what brought me back to that to be able to learn, study, teach,
Speaker 1: share and live in that element which I feel so
Speaker 1: much connected to. Yeah, and meet people where they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was That's always been my thing because because I've
Speaker 1: been you know, I've been plucked out, Like you know,
Speaker 1: it's when you've been drowning in an ocean of material
Speaker 1: thought and someone had the compassion and empathy to reach
Speaker 1: down and grab you. You feel like you want to
Speaker 1: do the same thing. And that's just my meditation constantly.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't you can't ever go back from that,
Speaker 1: the amount of gratitude I have for the people that
Speaker 1: have invested in me, and that opened up my eyes.
Speaker 1: I was eighteen years old, I would have gone down
Speaker 1: the path of becoming an I probably if I had
Speaker 1: it my way, I probably would have wanted to become
Speaker 1: an art director and a massive company. I probably would
Speaker 1: have done pretty well for myself. I would have traveled
Speaker 1: the world and wasted my life like that's I always
Speaker 1: think about that moment of sliding doors, what could have been,
Speaker 1: And that's why I would have been. But because I
Speaker 1: met these incredibly powerful people who wanted nothing from me
Speaker 1: but just to give, it changed my life. And that's
Speaker 1: the opportunity I want. And for people, it may not
Speaker 1: be a monk, but when you think like a monk,
Speaker 1: you you recognize that, actually, am I exposing myself to
Speaker 1: as many alternative methods of thought? Am I really allowing
Speaker 1: myself to experience everything the world has to offer? Because
Speaker 1: if I'm not, I'm already limiting myself in a world
Speaker 1: that's actually unlimited. And that's the challenge I see, is
Speaker 1: that we are living at a time when you have
Speaker 1: the most choice available, you have the most experiences available,
Speaker 1: but we still put ourselves in these prisons. Not only
Speaker 1: that those prisons are one of self seeking. I mean
Speaker 1: you mentioned giving. I mean giving is you know, service
Speaker 1: is the cornerstone of this whole thing. Yes, being in
Speaker 1: selfless service to others, Yes, which is just counterprogramming to
Speaker 1: the way entire you know, our entire infrastructure of Western
Speaker 1: civilization is constructive. Yes, absolutely, yeah, complete counterprogramming. I remember
Speaker 1: when I was giving a talk this was probably about like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, probably about four years ago, and I was
Speaker 1: speaking to a group of executives and one of them
Speaker 1: came up to me afterwards and he said, how old
Speaker 1: were you when you became among I was like twenty two,
Speaker 1: And he said, when did you get the realization that
Speaker 1: life was about selfless service? And I said, well, I'm
Speaker 1: still getting there. I'm not there yet. But the first
Speaker 1: time I fell in love with that idea, I was eighteen.
Speaker 1: He goes, the first time I realized that life was
Speaker 1: beyond me, I was forty two years old, when you know,
Speaker 1: my child was growing up. And he goes, that was
Speaker 1: the first time I realized that life was not just
Speaker 1: about me. And I was thinking, wow, like to me,
Speaker 1: it was. To me. It's weird because I got exposed
Speaker 1: to it at eighteen. I couldn't believe that someone didn't
Speaker 1: understand that even today. Like the reason why we're all
Speaker 1: repeating messages and continue to I think remind people of
Speaker 1: these messages and even ourselves is because you could hear
Speaker 1: that life is about service a million times, but until
Speaker 1: you practice it and until you really until you really
Speaker 1: mold it into every era of your life, like this
Speaker 1: podcast is your service. I think we think of service
Speaker 1: also very limited. We think service means to go out
Speaker 1: and help a charity or being at the Superkochen correct,
Speaker 1: And that is beautiful and people should do it's it's
Speaker 1: wonderful and I think we should all do it, and
Speaker 1: I try and do it as much as I can.
Speaker 1: But service is also serving through your calling, your talents,
Speaker 1: your skills, your purpose that benefits other people, and it
Speaker 1: can be different, like you know, yeah, so yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so many methods. Well, the ultimate is when you can
Speaker 1: find that thing that lights you up and channel that
Speaker 1: in a way to give back to others and also
Speaker 1: support yourself and your family in doing it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the secret. That's what this does for me. I
Speaker 1: just feel like the luckiest person in the world too. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, live in this time where this is possible
Speaker 1: and to have kind of stumbled into this, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: There's there's a beautiful story that I share that you've
Speaker 1: reminded me of now and it's It's the story of
Speaker 1: two monks that washing their bowls, and while they're washing
Speaker 1: their bowls, they see a One of the monks sees
Speaker 1: a scorpion drowning, and so he helps the scorpion out
Speaker 1: of the water and puts it onto the side, and
Speaker 1: in that process he gets stung by the scorpion, and
Speaker 1: the other monk says, what are you doing? Like you
Speaker 1: know this stupid He sit dount, don't worry about don't
Speaker 1: worry about it. This scorpion falls in again into the water.
Speaker 1: The monk picks it up again get stung in the
Speaker 1: process and puts it onto the side, so that the
Speaker 1: other monks just like, Okay, now you're just being ridiculous,
Speaker 1: Like what are you doing? He said, why are you
Speaker 1: saving the scorpion when you know that it's nature is
Speaker 1: to sting, And among replies goes, I know that the
Speaker 1: scorpions nature is to sting, but my nature is to save.
Speaker 1: And so he understood how hard wired his service mindset
Speaker 1: was that he was willing to go through the pain
Speaker 1: to act in that way. So what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: share with that story is that we're all wired to
Speaker 1: serve naturally as children, as kids as people, as humans,
Speaker 1: but we've been educated for greed. And you see this,
Speaker 1: there's countless viral videos of kids who like walk up
Speaker 1: to their television screen and wipe the cartoon characters tears
Speaker 1: off with their tissues, or like kids like running to
Speaker 1: help the person next to them, and we were all
Speaker 1: once that person. But it's just the education that we get.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just too much school. I'm just staying
Speaker 1: generally the education of becoming self centered. And whether you
Speaker 1: look at from a scientific point of view, the studies
Speaker 1: that have been done when people help people, their depression
Speaker 1: goes down, their mental health goes up. When people help people,
Speaker 1: they're able to feel more joy and experience more happiness
Speaker 1: in their lives. Like we are happier when we serve
Speaker 1: and help people, and that I think has been so
Speaker 1: lost that if someone genuinely awesome so because I think
Speaker 1: everyone hearing that will say, oh, yeah, but I like
Speaker 1: to help people. I try if you really did an
Speaker 1: audit of how much time you spend every week genuinely
Speaker 1: helping someone who is giving you no help, or is
Speaker 1: genuinely helping someone who does nothing back for you, I'd
Speaker 1: find that we'd say a very very little amount of
Speaker 1: t Yeah. The key is doing it when it's not convenient.
Speaker 1: Correct what I mean? Yes, exactly, that's the best fair
Speaker 1: to say. Yeah exactly. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: you know you hit it on the head. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not your school. It's like by osmosis.
Speaker 1: It's like I hear what you're saying, Jay, that's great,
Speaker 1: but like I gotta get mine, dude. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: times the clock's ticking and time's running out and I
Speaker 1: got my hustle on. Yeah. So you want my response
Speaker 1: to that, sure, Yeah. My My response to that is
Speaker 1: that mentality will get you the thing, and it will
Speaker 1: get you the number, and it will get you the
Speaker 1: money in the bank, but you won't feel satisfied. And
Speaker 1: that's my hypothesis. So go test it, and I would
Speaker 1: gladly let anyone test that, and I guarantee you that's
Speaker 1: how you feel. What happens, though, is you get it.
Speaker 1: You have that experience of momentary elation that quickly fades
Speaker 1: the half life on that is very short, and then
Speaker 1: you think your next thought isn't I need a new path?
Speaker 1: Your next thought is, well, when I get that next
Speaker 1: thing exactly gonna lock in. Absolutely, it's the habster wheel, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's it's the conveyor belt, and it's that's it's
Speaker 1: the treadmill. That's the that's the challenge with that. And
Speaker 1: I think that's why we have to learn from people
Speaker 1: who have got there and feel that way. I think
Speaker 1: we have to. It's like, you know, when you hear
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey say like everyone should get everything they want
Speaker 1: and become everything they ever wanted, just to realize it's
Speaker 1: not the point when you see everyone who gets to
Speaker 1: the peak of financial or fame or beauty success, they
Speaker 1: then try and serve like that's just what everyone ends
Speaker 1: up having to do. We're in the world capital of
Speaker 1: that right here. Yeah, you know what I mean, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And you see it like you know, I can't remember
Speaker 1: who said this, but you know it's it's talked about
Speaker 1: like your success. I can't remember who said it, but
Speaker 1: your success is based on the depth of the problem
Speaker 1: you solve, right. And it's like if you look at
Speaker 1: any success, even if it's Jeff Bezos and Amazon, and
Speaker 1: someone goes, I want to be Jeff Bezos, Jeff has
Speaker 1: solved not that I know him, but Jeff has solved
Speaker 1: a issue that people had, So it's still service. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what we miss. That anyone's winning, even financially,
Speaker 1: whether we agree with their business model or not, they
Speaker 1: are performing some type of service to people. And because
Speaker 1: he's serving more people with an issue that they have,
Speaker 1: he's able to make more money. So even from a
Speaker 1: totally financial perspective, service still wins. Like there's no there's
Speaker 1: no you know, there's no taking away at that. It's
Speaker 1: it's a more it's just an expansive definition of service, correct, correct,
Speaker 1: But it's still sold. Service ultimately is solving a problem
Speaker 1: that really is a core need in people's lives. And
Speaker 1: I think that could be a starting point for someone
Speaker 1: if they're still like, ja, I don't go right, I'm
Speaker 1: still I'm just trying to be people where there. I'm
Speaker 1: with you, all right, So you make this decision to
Speaker 1: go be a month full time? You live in the
Speaker 1: sash ram for three years, yes, yeah, yeah, and we
Speaker 1: traveled a lot too, so we lived in ushrooms across London,
Speaker 1: Mumbai and Europe as well. Oh wow, um yeah, I
Speaker 1: think similarly. And he was in he went, he was
Speaker 1: in crush he was in Russia and Scotland. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: walk me through like a typical day in the life
Speaker 1: of that experience. Yeah, so you wake up at four
Speaker 1: am every day no matter where you are. And four
Speaker 1: thirty is collective prayers and meditation. So four thirty till
Speaker 1: about five fifteen. Then five fifteen till seven thirty is
Speaker 1: personal meditation time. So that's personal meditation practice often in
Speaker 1: a communal space with other people, can be private. Two
Speaker 1: and then seven thirty to eight is seven thirty to
Speaker 1: eight thirty is a class or class on philosophy from
Speaker 1: the bargut Geeta or the Schumant Bargutum or one of
Speaker 1: these spiritual texts or punishads puranas. Instead, I'll be an
Speaker 1: hour class given by one of the senior monks or
Speaker 1: senior teachers. Usually one of my favorite things to look
Speaker 1: forward to in the day because that's I was like
Speaker 1: kind of like I was always waiting for that, because
Speaker 1: the classes were just so powerful and hearing people who've
Speaker 1: studied all the commentaries in the books. And then eight
Speaker 1: thirties breakfast. Breakfast is usually in India would be some
Speaker 1: kind of Indian dish kind of similar to I don't
Speaker 1: know how to describe it, it's called flat rice. That's
Speaker 1: the easiest way to describe it. So some simple food
Speaker 1: and then from then on it wouldn't be different every day.
Speaker 1: So the way it was split up is the morning
Speaker 1: was about yourself, and the afternoon and evening were about service.
Speaker 1: And that's where I I fell in love with this
Speaker 1: routine of self and service. And I think today now
Speaker 1: the world's coming a lot back to self love and
Speaker 1: I feel like that's where we got to experience both
Speaker 1: very clearly. When you spend half your day taking care
Speaker 1: of yourself, you spend the other half serving, you get
Speaker 1: this beautiful synergy between the two. So for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day, we'd be out feeding children, we'd be
Speaker 1: out building the sustainable village that we were at, we'd
Speaker 1: be out teaching, we'd be out helping, like, we'd be
Speaker 1: out doing something and that would change every day depending
Speaker 1: on what the need was. Sometimes would be chores as well,
Speaker 1: like washing your clubs. I mean washing monk robes are
Speaker 1: not fun at all. They're these huge bed shoots. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's sounds like seven days a week. Do you get
Speaker 1: a day off or you can go, you know, do
Speaker 1: whatever you want. You know. I always I was one
Speaker 1: of those guys who wanted that day off. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, if I make it a five of
Speaker 1: the four ams, can I skip the other note? You
Speaker 1: don't get to It doesn't work like that. And I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot of reflection time in the day
Speaker 1: that you get and you have to really work through
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff because your ego gets in the way,
Speaker 1: your opinions start to get in the way. And living
Speaker 1: community is a real experience. Like when you live community
Speaker 1: with that many men in one place, it's like you
Speaker 1: really have to face your ego, your pride, your competitive mentality,
Speaker 1: your comparison on a daily basis. It's really tough. Did
Speaker 1: humanity ever just percolate to the surface and dudes start fistfighting? No, like,
Speaker 1: no one ever actually, Like the only time monks would
Speaker 1: ever get from the humans are humans. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: care how much you're meditating now at some point, you know, No,
Speaker 1: it was never that that. The only time the monks
Speaker 1: ever got into physical was when the special sacred food
Speaker 1: came out. So there's sacred food that's often and like
Speaker 1: there's these sweets and we didn't you know, we didn't
Speaker 1: eat a lot of sugar or anything like that there.
Speaker 1: So whenever these sweets came out there, these milk sweets sometimes,
Speaker 1: and so these sweets were like the kind of like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never spent time in an ashram, but I've been well,
Speaker 1: we should go to I would like to. I mean,
Speaker 1: I like to take you. I would enjoy that. I'm
Speaker 1: being serious, I'm being deadly serious. We should go together
Speaker 1: to the I go back every year. Yeah, I still do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every year. So I go back every usually December January
Speaker 1: appeared because the weather is good to go then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for anyone who's not from India, like I struggled during
Speaker 1: the hot times in India too, So that's the best
Speaker 1: time if you're visiting. But I'd love to take You'd
Speaker 1: be so fun, it would be cool. Yeah. In my
Speaker 1: experience of you know, sitting in meditation with various you know,
Speaker 1: swamis over the years and and and being around you know,
Speaker 1: various types of those kind of communities, Yeah, the thing
Speaker 1: that I noticed, like the humanity that I see in
Speaker 1: that is the um is the institutionalization of the guru. Right,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes like this pecking order of who's
Speaker 1: close to the higher consciousness, and there seems to be
Speaker 1: a lot of jockeying around. Like that's where I see
Speaker 1: like the sort of character like the you know, our
Speaker 1: innate humanity percolating the surface and manifesting and character flaws. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, that's a really good point. And I saw
Speaker 1: that too, And I feel like, I feel like my
Speaker 1: teachers did a very good job of not trying to create, enjoy,
Speaker 1: or build that type of culture. They tried their best,
Speaker 1: but the follower's mentality is so strong. So I'll give
Speaker 1: an example, like, so, so whenever I was with one
Speaker 1: of my teachers, if we travel together, whether and and
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm you have to put yourself in
Speaker 1: the mindset of I'm a very junior monk and spiritually
Speaker 1: very junior too. So I'm like, I'm like right at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the pile, right, And it's like when
Speaker 1: I would travel with the senior most teacher, there was
Speaker 1: a respect in where we pay physical respects as you've
Speaker 1: probably seen before, where people pay physically bow on the
Speaker 1: floor to show respect to teachers, to etc. And and
Speaker 1: he at seventy years old, there was never a day
Speaker 1: behind closed doors when no one else was watching that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't get back and pay those respects on the floor,
Speaker 1: And to me, that was the that was the moment
Speaker 1: where I was like, he's real because there was no
Speaker 1: more no one to show off to. I was not
Speaker 1: senior that I deserved it, like there was no you know,
Speaker 1: from from the point of view of a hierarchy, even
Speaker 1: though there wasn't one. But he would have the humility
Speaker 1: and the human humanity to recognize that if a soul
Speaker 1: or if a person is showing me respects, and I'll
Speaker 1: showed those respects back. And I felt that at seventy
Speaker 1: years old, I'm you know, I'm like twenty two years old,
Speaker 1: like a seventy year old man, Like that's beautiful. Like
Speaker 1: then there was some beauty in there, and that was
Speaker 1: that was part of it, and the other part was
Speaker 1: the you know. And it's funny because we talk about
Speaker 1: this a lot, even even with the other monks and
Speaker 1: other people that about. My teacher would never have a
Speaker 1: favorite or a number one, and he never verbalized this,
Speaker 1: but we all knew it. And and one of the
Speaker 1: senior monks he always said to me, he said, if
Speaker 1: you want to be the number one, you won't last
Speaker 1: very long right, and he literally said it to me.
Speaker 1: He goes, if you want to be his number one,
Speaker 1: go to right hand man, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: He goes, you're not going to last long here, because
Speaker 1: he said, anyone who wanted that position, they never got
Speaker 1: it because he doesn't want it to exist, and so
Speaker 1: you will fail. And I remember having this conversation with
Speaker 1: him and he's, you know, because he's been so close
Speaker 1: to him for so long, and he said to me,
Speaker 1: he said, there are times this is wrong with us.
Speaker 1: He goes, there are times when I've had to be
Speaker 1: really close to support him, and there are times when
Speaker 1: I've had to move away and step back and let
Speaker 1: him do what he needs to do. And it's like,
Speaker 1: he goes, it doesn't work like that. So I think
Speaker 1: that good leaders always try and avoid creating that culture.
Speaker 1: But our follower mentality is so strong that we want
Speaker 1: someone to worship and idolize, and we want that we're
Speaker 1: seeking on. Our identity is informed by proximity to that person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, And there's two types
Speaker 1: of proximity. So I'll tell you anyways, sparking all these memories,
Speaker 1: so we're walking on this beach in South India. It's
Speaker 1: called Setubund. It's a very holy place and like literally
Speaker 1: the tip of South India if you were to look
Speaker 1: at a map. And so we're walking on this beach,
Speaker 1: it's about twenty five months and our senior teacher and
Speaker 1: we're all walking behind him, and everyone's trying to walk
Speaker 1: close to him, and he's just walking like he's not
Speaker 1: even talking to anyone. He's just walking and he's doing
Speaker 1: a walking meditation and everyone's around him. And it was
Speaker 1: there that I had had a realization. I was like,
Speaker 1: there are two ways of being close to him. Either
Speaker 1: I push everyone away and try and walk through the middle,
Speaker 1: or I push everyone closer and be close because everyone
Speaker 1: else is closer too. And I was like, I remember
Speaker 1: having a real reflection point at that moment. I was like, wow, like,
Speaker 1: these are the two options in life we always have.
Speaker 1: You either get closer to people because you try and
Speaker 1: push everyone else out of the way, or you get
Speaker 1: closer to people because you take everyone with you. And
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm going to try to do that
Speaker 1: second one for the rest of my life. If I
Speaker 1: want to be close to someone, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: everyone close to that person. I'm going to be that
Speaker 1: guy who's trying to and that's my hope, you know,
Speaker 1: that's my meditation. Yeah, that requires that you dispense with
Speaker 1: the zero sum game mentality. Explain it meaning that your
Speaker 1: success can only come at the expense of others, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the universe is infinitely abundant. Yes, and
Speaker 1: there's room for everybody here. Yeah. Yeah, a non fear
Speaker 1: based perspective. Yeah, and think like a monk, I call it.
Speaker 1: There are an infinite number of seats in the theater
Speaker 1: of happiness. So we in our minds have started to
Speaker 1: believe that every we thing. Now, if you're booking a
Speaker 1: cinema theater or a movie theater, there's a finite number
Speaker 1: of seats. You got to get tickets to the Olympics,
Speaker 1: there's a finite number of seats. There's tickets to the Coachella,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. It's like, there's a finite number of seats.
Speaker 1: And so that finite, finite, finite finite has been drilled
Speaker 1: so deeply into us. But there are an infinite number
Speaker 1: of seats, and there's a seat with your name on
Speaker 1: it in the theater of happiness. And just because I'm
Speaker 1: already in there, doesn't mean you can't be in there.
Speaker 1: Just because you're in there doesn't mean I can't be
Speaker 1: in there. And as soon as you realize that, you
Speaker 1: free yourself from realizing there is a seat with your
Speaker 1: name on it, and all you've got to do is
Speaker 1: claim your own seat, and no one else can take
Speaker 1: that seat from you. And when you start living like that,
Speaker 1: you can collaborate, you can grow together, you can build together,
Speaker 1: and you see this as being the epitome of I
Speaker 1: was just reading Bob Iger's book, and in there he
Speaker 1: talks about how it was and I may get a
Speaker 1: few of the names wrong, but I think it was.
Speaker 1: It was Steven Spielbok for sure. As George Lucas, I
Speaker 1: think it's Quentin Tarantino. You're saying they used to get
Speaker 1: together and they would critique each other's movies before they
Speaker 1: came out, so to give each other feedback. You're talking
Speaker 1: about some of the best of all time, like being
Speaker 1: comfortable showing their work to their competitors. Now that's the point, right,
Speaker 1: Like I've never watched the Quentin Tarantino film and felt
Speaker 1: I was watching a Steven Spielberg film and I've never
Speaker 1: watched a Spielberg film thinking I'm watching a George Lucas film,
Speaker 1: which just shows a how incredibly creative and talented they are,
Speaker 1: but also how much they trusted what they were off
Speaker 1: to the game. Yeah, and that to me is such
Speaker 1: a powerful metaphor. And I mean it's not even metaphor,
Speaker 1: it's literal of how you live in a There are
Speaker 1: an infinite number of seats in the theater of happiness.
Speaker 1: On the subject of happiness, you know, I think you
Speaker 1: would agree that we're suffering from an epidemic of loneliness
Speaker 1: and you know, depression, and you know, people are seeking
Speaker 1: for answers in different ways of living. There they're sensing
Speaker 1: their lack of you know, their lack of contentment with
Speaker 1: the path that they've chosen for themselves. And you go
Speaker 1: online and somebody's telling you to, you know, find your
Speaker 1: bliss or you know, seek out your passion. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's although perhaps coming from a good place
Speaker 1: is not necessarily helpful and perhaps damaging because it leaves
Speaker 1: that person thinking, well, I don't I don't know what
Speaker 1: my passion is or you know, I'm not happy, but
Speaker 1: I don't understand the path forward to find that happy penis,
Speaker 1: And I'm unsure about what steps I need to take
Speaker 1: in order to gird my life with more purpose and
Speaker 1: to try to find more fulfillments. So with the experiences
Speaker 1: that you've had, like, how do you speak to that
Speaker 1: person or meet them where they're at to try to
Speaker 1: get them to reframe their perspective on how they're living. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think, first of all, it has to be
Speaker 1: a twofold approach. And what I mean by that is
Speaker 1: there is an aspect of it that is thinking and reflection,
Speaker 1: and there is a part of it that is action
Speaker 1: and experimentation. These are the two aspects of anything in
Speaker 1: our life. And the biggest mistake we make is we
Speaker 1: do too much action and experimenting without reflection, or we
Speaker 1: do too much reflection without action and experimentation. So let's
Speaker 1: let's bring them down. So let's start with the thinking
Speaker 1: and reflective approach. This is approach you can do on
Speaker 1: your own. This is the approach you can do right
Speaker 1: now listening to this. This is approach that I half
Speaker 1: of it that I lay out in think like a monk.
Speaker 1: So the first thing I ask people to reflect on
Speaker 1: is four areas. The first area, it's things that you
Speaker 1: have an expertise in but have no passion for. Make
Speaker 1: a list of three things that you have a expertise
Speaker 1: in but no passion for. So for me, I give
Speaker 1: the example of Microsoft Excel in numbers. I'm okay at it,
Speaker 1: but I don't enjoy it, like I don't have a
Speaker 1: passion for it. Right, So write down three things in there.
Speaker 1: Then the next box that I want you to fill
Speaker 1: out is ask yourself, what do I have no expertise
Speaker 1: in but I have a deep passion for. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's neuroscience. I am not an expert in neuroscience. I
Speaker 1: couldn't perform brain surgery on anyone, and I couldn't scan
Speaker 1: anyone's brain, but I'm super passionate about it. I love
Speaker 1: reading about it. I love speaking to neuroscientists. It's something
Speaker 1: for me. Social media used to be in that category
Speaker 1: for me, once upon a time. Social media is something
Speaker 1: I wasn't an expert in or didn't know much about,
Speaker 1: but I was passionate about learning how to communicate. Then
Speaker 1: the third box things that you're not tease and no passion.
Speaker 1: What are those things in your life that you're like, Oh,
Speaker 1: don't like them, not good at them? Right? Maybe doing
Speaker 1: your taxes, I don't know whatever, right, like pretty much
Speaker 1: everything everything else, everything else. Yeah, And then the fourth
Speaker 1: and final boxes, what are you passionate about? And what
Speaker 1: are you an expert? And that's the box that you're
Speaker 1: trying to find. So that box may be empty right now.
Speaker 1: This is the thinking of so do that reflection experts.
Speaker 1: The reason why it's so important is because most of us,
Speaker 1: first of all, don't even know what expertise is and
Speaker 1: a passion is. And now when I say passion, I'm
Speaker 1: not just saying find your passion, I'm saying what do
Speaker 1: you like doing? What do you get joy from reading about? What?
Speaker 1: Even if you're watching a TV show? What is it
Speaker 1: about that TV show that keeps you captivated? Well, when
Speaker 1: you listen to this podcast, what part about it? Which
Speaker 1: person stands out to you? It's you having to read
Speaker 1: in to every part of your It's like, start with
Speaker 1: something as simple as what's your favorite cuisine? Most people go,
Speaker 1: I don't know what my favorite cuisine is? Well, think
Speaker 1: about the last time you walked out of a meal.
Speaker 1: You were happy when you ordered it, you're happy when
Speaker 1: you ate it, and you're happy the next morning. That's
Speaker 1: probably your favorite quisine. Try and find those patterns in
Speaker 1: your life, because all of us have a karmic pattern
Speaker 1: in our life that we've just not zoned into. So
Speaker 1: I'll give you another example. Let's look at the pattern
Speaker 1: of the best decisions you've made. If you looked at
Speaker 1: the best decisions you made in the last decade, and
Speaker 1: let's say you pick three right, Three is a pattern?
Speaker 1: For me, That's where I'm gonna I'm making that up.
Speaker 1: It's totally my choice. It's subjective, but it's my opinion.
Speaker 1: Three things are a pattern. Look at the three decisions
Speaker 1: you made in your life where you knew it was
Speaker 1: the best decision when you made it, not when you've
Speaker 1: got the best result, but you knew it even before
Speaker 1: the result happened, that you made the best decision. I
Speaker 1: guarantee you, if you reflect on those three decisions in
Speaker 1: the last decade, you will find the same parameters, the
Speaker 1: same environment, and the same decision making thoughts and thought
Speaker 1: process that got you to your best decision. So I'll
Speaker 1: give an example. When I decided to become a monk,
Speaker 1: I believe that was my best decision when I made
Speaker 1: it not because one day I'd be able to write
Speaker 1: a book about it, Because no idea or I'd even
Speaker 1: be here. So I was going against the grain. No
Speaker 1: one agreed with me, and most people thought it was
Speaker 1: the worst idea. When I left being a monk, I
Speaker 1: was going against the grain because most amongst I joined
Speaker 1: with status monks. No one agreed with me, and I
Speaker 1: was completely solved that I was doing the right thing
Speaker 1: for me. When I quit my safe corporate job to
Speaker 1: do what I do now, I was going against the
Speaker 1: grain because most of my friends were happy with their salaries.
Speaker 1: I was doing something that felt really right to me,
Speaker 1: and no one agreed with me, And so I found
Speaker 1: that that's generally the pattern of my life. My best
Speaker 1: decisions are those three things now that may not be
Speaker 1: for you. Your best decisions may be the opposite, So
Speaker 1: that reflection is really important. Second half action. Take the
Speaker 1: next month, Take the next thirty days, and every weekend
Speaker 1: plan a new activity, workshop, seminar, course, book, podcast, to
Speaker 1: listen to, person to shadow, person to experience with. Take
Speaker 1: a Saturday and Sunday and try it out. You've got
Speaker 1: eight things you can now test. There are eight days,
Speaker 1: eight weekends in a month roughly test something new on
Speaker 1: each of those, going actually do something. So this is
Speaker 1: no more thinking, no more reflecting. If you want to
Speaker 1: be a chef, where you think you want to be
Speaker 1: a chef, go and do a cooking class. See how
Speaker 1: naturally it was for you. See how much fun you
Speaker 1: had doing the process. Take eight different things and try
Speaker 1: them out. When you do both of those together, within
Speaker 1: thirty days, you could figure out what you genuinely are
Speaker 1: passionate about as a starting point. That may change, it
Speaker 1: may evolve, but at least you've got somewhere to start.
Speaker 1: And the biggest mistake is we're sitting there doing a
Speaker 1: personality test trying to figure out what our passion is.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're not going to know right. A lot of
Speaker 1: it goes back to if you could just live in
Speaker 1: the mindset of the child within, like what did you
Speaker 1: what were the choices that you made when you were
Speaker 1: a kid about what you like to spend time doing.
Speaker 1: I think that's also a good place to say. I agree,
Speaker 1: and I think those are really powerful exercises. The expertise
Speaker 1: piece can come later. Yeah, it's not about that at
Speaker 1: that moment. Absolutely, and more you engage with those activities
Speaker 1: that you naturally enjoy. You're creating opportunities, You're creating an
Speaker 1: environment in which opportunities can come later. To further explore that,
Speaker 1: there's a difference between a lack of expertise and inexperience. Right,
Speaker 1: we think we lack expertise in something, but actually we're
Speaker 1: just inexperienced at it. And that's the point of that
Speaker 1: second element of you don't have to be the best
Speaker 1: at something when you start doing it, but as soon
Speaker 1: as you start doing it, you've now given yourself that
Speaker 1: opportunity to grow. And I think we all know this.
Speaker 1: There's always something we've all learned and become better at it.
Speaker 1: But if you're fascinated by you're probably more likely to
Speaker 1: invest more time, right, And so yeah, don't but it
Speaker 1: is also important. There may be things in your life
Speaker 1: that you have an expertise in but you don't have
Speaker 1: a passion in. But then ask yourself the question why
Speaker 1: don't I have a passion here? Because you could add
Speaker 1: meaning to it, Like there are so many skills that
Speaker 1: we have that if you added a bit of meaning,
Speaker 1: you added some purpose to it, you added why you
Speaker 1: are doing it, you could actually find a great use
Speaker 1: for it, and I think a lot of us are
Speaker 1: underestimating how powerful expertise is. You may have strengths that
Speaker 1: it's just underutilized by your current job, but actually it
Speaker 1: could be really well utilized by someone that you felt
Speaker 1: activated you. Essentially, everything that you're saying are tools for
Speaker 1: greater self awareness. So when you say, when I made
Speaker 1: this decision to go be a monk, I knew in
Speaker 1: my heart it was the right decision for me despite externality.
Speaker 1: Same thing when you made the decision to leave. But
Speaker 1: you're somebody who had spent an inordinate amount of time
Speaker 1: developing your self awareness. You're a very integrated person because
Speaker 1: of all the inside work that you've done to get
Speaker 1: to a place where you not only are in tune
Speaker 1: with your instincts, you're able to rely upon them, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And I think most people are
Speaker 1: so disconnected from themselves and either lack adequate self awareness
Speaker 1: or are just living their lives so reactively that their
Speaker 1: impulses or their instincts are either unheard or entirely unreliable.
Speaker 1: And I think that people make decisions and set goals
Speaker 1: for themselves in that state that lead them terribly awry.
Speaker 1: But intuition is a muscle that everyone can build, right,
Speaker 1: it really is. I really believe that. There's a study
Speaker 1: that I mentioned and Think like a monk where I
Speaker 1: talk about how men and women are asked to be
Speaker 1: alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes or give themselves
Speaker 1: an electric shock. Thirty percent of women chose an electric
Speaker 1: shock and sixty percent of men chose an electric shock
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts
Speaker 1: for fifteen minutes. Now here's the root of all human suffering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now here's the thing. That Intuition comes from asking yourself questions,
Speaker 1: basic questions, simple questions, just as it would getting to
Speaker 1: know Rich. Getting to know Jay is the same process.
Speaker 1: After I eat something, did I like that? Did I
Speaker 1: not like it? The next morning? Did I like that?
Speaker 1: Did I not like it? When you ask people what
Speaker 1: are your favorite movies? You know how you feel when
Speaker 1: you walk outside a movie. You don't need to do
Speaker 1: a personality test. You don't need to do three months
Speaker 1: away in Costa Ricaller. You don't need to do that
Speaker 1: to know whether you like something or you don't like something.
Speaker 1: You can do a sense check with yourself every single
Speaker 1: day after doing an activity, and if you literally after
Speaker 1: you did anything anything you do, stop and just ask yourself,
Speaker 1: did I enjoy that? Yes or no? Simple question. So
Speaker 1: let's say I say yes, what did you enjoy about it?
Speaker 1: Let's have that conversation. What did I enjoy about it?
Speaker 1: What part of it was uncomfortable but you still got
Speaker 1: excited about it? These are three simple questions that can
Speaker 1: lead you to greater self awareness. I've done the same
Speaker 1: with every area of my life, and you should really
Speaker 1: become like an encyclopedia in your own life. Like if
Speaker 1: someone goes to me, what's your favorite movie, It's like,
Speaker 1: I am a big fan of thrillers. My favorite director
Speaker 1: and producer of all time is Christopher Nolan. My favorite
Speaker 1: movies A Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, and The Downright Trilogy.
Speaker 1: They're all Christopher Nolan movies. It's there's such a pattern
Speaker 1: in our lives, and everyone has that pattern. We just
Speaker 1: have to look beyond the debris that's all there, of
Speaker 1: the noise and the dirt that's stopping us because there's
Speaker 1: just so much distraction. But that practice of self inquiry
Speaker 1: is really the definition of leading an examined life. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: And that's all we have to do that. We just
Speaker 1: have to ask ourselves questions. The problem is we are
Speaker 1: demanding the answer from our partners, the universe, our teachers, people.
Speaker 1: We demand, we go, why is this happening to me?
Speaker 1: What's the meaning of this? That's not a question, that's
Speaker 1: a demand, and a question is a genuine heartfelt request.
Speaker 1: A question is do I like this? Like? That's a
Speaker 1: question is soft and powerful. A question is not loud
Speaker 1: and weak. And our questions are actually demands, and that's
Speaker 1: why we don't find the answers well. Their demands be
Speaker 1: also because they're they're foisted outward. Yes, if they're turned inward,
Speaker 1: the questions become, you know what, what what is? You know,
Speaker 1: what is the fear that compelled me to do that? Like?
Speaker 1: What what childhood wound am I trying to solve by
Speaker 1: you know, having this exchange with this person or making
Speaker 1: decision X, Y or z exactly, And that's exactly it.
Speaker 1: Demands are outwards, questions are inwards. It's beautiful, absolutely, that's it.
Speaker 1: So you spend three years in the ashram, and you emerge,
Speaker 1: you make this decision to return. First of all like,
Speaker 1: you know, what, was there a sense at some point
Speaker 1: that you were going to always stay there? And if so,
Speaker 1: what changed? Yeah? So my my dream was that I
Speaker 1: would do it for the rest of my life, and
Speaker 1: I believe that as a monk, I'd be able to
Speaker 1: write and teach and share and hopefully be able to
Speaker 1: share that message anywhere and everywhere and where the where
Speaker 1: are your parents at this point? What do you mean intends?
Speaker 1: How are they processing? So? I've always described my parents
Speaker 1: as very neutral. They've been neutral participants in a beautiful way,
Speaker 1: and I mean they're a good way. I love my parents.
Speaker 1: They've they've never been overly pushy, and they've never been
Speaker 1: overly encouraging. They kind of always been neutral. It's a
Speaker 1: really weird situation to be in. So my parents don't
Speaker 1: massively celebrate everything I do, but they don't get upset
Speaker 1: when things don't go the way they thought it would.
Speaker 1: So your mom's not asking you when you're going to
Speaker 1: go to medical school stuff? No, no, No, he knew
Speaker 1: I wouldn't get in. You know, I didn't go to
Speaker 1: my graduation ceremony, so I never got that picture of
Speaker 1: me holding the I graduates, but never got the picture,
Speaker 1: and so my parents really gave up on me. Maybe no,
Speaker 1: they you know, they gave in to me at that
Speaker 1: time when I decided to make this decision, and then
Speaker 1: they were open to whatever happened. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: do it for the thirst of my life. And then
Speaker 1: two things happened. One was I was really pushing it
Speaker 1: and really testing myself physically, and I could see that
Speaker 1: my health was was stumbling from it because I was
Speaker 1: just like trying to do all the fasts and meditating
Speaker 1: for longer, and my almost competitive ego and also competition
Speaker 1: with myself mindset constantly wanted to test. And at the
Speaker 1: same time I started to feel like and this was
Speaker 1: really tough, like to admit it, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I admitted it then, and it's only happened afterwards. I
Speaker 1: think that my meditation and self awareness got me to
Speaker 1: a point where I realized I wasn't a monk in
Speaker 1: the sense of that that wasn't my path. That I
Speaker 1: felt that I wanted to share wisdom in a certain way,
Speaker 1: that I wanted to serve people in a certain way,
Speaker 1: and a big part of me felt that that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be realized through that lifestyle. And that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: I knew that one day we'd have billions of views
Speaker 1: or that, you know, all that kind of stuff. Like
Speaker 1: it wasn't It wasn't like numbers, and it wasn't fame.
Speaker 1: It was just like, I feel this deep calling to
Speaker 1: be with people and serving this way and share wisdom
Speaker 1: in this way and teaching this way, and talk about
Speaker 1: movies in the way I talk, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: be immersed in mainstream culture. And as a monk, I
Speaker 1: didn't even know who won the World Cup that year,
Speaker 1: like I didn't, I had no idea, and so that
Speaker 1: was a big part of it. And then my teachers also,
Speaker 1: I think, started to see that I definitely consider myself
Speaker 1: a rebel, and I think becoming a monk is one
Speaker 1: of the most rebellious things you can do because it's
Speaker 1: totally anti society. But I think they could see that
Speaker 1: rebelliousness in me, and they could see that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily last with that mentality as a monk. I think
Speaker 1: as a monk it comes with sacred, sacred commitment. It's
Speaker 1: a sacred commitment to what you're doing. And I think
Speaker 1: I realized and they realized around the same time that
Speaker 1: it wasn't like that, and I didn't realize that at
Speaker 1: the time. I realized in hindsight, And so when my
Speaker 1: teacher said to me that he felt that I should
Speaker 1: leave so I can share what I've learned, at that time,
Speaker 1: I hadn't yet admitted to myself that I even knew
Speaker 1: what I would do, and said that really felt like
Speaker 1: a breakup. It really felt like he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not you, it's me. It's kind of like also
Speaker 1: a breakup, right, less relief, more like he was condescending
Speaker 1: to you. Correct like, because I hadn't yet admitted it
Speaker 1: to myself, it felt like I had failed. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why what failure actually feels like when you
Speaker 1: haven't admitted something to yourself is it feels like failure.
Speaker 1: Whereas now I look back and I go, wow, I
Speaker 1: should have felt relieved. I should have felt like someone
Speaker 1: just opened up a gateway for me to go off
Speaker 1: and be myself. And I didn't know that then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when I left, I was probably in the most
Speaker 1: depressed day of my life. I moved back in my parents,
Speaker 1: everyone around me now saying we told you so, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't make it like and then you know what is
Speaker 1: making it deciding to spend your entire life and that
Speaker 1: what I think. No one knows what made it mean
Speaker 1: for me, but it's it's what I mean is it's
Speaker 1: that perspective of like, oh, you couldn't even live as
Speaker 1: a monk, like why would you come back? Or like,
Speaker 1: oh no, who's going to hire you now? And I
Speaker 1: heard that over and over again, like how are you
Speaker 1: going to make money? Who's going to hire you, who's
Speaker 1: going to talk to you? Like will you be able
Speaker 1: to reintegrate? And it was hard, like hearing that noise
Speaker 1: as soon as you come back, rather than like, oh,
Speaker 1: we so have it every like. It wasn't like a
Speaker 1: welcoming party. And that's what my parents. My parents were
Speaker 1: very supportive. I'm talking about the external Yeah noways, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got it. But you emerged from that experience with
Speaker 1: a very powerful tool box, and it's one thing to
Speaker 1: implement or practice those tools in the construct of a
Speaker 1: very controlled environment at the Ashram, versus trying to take
Speaker 1: them into the chaos of the world. Yeah. Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: what was that re emergence process like and how do
Speaker 1: you think about the applicability of that timeless wisdom and
Speaker 1: that toolbox in terms of how we navigate the you know,
Speaker 1: vicissitudes of the modern age. Well, I even foold myself
Speaker 1: that the tools I'd learned were non transferable. So in
Speaker 1: the in the in the immediate moment, even I, even
Speaker 1: after having all that trade is useless. I was just like, great,
Speaker 1: like what do I do now? And and and it
Speaker 1: came from again the noise because I applied to forty companies.
Speaker 1: And when I say forty companies, I mean I send
Speaker 1: them all specific tailored resumes and cover letters. And I
Speaker 1: got rejected from all forty before into ad agencies. And
Speaker 1: I'm talking about entrustment banks doing it. Yeah, investment banks,
Speaker 1: financial institutions, consulting firms, strategy, that's just the universe doing
Speaker 1: you a favor. True, But I didn't know that then.
Speaker 1: Like you know, I was like, I can't rely on
Speaker 1: my parents forever. And my parents are not financially well
Speaker 1: off or you know, so I can't just leach off
Speaker 1: of them, and I need to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make money. I'm twenty six years old, and what am
Speaker 1: I going to do? So I was applying to companies
Speaker 1: that would have given me a job three years before,
Speaker 1: and I'm struggling and I'm getting all these nose and
Speaker 1: you know, when you're seeing rejection after rejection after rejection,
Speaker 1: you really start to question what you have. But I
Speaker 1: realized that those three years, and I describe it this
Speaker 1: way and the way you said that the three years
Speaker 1: being a monk were being at school, and the last
Speaker 1: seven years since I've left have been the exam. And
Speaker 1: I can genuinely say so far that every tool that
Speaker 1: I have tested from my monk talk, it works. And
Speaker 1: the biggest one, or most most likely the most powerful
Speaker 1: one that I've felt is there's a beautiful verse in
Speaker 1: the Monu Smithee I talk about in the book, and
Speaker 1: it says that when you protect your purpose, your purpose
Speaker 1: protects you. And what I mean by that, and I
Speaker 1: will broaden purpose to mean what it needs to mean
Speaker 1: for anyone listening. You have to protect your strengths, your calling,
Speaker 1: your passions, your interests, your skills. You have to protect
Speaker 1: them like a precious jewel, because the whole world will
Speaker 1: come at you and tell you that it's not a jewel.
Speaker 1: The whole world will come at you and tell you
Speaker 1: that it's worth nothing. And if you don't protect it.
Speaker 1: It can't protect your value back. And most of us,
Speaker 1: as soon as we get questions, we just chuck the
Speaker 1: jewel out. We just chuck it away and we go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that wasn't worth anything. And then later on in life
Speaker 1: you realize you threw away a precious jewel. So I
Speaker 1: love that verse because that's what I was being tested
Speaker 1: to do. Is I was about to go sell myself sure,
Speaker 1: and just go back into the world that I came
Speaker 1: from and just chuck out that jewel rather than like, hey,
Speaker 1: I learned all these things I wanted to serve. I
Speaker 1: became a monk because I wanted to serve. How can
Speaker 1: I still serve? How can I not just throw that
Speaker 1: all out and pretend that it doesn't matter, And how
Speaker 1: can I apply the discipline and the mentality and all
Speaker 1: of the great skills because guess what, when, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: no one wants to hire someone with monk on their
Speaker 1: resume for three years. And that's what I had because
Speaker 1: they couldn't see the transferable skills. I had to see them.
Speaker 1: So they were thinking, oh, he's probably just going to
Speaker 1: be really quiet in the office, right, Like, what is
Speaker 1: he going to do? But I knew that that choir
Speaker 1: was intuition. I knew that that choir was solitude, not loneliness.
Speaker 1: I knew that that quiet was the power, that ability
Speaker 1: to read things, reading between the lines, to connect with people.
Speaker 1: And so I ended up still getting a job at Accenture.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing I did was it came about
Speaker 1: nine months, ten months after I had left the Ushram.
Speaker 1: For ten months, I spent every day in the library
Speaker 1: reading spiritual book, spiritual text like The bugget Eater, and
Speaker 1: then reading self development books and business books and trying
Speaker 1: to reintegrate. So it spent I spent about ten months
Speaker 1: literally reintegrating. And then when I get my job, I
Speaker 1: remember they did an induction day. And you know at
Speaker 1: these big companies, they have these induction days where they
Speaker 1: try and do team bonding. So my first day of
Speaker 1: work was a pizza making class with all a hundred
Speaker 1: graduates who had also been hired by the company. So
Speaker 1: I turned up at this pizza making class and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, what am I can I do? Like, I
Speaker 1: don't drink alcohol. I've never gone back to drinking, so
Speaker 1: I still don't drink. I was like, Oh, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm going to be able to eat half
Speaker 1: the pizzas that we make, and how am I going
Speaker 1: to engage and how do I talk to people? And
Speaker 1: I remember being really uncomfortable that day because I was
Speaker 1: having to decide again who I was going to be
Speaker 1: in a world that I knew who I would have
Speaker 1: been before and now with everything else I learned. So
Speaker 1: I remember just finding one or two people having a
Speaker 1: really deep, meaningful conversation with them, and I found my people,
Speaker 1: and I found a smaller group, whereas I think if
Speaker 1: I'd gone before, I would have been the loudest person
Speaker 1: in the room and networking I was. I was totally different.
Speaker 1: And I'm still really close friends with one of the
Speaker 1: guys that I met that day, and I love it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's been it was. Accenture was an amazing experience.
Speaker 1: So at Accenture your job was it originally or did
Speaker 1: you morph into this role as kind of the social
Speaker 1: media person there? Yeah, I don't really understand how that
Speaker 1: what happened? So I started out as as an as
Speaker 1: an average analyst. I had the company where you just
Speaker 1: get a typical job, correct, correct, And what happened is
Speaker 1: that in our first year they ran a competition where
Speaker 1: they were going to choose a group of people to
Speaker 1: be trained by some social media experts that they were
Speaker 1: working with to try and build the social media and
Speaker 1: digital department inside the company, because that was new then.
Speaker 1: It was like a big, big area of growth at
Speaker 1: that time. And so thankfully I got into the twenty
Speaker 1: in the competition, and then I came out number one
Speaker 1: in the full competition and one, and so I got
Speaker 1: this coaching. And this coach not only became a coach
Speaker 1: from a professional standardpoint, he became one of my closest
Speaker 1: friends names Thomas Power. He lives in London, and he
Speaker 1: just I don't think he taught me everything about social media.
Speaker 1: I think he really opened in my mind. He would
Speaker 1: constantly push me to never settle. So if we made
Speaker 1: a breakthrough or something like I got a promotion of
Speaker 1: the company, he would never see that successful. What's next?
Speaker 1: What are we going to build? Like? He would just
Speaker 1: give him gave me this mentality of just growth mindset,
Speaker 1: believing more was possible, and just being able to apply
Speaker 1: all the tools that I'd learned. And so I end
Speaker 1: up creating this social media role at Accentia, where I'm
Speaker 1: creating all of this content. I'm learning how the biggest
Speaker 1: brands in the world use social media. I'm working with
Speaker 1: executives on social media presence and understanding Twitter and LinkedIn,
Speaker 1: and I just get exposed to this incredible world and
Speaker 1: that's where I get to learn these skills. Right. So
Speaker 1: that's basically, you know, the Ashram for learning how to
Speaker 1: become this social media maven with the unbelievable knack for
Speaker 1: creating virality. Yeah, and it wasn't that like I never
Speaker 1: created you know, viral content while I was at Accentia,
Speaker 1: but it just started opening up my mind to what
Speaker 1: was possible. Right. It was just like, oh, these are
Speaker 1: the tools. Feeling comfortable with failure, getting it wrong. It
Speaker 1: gave me a playground, right, It gave me an opportunity.
Speaker 1: And this is what anyone who's listening in to this
Speaker 1: right now, watching this, and you're working at a company,
Speaker 1: your company is giving you an opportunity to learn, to grow,
Speaker 1: to test. I learned so much about digital and strategy
Speaker 1: working at Extension that I could never have got from
Speaker 1: reading a book or going to a course or a
Speaker 1: seven because it was there, like I was there with
Speaker 1: it every day with a company that was five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people, you know, a global organization. So that's when
Speaker 1: when I hear that people are dissatisfied with their jobs
Speaker 1: and their companies. My biggest question is have you learned
Speaker 1: everything you possibly could from that place, because the truth is,
Speaker 1: you could find a lot more meaning and passion in
Speaker 1: a place that you don't want to be in because
Speaker 1: you realize it could be the answer and key to
Speaker 1: what you could do in the future, and there is
Speaker 1: so much to gain. Yeah, that's a cool lens. So
Speaker 1: what's interesting about this is I didn't really fully understand
Speaker 1: like that you kind of went into this corporate world
Speaker 1: before I thought you kind of we're hired as a
Speaker 1: consultant after you already figured out all this social media
Speaker 1: stuff and they hired you for that purpose. No, no, no no,
Speaker 1: So that's fascinating. But what I think is really interesting
Speaker 1: here is from an outsider's perspective looking in, it would
Speaker 1: appear that so many of these these you know, timeless
Speaker 1: wisdom concepts don't square with living in the modern world.
Speaker 1: Like when we think of detachment, we think of asceticism.
Speaker 1: When we think of competition, we think of you know,
Speaker 1: the zero sum game, etc. But I think when you
Speaker 1: peel back the layers, they're they're they're really highly compatible.
Speaker 1: So I'm interested in kind of exploring. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you take these ideas into the world and how they
Speaker 1: that's how they inform and how they inform your decision
Speaker 1: making and kind of how you you you know, see yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. And there's a big difference between, especially
Speaker 1: from the bug with Gita's point of view, but there's
Speaker 1: a big difference between detachment and indifference. And I think
Speaker 1: in our limited mindset sometimes we think that detachment means difference,
Speaker 1: or detachment means disconnecting, and actually detachment means and I
Speaker 1: quote this incredible writer where he said that detachment doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you own nothing. Detachment means that nothing owns you.
Speaker 1: And when you look at detachment through that lens, it
Speaker 1: means can I use everything that I have for a
Speaker 1: higher purpose? Can I use it and engage it rather
Speaker 1: than be consumed and used by it? Now, granted, that's
Speaker 1: a very high platform to live on and it's not easy,
Speaker 1: but the point being that detachment is not indifference, that
Speaker 1: detachment doesn't just mean, oh I don't want anything to
Speaker 1: do with this it's actually, how can I use this
Speaker 1: for more than what it's being used for right now?
Speaker 1: And that's what's known as by Rupagaswami's He quotes about
Speaker 1: probably about five hundred years ago, he created and coined
Speaker 1: a term called yukta veriragya, which means using everything for
Speaker 1: a higher purpose. So he talks about how real renunciation,
Speaker 1: real detachment, real asceticism is how can I use this
Speaker 1: for something more than myself and it's not about just
Speaker 1: getting rid of it? And I love that principle and
Speaker 1: I think that that's a very that's a very practical
Speaker 1: principle that we can all employ living in the real world.
Speaker 1: So for monks, detachment is real. Like we didn't have beds, right,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a place that we slept. We slept
Speaker 1: in a different place every night. But if you're not
Speaker 1: a monk and you want to apply that same principle,
Speaker 1: this is how you think about it. You recognize that
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in a position where I
Speaker 1: am consumed by everything. Another addition to detachment is detached
Speaker 1: from the result, focused on the process. That's another definition
Speaker 1: in the above good get to that you're not attached
Speaker 1: to the fruits of your labor, but you're completely committed
Speaker 1: to the labor, the process itself. And that's something that
Speaker 1: we miss so often that we think being detached means
Speaker 1: not caring about what happens. Actually it means caring about
Speaker 1: the process and not caring about the result. So when
Speaker 1: we're talking about writing a book, and you know you've
Speaker 1: written books, and when you're writing a book, if you're
Speaker 1: writing a book and all you're thinking about is how
Speaker 1: many copies am I going to sell? Now you're not
Speaker 1: going to write a good book. Now you're dead out
Speaker 1: of the gate totally. You're dead straight away because all
Speaker 1: you're thinking about how many copies am I going to sell?
Speaker 1: Is this going to rank? If that's what you're thinking about,
Speaker 1: you're now not present, which means you're not going to
Speaker 1: write a good job, a good book. Whereas if you
Speaker 1: would dedicate to the process, the result is a given,
Speaker 1: the results a natural end. To dedicate to the process,
Speaker 1: I fully get having a process oriented mindset and approach
Speaker 1: to everything that I do. On the higher purpose piece,
Speaker 1: what I find myself doing is deluding myself a little
Speaker 1: bit sure, treating a little bit of denial. Like perfect example,
Speaker 1: we're here doing the podcast. Now I can say, and
Speaker 1: there is a sliver of honesty in this, that I'm
Speaker 1: doing this for a higher purpose. I am like, when
Speaker 1: I sit down for these conversations, I'm trying to be
Speaker 1: as present as possible and you know, deliver the best
Speaker 1: content that I can in service to the audience. At
Speaker 1: the same time, I'm profiting off of this, really, and
Speaker 1: I know that if I grow the audience, that then
Speaker 1: I can charge more and get more advertised. You know,
Speaker 1: Like sure, there is a very self serving as I
Speaker 1: and I'm always you know, unsure about how those two
Speaker 1: worlds like butt up against each other. So intentions are
Speaker 1: all percentages. So what you just broke down, you may
Speaker 1: have and this is me everyone included. You may have
Speaker 1: a fifty percent pure motive and fifty percent impure motive.
Speaker 1: Or you may have a seventy five percent pure motive
Speaker 1: and you maybe twenty five percent impure. The point is
Speaker 1: it's a process of purification. But guess what, running away
Speaker 1: from it doesn't remove the impure intention doing it, being humbled,
Speaker 1: seeing it fall apart, failing growing, being told you're terrible,
Speaker 1: and having to reprocess that. That is what purifies you.
Speaker 1: So the belief that if I run away from that
Speaker 1: which brings me down, and you'll run away with it
Speaker 1: like it stays with you because it doesn't become purified.
Speaker 1: And that's the process of purification. When you look at
Speaker 1: a muddy glass of water, it needs to be purified
Speaker 1: to be drinkable, and we're the same. We just get muddy.
Speaker 1: But with us, what happens is when you're in the world,
Speaker 1: when you're a monk, you're getting cleansed a lot every
Speaker 1: day when you're in the world. It's described in India
Speaker 1: as to a dirty elephant. So the elephant goes and
Speaker 1: bathes in the water, and then it rolls in the mud,
Speaker 1: and then it bathes in the water, and it rolls
Speaker 1: in the mud, and it does this all in So
Speaker 1: that's what we're doing. When we have impure and pure motives,
Speaker 1: we're doing both. But guess what, when you're aware and
Speaker 1: you start being honest with yourself and what you just
Speaker 1: did was beautiful, you're like this, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be in denial. I'm not going to let myself delude myself.
Speaker 1: And what happens with that greater self awareness, you'll get
Speaker 1: closer and closer and closer to being able to do
Speaker 1: things with a purer motive. And that may mean at
Speaker 1: some point that you're like completely going to detach from
Speaker 1: ads or sponsorships or whatever it may be. But that
Speaker 1: won't just happen if you stop that. That desired doesn't
Speaker 1: go away just because you don't externize it. Well, the
Speaker 1: irony is that the more the more service minded I
Speaker 1: am and the more pure I am in my approach,
Speaker 1: the better it all is. And that ends up being
Speaker 1: more enriching to you know what I mean. So you
Speaker 1: can make the argument that that somebody should be selfless
Speaker 1: and in service for selfish motives, like you can be
Speaker 1: like if I if I'm trying to appeal to somebody
Speaker 1: who is a selfish person, the appeal is, well, if
Speaker 1: you're in service to people, your life will improve. So
Speaker 1: even if you're doing it for selfish reasons, it's still
Speaker 1: the right thing to do. Exactly. That's it, That's exactly.
Speaker 1: It hit the nail on the head, that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. And if that's what gets you started, Hey,
Speaker 1: that's what gets you started. So what trips you up?
Speaker 1: I'm like, now you're in the world, you're very successful.
Speaker 1: You've got a million things going on, the books coming out,
Speaker 1: your videos are you know, you've got billions of views
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff. I would imagine your
Speaker 1: life is lined with spiritual minefields. That's right. I mean
Speaker 1: you're being we're all being tested. But you know, what
Speaker 1: are the tests that you're facing and where do you
Speaker 1: still find yourself tripping yourself up? What is it that
Speaker 1: you're continually having to revisit? Well, I think the biggest
Speaker 1: test is so since I turned eighteen, I've always had
Speaker 1: my two hour meditation practice a day. And when I
Speaker 1: was a monk, obviously we did more, but the majority
Speaker 1: of the quality of it happened in the day in
Speaker 1: the morning. For me, now with my crazy schedule, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things being tested is my routine, my depth,
Speaker 1: my quality. And you know, in in the modern world
Speaker 1: people may say, oh, yeah, you meditate for two hours.
Speaker 1: My monk teachers would say how deep with those two hours? Like,
Speaker 1: they don't care about the two hours, you know, they
Speaker 1: talk about depth and quality, not quantity. So for me,
Speaker 1: the quality and quantity of my meditation is constantly being
Speaker 1: tested because there are supposedly more important things that I
Speaker 1: have to do, whether it's social media, whether it's audience,
Speaker 1: whether it's writing, whether it's doing right instead of being.
Speaker 1: And so my being is challenged, and that, to me
Speaker 1: is the biggest thing that I have to watch out
Speaker 1: for constantly is when I'm traveling, I have to prioritize
Speaker 1: my routine. When I'm moving around and I'm waking up
Speaker 1: later than I always am, or I'm on a plane
Speaker 1: for too many hours a day, I can't let go
Speaker 1: of that. And I think that I'm sharing that as
Speaker 1: a very real battle right now because that's what I'm
Speaker 1: grappling with. And so for me, that's that's a big one.
Speaker 1: And I really think that my meditation is is where
Speaker 1: the purity comes from. Like that's my bath, that's my
Speaker 1: purity bath every day, Like you miss your bath, like
Speaker 1: you'll smell it's the same thing. Well, it's rigged that way.
Speaker 1: I mean, all this, all the being got you to
Speaker 1: this place to where now you don't have time for
Speaker 1: the being because it provided you with so many gifts
Speaker 1: and opportunities. Correct, And so I'm just very uh I'm
Speaker 1: I'm saying this as much to answer you a question
Speaker 1: as I am for my own vigilance. Like the more
Speaker 1: I say this, the more I verbalize it, the more
Speaker 1: vigilant I become. Well, God would just tell you to
Speaker 1: wake up earlier. Yeah, and you know, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's part of it. But I think it depends how
Speaker 1: and you may find this. I find that mentally creative
Speaker 1: careers or purposes are different and they require good sleep.
Speaker 1: And so I'm a big believer. I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: in eight and a half hours of sleep. I sleep
Speaker 1: eight and a half hours a day. I'm sleeping before midnight,
Speaker 1: usually by nine thirty ten PM, to get my HGH
Speaker 1: to be maximized. And I think people I know a
Speaker 1: human growth homemone for anyone who doesn't know, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure your whole audience would know. But sleeping after twelve,
Speaker 1: your human growth hormone is not having the moment that
Speaker 1: it could have, and so you're limiting the quality of
Speaker 1: your sleep when you sleep after midnight. So for me,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a big believer in figuring out your routines.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing. That's one thing that I'm challenged by.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I'm challenged by is and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to share. I want to give you real ones that
Speaker 1: I'm grappling with rather than the obvious easy ones of
Speaker 1: like oh, there's so many opportunities and what to say
Speaker 1: no to and stuff like that. But I'd say another
Speaker 1: one is finding spiritual community. So finding deep community. I
Speaker 1: think I've been very fortunate. I think La has been
Speaker 1: good to me and we've made some really amazing friends here.
Speaker 1: But I think I go back to India every year
Speaker 1: to live with the monks. I take my wife as well.
Speaker 1: We go together every year, and that for me is
Speaker 1: my reconnection to remind me of how important that practice is.
Speaker 1: Because even while I'm here and I'm like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: doing all right. I've been meditating every day, I'm doing good.
Speaker 1: I'm doing good, and then you go back and go,
Speaker 1: oh wow, like you know, there's so much more that
Speaker 1: I've totally missed. So that kind of reawakening and humbling
Speaker 1: every year is really powerful for me. When you go
Speaker 1: and meditate with the experts and you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I get it. Yep, I've got a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do. And I think that looking in the mirror,
Speaker 1: and you can only look in the mirror when you're
Speaker 1: surrounded by people who are who are practicing with greater depth,
Speaker 1: and so I think that that's a real challenge as well,
Speaker 1: of surrounding yourself with people who who are aspiring for
Speaker 1: the same levels of death right. And it goes back,
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of reiterate your sliding doors example,
Speaker 1: to this experience. You had this blessing of being exposed
Speaker 1: to this monk at an impressionable moment in your life.
Speaker 1: Like had that not happened, your life would have had
Speaker 1: a completely different flavor to it totally. And it goes
Speaker 1: to this point of you know, not only seeking out mentors,
Speaker 1: but putting yourself in a position where you're exposed to
Speaker 1: different ideas, right, Like, you can't model or become something
Speaker 1: that you're not exposed to. Yeah, exactly, no, you can't.
Speaker 1: And that's the biggest thing, right We've all heard it before.
Speaker 1: You can't be what you can't see, and I think
Speaker 1: we don't see If we don't see enough of something,
Speaker 1: you don't realize how important it is. And that's why
Speaker 1: I mean the biggest, the biggest monk approaches to everything
Speaker 1: are so powerful. Like we talk about routines. Monks have
Speaker 1: incredible morning routines, mindfulness and meditation practice is we know
Speaker 1: that you know some of the most successful people in
Speaker 1: the world, and you've interviewed some of them, and I've
Speaker 1: interviewed some of them, and They've all got a deep
Speaker 1: meditation practice. You know, breathwork is so powerful. Like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm breaking this all down in the most simplest ways
Speaker 1: of how even just self and service like that to
Speaker 1: me as a concept of how monst of their lives
Speaker 1: of half self half service, like all of those is
Speaker 1: such brilliant foundation points of how we can construct our
Speaker 1: lives to find peace and to and to live with purpose,
Speaker 1: Like there are these simple constructs that we can all adopt.
Speaker 1: Clarity is a superpower for sure. As said by somebody
Speaker 1: we both interviewed, you've all know a Harari love you right,
Speaker 1: who also has a you know, strong meditation. He goes away.
Speaker 1: I think this year he did or did he do
Speaker 1: sixty He was telling me we were talking just before
Speaker 1: and he he told me he used to do sixty
Speaker 1: days and now because of his busy schedule, he still
Speaker 1: at thirty days. Yeah, exactly every year. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: love that about him, and he will tell you, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure he told you as well. That his books
Speaker 1: are a product of that practice, because he requires that
Speaker 1: level of solitude to develop the clarity that's necessary to
Speaker 1: write his books, which really are these ten thousand foot
Speaker 1: perspectives on how we live right. And it's one thing
Speaker 1: to be on of opossmum meditation or in an ashram
Speaker 1: where you're stripped away of those distractions, but you know,
Speaker 1: we live in a world where the noise is overwhelming
Speaker 1: and the distractions are not only omnipresent, they're they're specifically
Speaker 1: constructed to be as highly addictive as possible. And this
Speaker 1: is an interesting dynamic because your work requires you to
Speaker 1: have distance from those things, but you leverage those mediums
Speaker 1: to basically, you know, to have this career that you have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's a It's a beautiful thing
Speaker 1: because the tools are not going to go away, and
Speaker 1: social media is not going to go away, so learning
Speaker 1: how to use it effectively. Like I was just listening
Speaker 1: the other day, I really want to interview him too.
Speaker 1: I was just I watched an interview with Jake Joke
Speaker 1: Jay Cole the other day and mixed him up with
Speaker 1: a football player nearly, but j Cole the rapper. His
Speaker 1: music is fantastic, And I was watching he's very reflective,
Speaker 1: and he was saying that he took a break from
Speaker 1: social media to get away and he realized that when
Speaker 1: he came back, nothing went away. And and and this
Speaker 1: was the point that I'm making that learning how to
Speaker 1: engage is more important than disengaging. And this is something
Speaker 1: that's missed. Disengaging is the first step to re engage
Speaker 1: more effectively. It is not the step and the final step.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of us look at disengagement
Speaker 1: as the achievement or the final step, when actually disengagement
Speaker 1: is the beginning step of effective re engagement. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? Yeah? Like that, And I think that that's
Speaker 1: the mistake. People may people say, oh, I went on
Speaker 1: my social media seven day as I'm going to be
Speaker 1: brilliant when I come back. No, because you haven't still
Speaker 1: figured out how to re engage. When I became a monk,
Speaker 1: it disconnected me from the noise, but my re engagement
Speaker 1: into society has been more powerful because of the disconnection.
Speaker 1: But not seeing the disconnection as an end. And so
Speaker 1: when you decide to disengage from anything, learn that actually
Speaker 1: re engaging is the skill you want to develop. When
Speaker 1: you learn how to re engage, reconnect, renew, like, when
Speaker 1: you can do all of that effectively, that's when you
Speaker 1: win the battle. So for me, what helps me re
Speaker 1: engage with social media is, first of all, I am
Speaker 1: a creator, not a consumer. I consume to create or
Speaker 1: I create and I don't consume. So what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is when I come on too social media,
Speaker 1: I'm going there to share or to infuse energy. I
Speaker 1: don't go there to get energy. And if I go
Speaker 1: there to consume, it's to learn to create better. So
Speaker 1: that's a very clear rule for me. I'm not a
Speaker 1: consumer of soci not scrolling and looking at what everyone
Speaker 1: else is saying, not in an unintentional way. Like I
Speaker 1: may follow you to see if you've interviewed someone, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, Rich, ask that really good question. I
Speaker 1: won't ask that question. I can ask you from this angle,
Speaker 1: so that that will help my audience, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: that's consuming to create Or oh Rich got that amazing guest,
Speaker 1: Like maybe I should reach out to them, you know
Speaker 1: that kind of like And so I think being a
Speaker 1: consumer is important to being a creator, but it is
Speaker 1: not consuming just randomly and unintentionally and even if I'm
Speaker 1: being random on social media, it's intentional. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: going random to see what comes up on my feed
Speaker 1: because I want to see what's winning. So that's one point.
Speaker 1: The other barrier that I've made is me and my
Speaker 1: wife have created no technology times and zones in the home,
Speaker 1: and we break this all the time, but it's a
Speaker 1: good rule. So we decided that we would not have phones.
Speaker 1: And I recommend this to have phones in the dining
Speaker 1: room or the bedroom because it's more fun to eat
Speaker 1: and sleep with people. So don't you know, don't ruin
Speaker 1: those spaces where there's time for bonding and connection and conversation.
Speaker 1: And most people these days are sitting in their beds
Speaker 1: on their phones, on their devices and then go to
Speaker 1: bed right rather than talking or reflecting on the day
Speaker 1: or asking someone how their day was, whatever it is
Speaker 1: that you want to do. So I feel like creating
Speaker 1: barriers and times have really helped me. And even if
Speaker 1: I fail at it sometimes and we don't always follow it,
Speaker 1: it's still a useful thing to have. The other thing
Speaker 1: I have is I make sure and this has changed
Speaker 1: my life. Just don't look at your phone in the
Speaker 1: morning like that just the morning time is so powerful.
Speaker 1: So I wake up at six on my best days,
Speaker 1: and that's my generic across the board, five days a week,
Speaker 1: and I don't look at my phone until eight fifteen
Speaker 1: when I go down to the gym because I'm meditating
Speaker 1: in the morning and I've got my personal practices. So
Speaker 1: that just not looking at the phone in the morning,
Speaker 1: you're already now not starting the day as a consumer.
Speaker 1: You're starting the day as a creator. I think I
Speaker 1: heard you say that you lock your phone in your car.
Speaker 1: It's true, it's a true story. So I literally that
Speaker 1: was when I came back from being a monk. So
Speaker 1: when I came back from the usher, when I moved
Speaker 1: back in with my parents, I used to leave my
Speaker 1: phone and my laptop in the car, locked in the
Speaker 1: trunk outside because I knew that if I kept it downstairs,
Speaker 1: I would trick myself into going to get it, even
Speaker 1: after three years at the ash room, even after three
Speaker 1: years at the ashram, because that's how stuff, this stuff
Speaker 1: is designed. But again, it was disengaging to learn how
Speaker 1: to re engage, and re engagement means rules. You have
Speaker 1: to set rules for yourself. You have to set rules
Speaker 1: that you can follow and rules that you can commit to.
Speaker 1: And I think the simplest one for me is if
Speaker 1: you don't like and I don't know how you live,
Speaker 1: but I live. My life is very scheduled by the
Speaker 1: minute in the hour, even if it's free time or
Speaker 1: reflection time. And I like living like that because it
Speaker 1: doesn't give me an excuse. I don't really have many
Speaker 1: gaps in my day where I can just aimlessly do stuff. Well.
Speaker 1: It takes the decision fatigue out of everything, correct. I mean,
Speaker 1: one hard and fast rule that I have that I
Speaker 1: break fairly regularly is I never schedule anything before twelve nice.
Speaker 1: So my morning time is meditation, journaling, and then I
Speaker 1: go out and a train and that's usually that's that's
Speaker 1: my solitude. That's an active version of meditation that involves
Speaker 1: trail running or you know, going swimming or whatever I'm doing.
Speaker 1: But I give myself like that seems very indulgent to
Speaker 1: most people. And I have the privilege of being self employed,
Speaker 1: so I can do that, and I understand most people
Speaker 1: can't do that. But by adhering to that rule like I,
Speaker 1: you know, people will say, oh, can you do this
Speaker 1: conference call at nine in the morning, I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not available until twelve. Sometimes I I, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to bend for that or whatever. But by
Speaker 1: making that kind of a parameter and a priority, that's
Speaker 1: improved my life tremendously. Exactly. Yeah, that's beautiful, and I
Speaker 1: think that, like you said, if there are people out
Speaker 1: there who can't make those decisions, make it in the
Speaker 1: power that you do have. So if that for you
Speaker 1: is you don't do anything before nine am. If if
Speaker 1: your idea is you don't do anything on Sunday before noon,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is, like, find your mini version
Speaker 1: of that and see how that changes your life. You
Speaker 1: may not be able to do it to the degree
Speaker 1: of saying I'll never do anything before that time, but
Speaker 1: you can do it one day a week. You can
Speaker 1: do it for an hour a week, you can do
Speaker 1: it for ten minutes a week. Like that expands. I
Speaker 1: feel like the better we use our time, the more
Speaker 1: time expands for us. And I think we feel time
Speaker 1: is limited because we often don't use our time effectively. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing I wanted to touch on with you is
Speaker 1: this idea of element environment and energy. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I talk about how there are there, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are three things that we're all missing in our lives
Speaker 1: or we're not aware. It's self awareness. So the first
Speaker 1: is our element, and that to me is your your dharma,
Speaker 1: your passion, you're calling. It's when you feel you're performing
Speaker 1: at your best. It's what what what power? What power situation?
Speaker 1: But not not external, but what power mode do you
Speaker 1: find yourself? And so I love being in this mode.
Speaker 1: I love beaking on stage. I love reading, studying and learning.
Speaker 1: I love writing, I love synthesizing, Like that's my power mode,
Speaker 1: that's my element. I love being in the element. Now
Speaker 1: that comes with figuring out your dharama and your passion
Speaker 1: and your purpose and everything we spoke about. The second
Speaker 1: area of environment is what environment do you thrive in? Now?
Speaker 1: The reason why I fell in love with your home
Speaker 1: is because I love solitude and I love silence and
Speaker 1: I love being alone. And so right now it's just
Speaker 1: me and you, and I was just like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is really nice. And so I have an office for
Speaker 1: my team, but I work from my home office because
Speaker 1: I don't like being around lots of noise and people.
Speaker 1: And you're going to manage all these people? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But driving the big social media machine. Yeah, and it's hard,
Speaker 1: and so you know, and I'm still and this is
Speaker 1: what I mean by this is a challenge, right, do
Speaker 1: you protect your purpose or do you give in? This
Speaker 1: is exactly It's like, I have to work from home
Speaker 1: because that is who I am. I love being alone
Speaker 1: to create. I need time, I need space. I needn't.
Speaker 1: I can't deal with too much distraction. I don't enjoy it.
Speaker 1: And so I've had to craft my life in a
Speaker 1: way to do that. And just just to clarify, when
Speaker 1: I was at Accentia, I did not have my own office.
Speaker 1: I did not have a corner office, I did not
Speaker 1: have any office. I worked on the floor. And I
Speaker 1: was able to do this then by putting on my headphones,
Speaker 1: or by being very careful about who I spoke to
Speaker 1: and who I connected with, or finding a space where
Speaker 1: I could build my own. So you can craft these
Speaker 1: spaces too, even if you don't have them. But environment,
Speaker 1: it's really important to know what environment you thrive in,
Speaker 1: because I think for most of us, our environment is
Speaker 1: just something we accept based on what we get, and
Speaker 1: we're not good at crafting. Environment. Could be something as
Speaker 1: simple as playing the right song. It could be having
Speaker 1: the right background on your desktop because it brings you
Speaker 1: to life. It could be having crystals in front of you.
Speaker 1: This is an environment. When I walked into that, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, books and crystals kind of table. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like there's so much This is an environment and
Speaker 1: everyone can create the environment, whether they're at an office desk,
Speaker 1: where they're in a cubicle, whether they're on the train.
Speaker 1: You have to create that environment. And finally, it's what
Speaker 1: energy do you vibe with? And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is you can look at it as simple as
Speaker 1: fast paced energy or slow energy, but you can also
Speaker 1: look at it as frequency of do you succeed and
Speaker 1: are you more challenge when you're around people that are
Speaker 1: teaching you and guiding you, or do you succeed in
Speaker 1: an energy that is where you're teaching. Like, knowing your
Speaker 1: energy of power is so important, and I feel for
Speaker 1: so many people their energy is low because they're constantly
Speaker 1: in low energy spaces, so places like bars and restaurants
Speaker 1: every day. Of course you feel tired, of course you
Speaker 1: feel exhausted. Of course you don't feel energized in the morning.
Speaker 1: It's probably one of the worst ways to end the day,
Speaker 1: and we think that it's decompressing, and actually no, it's
Speaker 1: just depressing, right, It's like there's no decompression, there's just
Speaker 1: depression that comes with that because you just get exhausted
Speaker 1: and you're body in your mind are now dealing with
Speaker 1: what's called cognitive load, because your mind in a bar
Speaker 1: is not only trying to listen to the person talking
Speaker 1: to you. Your mind is trying your brain is trying
Speaker 1: to process all the other cluttered sound because it's trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of it. Now, guess what, your brain
Speaker 1: doesn't realize for a long time that there is no
Speaker 1: sense in it because it's still trying to process, process, process,
Speaker 1: So it's getting drained. And so you have to know
Speaker 1: what energy you thrive in, and if you need a
Speaker 1: day to take care of your energy every week, you
Speaker 1: have to invest in them. Well. I think answering those questions,
Speaker 1: like grappling with like what is the energy in which
Speaker 1: I thrive? What environment suits me? You know, what is
Speaker 1: my element? All of this goes back to self awareness
Speaker 1: to it. You know, I think if you ask most
Speaker 1: people what kind of environment do you thrive best in?
Speaker 1: I would venture to imagine that most people aren't really sure.
Speaker 1: They don't answer that they don't know. And my answer
Speaker 1: is to that is that that's what I expect, And
Speaker 1: that's why I'm encouraging that, because I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: give you the answers for you because I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I can't know, and no one can know. But
Speaker 1: what I do know is that if you ask yourself
Speaker 1: of the right questions more often, you will very quickly
Speaker 1: find out. Just like everyone knows whether they like Mexican
Speaker 1: food or not, it's the same thing. It's not complicated,
Speaker 1: Like it's really that simple. It's like, you know whether
Speaker 1: you like Mexican food or not. Okay, you like Mexican food.
Speaker 1: Do you like burritos or tacos? You know the answer
Speaker 1: to that, Like, it's not complicated, And it's the same
Speaker 1: with energy and environment and element it's just no one's
Speaker 1: ever asked us. No one's ever asked us what's your
Speaker 1: favorite energy? Right, imagine being on a first date and
Speaker 1: someone goes to you, what environment do you drive it?
Speaker 1: No one asked that. Everyone asked what's your verite color,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite food, what's your favorite movie? Start applying
Speaker 1: that same questioning to how you live your life. It's
Speaker 1: asked that about people you meet when you you live
Speaker 1: to I remember I was given a very interesting offer
Speaker 1: once by a very wealthy individual, and I remember and
Speaker 1: it would have been very lucrative for me. And I
Speaker 1: remember coming back from that evening and speaking to a
Speaker 1: very dear friend of mine and he was like, how
Speaker 1: did he go? Because I was very excited for that meeting.
Speaker 1: It was very early in my career. I was very
Speaker 1: excited for that meeting. I didn't think I've ever met
Speaker 1: someone of that caliber before, and it was quite a
Speaker 1: moment for me. So I told him I was excited.
Speaker 1: I wasn't when I come back. When I got back,
Speaker 1: he said to me, like, so, how do you go?
Speaker 1: And I said, I said, I don't think I'm going
Speaker 1: to work with him, And he was like, why not.
Speaker 1: It sounds like an amazing opportunity, it's lucrative everything. I
Speaker 1: was like, I just didn't vibe with this energy, Like
Speaker 1: there was just something about it that just I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like. I felt like if I failed, he'd say
Speaker 1: I told you so, and if we won, then he'd
Speaker 1: take the credit. And I just that's not the kind
Speaker 1: of partnership I like. I like partnerships which are win
Speaker 1: win where we're supporting each other and so so easy
Speaker 1: to judge that. But you will forget that if you
Speaker 1: don't ask yourself when you walk out. See, when we
Speaker 1: walk out of parties, we talk about the food in
Speaker 1: the drink, We talk about what people were wearing, all
Speaker 1: useless information. We rarely go do I like hanging out there?
Speaker 1: Or do I not like hanging out there? Do I
Speaker 1: energized or do I not? Those are much better questions
Speaker 1: to ask then oh, did you like her shoes? Well?
Speaker 1: Expanding that level of self earness to better understand how
Speaker 1: other human beings operate is incredibly valuable, especially if you're
Speaker 1: in a relationship, Like if you're somebody who who you
Speaker 1: know needs solitude, like you said, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the person that you're with thrives in that dynamic, Like
Speaker 1: that person may need something different and being able to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, grock that will provide you with incredibly powerful
Speaker 1: and important relationship tools to maintain that relationship. Otherwise, if
Speaker 1: you're expecting them to process in the way that you do,
Speaker 1: you're setting yourself up for a lot of problems. Exactly
Speaker 1: so for me and my wife, it's a really good point,
Speaker 1: which I'm really glad you raised that for me. For
Speaker 1: me and my wife, she succeeds and thrives when she's
Speaker 1: around her friends and family, and I succeed and thrive
Speaker 1: when I'm when I'm on my own or with her,
Speaker 1: but on my own in terms of a creative way.
Speaker 1: And so we know that when I want that time,
Speaker 1: that's when she usually goes back to London and spends
Speaker 1: time with her family, or when she wants to go
Speaker 1: spend time with her family in London or has our
Speaker 1: friends over here, that's when I'm going to get more
Speaker 1: time to do that. And so we found that we
Speaker 1: both require very different things, but we've tried in our
Speaker 1: relationship to time them, her for me and me for her,
Speaker 1: timed them at the same time so that we both
Speaker 1: get that and so I can be traveling alone, like
Speaker 1: I just went to New York for a week, but
Speaker 1: she was here and her friends had moved into our
Speaker 1: place for a week with her. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's finding out the things that work, and it's
Speaker 1: you supporting them to have that environment, and they support
Speaker 1: you to have your environment, rather than like you saying,
Speaker 1: oh well, I like being alone, so you should be
Speaker 1: okay being alone too, Like, we both know that doesn't work,
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, yeah, respecting that and also understanding that
Speaker 1: that person has their own independent experience and and and
Speaker 1: being in a place where a healthy, healthy place where
Speaker 1: you're trying to support that person in their own personal
Speaker 1: self actualization journey as a poe those to making it
Speaker 1: like a compliment to your own journey. I think it's important, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important to be to have your independence within a
Speaker 1: relationship and not be you know, overly defined by the
Speaker 1: other person. Yeah. I could couldn't agree more. And I
Speaker 1: think with with couples, that's the challenge. We look for
Speaker 1: similarities in likes and dislikes, you know, when you when
Speaker 1: you're dating someone or you're meeting someone yours, like, oh,
Speaker 1: do we like the same food, do we like the
Speaker 1: same things? Do we both like being alone? Do we
Speaker 1: both like this? And you look for likes and similarities
Speaker 1: and quite superficial things that are not actually relevant to
Speaker 1: the quality of a relationship. What's what's really the heart
Speaker 1: of a quality of relationship is do you have the
Speaker 1: same likes and dislikes? As to how to build a
Speaker 1: relationship in terms of your values about a relationships about values. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can be my wife and are completely
Speaker 1: different and so me too. Is that you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people are shocked that it works. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've been together for twenty years, so we figured a
Speaker 1: few things out. But it's because we share core of values,
Speaker 1: even though you know, and from a surface perspective we
Speaker 1: look very different. Yeah, and core values not just from
Speaker 1: the point of view of the deeper thing that builds
Speaker 1: you both, but I mean core values of how you
Speaker 1: view a healthy relationship. Yeah, like me and my wife
Speaker 1: both view a healthy relationship as one where we support
Speaker 1: each other to reach our own goals. That's a value
Speaker 1: in a relationship. It's not even just a value. Another
Speaker 1: value of ours is that we both know that we
Speaker 1: can trust each other, that we're always acting for each
Speaker 1: other's benefit. Right, That's a value we both share that
Speaker 1: we both share the value of. Once you sleep on it,
Speaker 1: it's done. We both have that. So when we've fought
Speaker 1: about something, or we've disagreed about something, when we've got
Speaker 1: to sleep the next day, we're not bringing it back
Speaker 1: up is as ammunition. It's gone. And we both had
Speaker 1: that value before we met, and so those are relationship
Speaker 1: value and that's what you need. Values that are similar
Speaker 1: or not just values in Oh, we both value spirituality,
Speaker 1: that's that's there. But this is a deeper level of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not about avoiding conflict or not arguing or not
Speaker 1: having definitely fights over things. It's about how you process
Speaker 1: that and communicate to get to the other side and
Speaker 1: you know, minimize the half life. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean John Gottman, who whose institute is phenomenal. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: been at the Gartman Institute. I haven't been. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: met and met a confidence that we both spoken. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to have him on my podcast. But John
Speaker 1: Gottman's done all the research on relationships, and he talks
Speaker 1: about the number one skill needed to have a long
Speaker 1: lasting relationship is not date nights. It's not walks on
Speaker 1: the beach, it's not flowers, it's learning how to fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And when I read that in his work, I was
Speaker 1: just like, that is so true. I love that because
Speaker 1: you are going to fight, but most people don't know
Speaker 1: how to fight. And just as there's love languages that
Speaker 1: Gary Chapman so beautifully explained, I believe that there are
Speaker 1: fight languages, and what I mean by that is there
Speaker 1: are fight responses or languages that you naturally have. So,
Speaker 1: for example, my wife's fight language is she likes to
Speaker 1: be quiet, reflect and think and not talk about things
Speaker 1: until she processes. My fight language is totally the opposite.
Speaker 1: I want to figure it out right now, I want
Speaker 1: to open up. I want to extrapolate on to break
Speaker 1: it down. Guess what. In the beginning of our relationship
Speaker 1: that really didn't work because she was quiet and I
Speaker 1: was like, why are you quiet? Why are you not
Speaker 1: telling me what's going on? Have I done something wrong?
Speaker 1: And I'd be forcing her to share it, and then
Speaker 1: she would share prematurely and feel like she said something
Speaker 1: she didn't mean now and now I'm upset at what
Speaker 1: I forced her to share with me. And so we
Speaker 1: really had to learn each other's fight languages. And I've
Speaker 1: learned that her fight language is better than mine. And
Speaker 1: so now the approaches she needs space, I need space,
Speaker 1: and we come back together and discuss it when we're
Speaker 1: both ready. And it sounds basic, but so many relationship
Speaker 1: issues occur because people's fight languages don't match mindful fighting.
Speaker 1: Mindful fighting fighting is that is the antithesis of mindfulness
Speaker 1: in the sense that you're you're being reactive in the moment,
Speaker 1: like something comes over us and we're just we're just
Speaker 1: spouting whatever, and we're repeating these recursive patterns that are
Speaker 1: embedded deep within us. And to the extent that you
Speaker 1: could take a step back and deploy the skills that
Speaker 1: you learn through meditation and the experiences that you had
Speaker 1: in this ostramp to create distance between your impulse, yeah
Speaker 1: and the next best move. You're taking out an insurance
Speaker 1: policy for a better outcome. Absolutely, yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1: It's well said. Well, I appreciate you coming here to
Speaker 1: talk to me. You are an inspiration to me and
Speaker 1: millions of people out there. The content that you're putting
Speaker 1: out into the world is definitely raising the the vibration
Speaker 1: of consciousness, and that's what we need now more than ever.
Speaker 1: We need to bridge these gaps and learn how to communicate.
Speaker 1: Long form conversations are one way to do it. The
Speaker 1: videos and everything that you kind of you know, produce
Speaker 1: as as really like a spiritual offering to the world.
Speaker 1: I think is m is a gift. So thank you
Speaker 1: for thank you, and I'm excited to see how this
Speaker 1: book is received by the world, and uh, and what
Speaker 1: you decide to do next, my friend, and you've always
Speaker 1: got a welcome seat across from me here. Thank you. Man.
Speaker 1: I was also going to say, you've I've been I've
Speaker 1: been school today and how to host a really good podcast.
Speaker 1: This has been from a veteran. This has been a
Speaker 1: lot of fun and it's uh, yeah, you're brilliant to
Speaker 1: talk to him. And I've really explored so many things today.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for helping me re explore
Speaker 1: and learn and question so many of my own beliefs
Speaker 1: and values. I really appreciate anyone who can help me
Speaker 1: do that. Thanks. So the book is think like a monk,
Speaker 1: available everywhere. Support your local booksellers, but you can also,
Speaker 1: of course, always get it on Amazon. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about Jay Jetty dot me. He's a beast on Facebook,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because it's like I thought we were
Speaker 1: done with Facebook, but you're like huge on Facebook. That's
Speaker 1: a whole other podcast. Just google Jay Chetty you can
Speaker 1: find him everywhere. Than man, Thank you so much. Manche Hey,
Speaker 1: we didn't even talk about being vegan. We didn't do that.
Speaker 1: Next time, Yeah, next time. Yeah, we got a lot
Speaker 1: more tea. We should do more stuff together regularly. Right on.
Speaker 1: That's great. That was awesome man, Thank you. I hope
Speaker 1: that was good for your audience.