Speaker 1: How do you feel you have the numbering album in
Speaker 1: the country, And I remember saying I've never been more
Speaker 1: unhappy in my life. Let's say you spend twenty years
Speaker 1: of your life working towards a goal that's going to
Speaker 1: solve everything and nothing changes. That's when you get hopeless.
Speaker 1: The best selling author and host the number one health
Speaker 1: and wellness.
Speaker 2: Podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty. Hey, everyone, welcome back
Speaker 2: to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
Speaker 2: Thanks to each and every one of you that come
Speaker 2: back every week to listen, learn, and grow. I'm so
Speaker 2: grateful that together we're trying to make the world a happier, healthier,
Speaker 2: and more healed place. And you know, my goal in
Speaker 2: life with this show is to try and introduce you
Speaker 2: to people that I find have fascinating insights, have counterintuitive
Speaker 2: points of view, are able to open our minds, help
Speaker 2: us imagine and think differently. And today's guest is someone
Speaker 2: that our teams have been in touch for around maybe
Speaker 2: three years at this point and was waiting for this
Speaker 2: opportunity to sit with him in his presence in person,
Speaker 2: and so I feel really grateful to have this opportunity.
Speaker 2: I'm speaking about none other than nine time Grammy winning producer,
Speaker 2: named one of the one hundred most influential people in
Speaker 2: the world by Time and the most successful producer in
Speaker 2: any genre by Rolling Stone. Rick Rubin, of course, has
Speaker 2: collaborated with artists from Tom Petty to Adele, Johnny Cash,
Speaker 2: to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, to Slayer,
Speaker 2: Kanye West, to The Strokes and System of a Down
Speaker 2: to Jay Z. Rick Rubin, Welcome to On Purpose. Thank
Speaker 2: you for being here, Rick.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, sir.
Speaker 2: Just from the moment you walked in, it was I
Speaker 2: felt a sense of synergy which was really beautiful to
Speaker 2: experience as we were just walking over here. And I
Speaker 2: would never start an interview with this question. Today, we're
Speaker 2: obviously talking about your new book, which by the way,
Speaker 2: needs no introduction in and of itself. It's been performing
Speaker 2: incredibly well. It's been on the New York Times bestseller
Speaker 2: list for for months now. The Creative Act A Way
Speaker 2: of Being. If you don't already have this book, I
Speaker 2: highly recommend it. Whether you think you're a creative or not.
Speaker 2: This is a book that's going to help you tap
Speaker 2: inward into helping you access a part of yourself that
Speaker 2: you may not even know exists, or refine and deepen
Speaker 2: apart that does exist. So highly recommend the creative act
Speaker 2: that we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: Rick.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't usually start with this question, but I feel
Speaker 2: like you're someone that When I was preparing for this
Speaker 2: interview today, this was the question that stood out to
Speaker 2: me the most, and so I had to ask it
Speaker 2: to you. You start this book by saying, we're all creators, right,
Speaker 2: We're all creators, and I'm intrigued to know who have
Speaker 2: you created? Like? Who are you like at the core
Speaker 2: of it? How do you see yourself? I think we
Speaker 2: live in a world today where people create who we
Speaker 2: are to us in our own minds. Our families and
Speaker 2: friends create us. Our the media we consume creates us.
Speaker 2: And I think everyone will agree that we have so
Speaker 2: many influences. But who's the you you're trying to create
Speaker 2: or have tried to create over the last few decades.
Speaker 1: I don't know if trying would be the word I
Speaker 1: would use. I would say I'm true to whoever's inside there.
Speaker 1: I don't look at the outside very much. I look
Speaker 1: inward and try to focus on what do I feel?
Speaker 1: What am I seeing in the hopes that by sharing
Speaker 1: what's going on in me, it maybe resonates with someone else.
Speaker 1: I can't predict what someone else would like, and I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody can. So if I'm true, authentically true
Speaker 1: to myself, that's the best chance of someone else liking something.
Speaker 1: So I would say tuning into myself and being honest
Speaker 1: with myself and anything I can do to get closer
Speaker 1: to understanding what I like and why I like it,
Speaker 1: and what I don't like and why I don't like
Speaker 1: it is helpful in the work that I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that idea of almost like a personal
Speaker 2: check in or a sense check. And it's interesting we
Speaker 2: do it after we eat food, like you know whether
Speaker 2: you liked the restaurant or you didn't like a.
Speaker 1: Restaurant, or it's automatic. It's funny because I've been asked
Speaker 1: about like, how can you be so confident in your opinion?
Speaker 1: It's like, if you taste food, how confident can you
Speaker 1: be if you like it or you don't like it? It's
Speaker 1: so clear, it's so face value, and I think we
Speaker 1: tend to overthink and put layers on top of something
Speaker 1: as simple as it tastes really good. I like it,
Speaker 1: or you know what, this one's not for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's as simple as.
Speaker 2: That, absolutely. And why do you think it is, though,
Speaker 2: that over the years we've all as humans from your perspective,
Speaker 2: your opinion, I'd be fascinated to know you've worked with
Speaker 2: so many people who also make things that are fascinating
Speaker 2: to billions of people on the planet. Right there's we
Speaker 2: all experience what it feels like to get five to
Speaker 2: ten people to laugh at a joke or listen to
Speaker 2: something we do. But when you're creating at that scale, what,
Speaker 2: in your opinion, has made us so addicted to wanting
Speaker 2: to become someone that people like and often go against
Speaker 2: who we truly are. You just said you like to
Speaker 2: sense that authenticity and feel how you feel a lot
Speaker 2: of people are scared of that. A lot of people
Speaker 2: would rather mold and become malleable and evolve and become
Speaker 2: who people want them to be. Why do you think
Speaker 2: that is?
Speaker 1: People like to be accepted. People want to be accepted,
Speaker 1: And I'm suggesting in the book that the best way
Speaker 1: to be accepted is to be yourself. It's not to
Speaker 1: change yourself to what someone else thinks. First of all,
Speaker 1: you don't really know what someone else thinks. And if
Speaker 1: you're not genuine to yourself, there's like nothing is there.
Speaker 1: It's just a projection or a mask. It's not true.
Speaker 1: And there's something about authenticity Like I get to work
Speaker 1: with artists, some of whom have very different ways of
Speaker 1: seeing the world than me, and I support their vision
Speaker 1: a million percent, even though whatever they're talking about, maybe
Speaker 1: I may be diametrically opposed to what they're talking about,
Speaker 1: but I support them a million percent, and anything I
Speaker 1: can do to support them getting their message across the
Speaker 1: clearest they can. I support that. The only way we
Speaker 1: can learn anything is through the reality of seeing what's
Speaker 1: around us and learning there are these different points of
Speaker 1: view around us. If we're all thinking the same thing,
Speaker 1: it's boring. Why would we make anything if everyone thinks
Speaker 1: the same thing. What makes us interesting are the differences
Speaker 1: and even the imperfections. The imperfections are what makes us humans,
Speaker 1: what makes us what we are. It's like there's so
Speaker 1: much talk today about chat, GPT and AI. It's like
Speaker 1: it's a different thing than a human sharing their own
Speaker 1: experience warts and all. That's what we love. We love
Speaker 1: you know you may hear a song about someone who
Speaker 1: says terrible heartbreak, and you may not be experiencing terrible heartbreak,
Speaker 1: but hearing them honestly talk about a human experience, even
Speaker 1: one that we're not having, can make us cry, can
Speaker 1: make us resonate with them, can give us a better
Speaker 1: understanding of the world. Absolutely, And we're not all everything,
Speaker 1: you know, We're all only us. Each of us is ourselves. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One thing when I was reading your book, it reminded
Speaker 2: me of something else I read a while ago, And
Speaker 2: what I read said that the Japanese say we have
Speaker 2: three faces. One face that we show the entire world,
Speaker 2: The second face is the face that we only show
Speaker 2: our family and friends. And the third face, they say,
Speaker 2: we show no one at all, maybe not even ourselves.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we don't even But what you're saying is almost
Speaker 2: like when we tap into that essence to come that self,
Speaker 2: that's where all this beauty and imagination and creativity stems from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the most it seems to be the most
Speaker 1: interesting and the most particular. You know, in a sea
Speaker 1: of information. The more yours is personal, the more it's
Speaker 1: not like hers or his or theirs, it's it's yours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And.
Speaker 1: For all of us, we get more of a sense
Speaker 1: of reality. Even if our views are different than everyone else's,
Speaker 1: it still helps us understand this is this place that
Speaker 1: we're in where there are these there are these different views.
Speaker 1: It's interesting when I speak to someone who has a
Speaker 1: different view on anything. I always want to learn more.
Speaker 1: How did you get there? What can I learn from you?
Speaker 1: You know, I never assume that I know anything.
Speaker 2: Were you always like that? Or whether experiences in your
Speaker 2: childhood that informed that? Because I feel like there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people more generally speaking, and I don't
Speaker 2: like to stereotype, but just as an overall sense, a
Speaker 2: lot of the reasons why we struggle with doing what
Speaker 2: you just said is defending our viewpoint gives us a
Speaker 2: sense of safety and security, and we feel vulnerable if
Speaker 2: someone else's viewpoint that seems opposite to ours could be true.
Speaker 2: So that's one reason. The second is we generally struggle
Speaker 2: as humans to entertain to opposing ideas. We struggle to
Speaker 2: understand the nuance that someone can be kind but also
Speaker 2: be assertive, or someone can be complex yet really compassionate,
Speaker 2: like there can be these paradoxes that exist. I was
Speaker 2: reading recently about how black and white TVs are not
Speaker 2: really black and white, they're shades of gray. There is
Speaker 2: no black and white pixel. It's really really minute sh
Speaker 2: shades of gray that are changing. So were you always
Speaker 2: that way? Always that curious? Did that start somewhere? Does
Speaker 2: that come from parent? Where did that come for you?
Speaker 2: I'm intrigued.
Speaker 1: I would say I've always been open minded. Earlier in
Speaker 1: my career, I probably had more of a view of
Speaker 1: I know how to do it, like, I know my way,
Speaker 1: and my way was fine. But over the years I've
Speaker 1: realized that my way isn't necessarily the best way. It's
Speaker 1: just one way, and there are many other ways that
Speaker 1: are great. I was a vegan for twenty two years
Speaker 1: and now I'm mainly carnivore. When you've really committed to
Speaker 1: a vegan lifestyle, it's very difficult to break out of it.
Speaker 1: And for about a year I was a I believe
Speaker 1: that eating meat was the healthiest thing I could do,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't do it because I was vegan. I
Speaker 1: was committed to being a vegan. So it's a perfect
Speaker 1: example because it was something I was dedicated to for
Speaker 1: a long period of time. I had new information. It
Speaker 1: was hard to change. It was hard to break out
Speaker 1: of it. But as we get new information, we have
Speaker 1: to evolve. How can we live in an old belief
Speaker 1: if you believe the same thing that you believe twenty
Speaker 1: years ago about everything I don't know that you're living.
Speaker 2: And so we've got to have that openness and the
Speaker 2: ability to.
Speaker 1: Cure my curiosity, a curiosity about what's it like if
Speaker 1: my view is my view of the world is wrong?
Speaker 1: What does someone else know? What can I learn from?
Speaker 1: Not to disregard what someone else thinks, like why do
Speaker 1: they think that what I know? There's something I can
Speaker 1: learn from someone who sees it differently than me, and
Speaker 1: I want to understand it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's exactly why I asked you about your past,
Speaker 2: because I feel that I always try and study someone's
Speaker 2: past in order to understand how they came to a conclusion,
Speaker 2: because or even their behavior is often the people that
Speaker 2: I feel act in ways that seem unreasonable or ways
Speaker 2: that I don't agree with. When I track back and
Speaker 2: look at their past, I can often be like, oh,
Speaker 2: there are the dots and they can probably see them too,
Speaker 2: of why they've chosen that path, not that that path
Speaker 2: is right or.
Speaker 1: It takes a.
Speaker 2: Lot to go beyond right and wrong because these constructs
Speaker 2: are so and that's what I feel this book does.
Speaker 2: This book in itself breaks the construct of what a
Speaker 2: book is, right like that. When I picked it up,
Speaker 2: I was assuming that I was going to read a
Speaker 2: memoir or like stories and tells. I assume that what
Speaker 2: it would be in my belief system of what a
Speaker 2: book is by a prominent figure who's had a life
Speaker 2: such as yours. And then I open it up and
Speaker 2: I was like, wait a minute, this is like, this
Speaker 2: is not what I was expecting. And I'm seeing like poetry,
Speaker 2: and I'm seeing like rhymes, and I'm seeing just short
Speaker 2: reflections and some really beautiful even exercises and activities that
Speaker 2: you suggest. And I thought, even in this book, you're
Speaker 2: breaking down what someone sees as a book. I mean,
Speaker 2: the color does it. It's stunning, And it's like, that's
Speaker 2: something I would love to help people develop, because I
Speaker 2: think it's a skill. It's a habit. And you talk
Speaker 2: about habits in the book, and we're only as creative
Speaker 2: as the habits we keep. You say, how do we
Speaker 2: develop that? Andy? Is there a step by step system
Speaker 2: or is it something that you just start tomorrow and
Speaker 2: you now are more curious when something conflicting comes your way.
Speaker 1: It's something you get better at the more you practice,
Speaker 1: and meditation is a great tool to quiet ourselves enough
Speaker 1: to get in touch with how we see the world.
Speaker 1: The closer we can get to what we see. That's
Speaker 1: a starting position to be able to then understand how
Speaker 1: someone else sees it. And it's interesting to be able
Speaker 1: to learn to argue the points opposite what you believe.
Speaker 1: You know, if you don't understand all sides of the story,
Speaker 1: you don't really understand the story. So it's helpful to
Speaker 1: understand the whole picture and hold all of the beliefs
Speaker 1: softly enough to be surprised and learn something new and
Speaker 1: change everything you know.
Speaker 2: The book is called The Creative Act, and it is
Speaker 2: about being creative more than even doing things that are creative.
Speaker 2: But have you ever sacrificed creativity for anything on any
Speaker 2: project or any personal endeavor in life where creativity had
Speaker 2: to be sacrificed or you felt pushed to sacrifice the
Speaker 2: where you felt it was being where there was a
Speaker 2: bit of a part of you that was like I
Speaker 2: might have to let go.
Speaker 1: In the world of art. I feel fearless. I feel
Speaker 1: like whatever strikes me as this is what's interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I'm good with that. It doesn't extend as strongly into life.
Speaker 1: I know people who are completely fearless in life. I'm
Speaker 1: not there yet. It's very impressive. I love it. But
Speaker 1: within the confines of creativity and making things, I know
Speaker 1: and only I know it through experience. I started only
Speaker 1: making things I liked. Luckily people like them. Otherwise I'd
Speaker 1: have a different job. I would still be making things
Speaker 1: because it was always my passion. I never thought it
Speaker 1: would be my work. I always knew I would make
Speaker 1: things because that's what I love to do. I thought
Speaker 1: I would have a regular, straight job to support my
Speaker 1: habit of making things, and then miraculously the universe allowed
Speaker 1: me to make things as a full time thing in life.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. How we always talk about how like
Speaker 2: life imitates or imitates life, and why has it been
Speaker 2: harder to translate from art to life that idea of fearlessness.
Speaker 2: What are the things that you find yourself fearing in
Speaker 2: life that you find so effortless here.
Speaker 1: There's a life in death commitment in art that's different
Speaker 1: than the life and death commitment in life. Jumping out
Speaker 1: of an airplane is different than you know, telling a
Speaker 1: controversial joke. I can remember recently, four or five years ago,
Speaker 1: I had open heart surgery and I was really afraid.
Speaker 1: And I was with a an artist friend who's a
Speaker 1: fearless artist, and I told me, I'm going into the surgery.
Speaker 1: I'm really nervous. He's like, Oh, You're going to be fine.
Speaker 1: Why you even thinking about that, Like, that's that's a
Speaker 1: crazy thought, because he's confident. He's fearless in life. Still,
Speaker 1: the normal fears of life get me. But in art,
Speaker 1: I know the real power in it is going to
Speaker 1: the fringe edges of where you can go. That's what it.
Speaker 1: The purpose of doing it is to see how far
Speaker 1: you can take it. So I feel, in a way
Speaker 1: obligated to do that. So I know that's what's that's
Speaker 1: what's most interesting to me. You know, there's so much
Speaker 1: middle of the road and it doesn't interest me. I
Speaker 1: want it because it's louder, quieter, softer, arder. It's pushing
Speaker 1: some boundary. That's why I take note. It's not more
Speaker 1: of the same, it's not just another it's the one
Speaker 1: that makes you like, you stop and did I really
Speaker 1: hear that? Did I really see that? What's going on here?
Speaker 1: You know, you see a movie where you have to
Speaker 1: lean forward and pay attention, like what's happening? It's not
Speaker 1: just the audience's hand is being held and walk through
Speaker 1: a story simply. I like the complexity and difficulty that
Speaker 1: forces me as the viewer to participate in what's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm not just being carried along.
Speaker 2: I'm intrigued if you'd be happy to go there? How
Speaker 2: do you use some of the creativity that you found
Speaker 2: in art in order to navigate some of the fears
Speaker 2: in life? Is it helpful?
Speaker 1: It is helpful, And one of the things is realizing
Speaker 1: the attitude we bring to things changes it completely. The
Speaker 1: same event could be terrifying, or we can decide it's okay,
Speaker 1: and it's the same exact event. It's just a mentality.
Speaker 1: I had an experience years ago. I grew up in
Speaker 1: a place where there are no insects.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Where I grew up was just a very contained, protected environment.
Speaker 1: So I was and my mom was afraid of insects.
Speaker 1: So I grew up with this feeling of insects as
Speaker 1: foreign and scary. And I was in Hawaii about seven
Speaker 1: years ago, and there are centipedes that can sting you.
Speaker 1: They don't kill you, but they're very painful. And I've
Speaker 1: been going to Kauai for a long time and I
Speaker 1: was aware of them and in the back of my
Speaker 1: mind afraid of them. And one night I woke up
Speaker 1: my head was itchy. I brushed my head and I
Speaker 1: felt something extremely painful, and I said to my wife,
Speaker 1: I think I was just stung by a centipede. And
Speaker 1: I have one of two choices, which is what my
Speaker 1: entire life has led me up to, or I can
Speaker 1: decide it's okay and go back to sleep. And she said,
Speaker 1: the second one sounds better. I'll do that twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could have done that thirty
Speaker 1: years ago. I don't I'm sure I couldn't have done that.
Speaker 1: The panic is what I've been trained for my whole life.
Speaker 2: That's that conditioning where we're all, as you said, trained, conditioned,
Speaker 2: prepared for in a certain way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even things that we don't know about, like we
Speaker 1: may be afraid. Did you know that people were not
Speaker 1: afraid of sharks before the movie Jaws?
Speaker 2: No, I did not know that the.
Speaker 1: Reason everyone's afraid of sharks is because of the movie Jaws.
Speaker 2: Wow. That I mean that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: That makes the world of sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: How.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what we seek or what we shun comes from
Speaker 2: a movie or a song or a visual demonstration of
Speaker 2: but whatever it may be. And I find hence so
Speaker 2: many fears are not real. And as we're talking about,
Speaker 2: fear only or so often exists mainly in the mind.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're talking about, is a construct of
Speaker 2: the mind. When we're talking about creativity, you address this
Speaker 2: fear head on in the beginning, because it is a fear.
Speaker 2: Everyone has somewhat of a fear. Just as we say
Speaker 2: things like, oh I can't sing, we say things like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not creative or I'm not artistic or I've never
Speaker 2: really been a creative and more academic or whatever it
Speaker 2: may be. We have these again, constructs right and wrong, academic, creative,
Speaker 2: mostly polar opposites. And you're actually saying, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: this is something everyone can access and has access to.
Speaker 1: It and do access and do access. Yeah, we just
Speaker 1: don't all acknowledge it. But deciding to take a different
Speaker 1: route home because there's a traffic jam in front of you,
Speaker 1: and figuring out the way to go. That's a creative decision.
Speaker 1: Cooking food and it tasting a certain way and you think, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe it'll taste better if I add this to it.
Speaker 1: That's a creative decision. We all do them every day.
Speaker 1: We make creative choices. Anytime we do something that's not
Speaker 1: exactly the same as the way we did it yesterday,
Speaker 1: the reason it's different is because we made a creative choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, as simple as that, as simple as a
Speaker 2: car anything, there a sprinkle of this or that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we're all doing it, and the book is
Speaker 1: an invitation to open that channel as far and freely
Speaker 1: as you can.
Speaker 2: It really does that. I really believe it does that.
Speaker 2: I what I love about it is you can truly
Speaker 2: turn to any page. And I know they say it's
Speaker 2: about a lot of books, and I don't think it's
Speaker 2: true for most books, to be honest, because if you
Speaker 2: pick a random book, a random page of a book,
Speaker 2: the context is completely out. Whereas with this there truly
Speaker 2: is that sense of if you're looking for that creativity,
Speaker 2: if you're trying to seek it within yourself. There's something
Speaker 2: that will inspire you. What have you found over the
Speaker 2: years working with artists, working with yourself, what have been
Speaker 2: the biggest blocks to creativity or to accessing that? What
Speaker 2: are the biggest blocks? Is it? I know, and I'll
Speaker 2: touch on a few that I'm intrigued by and curious about.
Speaker 2: But what would you say are the biggest blocks that
Speaker 2: people have to being truly creative and imaginative.
Speaker 1: One big block is concerns about what other people think.
Speaker 1: That's a big one. I made this thing that I love,
Speaker 1: but I think other people would like it more if
Speaker 1: I made it different for them. We don't know what
Speaker 1: they would like. It's a really it's all in our head.
Speaker 1: It comes back to this thing of what I think
Speaker 1: isn't good enough? You know, if I like it, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean anything. That's what people think it's like. Just
Speaker 1: because I like it, that doesn't give it any value,
Speaker 1: Like as an artist, if you like it, that's all
Speaker 1: of the value. That's the success comes when you say
Speaker 1: I like this enough for other people to see it.
Speaker 1: Not other people like it, so it's successful. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything because that's other people liking it is out
Speaker 1: of your control. All that's in your control is making
Speaker 1: the thing to the best of your ability. I talk
Speaker 1: about it usually. The way I talk about it is greatness,
Speaker 1: and that's the way I thought of it my whole
Speaker 1: life was my interest is in making something great, greatness, lasting, greatness, timeless.
Speaker 1: And I came to realize recently it's all an offering
Speaker 1: to God. And if you're making an offering to God,
Speaker 1: you're not thinking about, oh, what's the budget, or I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope this segment of the audience is going to
Speaker 1: like it or don't. We don't think like that. It's
Speaker 1: a higher vibration. We're making the best we can make
Speaker 1: to the best of our ability out of love and devotion.
Speaker 1: That's what it is. And there is no I'm changing
Speaker 1: it for someone else because it can't be better than
Speaker 1: this devotional act that we're doing. There is no higher form.
Speaker 2: And that's what you see so much in nature around us.
Speaker 2: I've always found like the sun is just selflessly serving
Speaker 2: and giving, and you see a bush of flowers, or
Speaker 2: you see a tree that's growing fruits, and again it's
Speaker 2: providing shade and fruit, and it's just serving. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting how when you call it a devotional act, the
Speaker 2: idea that it's a service, it's an offering.
Speaker 1: As you said, absolutely language and even an offensive song
Speaker 1: is that to someone? To someone it's like I worked
Speaker 1: with man Slayer and Slayer were a very controversial, aggressive man,
Speaker 1: and the people who came to see them didn't come
Speaker 1: to see them in filled with hate. They came to
Speaker 1: see them filled with love. And for many of the
Speaker 1: people in the audience maybe the only experience of love
Speaker 1: they had was connecting over Slayer. You know, there were
Speaker 1: people in the audience who seemed like other than this thing.
Speaker 1: To devote themselves passionately to seemed like often hopeless people,
Speaker 1: and for them to have something that they love was
Speaker 1: beautiful to witness.
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Speaker 2: select countries in the EU and Australia. And that sounds
Speaker 2: like one. I think you're spot on that that fear
Speaker 2: of what will people think? What will people say? Art
Speaker 2: versus audience almost and I feel that that has become
Speaker 2: such a big challenge in today's world because there's so
Speaker 2: much data available, social media available, and you get instant feedback, right, So,
Speaker 2: I think in the past, a band would lock themselves
Speaker 2: in a shed or whatever it may be and then
Speaker 2: work on stuff and maybe their friends would listen or
Speaker 2: they would listen, but it would take months before the
Speaker 2: audience heard it. Today, you could literally record something in
Speaker 2: three seconds, put it up and get instant feedback. And
Speaker 2: so the feedback loop has got shorter, The time to
Speaker 2: create something has got shorter. It's easier to publish, and
Speaker 2: it's easier to get criticism, more feedback, and so in
Speaker 2: that world, I find us looking so much at like, well,
Speaker 2: what's the data saying of the trends of the pace
Speaker 2: of music or the frequency of music or whatever. And
Speaker 2: that's obviously only music, but you could apply that to
Speaker 2: anything else. Do you think that that obsession in social media, music, movies,
Speaker 2: of looking at it from a dative? Even in movies
Speaker 2: now I find like we're just taking old IP and
Speaker 2: remaking stuff. There's very little new ip. You just keep
Speaker 2: seeing old ip finding its way back into TV and movies.
Speaker 2: Do you say that that's creativity being stifled and is
Speaker 2: hampering creativity?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? And the beauty of it is because so much
Speaker 1: of what's being made is being made that way that
Speaker 1: if we choose to make something not like that, it
Speaker 1: really stands out. This book, for example, it goes against
Speaker 1: all of the rules of publishing from the beginning. I
Speaker 1: started the book eight years ago, and I met with
Speaker 1: publishers eight years ago, told them this is my vision
Speaker 1: for this book, and all of them said, that's not
Speaker 1: the book anybody wants from you, that's not the book.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, that's the book I want to write.
Speaker 1: And well, but surely you'll tell personal stories and you'll
Speaker 1: talk about Johnny Cash, you'll talk about It's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what this is. It's a different book. And
Speaker 1: then I decided not to make a publishing deal then
Speaker 1: because even the ones who said they would go along
Speaker 1: with what my vision was, I could see that they
Speaker 1: really were fantasizing a different book than this book. I
Speaker 1: waited till the book was written and then said, do
Speaker 1: you want to publish this book? Not the book you
Speaker 1: think is the book that you want me to write,
Speaker 1: but this is the book that I wrote, that I
Speaker 1: wanted to write, and wrote, do you want to publish
Speaker 1: this book? And then when they read it, they're like, oh.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's brilliant. There isn't a love for so much,
Speaker 2: just because I with my first book, I had I
Speaker 2: had thought of the title when I was writing it
Speaker 2: because it resonated to me, because it was playful but
Speaker 2: also curious, and it felt true to me. It was
Speaker 2: the biggest reason why I chosen the title. It just
Speaker 2: it felt like it was truth. And so the title
Speaker 2: I was proposing for my first book was Think like
Speaker 2: a Monk and I'd lived as a monk for three years.
Speaker 2: I'd studied under these incredible monks, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: share what I'd learned from these masters who'd spent forty
Speaker 2: fifty years living as monks. And so the book was
Speaker 2: almost an offering to them in the way you're saying,
Speaker 2: and a devotional act back to my teachers and guides.
Speaker 2: And every publisher is like, Jay, you should just write
Speaker 2: a book about like how to find your passion or
Speaker 2: like you know, like what you love in life. And
Speaker 2: I was just like, that's there's beauty in that. There's
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with the book about how to find your passion.
Speaker 2: That's great, but that's not me, Like it's not my experience,
Speaker 2: it's not my book. And remember fifteen out fourteen out
Speaker 2: of seventeen imprints said no to that title, and we
Speaker 2: still went with it. Yes, And I couldn't be more
Speaker 2: happier because of that. But you're right, you can't control
Speaker 2: what the audience wants, even if you played every perfect
Speaker 2: metric in game. No, but we think we can. We
Speaker 2: think there's a part of us. And that's what I
Speaker 2: was going to ask you that almost one end is
Speaker 2: saying I am too worried about what people think. But
Speaker 2: the opposite almost is the ego of I can either
Speaker 2: control everything perfectly so that this becomes the number one
Speaker 2: chart topping song, or I'm right and I know everything.
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 2: Do you see that as a block to creativity? And
Speaker 2: how and how do you purify that?
Speaker 1: I think that the goal is to get to this.
Speaker 1: This is how I see it. I don't know what
Speaker 1: other people are going to think. I can't know what
Speaker 1: other people are going to think, but this is how
Speaker 1: I see it, and I want to show you how
Speaker 1: I see it. That's my purpose here on the planet
Speaker 1: is to show you how I see it. And then
Speaker 1: I want to see how you see it and where
Speaker 1: do they line up and where are they different? And
Speaker 1: that's how we make sense of the world. It's not
Speaker 1: one story. We all have a story. We all have
Speaker 1: something to say, and we can all learn from each other.
Speaker 1: And it's fascinating. It's like there's there are the same
Speaker 1: set of chords used in all the songs, yet new
Speaker 1: songs keep coming. You know, there's someone who say all
Speaker 1: the songs have been written there it keeps happening. How
Speaker 1: do new jokes come up? They're all it's like they're
Speaker 1: all the same, but then they're all different and how
Speaker 1: we interpret it and are each and it comes from
Speaker 1: each of our life experiences which are different. We each
Speaker 1: have our own family origin story, We each have our
Speaker 1: own places that we grew up, the things that we saw.
Speaker 1: We could go and do the same thing together and
Speaker 1: then get back and discuss what we saw and see
Speaker 1: two completely different things. And it's not like one of
Speaker 1: us is right and one of us is wrong. We're
Speaker 1: just noticing different things. There's so many data points to
Speaker 1: take in, and we each take in the ones that
Speaker 1: speak to us.
Speaker 2: So true. Yeah, you're reminding me of the famous words
Speaker 2: of Mark Twain of history never repeats itself, but it
Speaker 2: always rhymes. And that right that the idea of like yeah,
Speaker 2: like the same song doesn't come back, but there's a rhyme.
Speaker 2: There's there's the core, there's but it's still different. And
Speaker 2: there's some beautiful I want to point out to everyone
Speaker 2: because I really do want you to get this book.
Speaker 2: Everyone's listening and watching right now, and there's I've like
Speaker 2: Dougy it some pages that have some really beautiful moments.
Speaker 2: I really like this because one thing I really aim
Speaker 2: to do here on the podcast, but also in life
Speaker 2: is to try and give people really practical, tiny steps
Speaker 2: that they could take. And you you do that artfully
Speaker 2: in this book. And there was this section here which
Speaker 2: identifies why I brought up now because exactly what you
Speaker 2: said breaking the sameness right, and we think there's the
Speaker 2: sameness or completeness, and you give these beautiful examples of
Speaker 2: things people can do in order to do that, and
Speaker 2: I just want to touch on a couple of them please,
Speaker 2: and would love to hear some examples from you that
Speaker 2: where it worked. So I really like this one. Change
Speaker 2: the context, so you say there are times when a
Speaker 2: singer doesn't connect with a song, like an actor whose
Speaker 2: line reading falls flat. It can be helpful to create
Speaker 2: a new meaning or an additional backstory to a song's lyrics.
Speaker 2: A love song might sound different if sung to a
Speaker 2: long lost soul, may a partner of thirty years that
Speaker 2: you don't get along with, a person you saw on
Speaker 2: the street but never spoke to, or your mother. Have
Speaker 2: you I was intrigued. Have you ever asked an artist
Speaker 2: to sing to someone real in their life potentially to
Speaker 2: get an emotion out.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's the first example. That comes to mind is
Speaker 1: we were doing a cover of the song the first
Speaker 1: time ever I saw your face with Johnny Cash and
Speaker 1: he read the lyrics and he said, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I could sing this song. I don't really feel
Speaker 1: these words. And I said, well, how about if it's
Speaker 1: a devotional song to God? He's like, I could sing
Speaker 1: that song. And when he changed it to being not
Speaker 1: singing it to a woman, but singing it to God,
Speaker 1: he was able to tap into the energy of the
Speaker 1: song and he felt the vibration, he felt, he felt
Speaker 1: the trueness to him in singing it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he but everyone still thought the song
Speaker 2: was about a woman.
Speaker 1: It is. It is about a song. But there's a
Speaker 1: long history of songs that are love songs that could
Speaker 1: be to a woman or could be devotional. It's interesting
Speaker 1: when songs walk this line, or when we think we
Speaker 1: know what a song's about and we think it's about
Speaker 1: a romantic relationship, when it's really about their child. You
Speaker 1: know that these devotional.
Speaker 2: Song So, and I'm sharing this with all of you
Speaker 2: listening and watching because I know where you're sitting there thinking, Jay,
Speaker 2: I procrastinate, I overthink. I don't know how to focus,
Speaker 2: which we'll get into all of that, but I want
Speaker 2: to share these with you because I want you to
Speaker 2: try them out in your own area in the world.
Speaker 2: The work you do so change the environment. If we're
Speaker 2: looking for a performance of a different nature, it can
Speaker 2: help to change an element of the environment. Turning off
Speaker 2: the lights and playing in the dark can create a
Speaker 2: shift in consciousness and break the chain of sameness from
Speaker 2: performance to performance. Other shifts we've experimented with include having
Speaker 2: a singer hold the microphone instead of standing in front
Speaker 2: of it, and recording early in the morning instead of
Speaker 2: at night. To access a greater degree of variation. One
Speaker 2: vocalist chose to hang upside down while singing. Could you
Speaker 2: tell us some examples of those, because I find that again,
Speaker 2: these are just they're so simple, but we don't do it.
Speaker 2: We will sit at the same desk every day, banging
Speaker 2: our head against the wall, with the same tabs open
Speaker 2: on Google, going why can't I be creative? And it's
Speaker 2: often these physical, tangible changes around us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so it happened in the studio. It's not
Speaker 1: uncommon if we've played a song three or four or
Speaker 1: five or six times and it just feels like it's
Speaker 1: not getting better, or we've reached a certain peak and
Speaker 1: it's really not all it could be. But then it
Speaker 1: starts not being as good. Usually, when that happens, as
Speaker 1: soon as you reach whatever peak you're at and it
Speaker 1: starts coming down, we usually stop playing the song. But
Speaker 1: one thing we've done in the past also would be
Speaker 1: again changing the contest. Turning the lights off in the
Speaker 1: studio is it changes everything. It's not take seven, it's
Speaker 1: the first take in the dark, and it changes. It changes.
Speaker 1: The first album I recorded with the Red Hot Chili
Speaker 1: Peppers was there. I think it was their fifth album.
Speaker 1: And the albums that they had done before they had
Speaker 1: all done in traditional recording studios, and them they told
Speaker 1: me that none of those were good experiences. So we
Speaker 1: thought about what could we do for this experience to
Speaker 1: make it the first different one instead of the fifth.
Speaker 1: If the first four were bad, could have been the
Speaker 1: first good one in the same environment, or we could
Speaker 1: change the environment and it would be the first of
Speaker 1: any kind. So we chose to rent this big house
Speaker 1: not far from here and record in this mansion, and
Speaker 1: that was very different than showing up to a recording
Speaker 1: studio with people working in an office and other musicians
Speaker 1: and other places. We had our whole own world that
Speaker 1: we created, and some of the members of the band
Speaker 1: didn't leave during the entire I don't know, six weeks
Speaker 1: or two months. They never left the premises. They just
Speaker 1: stayed there, slept there, eight there, work there, and never
Speaker 1: left until it was done. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that one. An audience, this one makes sense,
Speaker 2: but I think people need to do more. When an
Speaker 2: artist on being in front of a crowd, we may
Speaker 2: bring in several people to watch a session. Being observed
Speaker 2: changes how an artist acts. Even if the audience consists
Speaker 2: only on one person who isn't part of the project,
Speaker 2: that can be enough. While some artists may overdo a
Speaker 2: performance for an audience and others may hold back, most
Speaker 2: tend to be more focused with someone else present. Even
Speaker 2: if your art is nonperformative, such as writing or cooking,
Speaker 2: it was still likely changed with an observer present. The
Speaker 2: goal is to find the specific parameters in each case
Speaker 2: that bring out your best I love the idea. I
Speaker 2: had a few friends a few years ago. One of
Speaker 2: their buddies wanted to become a stand up comic, but
Speaker 2: he had no experience in stand up comedy. So they
Speaker 2: threw him a stand up show in their backyard and
Speaker 2: they were like fifteen of us present in the audience.
Speaker 2: He got announced on the stage in front of an
Speaker 2: audience that wasn't going to heckle or be the meanest
Speaker 2: to him, and he got to practice and it was
Speaker 2: just such a beautiful way to do that for your friends,
Speaker 2: but to experience that. And I'm on tour at the moment,
Speaker 2: this is my break period. But for my test, we
Speaker 2: were practicing rehearsing in a small theater in Thousand Oaks,
Speaker 2: And so what the theater said to us is they
Speaker 2: could throw it out to their local audience members who
Speaker 2: would have no clue who I was or what I
Speaker 2: was doing, and they'd come along. Little did I know
Speaker 2: that we'd have like fifty to one hundred people that
Speaker 2: weekend watching the show just as a rehearsal. And it
Speaker 2: was so useful to me before I went out, and
Speaker 2: it was huge, like absolutely huge, So I loved that.
Speaker 1: One I was listening to a story on the way here.
Speaker 1: I was listening to a podcast in the car and
Speaker 1: it told the story about the Beatles that when the
Speaker 1: Beatles were interviewed individually, they were all these thoughtful, interesting,
Speaker 1: soulful people.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: But when they were interviewed, even two together, they became
Speaker 1: sarcastic and never said much about about anything real and
Speaker 1: was much more of a performative cool, like to look
Speaker 1: cool in front of the other one. Wow. That just
Speaker 1: being with each other changed the way that they appeared
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: M Wow, Yeah, that group aspect is so interesting. You've
Speaker 2: just spulked another thought for me that I think it
Speaker 2: would be really interesting for people to hear you going
Speaker 2: back to this. It's interesting again. Then, being on their
Speaker 2: own allowed them to be more of their authentic, deeper
Speaker 2: self to some degree, I guess. I think it was
Speaker 2: in Bob Iger's book where he talked about how he
Speaker 2: was saying that George Lucas, Spielberg, Tarantino and a bunch
Speaker 2: of others used to almost have a movie mastermind where
Speaker 2: they'd played their movies to each other before they went out,
Speaker 2: and he was saying that that's how confident they felt
Speaker 2: about their own work, because they were showing their competitors
Speaker 2: their movies. Yes, but they weren't scared of anyone stealing
Speaker 2: an idea or taking a concept because they were so
Speaker 2: confident in who they were, and all their friends were
Speaker 2: so confident in their styles. And we know that a
Speaker 2: Tarantino movie versus a Spielberg movie has no similarities.
Speaker 1: Yes, and in some ways that community we talk about
Speaker 1: that in the book too, having a community of it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be people who do the same kind
Speaker 1: of art as you, but people who just taste you,
Speaker 1: respect you, like what they do. They like what you do,
Speaker 1: and being able to share your work back and forth
Speaker 1: is a really great feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how have you That's a really nice segue. How
Speaker 2: is that? How has that affected how you've learned to
Speaker 2: filter criticism and feedback because, again going back to the
Speaker 2: world we live in today, because of that instant feedback loop,
Speaker 2: you can have one hundred comments that are negative on
Speaker 2: social media. Your song didn't make it. It's not as
Speaker 2: big as the next album you have, the top ten
Speaker 2: show you didn't make it. I think the way everything's
Speaker 2: measured and broadcasted now can make criticism and feedback in
Speaker 2: one sense, seem louder. Before you went into a room
Speaker 2: and someone told you you weren't getting a new deal,
Speaker 2: and no one knew today you didn't get a new deal.
Speaker 2: And the whole world knows, and your fans know, and
Speaker 2: the opposing fans know. It's messy. It's like, how have
Speaker 2: you worked on that for yourself and the work you've done?
Speaker 2: And even the artists that you work with, who I'm
Speaker 2: guessing may be more sensitive to it, may not have
Speaker 2: that natural confidence or groundedness in what it is. How
Speaker 2: do you how and even people are listening today? How
Speaker 2: do we think about feedback and criticism?
Speaker 1: Most of the artists I work with don't read any
Speaker 1: any criticism or reviews that they work good or bad.
Speaker 1: Most some some do, and I would say the ones
Speaker 1: who are the strongest in who they are can even
Speaker 1: read a terrible review and laugh at it. And that
Speaker 1: makes sense because when someone gives you criticism, it's telling
Speaker 1: you as much about who they are as what you've made.
Speaker 1: It's like we make things and then we make it
Speaker 1: with one through our filter, our perspective, and then you
Speaker 1: receive it through your filter with your perspective. So even
Speaker 1: if we both like it, we probably don't like it
Speaker 1: the same way for the same reasons. We all have
Speaker 1: our own relationship to it. Everyone has their own relationship
Speaker 1: to it. So any of these metrics of which is better,
Speaker 1: like the idea of the Oscars or the Grammys, where
Speaker 1: we're saying which album is better than another? It doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense to me because it's always apples and oranges.
Speaker 1: If you have a Drake and Beyonce and you're deciding
Speaker 1: which album's better, well, Drake's album is clearly a better
Speaker 1: Drake album than Beyonce's album is, and Beyonce's album, I'm
Speaker 1: sure is a much better Beyonce album album than Drake's
Speaker 1: album is. But the idea that one's better than the other,
Speaker 1: it makes no sense. Who has a better diary entry.
Speaker 1: It's like it's if we are actually making these personal things,
Speaker 1: you can't compare them or compete in any way with
Speaker 1: anyone else. The only people who we can honestly compete
Speaker 1: with is ourselves. Is like, is this the best I
Speaker 1: can make today? Have I gone further than I've gone before?
Speaker 1: That's all we can do. That's the only competition that
Speaker 1: makes sense is continuing to evolve and push ourselves artistically
Speaker 1: and not get complacent. Especially in success, it's easy to
Speaker 1: get complacent. Once something works, it's like, I'll just keep
Speaker 1: doing more of that. It ends up maybe one more
Speaker 1: time you can get away with it, but once three
Speaker 1: are similar, it stops being interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. And that comes back to
Speaker 2: that sameness point that we always and I'm just addressing
Speaker 2: things that I know all of you are thinking and
Speaker 2: feeling right now, like or I'm assuming you are the
Speaker 2: idea of Oh, Jay, there's already you know, when I
Speaker 2: started making podcasts, I think there were like seven hundred
Speaker 2: thousand podcasts in the world, and today there's like two
Speaker 2: million plus maybe even more now. And that's in three years.
Speaker 2: It's tripled. Since I started four years ago, it's tripled.
Speaker 2: And so when I started, everyone's like, Jay, there's seven
Speaker 2: hundred podcasts. You don't need another podcast too late, too late,
Speaker 2: exactly too late. And then now everyone's like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: there's two million podcasts, Like it's too late, and we
Speaker 2: do that, we start again, using a metric to say
Speaker 2: and you'll only feel that way if you're planning to
Speaker 2: repeat what's already been done, Because if you're not planning
Speaker 2: to repeat it, then you're one of one. You're not
Speaker 2: one of two million or one of seven hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: It's one of one because you're only bringing your own
Speaker 2: essence out right, like just because every other podcast you
Speaker 2: could be like, there's so many interview parks. There are
Speaker 2: so many interview podcasts, that's true, and they're all different,
Speaker 2: and they're all different exactly, you know. And we've got
Speaker 2: introduced through your long term friend and my new mutual
Speaker 2: friend Andrew Huberman, who's also been a guest on this podcast.
Speaker 2: Is a phenomenal podcast. I love his podcast, but so
Speaker 2: different to who I am, so different to what we do.
Speaker 2: And then there's a million other friends that we have
Speaker 2: that have shows. So the most common thing I hear
Speaker 2: when it comes to creativity or it comes to tapping
Speaker 2: into essences, distraction, overthinking, and procrastination, Like those words come
Speaker 2: up from my community again and again and again. And
Speaker 2: that's the kind of community listening I do like to
Speaker 2: do where I'm like, well, what are people struggling with?
Speaker 2: Because we're want to help, what are people's challenges? I
Speaker 2: have to know from them what they think it is,
Speaker 2: and then I'll also share in the way I do.
Speaker 2: Have you or anyone you've ever worked with, ever dealt
Speaker 2: with big bouts of procrastination or thinking? Yeah, and how
Speaker 2: do you define it? Because I almost think.
Speaker 1: I would say distraction and procrastination are related and different.
Speaker 1: Procrastination is not a good one. Distraction can be Distraction
Speaker 1: can be helpful. You can use distraction if you hold
Speaker 1: a question to be solved and don't sit and think
Speaker 1: and try to solve it, but go do something else
Speaker 1: and go take a walk or go for a swim.
Speaker 1: You'll find that it changes. It changes, and the distraction
Speaker 1: of when you go for a walk and seeing oh,
Speaker 1: look at that tree over there, look at those birds,
Speaker 1: or whoa, that car came kind of close to me,
Speaker 1: all of those things that living in the world, even
Speaker 1: though it's not challenging in any real way, it's a
Speaker 1: distraction that's using some part of your brain. Some part
Speaker 1: of your brain is occupied with do I turn left
Speaker 1: or do I turn right? Oh? Look at that thing
Speaker 1: over there? What is it going to rain? These other
Speaker 1: things are happening. That's different than just sitting in a
Speaker 1: room looking at your life. Just those outside queues can
Speaker 1: give you a way in to solve a problem that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't solve if you were sitting and working on it.
Speaker 1: For example, if we were now doing this podcast together
Speaker 1: on a walk, it would be a very different podcast
Speaker 1: than I was sitting here staring into each other's eyes,
Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful idea I've had. There was a
Speaker 1: period of time where I lost a whole bunch of weight,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that I did as part
Speaker 1: of that was I only did walking meetings. Before I
Speaker 1: used to only do lunch meetings, So I switched the
Speaker 1: lunch meetings to walking meetings, and I would meet people
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica and we would walk, and the meetings
Speaker 1: were so much better than the meetings either in a
Speaker 1: restaurant or in an office. Everything shifted just because we
Speaker 1: were moving, we were doing something, there were external stimuli.
Speaker 1: Even though the external stimuli had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: what we were doing, it changed. It was a change
Speaker 1: in context that really did make the conversation much more interesting.
Speaker 1: And there's also something about when you're walking, you're not
Speaker 1: looking at each other, so it's easier to go into
Speaker 1: your own thoughts when you're not looking at someone. So
Speaker 1: it's very interesting, a great experiment. Lost a lot of weight,
Speaker 1: and the meetings were the best they've ever Doten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of working couple psychology that suggests that when couples argue,
Speaker 2: they're usually sitting on opposite sides of a dining table.
Speaker 2: And when you're sitting with something in between you, first
Speaker 2: of all, I mean, here, we don't have anything, but
Speaker 2: you have something in between you. It's already creating a distance.
Speaker 2: And now you're working against each other yes, rather than
Speaker 2: what you're saying is you're walking with each other, yes,
Speaker 2: and you're looking off into the same directions. You're almost
Speaker 2: creating a future, the idea that you're forward your future, forward,
Speaker 2: your future facing.
Speaker 1: It's funny my wife and I whenever we get to
Speaker 1: a new table and we're sitting to eat, we always
Speaker 1: say we look at where the chairs are, and one
Speaker 1: of us will say cheek to cheek, and we tend
Speaker 1: to sit next to each other instead of across the cheek.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that. And that makes so much sense
Speaker 2: with leadership meetings, creative meetings, and I love that. I love, love, love,
Speaker 2: And this is why this book is so beautiful, because
Speaker 2: it has so many really subtle points and the idea
Speaker 2: of the difference between distraction and procrastination, yes, and how
Speaker 2: distraction can actually be healthy, and especially as you said,
Speaker 2: when you hold a question or you you hold an
Speaker 2: idea and you're just kind of toying with it. But
Speaker 2: you might pick up a book, you might go for
Speaker 2: a walk, you might whatever. You can do all these things,
Speaker 2: but it's almost like you're using that time wisely to
Speaker 2: come back.
Speaker 1: And absolutely going for a drive is a great one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just just paying attention to not crashing. Even though
Speaker 1: we can drive essentially on autopilot. We're not thinking about
Speaker 1: driving once we've been driving for a while, but just
Speaker 1: driving ideas come. I know many musicians, singers who will
Speaker 1: listen to the instrumental music in the car and then
Speaker 1: sing along when they're driving because they're more free than
Speaker 1: when they're sitting with a recorder. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, no, And it's
Speaker 2: so interesting how we have so many we've also built
Speaker 2: up again, going back to our conditioned beliefs, we've built
Speaker 2: up a negative relationship with the word distraction. We've built
Speaker 2: up a negative connotation around if I don't solve it
Speaker 2: right now, sitting in this one place, then I'm never
Speaker 2: going to figure it out. And the idea that actually
Speaker 2: going on a walk, picking up something else. That's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why I like having in my office
Speaker 2: here in the studio, back in my home, everything's quite minimalist,
Speaker 2: but I have a lot of little artifacts and little things,
Speaker 2: and because I enjoy the kind of like stimulation and
Speaker 2: the creative juices that start flowing if I get a
Speaker 2: moment to just observe. And then sometimes I just want
Speaker 2: to observe nature outside where I can just sit and
Speaker 2: bask and almost bathe in nature, which I find to
Speaker 2: be so useful. Because there was this incredible study from
Speaker 2: MIT a few years ago where they tried to look
Speaker 2: for who were their most creative innovative employees inside the
Speaker 2: organized inside corporate organizations. And MIT was doing the study,
Speaker 2: they found two sets of charts of types of employees,
Speaker 2: employee and employee B. Employee A knew lots of people
Speaker 2: that knew each other, and employee B knew lots of
Speaker 2: people that didn't know each other. And they were looking
Speaker 2: at which ones more creative, innovative and hence more imaginative
Speaker 2: inside a company, and they found it was employee B
Speaker 2: because employee A knew people who knew people who knew
Speaker 2: them back any more circles closed closed circles that created
Speaker 2: these echo chains. And you asked the same ten people
Speaker 2: for advice, and employee b knew lots of random people
Speaker 2: who had no connection to each other, and the point
Speaker 2: was being made that if your circle, and that I
Speaker 2: think applies to environment as much as it applies to people,
Speaker 2: is more random and disconnected, you have more chance of
Speaker 2: having an original, authentic or idea spark as opposed to
Speaker 2: you surrounded by the four same people and you talk
Speaker 2: about the same things absolutely, And that to me has
Speaker 2: always been what I'm trying to do. It's like, I
Speaker 2: want to know what the monks think, and I want
Speaker 2: to know what Silicon Valley thinks, and I want to
Speaker 2: know what music geniuses think, because that's there's something there.
Speaker 2: Absolutely A word you use in this book that I
Speaker 2: want to touch on and that's why this came up
Speaker 2: for me was submerge. And I loved it. When I
Speaker 2: saw that word, I was just like, yes, Like I
Speaker 2: love that. I have thought about that for so long,
Speaker 2: submerging yourself. We've lost that ability to submerge. We don't
Speaker 2: submerge ourselves much because we have so much of a
Speaker 2: little How have you in this hyper connected world, working
Speaker 2: with the most connected artists in the world, how are
Speaker 2: you encouraged yourself and others to continue to submerge when
Speaker 2: everyone's asking us to swim shallow.
Speaker 1: I think so many of the great artists do it naturally, can't.
Speaker 1: You can't help it. It's the obsessive nature of being
Speaker 1: really into something that once you start down a thread,
Speaker 1: you just keep pulling forever if you're interested. Many of
Speaker 1: the artists that are great at what they do are
Speaker 1: great at what they do for that very reason. They
Speaker 1: fall in love with this thing and then they just
Speaker 1: want to know everything they could possibly learn about it,
Speaker 1: and there are no distractions. I'm working on a project now,
Speaker 1: a documentary project with comedians, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that they talk about is their commitment, like when other
Speaker 1: people are doing things on the weekend, going out with
Speaker 1: their friends, going to perform every you know, every night
Speaker 1: that they can possibly go out and perform until they
Speaker 1: can get good at their craft. And this could be
Speaker 1: for a period of you know, ten years of just
Speaker 1: having bad performances, you know, having people not like what
Speaker 1: you do, like banging your head against the wall. But
Speaker 1: that obsession with breaking through. And when I say breaking through,
Speaker 1: I don't mean breaking through to the audience. I mean
Speaker 1: breaking through with themselves to where they get passed all
Speaker 1: of the blocks and to be free in this moment
Speaker 1: in a way where they can really express their views
Speaker 1: and be heard and people can react. It's a fascinating thing.
Speaker 1: I just want to ask about being being a monk.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your experience.
Speaker 2: What would you like to know?
Speaker 1: How did you choose to do this first?
Speaker 2: I was born and raised in London, and when I
Speaker 2: was around eighteen years old, I started going to events
Speaker 2: in the city where speakers were invited to come and
Speaker 2: share their stories or journeys or successes or whatever it
Speaker 2: may have been. And this is obviously before podcasting and
Speaker 2: before YouTube, and so you actually went to events to
Speaker 2: hear people like yourself or anyone speak. And so I
Speaker 2: would go and listen and they'd be founders of companies,
Speaker 2: they'd be athletes, they'd be you know, musicians, people like
Speaker 2: that that would come to universities and colleges in London,
Speaker 2: and so I'd go and one of the nights I went,
Speaker 2: I was invited to hear a monk speak. And I
Speaker 2: was eighteen years old and my I didn't really have
Speaker 2: a perception of monkst like, I didn't really have any
Speaker 2: I'd seen saintly people and holy people coming from an
Speaker 2: Indian background, but I never really knew what monks were
Speaker 2: or what they did. And so I said to my friends,
Speaker 2: I didn't really want to go, but I said I'd
Speaker 2: only go if we went to a bar afterwards. That
Speaker 2: was my that was my state of consciousness, age eighteen.
Speaker 2: And my friends were very persuasive and convincing. They said,
Speaker 2: yeah it, we'll go. And so I went to this
Speaker 2: event kind of like not expecting anything, wanting to leave,
Speaker 2: and I was just completely flawed. This monk was from India,
Speaker 2: he was born and raised in India, a thick Indian acts,
Speaker 2: and he was wearing saffron robes. And there was nothing
Speaker 2: externally that I should or should have found it attractive
Speaker 2: about him as an eighteen year old guy. But his
Speaker 2: whole message, and it's that's why I smiled when you
Speaker 2: said it earlier, Like his whole message was that the
Speaker 2: greatest thing you can do in the world or greatness
Speaker 2: is to use your gifts in the service of God,
Speaker 2: and use your gifts in the service of humanity as
Speaker 2: a devotional act. And he was talking about how living
Speaker 2: in devotion and my eighteen year old self was just
Speaker 2: completely like mesmerized by that idea. I was just like,
Speaker 2: I've never heard this, Like everyone's been telling us how
Speaker 2: to be successful and how to start a business and
Speaker 2: how to launch a company and how to become number one,
Speaker 2: and it was like this guy was just saying that
Speaker 2: that wasn't it. And so I went up to him
Speaker 2: as you do after an event when you're blown away
Speaker 2: by a speaker, and I just said to him, I
Speaker 2: was like, I just want to follow you around, like
Speaker 2: I just want to spend time with you and learn
Speaker 2: from you and sit at your you know, sit at
Speaker 2: your feet and just take observe. And he said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm doing all these events in London this week, you
Speaker 2: can come. So I would go along. And then that
Speaker 2: turned into my during college. That turned into my summer
Speaker 2: and Christmas vacations being with him, and then when I graduated,
Speaker 2: I turned down my corporate job office and actually went
Speaker 2: and lived there for three years. And so it was
Speaker 2: like all these little steps up to like this very
Speaker 2: big decision. And so that's why it was just one
Speaker 2: person who I've just always been fascinated by people that
Speaker 2: you meet that can change the trajectory of your life.
Speaker 2: And the reason why I do this show is because
Speaker 2: I want to introduce people to people and thoughts that
Speaker 2: I think will change the trajectory of their life. Because
Speaker 2: I didn't ever want to be a monk. I didn't
Speaker 2: think i'd become a monk. I didn't crave to like.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a part I saw for myself. But it
Speaker 2: became the best thing that ever happened to me at
Speaker 2: that time, and now I live in gratitude. But I
Speaker 2: also realized, so I always ask people who's your monk? Like,
Speaker 2: who's the person you need to me that you haven't
Speaker 2: met yet that could change your life.
Speaker 1: There's an example in the book of people say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a good artist, or you're either living as
Speaker 1: an I say, you're either living as an artist or
Speaker 1: you're not living as an artist. There's not you're not
Speaker 1: good at it or bad at it. It's like being
Speaker 1: a monk. You're either living as a monk or you're
Speaker 1: not living as a monk. You can't be a bad monk.
Speaker 1: If you're living as a monk, you're a monk.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, you've you've
Speaker 2: had so much even today, you know, And that's why
Speaker 2: I was excited to meet you in person, because you
Speaker 2: have such a spiritual journey and essence and just in
Speaker 2: spirit even in just your presence and what you talk about,
Speaker 2: the vocabulary you have that. Where did that get infused
Speaker 2: with the work you do? Like or is? Again? Has
Speaker 2: that always been there?
Speaker 1: Or what was?
Speaker 2: Georgia?
Speaker 1: I learned to meditate when I was fourteen, and that's
Speaker 1: turned into a big part of my life. I stopped
Speaker 1: meditating when I went to college, and then when I
Speaker 1: moved to California, I started again. And when I started again,
Speaker 1: I realized, oh, even though I hadn't done it for
Speaker 1: the last five years, a big part of who I
Speaker 1: am is because I did it when I did it.
Speaker 1: Had I not stopped, I wouldn't have recognized that. So
Speaker 1: stopping and starting was a very clear Wow, this this
Speaker 1: is a big part of how I see the world already,
Speaker 1: even with not doing it for the last five years.
Speaker 2: What type of meditation is in how gm im? Oh? Okay,
Speaker 2: it got it.
Speaker 1: I learned TM changed my life and since then I've
Speaker 1: learned for PASTAA and I do many different many different
Speaker 1: practices and breathing practices and Taichi and many different meditative practices.
Speaker 1: I often come back to TM, maybe because it was
Speaker 1: first and it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, simple and beautiful, yeah, absolutely, and it's interesting
Speaker 2: to me and meditation just seems to be. But there
Speaker 2: was definitely a generation where meditation became really prominent in
Speaker 2: the lives of so many especially so many people today
Speaker 2: that you meet that are doing You know, Ray Dario
Speaker 2: has been on the podcast a million times and again
Speaker 2: he talks about TM as being such a big part
Speaker 2: of his financial success in terms of making wise financial
Speaker 2: investment decisions, and he is a special human as well.
Speaker 2: I feel like that resurgence is back now where there's
Speaker 2: so much more talk about breath work and meditation. And
Speaker 2: if you had any words of wisdom or insight for
Speaker 2: anyone who's trying it, experimenting, what would you suggest to them,
Speaker 2: as someone who's done it for so long, had breaks
Speaker 2: found usefulness in it? Are there any things that come
Speaker 2: to your heart or for front of you.
Speaker 1: The first thing that comes up, there's a beautiful book
Speaker 1: called Wherever You Go, There You Are. I love that book.
Speaker 1: I had meditated a long period of time before I
Speaker 1: read it, but I remember reading it feeling like this
Speaker 1: is the best both introduction to meditation and reminder of
Speaker 1: the power of meditation regardless of where you are in
Speaker 1: your meditative journey. So I would recommend that book as
Speaker 1: a as a way in and find the practice that
Speaker 1: works for you. And I've also used like yoga nidra
Speaker 1: or different guided meditations which also are beautiful and helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I used a load of Yoga Nidra when I
Speaker 2: had my harnia surgery. I was like, I couldn't get
Speaker 2: a sleep because of the paid and so yoga needra
Speaker 2: is beautiful if you have trouble sleeping. Everyone Yogendra is
Speaker 2: like really special. You strike me as someone who appreciates
Speaker 2: growth and inner work and self work through through at
Speaker 2: least what you've said today and shared today and the
Speaker 2: thoughts in the book. And I was wondering, what do
Speaker 2: you feel has been the hardest thing that you've worked
Speaker 2: on internally or the most challenging thing that you've worked
Speaker 2: on internally? You said you can only compete with ourselves artistically,
Speaker 2: but internally, what has been the greatest challenge that you've
Speaker 2: worked on or all working on now?
Speaker 1: No, I would say losing weight was the biggest challenge
Speaker 1: of my life. I weighed three hundred and eighteen pounds
Speaker 1: at one point, and I was overweight my entire life,
Speaker 1: and I tried everything from the beginning. I went to
Speaker 1: weight watchers meetings with my mom, you know, like my
Speaker 1: whole life was dealing with weight issues and finally just
Speaker 1: honestly getting the right information because I would do whatever
Speaker 1: was recommended and nothing worked. At one point in time,
Speaker 1: I had a performance coach living at my house for
Speaker 1: two years who watched everything I ate and got me
Speaker 1: to exercise and change my life for the I got
Speaker 1: so much healthier with his help. And he said, in
Speaker 1: the last two years, I've watched everything you've done, ninety
Speaker 1: nine out of one hundred people would have shared one
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, and for some reason, it just the weight
Speaker 1: just doesn't come off. His just scratching his head. I
Speaker 1: don't understand it must be, you know, must be something else.
Speaker 1: And then finally I saw a nutritionist at UCLA, and
Speaker 1: I hadn't by this point, I believed nothing would change
Speaker 1: the situation. My mom was obese, my mom was in
Speaker 1: a wheelchair. I just assumed that that was the way
Speaker 1: it was. It was a genetic thing I assumed, and
Speaker 1: I went to see a guy at UCLA based on
Speaker 1: a mentor friend of mine saying, I really want you
Speaker 1: to see this guy. And I was sure it wouldn't
Speaker 1: work because I'd tried everything and nothing worked. So but
Speaker 1: I loved this person who recommended me to go. He
Speaker 1: was one of my great mentors, recently passed away. His
Speaker 1: name was Mo Austin, a great, great man. He worked
Speaker 1: for Frank Sinatra and signed Jimmy Hendrix and signed the
Speaker 1: sex Pistols and unbelievable person, unbelievable human being. And he
Speaker 1: was the one who got me to see this nutritionists
Speaker 1: at UCLA. He said, just go to see this guy.
Speaker 1: Go to see the guy that I send you to,
Speaker 1: and do whatever he said. And I did, and I
Speaker 1: lost like one hundred and fortund one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five pounds in fourteen months. But that was probably the
Speaker 1: most radical, just because it was a lifelong issue and
Speaker 1: I believed it couldn't change eventually. I believed it couldn't
Speaker 1: change because I tried everything, and it was In some ways,
Speaker 1: this is interesting. The moral of the story is through
Speaker 1: giving up, I turned myself over to this nutritionist. I
Speaker 1: didn't do what I thought was right. I did what
Speaker 1: he thought was right, and what he suggested sounded crazy
Speaker 1: to me, but I did what he thought was right
Speaker 1: and it worked and the same like I was, I've
Speaker 1: never exercised in my life. And then I started hanging
Speaker 1: out with Larrd Hamilton and these incredible athletes because when
Speaker 1: I lost a bunch of weight, they invited me to
Speaker 1: start training with them, and I just wanted to be
Speaker 1: around them because they're such interesting people. Like I like
Speaker 1: being around people who are good at what they're good at,
Speaker 1: especially when what they're good at is different than what
Speaker 1: I'm good at. It's just interesting the way they see
Speaker 1: the world. So I got to hang out with these
Speaker 1: incredible athletes and through giving myself to them of doing
Speaker 1: what they said. You know, I first day when I
Speaker 1: couldn't do one push up and then and I say
Speaker 1: I can't do it, don't say you can't do it
Speaker 1: so you haven't done it yet. And then they, you know,
Speaker 1: train me where I could do one hundred consecutive push
Speaker 1: ups like crazy things. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you reminded me of Thomas Edison's statement of when
Speaker 2: you feel you've exhausted all options, remember this, you haven't,
Speaker 2: And I think it's so interesting with health specifically, it's
Speaker 2: it's fascinating that you chose that. But I think that's
Speaker 2: so true where you think you're doing everything right, and
Speaker 2: I've eve experienced that with myself as well, especially with
Speaker 2: my gut and inflammation, where I was like I was
Speaker 2: doing everything right, I'm living a healthy life and still
Speaker 2: having this, and then again passing myself over to an
Speaker 2: amazing coach who's just told me exactly what I need
Speaker 2: to eat, and all of a suddn you feel better
Speaker 2: and it's almost like magic when it happened.
Speaker 1: Yes, but it's also fighting the right coach because you
Speaker 1: could see ten other coaches and do what they say
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work. Yeah, it's we're so different. That's
Speaker 1: another thing, the idea that one size fits all. It's
Speaker 1: like there is no one answer for anyone. We have
Speaker 1: to find our path. You could have seen probably many
Speaker 1: different monks and not had the experience you had. It
Speaker 1: was that monk spoke to you. I remember the first
Speaker 1: time I saw Ramdas speak, I felt like this is
Speaker 1: the first spiritual teacher that really speaks to me. And
Speaker 1: the next one was Tick, not Han. When I saw
Speaker 1: tick not Han speak. I was so I felt so
Speaker 1: much peace in my body hearing him speak that I
Speaker 1: couldn't even hear what he was saying. I went into
Speaker 1: a trance in his presence. And this is with two
Speaker 1: thousand people, you know, in a room of two thousand people.
Speaker 1: He stepped out on stage and I felt like I
Speaker 1: was going to pass out. YEA, that's how much PC carried.
Speaker 1: So seeing these things, seeing these incredible teachers and these
Speaker 1: deep souls and getting inspired and learning from them all
Speaker 1: is that's the work. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you're right that finding our mentors, our guides,
Speaker 2: our teachers is such a or people that inspire you
Speaker 2: is such a such a big part of life. And
Speaker 2: I've found studying their stories and studying their their life
Speaker 2: it gives so much texture to your own as well.
Speaker 2: And you know when when you look at passing these
Speaker 2: things on, when you look at passing, you know, as
Speaker 2: you start this book by talking about how you're like,
Speaker 2: these aren't facts, them my thoughts and hopefully they they
Speaker 2: help and support you when you think about giving this,
Speaker 2: I can imagine a lot of young parents who are
Speaker 2: listening thinking, well, how do I help my child tap
Speaker 2: into their creativity. How do I he help even if
Speaker 2: it's not your child, but my friend, my family member.
Speaker 2: What are what have you found helpful ways in being
Speaker 2: a proponent of ideas that you believe in? Have you
Speaker 2: found specific things to be more authentic and useful and
Speaker 2: hence translate well.
Speaker 1: I think in general people don't like to be told
Speaker 1: what to do. So the best way that you can
Speaker 1: inspire someone to do something is through the way that
Speaker 1: you carry yourself. And if you act in a creative
Speaker 1: way in the world and you do it to the
Speaker 1: best of your ability, and if someone else recognizes it,
Speaker 1: it might inspire them to do the same. So I
Speaker 1: think it's hard to teach someone something that we don't practice.
Speaker 1: We have to practice it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the hardest part. Yeah, but it's also the
Speaker 3: most fun. It's like ye, and it's our purpose. It's
Speaker 3: the reason where on this planet is to do this work,
Speaker 3: to do our work, whatever that is, whatever our part is,
Speaker 3: to play our part in this giant symphony.
Speaker 2: When you're trying to find your part, that's the part
Speaker 2: I think that confuses or concerns so many peop people
Speaker 2: because so many parts today have become barcodes or conveyor belts,
Speaker 2: and there's so many of you doing your part. It
Speaker 2: may feel sometimes where it's like, well, I work in
Speaker 2: a company where we all do the same thing, Like
Speaker 2: what is my part? I think there's such a We've
Speaker 2: been talking about originality the whole time, but I think
Speaker 2: so many people feel like what they do is so
Speaker 2: so much of a commodity. It's not original when someone
Speaker 2: searching for that purpose. As you said, your purpose is
Speaker 2: to play your part, which I think is beautiful, and
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more. A few years ago, I really
Speaker 2: came to the conclusion. I realized that what I do
Speaker 2: is not better than anyone or worse than anyone. It's
Speaker 2: not early than anyone or later than anyone. It's not
Speaker 2: for anyone or not for anyone. It's it is just
Speaker 2: what I'm meant to do. It's just my role. And
Speaker 2: that's such a liberating place to live for us. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: But it's almost feels like today there's so much pressure
Speaker 2: for people to pursue that will find that yes, so
Speaker 2: they either don't find it or they get scared to
Speaker 2: look for it. What have you found to be useful
Speaker 2: on that?
Speaker 1: Well, I want to say that giving the example, you
Speaker 1: gave of the cookie cutter work. Maybe your purpose in
Speaker 1: life isn't related to your job. Maybe your job is
Speaker 1: your job, and the job is the thing that supports you,
Speaker 1: and then the rest of your waking hours are devoted
Speaker 1: to your purpose, whatever that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of us are trying to make
Speaker 2: it the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's beautiful when it happens, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: always happen, and it's out of our control. Also, we
Speaker 1: can decide. I would say, if you need to have
Speaker 1: a job to support yourself, that's great, that's a noble
Speaker 1: thing to do. And follow your dreams, but I'm not
Speaker 1: saying they're one thing. They don't have to be one thing,
Speaker 1: And don't let following your dreams undermine your ability to
Speaker 1: support yourself. It could do could actually do the opposite.
Speaker 1: If you decide I want to be a comedian and
Speaker 1: I'm putting all my eggs in the comedian basket and
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a comedian, the pressure of having
Speaker 1: to support support yourself will change you as a comedian,
Speaker 1: not for the better. You want the stability of being
Speaker 1: able to take care of yourself in the world, to
Speaker 1: be free to do whatever your passion is whatever it is, fishing,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's so true that I think the scarcity
Speaker 2: ruins the art, right, it's the abundance of I did
Speaker 2: my day job. I'm now safe and secure. I could
Speaker 2: be autistic as opposed to sometimes Actually, I'm going to
Speaker 2: debate my own statement, because sometimes it also feels like
Speaker 2: the pain is the pain of trying to do something
Speaker 2: is what cbo as well. But yeah, I mean, I'm but.
Speaker 1: But it could be there's pain in it anyway.
Speaker 2: There's pain anyway.
Speaker 1: There's pain in you know, getting up in front of
Speaker 1: people and them not laughing is painful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's pain in it anyway. Yeah, there's plain
Speaker 2: in it anyway.
Speaker 1: If that means you also can eat, I don't know
Speaker 1: if that makes it less more or less painful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's almost like giving ourselves permission to
Speaker 2: make our like I feel like there's a moment where
Speaker 2: you go, now I'm worthy almost. But what you're saying
Speaker 2: is you are always worthy because it's who you are.
Speaker 1: Yes, You're always worthy, It's who you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why do you think we don't feel worthy of anything?
Speaker 2: Not just making it up, but so many of us,
Speaker 2: I think, feel a sense of like we're not worthy
Speaker 2: to do what we love, We're not worthy to share
Speaker 2: our purpose or our passion. There's a sense of we
Speaker 2: don't want to give us anything.
Speaker 1: I think there's a mythology that the people who make
Speaker 1: things that we love are special people, and that we
Speaker 1: think that they're you know, the people on Mount Olympus,
Speaker 1: and they are these magic people who are geniuses. And
Speaker 1: then there's the rest of us, and that's not the case.
Speaker 1: It's like, we're all just people. We're all doing our best.
Speaker 1: We all are good at some things, not good at
Speaker 1: other things. We're humans, and sometimes we find a way
Speaker 1: to make something beautiful. But that's it. No, do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, There's no there are no special people. Really,
Speaker 1: we're all special.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And everyone please listen to that again
Speaker 2: and again and again, because it's that's the mess of
Speaker 2: like that person's gifted, this special, they did something unique,
Speaker 2: and I promise you if you knew them twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't think that. No, but you just met them
Speaker 2: at this precipice of their life. They don't think so,
Speaker 2: they don't think that, yeah, or if they do think
Speaker 2: so their art will suffer. Yeah, the ones who believe
Speaker 2: the hype. Yeah yeah, How did you respond? What was
Speaker 2: your first time you felt and even if maybe you
Speaker 2: didn't even allow yourself to feel it, but what was
Speaker 2: the first time you experienced success? And how did you
Speaker 2: respond to it? Because I hear so many people say
Speaker 2: I just wanted to repeat it right, and that again
Speaker 2: getting coined that same When was the first time you experienced,
Speaker 2: maybe even felt successful and how did you respond.
Speaker 1: To My first memory of outward success came when the
Speaker 1: first Beastie Boys album, Licensed to Ill was the number
Speaker 1: one album in the country, and I got a call
Speaker 1: from a person who I worked with, saying, you have
Speaker 1: the number one album. I only know this because I
Speaker 1: remember the phone call. Had the call not happened, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't I would have no idea how I felt. And
Speaker 1: the call came, how do you feel you have the
Speaker 1: number one album in the country, And I remember saying,
Speaker 1: I've never been more unhappy in my life. And I
Speaker 1: think we mistakenly think some kind of outward success is
Speaker 1: going to change something in us, and it does not.
Speaker 1: It may make life more comfortable, but it doesn't change
Speaker 1: who we are. And any hole in ourselves that were
Speaker 1: hoping to fill does not get filled. And if you
Speaker 1: spend let's say you spend twenty years of your life
Speaker 1: working towards a goal that's going to solve everything, and
Speaker 1: then you finally achieve what you've been trying to do
Speaker 1: for twenty years toiling away, I won't have any fun
Speaker 1: because I'm working for twenty years for this end. And
Speaker 1: then you get that end and nothing changes. That's when
Speaker 1: you get hopeless. So it's not uncommon to see very
Speaker 1: successful artists who are very unhappy in life because they're
Speaker 1: working towards this the thing that's going to make them
Speaker 1: feel better, and it does not make them feel better.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've got to meet many very successful business people.
Speaker 1: You have a billionaire people, very few of them are happy,
Speaker 1: very few, and they've reached there, they've accomplished their dreams
Speaker 1: and are unhappy because we don't know what we want,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know what's going to make us happy.
Speaker 1: We're trying to fill something that maybe can't be filled
Speaker 1: through material or cultural success, public success. It's something else.
Speaker 1: It's some internal thing.
Speaker 2: What was it that at that time that but.
Speaker 1: You I don't know. I don't know. I think it
Speaker 1: was more. I think it was more just the reality
Speaker 1: of well, that doesn't matter at all, and it's always
Speaker 1: been I'll say, I like when people like the things
Speaker 1: I make, of course, and it changes nothing, you know,
Speaker 1: it changes nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I found that there were only a few things
Speaker 2: through my monk experience that helped me realize what made
Speaker 2: a difference. One was something we're experiencing today, which I
Speaker 2: really feel from you and Homer, who's always been here,
Speaker 2: he's filmed every episode pretty much we've done for the
Speaker 2: past gods how long now, but that there was a
Speaker 2: stillness and a quiet and a presence. And so the
Speaker 2: first thing was presence. That the idea that presence a
Speaker 2: big part of joy and happiness and just being able
Speaker 2: to actually be here right now in the way you
Speaker 2: said your one of your favorite books was where you go,
Speaker 2: there you are. Wherever you go there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, wherever you go, there you are presence.
Speaker 2: The other one is learning and growth, the idea that
Speaker 2: we're growing, we're evolving, we're learning, there is some some
Speaker 2: kind of stimulation of evolution. We all need to evolve.
Speaker 2: The third one was achievement. There was a sense of achievement,
Speaker 2: but I think today's sense of achievement has become about
Speaker 2: an external metric as opposed to do we even think
Speaker 2: that's worthy of achieving or pursuing. And then the fourth,
Speaker 2: which to me sometimes is the most important, is the
Speaker 2: service element, the act, the offering that we were working
Speaker 2: always in devotion. And those were like four really simple
Speaker 2: things that I think have always our form part of
Speaker 2: the mocktail of joy, happiness, success. When you said something
Speaker 2: really beautiful there you said the first time you fell
Speaker 2: out with success. When was the first time you experienced
Speaker 2: in with success well or felt that? Or is that
Speaker 2: something that's constantly.
Speaker 1: That's something probably making something that it would have been
Speaker 1: one of the very first records I ever made, the
Speaker 1: experience in the studio of hearing something that I haven't
Speaker 1: heard before, getting excited by it, and then maybe going
Speaker 1: out and hearing it in the club, you know, like
Speaker 1: even getting the club to play it just so I
Speaker 1: could hear it in the club. That experience of like, wow,
Speaker 1: there it is. Or the first time you hear something
Speaker 1: that you make on the radio, it's very exciting, not
Speaker 1: because of what it means, but just I spent my
Speaker 1: whole life listening to music on the radio and now
Speaker 1: there's something I made on the radio. I still have
Speaker 1: this experience on a semi regular basis, just out in
Speaker 1: the world. I'll be somewhere and in a coffee shop
Speaker 1: and a song come on that I produced, and the
Speaker 1: feeling is like, wow, can you believe it's just out
Speaker 1: there like that? I remember, I remember, I could choke
Speaker 1: myself up. I can remember being in the room, what
Speaker 1: we were doing, like, and now it's playing here. How
Speaker 1: crazy is the world? I went to WrestleMania yesterday and
Speaker 1: a song I produced was played at WrestleMania. I wasn't
Speaker 1: expecting it. I wasn't expecting it. It's like, wow, WrestleMania,
Speaker 1: it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you still feel that today, that's what.
Speaker 1: It's just so wild. Yeah, you can't believe it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy.
Speaker 2: It's magic that I love. I love that seeing like
Speaker 2: how long have you done this?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Like how long have you done what you do?
Speaker 1: Thirty five years?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like there was I got to go to I've
Speaker 2: been a Manchester United support of my whole life, and
Speaker 2: I got to go again. Recently. I have a really
Speaker 2: wonderful relationship with the club and I went to watch
Speaker 2: a game recently when I was back in England and
Speaker 2: it was the first time I got to meet legendary
Speaker 2: manager Sir Alex Ferguson, and he's the most decorated manager
Speaker 2: in Premier League history and United It's longest standing manager
Speaker 2: and you know, with the greats, and I got to
Speaker 2: meet him for the first time and we're just hanging
Speaker 2: out and talking and having lunch before the before the game.
Speaker 2: And what I loved what you were saying about you
Speaker 2: love watching people with greatness. What I loved about him
Speaker 2: was he was talking about football like a soccer for
Speaker 2: those who but he was talking about football like a fan.
Speaker 1: Yes still yes.
Speaker 2: Like I was like, I was like, Sir Alex, you
Speaker 2: gave me the best memories of my childhood. I was
Speaker 2: naming all these games that they'd won. And I knew
Speaker 2: he knew that. It's like me telling you my favorite
Speaker 2: songs you've worked on. I know you know them, but
Speaker 2: I had to tell him for my sake, and he
Speaker 2: was like living each game with me as it was
Speaker 2: the first and I was like, how are you still
Speaker 2: you know? How is it that it's still so fresh?
Speaker 2: And I guess same question to you like, how is
Speaker 2: it still so fresh that a WrestleMania a song surprises
Speaker 2: you and you still get that childlike like.
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense.
Speaker 1: I remember the ordinary situation that it came out of.
Speaker 1: I remember the studio in It was one of the
Speaker 1: first times I ever came to California. I remember it's
Speaker 1: not a studio now, it's a flower shop where the
Speaker 1: studio used to be off of Los Cienna Boulevard, and
Speaker 1: it was this tiny little studio and I remember being
Speaker 1: in this tiny little room and one of the first
Speaker 1: times in California, and what a fun experience it was
Speaker 1: making the record, how cool it was, and that now, however,
Speaker 1: many years later, twenty five years later, seeing a stadium
Speaker 1: of eighty thousand people and the song comes on unexpectedly,
Speaker 1: it's just bizarre. It's bizarre because I know the modest
Speaker 1: beginnings of all of these and it's just regular people
Speaker 1: like you and me showing up somewhere and making something
Speaker 1: that we think is cool. It's unbelievable that it has
Speaker 1: some life that goes on. Yeah, it's crazy, but.
Speaker 2: I love that because what I'm hearing you say that
Speaker 2: is like you took notes like there were mental notes
Speaker 2: of like that moment we went in that like there's
Speaker 2: a gratitude and there's a perspective of It wasn't just
Speaker 2: as you've just laid out. It wasn't just about having
Speaker 2: a record on the radio. It was all those minute,
Speaker 2: small moments of discovery and of intrigue and curiosity, which
Speaker 2: which you made a note of somewhere in your subconscious
Speaker 2: so that you then recall and live through when you
Speaker 2: hear that song in that moment, you're not living there
Speaker 2: just listening to a song at WrestleMania or on the
Speaker 2: radio or number one. It's that you're living through all
Speaker 2: those miniature moments that created it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I never listened back to music that I
Speaker 1: work on, so when I do hear it out in
Speaker 1: the wild, it's it's funny. It's like, wow, look it's
Speaker 1: still there. Crazy.
Speaker 2: Is there a reason you don't listen to it?
Speaker 1: As Because I'm always making something new, I've had no
Speaker 1: reason to go back. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You never even feel a sense of nostalgia or.
Speaker 1: Like a no, unless unless I'm working with an artist
Speaker 1: and there's an example that comes up where I think, oh,
Speaker 1: we did something like this, a long time time ago.
Speaker 1: This might listen to this and see if this scuse
Speaker 1: me any inspiration. Yeah, so more as a tool, but
Speaker 1: I would do the same for something I didn't make.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be let's listen to this Stev
Speaker 1: Wonder song because we maybe will learn something same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. There's there's a beautiful chapter's
Speaker 2: book that I want to talk about, which is all
Speaker 2: about memories and subconscious and I felt that you talk
Speaker 2: about this idea of larger intelligence and tapping into and
Speaker 2: even making almost journaling about dreams, which I found was
Speaker 2: something that I'm definitely going to practically take on. So
Speaker 2: I've never journaled about dreams. I know I dream, and
Speaker 2: there's times when I forget, and there's times when I remember,
Speaker 2: and sometimes I'll tell someone sometimes I won't. And I
Speaker 2: when I read you say that you actually wrote about
Speaker 2: dreams and journaled about dudes, I was like, I'm going
Speaker 2: to start doing that now. So that's something you've directly
Speaker 2: impacted me to do as a practical thing, because I
Speaker 2: feel like I've had fascinating dreams in the past, I've
Speaker 2: forgotten it's too messy.
Speaker 1: And they go and they a dissipate me very quickly.
Speaker 2: So quickly, so quick And that's when I was reading that.
Speaker 2: Bo I was like, Okay, I need to hold onto these.
Speaker 1: So some of the tricks I talked to some degree
Speaker 1: in the book, but I just touch on it in
Speaker 1: the book. There's so much to talk about. But when
Speaker 1: you wake up, you don't move at all because the
Speaker 1: way the dream works, it's a chemical reaction in your brain.
Speaker 1: So it's also good to know if you wake up
Speaker 1: from a scary dream and you don't want to think
Speaker 1: about it, if you just shake your head around, it'll
Speaker 1: be gone. So you keep pen and paper right next
Speaker 1: to your bed, and the minute you wake up, you
Speaker 1: grab the pen and paper, moving as little as possible,
Speaker 1: and just start writing. And even if you only remember
Speaker 1: I remember there's a part in the dream where this happens.
Speaker 1: Write the part you remember, and you'll see through the
Speaker 1: process of writing, more of the dream will appear. It's
Speaker 1: you don't even when you wake up, you don't. You
Speaker 1: won't remember as much of it as you know. But
Speaker 1: once you start writing, you can start tapping into more.
Speaker 1: Oh and before that, this happened, and then this after that,
Speaker 1: and you'll start noticing more details, and the more you
Speaker 1: practice it, the better you get at it. So I
Speaker 1: did that for a period of time, and at the
Speaker 1: time the dreams made no sense. They were just these
Speaker 1: abstract you know, Salvador Dolly paintings, and just went on abstract.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, strange, strange dreams, no idea what
Speaker 1: they are. And then years later I found that journal
Speaker 1: and I read it, and when they were happening, I
Speaker 1: thought every dream every night was completely different, and none
Speaker 1: of them more about anything I understood. And years later,
Speaker 1: when I looked back at it, all the dreams were
Speaker 1: about the same thing, and they all were. It was
Speaker 1: so clear what my subconscious was telling me. I don't
Speaker 1: remember what it was, because it was probably twenty some
Speaker 1: odd years ago, but I remember being shocked by, Oh,
Speaker 1: this didn't make I was too close to it to
Speaker 1: understand it. I was too close, and with a little
Speaker 1: bit of distance you can see what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's also interesting to see how your subconscious works,
Speaker 1: how it how your subconscious abstracts reality to show it
Speaker 1: to us in a way that's intriguing and interesting but
Speaker 1: not obvious. It's very beautiful.
Speaker 2: The reason why I love that so much is. I
Speaker 2: even had to retract the immediate question that came into
Speaker 2: my mind, and I retracted it because and I'll tell
Speaker 2: everyone what it is, but I retracted it because I
Speaker 2: just love the act of observing and being present with
Speaker 2: your dream as you're showing us how to do. And
Speaker 2: the modern day question is, well, what's the benefit of that?
Speaker 2: Like why would you do that? And and when I
Speaker 2: was asking in my head, I was like, if I
Speaker 2: just listened to you, and I'm listening to you, and
Speaker 2: I remember reading what I read, and I'm thinking, the
Speaker 2: benefit is just the act of observing and just being
Speaker 2: there and being and then, like you said, being able
Speaker 2: to then look back potentially and potentially if you maybe not,
Speaker 2: maybe it is to see if there are connections and
Speaker 2: the subconscious You're so right, is is speaking to us
Speaker 2: in almost such a compassionate, artful way. Yes, without telling
Speaker 2: you on the nose, but.
Speaker 1: It's an important point. Don't do things just because you
Speaker 1: think you're going to get something for it. That's not
Speaker 1: why we do things. Do what's interesting to you, follow
Speaker 1: what's interesting. Don't worry about the outcome. Yeah, we don't know,
Speaker 1: We can't predict the outcome. We can never predict the outcome.
Speaker 1: Follow your own inner guide. It directs us. It might
Speaker 1: not make sense, might not make sense to us, might
Speaker 1: not make sense anyone else. Certainly won't make sense anyone else.
Speaker 1: But it might not even make sense to us. And
Speaker 1: that's okay. It's fine. Listen to yourself. Why is it
Speaker 1: telling you this? Why is it telling you this? I
Speaker 1: mentioned my heart surgery earlier. My son was born eighteen
Speaker 1: months before the heart surgery. I didn't know about the
Speaker 1: heart issue. I knew about the heart issue and that
Speaker 1: it was something I was born with, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know that it was anything I would need to deal with.
Speaker 1: And a friend of mine said, when my son was born,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a whole lot of energy, and
Speaker 1: your son is going to want his mom. So you're
Speaker 1: going to have all this energy and nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it. So pick something interesting to you or that
Speaker 1: you want to do, or something you want to accomplish,
Speaker 1: because you're going to have all this extra energy with
Speaker 1: nowhere to put it, because you're going to want it
Speaker 1: to go to your son, but he's not going to
Speaker 1: want that. He's going to be taken. So I decided
Speaker 1: I want to learn deadlifts heavy deadlifts. The only exercise
Speaker 1: experience I had was with Lard Hamilton, and we didn't
Speaker 1: do any formal exercises like that. We did a lot
Speaker 1: of weight training, but it was more balance and coordination
Speaker 1: oriented and super fun, really interesting and challenging as challenging
Speaker 1: mentally as it was physically. Usually you'd cognitively not be
Speaker 1: able to do it before you physically couldn't do it,
Speaker 1: which was fascinating to me too. It was never like
Speaker 1: sitting on a treadmill looking at the TV. It was
Speaker 1: always if you were not paying full attention to everything
Speaker 1: you were doing, you'd probably get hurt. So really you're focused,
Speaker 1: and I like focusing on things, so it was fun.
Speaker 1: So then I thought, okay, learning like proper form Olympic deadlifting,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing the Olympic deadlifting. And as the weights
Speaker 1: got heavier, I realized I had this anxiety before a lift.
Speaker 1: It didn't make sense to me, and even to the
Speaker 1: point where I talked to the trainer and I said,
Speaker 1: something doesn't make sense. I'm gonna pick up this weight
Speaker 1: and one of two things is going to happen. The
Speaker 1: weight will go off the ground or the weight will
Speaker 1: not go off the ground. If the weight doesn't go
Speaker 1: off the ground, we'll take off five pounds and then
Speaker 1: I'll try it again. What if it goes off the
Speaker 1: ground or doesn't go off the ground. I don't care.
Speaker 1: I don't care at all. Why would I have anxiety
Speaker 1: if I don't care? Turns out the wisdom of the body.
Speaker 1: Knowing that. When I finally found out what was going
Speaker 1: on in my heart, and I talked to the heart
Speaker 1: surgeon and he asked what kind of exercise I do,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh, I'm doing this heavy Olympic deadlifting.
Speaker 1: He just he put his hand, his head in his hands,
Speaker 1: and he said, every time you lifted the weight, you're
Speaker 1: playing Russian Roulette every time. Wow. He's like, there was
Speaker 1: no worse thing you could have done with what was
Speaker 1: going on in your heart. So and again I didn't
Speaker 1: know that, but something in my body had all this
Speaker 1: anxiety around something that I didn't care about at all.
Speaker 1: So there are levels of wisdom that we don't know,
Speaker 1: we don't understand. So when you have an intuition to
Speaker 1: take the stairs instead of the elevator, or I always
Speaker 1: go home this way, but today, for some reason, I
Speaker 1: feel like going this other way, or maybe I'm in
Speaker 1: a cross street and walk on that side of the street.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, whatever intuitions in your body that come,
Speaker 1: listen to them, see what happens, be open to There's
Speaker 1: more going on than we know. There's a lot more
Speaker 1: than our conscious mind can can pick up going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we often do so many things because we think
Speaker 2: they're right, we think they're healthy. They the thing you're
Speaker 2: meant to do in it, but it doesn't sit with
Speaker 2: you somewhere, and I think so many people have. I
Speaker 2: know for a fact that I feel like I started
Speaker 2: following my intuition when I was probably around fourteen, and
Speaker 2: so that voice is very loud. But I know a
Speaker 2: lot of people that I've worked with and coached and
Speaker 2: also worked with in my life that started to stop
Speaker 2: listening to their own a voice at fourteen, and so
Speaker 2: it's very quiet now, and so it becomes harder to
Speaker 2: really hear it because we've suppressed it for so long.
Speaker 2: And then the ego or the outside noise is so
Speaker 2: loud that we're guided by that, we're not misguided by that.
Speaker 2: It's hard to tap into it. And have you found
Speaker 2: anything that helps you tap into it when you feel
Speaker 2: like you're losing or have you met someone and you've
Speaker 2: worked and you've said, hey, just try this to tap
Speaker 2: into it again. And the example you just gave right
Speaker 2: now kind of feel real too. Where it can be
Speaker 2: something as simple as take that route. Do that, because
Speaker 2: I find like people lose touch with it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I would say, when when you're getting advice of
Speaker 1: any kind, expert advice from whoever it is, no, maybe
Speaker 1: that's maybe that applies to me, Maybe that applies, and
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't, but it's okay, it's okay. No, there's
Speaker 1: no bad intention on the wisdom that's being shared with us.
Speaker 1: People are offering their best information, but the information that
Speaker 1: they're offering is based on their experience. So no, even
Speaker 1: when it's someone you really respect, when they're suggesting something
Speaker 1: maybe that would work, Maybe I'll try it, maybe not,
Speaker 1: But listen to what's going on in side yourself. And
Speaker 1: I would say, getting to wherever it is that you've gotten,
Speaker 1: we've usually gotten there through listening to something going on
Speaker 1: inside of ourselves. I have many successful musician friends who
Speaker 1: have gotten there through listening to what's going on inside themselves,
Speaker 1: and then in success think it's time to start taking
Speaker 1: direction from the outside world makes no sense.
Speaker 2: It's hard. Yeah, like you either do it at the
Speaker 2: beginning or you do at the end. And it's almost
Speaker 2: like they're the same in the sense of what you
Speaker 2: were saying earlier. The idea of there's this beginner's mindset
Speaker 2: where you always open to hear people's thoughts, so you
Speaker 2: don't know. There's that idea of I don't know, we
Speaker 2: have to feel yes and see. But that's different too.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Therefore someone else must know, or I've
Speaker 2: known up to now, and now I don't. No one knows.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and nobody knows. No one knows, And
Speaker 1: everyone's intentions are good. They're not out to get us,
Speaker 1: but nobody knows. They think they know. The wisest thing
Speaker 1: we can do is no enough to know. We don't know.
Speaker 1: If you start from maybe maybe that's true. It could work.
Speaker 1: Who knows. Yeah, not hold anything so firm as this
Speaker 1: is the way it is. I know how it is.
Speaker 1: Anytime you know how it is, your world just got
Speaker 1: a lot smaller, tiny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's yeah, it's this. This idea is crystallizing for
Speaker 2: me as we're talking. This idea that you can be thinking,
Speaker 2: you can be doing, you can be feeling, or you
Speaker 2: can be knowing. And a lot of us try and
Speaker 2: play so much emphasis on knowing, but no one actually knows,
Speaker 2: and so it's better to either change our thoughts, change
Speaker 2: our behavior, or focus on our feelings and sense. As
Speaker 2: you've been saying all along, it's like you've got to
Speaker 2: feel how it.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying will always be right?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no no, no, there is no well,
Speaker 2: there is no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is even there isn't even wrong, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Pay attention to what's going on inside yourself. There's so
Speaker 1: much information going on inside of ourselves, intuitive information.
Speaker 2: Greg, This has been such a beautiful and fascinating conversation
Speaker 2: for so many reasons. We end every one Purpose episode
Speaker 2: with a final five, and these answers are answered in
Speaker 2: one word or one sentence each, so you have that
Speaker 2: kind of capacity. And I want you to tell us
Speaker 2: about your new podcast that's coming out as well, so
Speaker 2: we'll talk about at the end. But the first question
Speaker 2: is what is the best advice you've ever heard, received
Speaker 2: or given?
Speaker 1: Don't listen to anyone, And what is.
Speaker 2: The worst advice you've ever heard received.
Speaker 1: Or given don't do the thing you love?
Speaker 2: Question number three, how would you define your current purpose.
Speaker 1: Making every step that I make in the interest of
Speaker 1: the highest good?
Speaker 2: Question number four, what's something that you believe strongly that
Speaker 2: you think other people find it hard to understand everything?
Speaker 2: That's really everything? And fifth and final question, If you
Speaker 2: could create one law that everyone in the world had
Speaker 2: to follow, what would it be? Love each other? Beautiful?
Speaker 2: Rick Rubin everyone. The name of the book is the
Speaker 2: Creative Act, a way of being. If you don't already
Speaker 2: have a copy, again, I highly recommend it. I promise
Speaker 2: you it will be an investment that will be something
Speaker 2: you pick up for years. It's not a book you've
Speaker 2: read and put down and then you never see it again.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a book that you're going to
Speaker 2: go back to again and again and again day after day,
Speaker 2: month after month and find new gems and new jewels
Speaker 2: and new wisdom that will inspire your creative journey. So
Speaker 2: if you've been someone who's been blocked stuck trying to
Speaker 2: find out you know where that's gone, or haven't ever
Speaker 2: seen it before, this will be the book to unlock it.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend it. And Rick, you also have podcast
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called Tetrogrammaton. I've been doing the Broken Record
Speaker 1: podcast for about five years, where I mainly speak to musicians,
Speaker 1: and I'm so interested in people who are not musicians.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just one of the things that I'm
Speaker 1: involved in, but I'm much more curious than just about music,
Speaker 1: and it just seemed like, why would I do that?
Speaker 1: So I've recorded the first fifteen of them.
Speaker 2: Okay, amazing, amazing. Where can people find it? Everywhere?
Speaker 1: Everywhere?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, make sure you go and subscribe to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Got fifteen. I'm sure they're coming out weekly or week.
Speaker 2: They'll come out weekly and sounds like I'm sure you've
Speaker 2: got some phenomenal guests already lined up. So please, everyone
Speaker 2: who's listening and watching with the book, go ahead and
Speaker 2: listen to the podcast as well. I'm sure you're going
Speaker 2: to be hearing amazing interviews and introductions and new insights
Speaker 2: on people that you know and love, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: there'll be some new people there too, But make sure
Speaker 2: you do that. Rick, thank you so much for today.
Speaker 2: Thank you for your energy, your presence, your work and
Speaker 2: putting this together and making sure you put out the
Speaker 2: book you wanted to put out. I'm very grateful for it.
Speaker 2: I was, as I said, I was personally amazed at
Speaker 2: how you'd transformed how people would have thought about a
Speaker 2: book from you, and I hope it inspires many more
Speaker 2: people to find their truth as well.
Speaker 1: So beautiful, Thank you so much for reading you, thank
Speaker 1: you for of course, thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: If you love this episode, you'll really enjoy my episode
Speaker 2: with Selena Gomez on befriending your inner critic and how
Speaker 2: to speak to yourself with more compassion. My fears are
Speaker 2: only going to continue to show me what I'm capable of.
Speaker 2: The more that I face my fears, the more that
Speaker 2: I feel I'm gaining strength, I'm gaining wisdom, and I
Speaker 2: just want to keep doing that