4 Steps to Improve Your Self Awareness to Reach Your Goals & How to Change Your Perspective on Rejection

He seems to come up with them relatively spontaneously. Yeah, he does, he does. He I mean, that's who he is, right, He's one of the worst, one of the most spontaneous people have over them there. I know, he's great. Welcome, great to have you here. Thanks for driving all the way out here. It's spent a long time in the works. It's my pleasure. I'm so grateful to be out here. Rich. I know we've become recent friends and I'm excited. I'm

excited to bond more and get to do this. Likewise two times in like two weeks, because I was did your show the other day, so this is great. We're on the precipice of your book coming out, which will be out when this comes out, which it's got to be an exciting time for you. It is, man, it's I feel like every year I try and do a new first, and this time it's the book. And yeah, it's like I get all the nerves, I get anxious, and in a good way. I love it. It's cool.

In preparation for today, I was poking around the internet and you know, I've been following you for some time, but just trying to get up to speed. And I gotta tell you, I'm falling in love with your wife. She's adorable, so you know, I get literally, so this is the story of my life. Basically, people like me to some degree. I hope they spend time with me, and then I introduced them to my wife and then they go oh, and then it's over. Yeah. Literally, no

one ever wants to see me ever again. It happens all the time. Saw my wife, Yeah, and she's amazing. Like we talked about it with you with your wife too, and it's my wife is amazing. She's incredible. I'm not surprised that people love them more than me. We both upgraded, which I feel good about. You know, I'm happy to be with someone who's better than me. It's it's a blessing. And yeah, I've had that experience many times over. We do this I was telling you earlier. We do this

retreat every year in Italy. Uh And and people show up from all over the place, you know, forty people for this week long experience, and most of them arrive under this idea that they're gonna like a trail running with me, and they're gonna learn about plant based cooking and maybe do a lot of little meditations. She's gonna be fun. Like, expectations are low, and then it becomes

like a whole Julie experience. They're like, I didn't know that we were going to get this, and then they all fall in love with her and I become very secondary to the entire experience. Okay, so we've got a lot in common. Yeah, we've got a lot of comment. What's the plant based thing? I urvadea all this stuff? Yeahs cool. Yeah, No, my wife is she's a real she's a real, genuinely powerful soul. And yeah, she does everything from a huh. And she's always been that way.

And you guys have been together for a long time. We've been together for seven years and been married for four and we just feel like we've got stronger and stronger. It's been really interesting for us because our life literally turned on it turned it on its head when when my career really started to take off. And so in twenty sixteen, we I move job three times, we moved country, we bought our house, put it on rent, found an apartment to rent, and got married all in the same year.

And it was a It was a lot, but it was also a lot of bonding together and forming and I think we had a moment where I think it could have gone either way, like it literally could have broke us or it could have made us. And thankfully, because of how she is and how I am and what we both wanted from our relationship, we've we've really been able to build something special. But you know, it's it's taken a lot of work, and that was definitely

a tough time. Yeah, I have no doubt. I mean, I think that level of change could easily and most likely splits apart most couples, especially when one person in the relationship suddenly goes on a crazy trajectory that isn't like, that doesn't where the other person isn't kind of in a in a parody type situation, you know, and without you know, a lot of relationship skills and communication that ends up, you know, planning the seeds of you know,

the demise of many a relationship. Yeah, exactly. And you know, we had our tough times. Like I remember knowing that every time I went out to work that my wife was at home, my new wife, like as in my you know, very new in terms of time, she's at home crying because she's just been moved away from her family and her home, and you're off like in your bliss totally. I'm trying to follow my bliss, as Joseph Campbell would say, and just like trying to build my purpose.

But in the back of my mind, I'm feeling the pain of the fact that I'm like, my wife doesn't have any friends here, we don't have any family in New York, we don't have a community here, Like we're feeling that gap and then me trying to play both roles and wanting to I used to set up on these dates. So I would literally set up on dates with women that I've met that I thought would get along with her, and she Why you keep trying to

set me up on dates with women. But it was just I was trying so hard and I really made it my priority that she became my priority. I was like, if she's not happy here, if she doesn't feel like this is her home, if she doesn't feel satisfied here, then it doesn't matter what happens with my purpose. So I would say she actually became my top priority when we lived in New York, and when we moved to La,

it's actually been the opposite. Where she loves La and has made the best friends of her life and has an incredible community around her, and I haven't had to have that, whereas in New York, I really felt that sense of pressure to help her feel at home. It's interesting because usually it's the other way around. New York is a place that that feels it easier to get socially acclimated than La. I think La can be an

incredibly lonely place. Interesting when you arrive and you're new and you don't have a community because everybody is so dispersed and in their cars, it's just not as spontaneous as New York or or it's difficult to connect. I mean, I think the onus is on the individual to really make something happen. Yeah, I think we were lucky we had we had a couple of friends here who really opened us up to their world and their friends, and that led to us making friends. But also just I

found in New York. And I guess it also depends where you are in your career and all of that kind of stuff too, But I felt like in New York people like came late to meetings and left early and always had thirty minutes to see me. And also one this was the biggest one, and this is huge. It's it's a weird one, but when you think about it,

really it really resonates. People in LA have homes or they have larger apartments, and so people invite you to their home, like today, we're in your home, and you have a beautiful home. And when people come to your home, you end up spending more time with them. So I remember the first weekend we came here, my friend threw a party and we went out and we spent eight hours with someone, right, And I was like, well, we

just spent eight hours, So I never spent eight hours. Yeah, if you're in New York, you'd meet at a borrow, a restaurant totally. And I think that's it Pop and Run, and I think that's a big thing about it. I think when you meet people in their homes, when you meet people in their genuine, natural habitats and environments, I feel like you get an opportunity to really see them and they feel exposed in a genuine, natural, vulnerable way to you as well. Yeah, that's part of the reason

why I like doing the podcast at my house. Yeah. I like having people over. And I have this theory that each person that arrives and spends time here deposits this place with their wisdom and their operation, and it just elevates, you know, the whole experience of living here. That's beautiful. It's like it's like a deposit. You must be very careful about who you allow it. Yeah, I'm glad that I snuck in this is I try to, you know, I try to be mindful of that. Yeah.

I've been holding onto your crystals ever since to make sure I don't. Yeah. So when I when I take a ten thousand foot view of who you are and what you do, it seems to me that your your gift, or your your real facility is this ability, this facility for taking Asile's wisdom, these spiritual precepts, these philosophical tenets and ideas, and translating them in an entertaining way and a digestible way for a very broad mainstream and and perhaps young you know audience. Is that fair sounds good

to me? Yeah? No, it's you know, it's there. There's a statement by Albert Einstein which kind of underpinds all my work, and it's if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. And when I was exposed to the Invaders and all these spiritual texts that some of them date five thousand years back, I was reading them and I was like, there is magic in these texts, Like there is so much energy in these texts. There's so much weight and gravitas, and there's so much power.

But guess what, most people will never be able to experience it because it's in another language. And when I say another language, I don't just mean Sanskrit or Hindi or you know, and you know Chinese, I mean another language of it's speaking to a different age. And there's beauty in that, and I love that and I appreciate that. But I could see that I wanted to try and see if I could explain these things to people that I grew up with. And I was always connecting with

the person who grew up in London. You know, I'm born and raised in London. I grew up liking anything an average londoners into. But I got so fascinated because of the way the philosophy was presented to me, and I felt a responsibility to want to do that for others. So, yeah, I think that's a that's a pretty good breakdown in ten thousand foot view, And I appreciate you saying that because that's what fascinates me. That's where I get my buzz from is how do I read, study and learn

so that I can share, support and serve. And that's that's where I get my meaning from. Yeah, I mean crystallizing these texts down to these kernels of wisdom or teachable moments. There's no small thing. I mean, if you you know, if you read the Bug of our Guida, I mean, it takes a prodigious mind to just keep

track of all the characters. Like these stories are insane, you know, So it's like, all right, you know, our Juna is doing this, and you know, so and so is over there do it's spirit, you know, killing these people, and what's the lesson that I'm supposed to get up? So I leve to send you when I when I studied it, I made a family tree, so I literally

had to physically. For anyone who doesn't know what we're talk about, we're doing about the bug Geta, which is part of the Mahabara, and there are million characters, and I remember having to not million literally, but I remember having to literally piece together the family tree because I was the same I couldn't and and the messages are so profound and so powerful, and you know, yeah, it's it's it's it's a blessing to be even be able to be exposed to them, let alone trying to share them. Well,

let's take it back. Tell me about you know, what it was like being a kid growing up in London, North London. Yeah, North London. So I grew up in the most common place that people would know is a place called Tottenham more specifically you know, yeah, North London for anyone who doesn't know. And I grew up as a you know, I was a very obedient kid growing up, especially in my up to four teen years old, I was very I would say I worked very hard at school.

I was a good son, I followed the rules. I was very overweight at that time as well, so I got bullied a lot. So I was bullied for my weight. I was probably one of the few Indian kids at school, so I was bullied for being Indian and parents first generation. Yes, yeah, And I just was very fortunate because I guess it was a mixture of love at home but also resilience. I never really felt that affected by any of it. I just I kind of accepted it as normal. I

didn't see myself as different. I was just like, oh, this is just what kids must go through. And I kind of got it. And then at fourteen it kind of switched where I was like, well, being good doesn't work, like, it doesn't add up to anything. I'm not happy, it doesn't make me more successful. I still experienced racism and bullying, so I might as well be a jerk. Like and I don't mean the jerk is a bad person to people. I meant like, I might as well not follow the rules.

I might as well experiment with everything else, whether it was getting drunk or whether it was you know, experiment with smoking or weed or whatever it was at the time, and just feeling like I wanted a thrill in an experience in life, and that being good didn't stack up to what I was told. I was told if you were good, that you'd be successful and things would work, and I didn't feel that. So I kind of you

have a conscious memory of making that decision. What's that meaning at some point when you were fourteen, thinking like I'm going to change tack here. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know if it was conscious in the sense I was like, oh, this is not working, let me try this. It wasn't like that. In hindsight, I can see my reasoning behind wire because people of like I've I've always considered myself to be a well intentioned, good person, Like that's that's who I am at the

heart and the core of it. I could never hurt anyone. It's not who I am, and so it's it was weird when I when I got involved in the wrong circles and I started doing things I can never imagine, and I became the opposite. And when I reflect on that, that's what I feel is the reason. So no, I don't think it was a conscious decision at the time, but when I reflect on it in hindsight, it's very clear to me that that was the reason that brought it out. Right. So you're getting into a little bit

of trouble, but not too much trouble. You're still you know, are you the eldest son. I'm the eldest son. There's a certain mantle that you have to carry, yeah, exacertain level of expectation and you know, academic prowess that you have to demonstrate to your parents to remain in good steady. Yeah. And I didn't good at that because my parents, you know, Indian parents are generally like, if you do well in school, that's all that matters, and so I kind of took

that too literally. I was like, Okay, as long as I'm doing well in school, I can do anything I want. So I was performing well in school, but I started to really when I was fourteen, really dive into what I was fascinated by. And I found that there were three subjects that really took my attention. So it was economics, art and design, and philosophy, and those became my three favorite subjects. At school and it was very different to what my parents wanted or what I thought at primary school,

where the maths and sciences were more stressed. But I started to see that I was connecting. I would talk to my art teacher for hours about different art that we would, you know, dissect together and think about why the artist had juxtaposed those two items like that, and the meaning behind certain brushes and strokes. And I loved like breaking something down philosophically. And I really own my art teacher a lot for that because he made me gain that taste for questioning why things were the way

they were rather than just accepting them at face value. Yeah, but that seed kind of was under germinated. It seems like finance originally kind of want out in that race war. I would say that I thought that I would go off and do graphic design or marketing at university, or I really was about to apply, remember for Central Saint Martins, which is an incredible art school in London. And I remember.

It's funny you say that because I remember applying, and then my art teacher, I think messaging me or saying to me at the time however we did at that time, I can't even remember, but I guess emailing me and saying, oh, you sold out and just like calling me out on it.

And it was just it was just my young Indian mind in London of just feeling that there were a finite number of options and that I didn't really even I didn't even know that there were other careers, like genuinely, like if you asked me then, like what careers existed in the world. I literally could only think of medicine, law and finance, like I didn't even know that anyone did anything beyond that, or that anything beyond that was

even available. And so for me, I was like, Okay, well can't do the first two, so I'm going to end up doing this one. And so it wasn't that it won from the heart, It's that it won from a safety, security, stability, reliability platform. And the reason why this is so important to talk about is I think today people look at me, or may perceive my work

if they're aware, to be quite risk taking. And you know, I think I'm very different now, But there was a time in my life where I made decisions based on feeling I wanted a secure future and a stable future, right medicine, law, law or a failure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so I had three options growing up. What about engineering, That seems that that would have passed the test, Yeah, but I wasn't know, But I wasn't. I think that's

very India centric. But like British Indians, I feel, are not as good as engineering, so you don't find it. I don't know, maybe maybe it's just me, but but yeah, no, it was just I was always I never, I never. I realized very very early on that I didn't engage with the same things as the people around me, and I couldn't even force myself. My intuition was so strong, and I didn't know it's called intuition at that time,

but I knew that it was so strong. It was dragging me towards art in design and philosophy and all of this kind of stuff. But you're a social animal. I suspect that you had lots of friends and ran

in popular circles. I did in my teens, but not up to my teens and even in my Yeah, I did in my teens, but I felt that I felt at that time that you know, you're just finding yourself, Like when you're in your teens, you don't know who you are, you don't know where you stand for, you don't know where your values are, and everyone at that time, I mean I went to a school where majority of people were probably smarter and smarter than me that you know,

super smart kids in my school and really accomplished and getting the best grade and you know, best resumes and all of that kind of stuff, so you never really it was good. It was very humbling being at my school. You got a very every year, they would literally we'd get a report which would rank you in every subject

one to one hundred and eighty. So we had one hundred and eighty students in my year and for every subject, and it would you'd get it sent to your parents to you and you get a number one to one eighty, so you can know when you're at one forty four, and there were some subjects where I was at one. That's true ceremony. It was so bad, but it was, you know, it was humbly. But the good thing about it was very early on my school was able to

show us what our strengths were and what wasn't. And now when I look back and behind something like wow, My school really pointed out to me what I was going to be successful in, what I wasn't to the point that my school didn't allow us to take certain subjects. Later one, between ages sixteen age, you're done with that, Yeah, it's not going to work for Yeah. Literally, that's that you would go into this room with your parents and the teacher would sit you down and they'd be like, yeah,

we don't think Jay can take chemistry. It was literally salis that I'd be so scared of those meetings because you'd be scared of how your parents are going to react. So you go to university and you study business. Yeah, I studied management science and I focused on behavioral science. So all of my thesis and my dissertations and all of that, I was focused on analyzing behavior. And that's kind of what I got fascinated. So walk me up

to this pivotal monk moment. Yeah, I think you know, I've talked about it before, and this is a great conversation already because I'm telling you stuff I've never said before, which I always loved. So you know, I mean, this is this is really fun for me right now, and I want to approach this as well, I'm always whenever I tell this, I'm always trying to relive its It's this thing, you know, I'll enter apologies for interrupted that. When you're in the process of telling and retelling your

story time and time again. What I always I'm always sitting here thinking when I'm doing it, myself thinking because I'm just repeating because I have, like, you know, I know the thing, and I know what to say, and I think, is that really what happened? Yeah? Can me really be honest with myself? Did this happen differently? Or is my is my memory playing tricks on me and telling me that something happened? Because I've just repeated it so many times, I'm always kind of like using that

as a reference point. Absolutely, Yeah, me too, And I'm always trying to what I find is I know? And I've asked myself that question as well, And i know that I'm telling what happened, but I'm always trying to discover a new truth about it. So whenever I'm telling you, I'm like, oh, what can I discover this time about me?

Ask let's do it this way though, I mean, basically, as the story goes, you developed a proclivity for seeking out interesting people to go here, talk businesspeople, sports figures, etc. And suddenly there was this monk who was going to be speaking. You were initially not interested in hearing what that person had to say, and you agreed with your friends to attend only on the assumption that you guys would go to a bar afterwards. That that is the story.

So let me ask you this. Let's talk about where that resistance came from. The resistance just came from I think this skeptical version of me that didn't really believe there was anything beyond success. And that's partly why I called the book Think like a Monk, because I think a lot of people look at them. Why would I want to think like a monk? Like? Why? You know?

But that's the point, Like, I'm trying to break through that barrier of I think so many of us have been conditioned to believe that success looks a certain way, and that happiness looks a certain way, and that joy looks a certain way. And I was one of those people that was very skeptical about anything else outside of my space, Like if someone wasn't pulling up in their fast car, or if someone wasn't pulling up in the best clothes, did I give them the time to really

share their perspective. And I love the fact that that the best moment of my life, that moment uptil that point was also the most humiliating moment of my life for myself, because I was being humiliated to myself, like it was so humbling to walk out and then and be like, ah, you had it all wrong. And so I love that. I really celebrate the humbling that that moment gave me. And it's exactly that that when you hear someone speak and they speak about things that you

never knew you were interested in. You never thought that you'd be fascinated by someone talking about service. But when he spoke about service, it just penetrated my soul and it just spoke so deep to my core in a way that nothing ever has. That I could hear about someone talking about making a billion dollars and it wouldn't feel the same way. What was it that he said? Specifically, he was quoting another writer and he mentioned this phrase. He said, plant trees under whose shade you do not

plan to sit. He said that the best use of your talents and skills is not to use it to become rich, famous and successful, but to use it in the service of others. When he said that, I was like, wow, like that's a pretty bold statement. And I think for me it was, you know, it was partly my openness just came because and I've said this before, but I'll

repeat it because it really hit me. It's like when I was eighteen, I'd met people who were beautiful, I'd met people who are rich, I'd met people who are strong, and met people who are powerful, but I don't think i'd ever met anyone who was truly happy. And he looked and I still know him. He's really happy. What's

his name, Goads So's. He's like, he's just like this big, joyful like anytime I spend time with him, and he has a crazy schedule, like the way he lives and how powerfully like he's He went, you know, he went to I went to the Indian Institute of Technology. He's super smart, like one of the smartest people in his year, like very accomplished, and he gave it all up. And I was like, either he's really smart or he's really crazy. And I wanted to find out. And I think that's

all I had is that. I was like, he must be onto something because if he had it all lined up, but he gave it up and he's really happy, what is it? Right? Like that's that's kind of where the curiosity. Yeah, I mean it sounds more like confusion, like I don't understand, you know, I need, I need, I need to square this equation. Yeah. Yeah, partly confusion, but partly all curiosity in the sense of just like he must be really smart,

he must be really crazy. Like if he's smart, he's onto something Like how did he gain so much joy, satisfaction and contentment in not chasing the dream that everyone around him was chasing and that society is constantly sort of pushing us towards. Absolutely absolutely, and I was I was fascinated. But what was his or he's still young? What's his uh particular genus of you know, spirituality? Like

what tradition? So he's a Hindu monk. He's a Hindu monk, and he's what I would consider I in the book, I break down and think like a monk. I break down dharma and purpose and calling. So he would probably sit under the leader type of individual. He's very ambitious, very focused. He can get a lot done. He's a powerhous to be around. At the same time, he works up a two am to meditate every day, takes care

of his health. He's just he's one of these like all rounder types of people who's just yeah, really good at taking care of his mind, body and spirit. But at the same time he really wants to do something

for the world. He has that energy. There is something about certain individuals I'm reluctant to say the word enlightened, but people who are carrying a higher level of consciousness that when you're in their presence, it's undeniable, like it's you can't you can't reduce it to words, but there is a sensation of what it feels like to be

in that person's presence. And he introduced me to his spiritual teachers, also one of my suppositual teachers rather than at Swammy, who's been a monk for forty years now and he's in England, in India and India, and he's older as well, and it's like I feel like that when I'm with him every time, like it's just yeah, it's that undeniable presence. And I always say to people, you need to you need to feel it to believe it, like you need to be there. You can't, like you said,

you can't reduce it to words. And yeah, I feel that now when even when I go to temples. When I was in South India particularly, and your home reminds me a lot of South India because there's a lot of these stone statues and the mountain out there. We've had we had some proper swammy here or while we've had lots of swammis past career, over the years. Yeah, And one of them looked out of the mountain across the way and he said, this feels like my home.

And in his home is anah yeah, yeah, which is a very kind of like powerful spiritual for attack absally yeah, and vortex is the right work. So when I went to South India, it's a city with these powerful gates. So if you look at South Indian architecture, it's like these in you You've got a lot of in your home.

But it's like this incredible kind of like almost like Avengers Marvel meets spiritual culture kind of like spaceship kind of these these doors and gates and and it's you know the temples that are like five thousand years old. And when you walk through those corridors, there's one that literally feels like you're going to walk through it and be transported to another dimension because the way the pillars are built. And this is a bolt a thousand years

like Star Trek. Yeah literally, yeah, exactly, it's just yeah, it's super what's it? What's what's some more up to date reference point kind of like Doctor Strange because like Doctor Strange but on steroids, Like it's just yeah, it's expansive. And I think that is one of those things that you have to sit in that present. You have to go there to believe it. And and I think anyone

who has whether they have a faith or not. And and that's really what's important to me is how do we share these ta teachings in a way that it's not bound by faith or religion or spiritual tradition even for me, Like this book isn't about becoming a spiritual tradition or a particular philosophy. It's it's about living like you and thinking like a monk. Right, That's that's the ballet. Yeah,

I mean two things, there's two powerful precepts here. One is you can't transmit something you haven't got Like when you're in the presence of somebody like that, you know it and you know there are a lot of pretenders to that type of vibration, but it's pretty transparent, like who's really carrying that kind of wisdom and who's pretending to And second to that is this idea that you really fully embrace, which is meeting people where they're at.

Like if you show up in robes and you're you're framing your presentation in a way that creates a distance between you and the person you're trying to communicate, then you're already you know, basically behind home plate in terms of like trying to connect or transmit. Yeah. Yeah, And there's two things you were about there which I think are really interesting. It's the first is it's all about

the frequency you're operating at. So if someone is fooling your pretending or trying to be something, if you're operating at lower frequency, you may follow for a while and you may not know. But when you start upping your frequency, that's when you can really see that, Oh right now, I can see the difference. And it's not in a

judgmental way or a critical way. It's just frequencies, and at the second point, you're making there around, you know, really really speaking to people about where they're at, or meeting them where they're at and connecting with them. For me, it's just I think compassion is not expecting people to be more advanced than they are. And that's what people have done with me. I mean when I went to the usherroom and when I split up with these monks, I mean I am in no way and even now

I'm not. I mean, their compassion even to spend time with me now. And I feel like when you've experienced that level of compassion where people see you, they look through your so they watch you and they just think they can see everything about you that you don't like about yourself, and they will still find that spark of potential and the spark that makes them believe that we

should invest and serve and help this human being. And for me, when you've experienced that level of compassion, even if you are still dealing with stuff yourself, you want to pass it on. And so when I see anyone at any level, I don't judge anyone because hey, hey I've been there before. Hey I'm still there kind of in some ways, and I know how hard it is to get out of that mess, and so how can I judge someone just because there are three steps behind? Yeah,

so you have this experience with this spark. Yeah, apparently everything changes. So how does it change? Well, my lifestyle, and I've talked about this before, like my personal lifestyle styled the same. I was still dating. I was still I'd given up alcohol by that time, and they'd given up like you know, drugs and stuff. So I wasn't really playing. And I was always very experimental. I've never been an addict or a regular consumer of anything. I've

just been an experiment in my whole life. But for me, it was my Yeah, I was still dating, I was still doing everything that anyone ever did. There was nothing changed in that, but I was now mentally curious and checking it out. So I spent the next four years, half of them in my summer vacations interning at financial companies in London, where I thought I would end up working just because my university recommended that. And the other half of my breaks, I'd spend them living in India

with the monks to experience that lifestyle. So I would literally go as I explain it, from steakhouses, bars and suits to robes, sleeping on the floor and meditating every day. Right, So was that was that this Monk's teachers ashram. Yes, yeah, no, it's two hours outside of Mumbai, so it's in the middle of nowhere. But it's yeah, that two hours, said Mbai. Yeah.

And were there other Westerners there, Yeah, yeah, yeah, plenty, yeah, plenty of visitors from all over the world, people from Australia, people from Europe, people from London, and yeah, they'd definitely have a lot of visitors even to us. Yeah, So initially it was a couple of years of half the summer. Yeah, it wasn't It wasn't long. I'd go there for like two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, like I would go there for short bursts of time and just just experiencing,

just just live like them and live with them. And for me, and I didn't know this again, in hindsight, it was me really getting to live both options of life. Like I was getting to live in the city, I was getting to wear a fancy suit to work every day and get to perform well in the workplace and you know, go through all of whatever that is networking and meeting people, and then I would get to do that, and I just got so much more satisfaction from it.

I felt satisfaction from the service we did, I felt satisfaction from the meditations, and if I'm completely honest, the biggest thing that that got me at that time was I didn't have to think that ego and humility and vulnerability and empathy and compassion, these weren't just going to be concepts anymore. These were going to be real practices and weaknesses, yeah, weaknesses, These could become focuses that I

could really wrap my head around them. Because when I was back in the city and I was trying to perform and I was trying to show my boss who was the best and who was performing well, it was hard to maintain that level of gravity because not because it's impossible, because it's not that that's what I lay out and that's what I'm trying to teach right now.

It was harder because I hadn't had that training. And so now that I've come out of the astroom, I feel like my Monk training has allowed me to continue to practice those principles in the real world. Whereas at that time I was just an eighteen year old kid who was still conditioned by everything else. I suppose the distinction.

It's one thing to make a decision after you'd lived as a monk during that like three year period, making this hardline decision Okay, I'm going back into the world, But when you kind of have one foot in both worlds, Yeah, I suspect that it probably became progressively more difficult to relate or connect with your friends back in Wonder. Yeah. I was, you know, I was very open with the

closest friends. I remember one of my friends saying to me, like, oh, well, you know, he was always we would always talk about women together, right, We would always talk about girls, like which girls we liked and who he was dating and all this kind of stuff. And all of a sudden, I don't time, I would come back from being a monk. I'd have a monk moment and and you know try and like resist the urge to just talk about women in that way and the way it can be done.

And my friend would just be like, what We're not what we're going to talk about it? You know, it's just like confused, like where's this life going? And other parts of other parts and having to say, And I want to give credit to my friends too. Some of my other friends were just really intrigued and so they actually wanted to learn. And so I ran a society at university called Think out Loud, and every week I would present a topic based on philosophy, science, and psychology.

So I would take a movie, I would dissect the characters, I would we would watch half the movie together and then would break down the roles and I would talk about philosophy, science, and spiritual reality and psychology to students. And when I started it, we had like ten students. By the time we finished, university had one hundred students coming every week. And it was totally free. There was no catch, there was no followers, there's not nothing. It

was just this beautiful experience. And that's kind of where I got into the habit of everything I learned as a monk, I would teach it. So if I was learning about karma, I would teach it that week. If I went that summer and I learned about ego, I would talk about ego. And so I just started sharing what I was learning because I found that to be the best way of letting people connect. And that's kind

of where I got fascinated with this whole thing. So this whole trajectory gets planned then, like you're you're starting to teach and share even before you go off and be a full time mom way before, and that experience of reviewing movies and discussing it really is, I mean, that's the germination for these videos that you do now, one hundred percent like that, that really was the beginning. And that was when I was eighteen years old, so fourteen years ago now, and I just loved putting on

a session every week. And then I got invited to other universities, so I go to the London School of Economics in present and I go to this other university and I was just loving the fact that I was finding so many young people in London that wanted this over anything else. Like that's what I was impressed by the most, that there was a need, and that convinced me very early on that if presented effectively, there wasn't

community for this, and people really were searching. It's very similar to Andy Pottocomb's Andy's yeah, yeah, I mean he's the only other person who's had right I know, but him coming back from that experience and returning to London and then kind of hosting these salons. He meets rich and then they start kind of you know, basically doing informal get togethers that then you know, become and grow into Headspace. But the idea started in a similar way

to kind of what you're telling about. Yeah, exactly, And this was I actually remember I told Andy this. I said to him that the year I first found out about headspace is the year I became a monk. And I told him this. I was so impressed by what he was doing. And I said to him, if I would have had the money, I would have invested, but I had no money. I've said this Andy. He's been on my podcast and we've done a few panels together. But yeah, he's amazing. I love Andy, and I said

that to him. I was so impressed by what they did because I was just starting that journey and I saw what he'd done. I was like, Wow, that's fascinating, you know, it's so great to see that. But yeah, yeah, I think this is the reason why I'm sharing this too with you Riches. You know, I've been doing this online for like three to four years, but in my

life I've been doing this for fourteen years. Like I've literally done this every single day of my life for the last fourteen years in some way, shape or form, whether I was reading, studying, or teaching or sharing. And so for me, it's become my life. And when I left being a monk, I didn't want to not do that anymore. And what I get to do now is what brought me back to that to be able to learn, study, teach, share and live in that element which I feel so

much connected to. Yeah, and meet people where they are. Yeah, that was That's always been my thing because because I've been you know, I've been plucked out, Like you know, it's when you've been drowning in an ocean of material thought and someone had the compassion and empathy to reach down and grab you. You feel like you want to do the same thing. And that's just my meditation constantly.

You know, you don't you can't ever go back from that, the amount of gratitude I have for the people that have invested in me, and that opened up my eyes. I was eighteen years old, I would have gone down the path of becoming an I probably if I had it my way, I probably would have wanted to become an art director and a massive company. I probably would

have done pretty well for myself. I would have traveled the world and wasted my life like that's I always think about that moment of sliding doors, what could have been, And that's why I would have been. But because I met these incredibly powerful people who wanted nothing from me but just to give, it changed my life. And that's the opportunity I want. And for people, it may not be a monk, but when you think like a monk, you you recognize that, actually, am I exposing myself to

as many alternative methods of thought? Am I really allowing myself to experience everything the world has to offer? Because if I'm not, I'm already limiting myself in a world that's actually unlimited. And that's the challenge I see, is that we are living at a time when you have the most choice available, you have the most experiences available, but we still put ourselves in these prisons. Not only that those prisons are one of self seeking. I mean

you mentioned giving. I mean giving is you know, service is the cornerstone of this whole thing. Yes, being in selfless service to others, Yes, which is just counterprogramming to the way entire you know, our entire infrastructure of Western

civilization is constructive. Yes, absolutely, yeah, complete counterprogramming. I remember when I was giving a talk this was probably about like, oh yeah, probably about four years ago, and I was speaking to a group of executives and one of them came up to me afterwards and he said, how old were you when you became among I was like twenty two, And he said, when did you get the realization that life was about selfless service? And I said, well, I'm

still getting there. I'm not there yet. But the first time I fell in love with that idea, I was eighteen. He goes, the first time I realized that life was beyond me, I was forty two years old, when you know, my child was growing up. And he goes, that was the first time I realized that life was not just about me. And I was thinking, wow, like to me, it was. To me. It's weird because I got exposed to it at eighteen. I couldn't believe that someone didn't

understand that even today. Like the reason why we're all repeating messages and continue to I think remind people of these messages and even ourselves is because you could hear that life is about service a million times, but until you practice it and until you really until you really mold it into every era of your life, like this podcast is your service. I think we think of service

also very limited. We think service means to go out and help a charity or being at the Superkochen correct, And that is beautiful and people should do it's it's wonderful and I think we should all do it, and I try and do it as much as I can. But service is also serving through your calling, your talents, your skills, your purpose that benefits other people, and it can be different, like you know, yeah, so yeah, there's

so many methods. Well, the ultimate is when you can find that thing that lights you up and channel that in a way to give back to others and also support yourself and your family in doing it. I mean, that's the secret. That's what this does for me. I just feel like the luckiest person in the world too. Yes, you know, live in this time where this is possible and to have kind of stumbled into this, Yeah, for sure.

There's there's a beautiful story that I share that you've reminded me of now and it's It's the story of two monks that washing their bowls, and while they're washing their bowls, they see a One of the monks sees a scorpion drowning, and so he helps the scorpion out of the water and puts it onto the side, and in that process he gets stung by the scorpion, and the other monk says, what are you doing? Like you know this stupid He sit dount, don't worry about don't

worry about it. This scorpion falls in again into the water. The monk picks it up again get stung in the process and puts it onto the side, so that the other monks just like, Okay, now you're just being ridiculous, Like what are you doing? He said, why are you saving the scorpion when you know that it's nature is to sting, And among replies goes, I know that the scorpions nature is to sting, but my nature is to save.

And so he understood how hard wired his service mindset was that he was willing to go through the pain to act in that way. So what I'm trying to share with that story is that we're all wired to serve naturally as children, as kids as people, as humans,

but we've been educated for greed. And you see this, there's countless viral videos of kids who like walk up to their television screen and wipe the cartoon characters tears off with their tissues, or like kids like running to help the person next to them, and we were all once that person. But it's just the education that we get. And I'm not just too much school. I'm just staying

generally the education of becoming self centered. And whether you look at from a scientific point of view, the studies that have been done when people help people, their depression goes down, their mental health goes up. When people help people, they're able to feel more joy and experience more happiness

in their lives. Like we are happier when we serve and help people, and that I think has been so lost that if someone genuinely awesome so because I think everyone hearing that will say, oh, yeah, but I like to help people. I try if you really did an audit of how much time you spend every week genuinely helping someone who is giving you no help, or is genuinely helping someone who does nothing back for you, I'd find that we'd say a very very little amount of

t Yeah. The key is doing it when it's not convenient. Correct what I mean? Yes, exactly, that's the best fair to say. Yeah exactly. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, listen, you know you hit it on the head. I mean, it's not it's not your school. It's like by osmosis. It's like I hear what you're saying, Jay, that's great, but like I gotta get mine, dude. Yeah, you know, times the clock's ticking and time's running out and I got my hustle on. Yeah. So you want my response

to that, sure, Yeah. My My response to that is that mentality will get you the thing, and it will get you the number, and it will get you the money in the bank, but you won't feel satisfied. And that's my hypothesis. So go test it, and I would gladly let anyone test that, and I guarantee you that's how you feel. What happens, though, is you get it.

You have that experience of momentary elation that quickly fades the half life on that is very short, and then you think your next thought isn't I need a new path? Your next thought is, well, when I get that next thing exactly gonna lock in. Absolutely, it's the habster wheel, right, It's it's it's the conveyor belt, and it's that's it's the treadmill. That's the that's the challenge with that. And I think that's why we have to learn from people who have got there and feel that way. I think

we have to. It's like, you know, when you hear Jim Carrey say like everyone should get everything they want and become everything they ever wanted, just to realize it's not the point when you see everyone who gets to the peak of financial or fame or beauty success, they then try and serve like that's just what everyone ends up having to do. We're in the world capital of

that right here. Yeah, you know what I mean, absolutely, And you see it like you know, I can't remember who said this, but you know it's it's talked about like your success. I can't remember who said it, but your success is based on the depth of the problem you solve, right. And it's like if you look at any success, even if it's Jeff Bezos and Amazon, and someone goes, I want to be Jeff Bezos, Jeff has solved not that I know him, but Jeff has solved

a issue that people had, So it's still service. And I think that's what we miss. That anyone's winning, even financially, whether we agree with their business model or not, they are performing some type of service to people. And because he's serving more people with an issue that they have, he's able to make more money. So even from a totally financial perspective, service still wins. Like there's no there's

no you know, there's no taking away at that. It's it's a more it's just an expansive definition of service, correct, correct, But it's still sold. Service ultimately is solving a problem that really is a core need in people's lives. And I think that could be a starting point for someone if they're still like, ja, I don't go right, I'm still I'm just trying to be people where there. I'm with you, all right, So you make this decision to

go be a month full time? You live in the sash ram for three years, yes, yeah, yeah, and we traveled a lot too, so we lived in ushrooms across London, Mumbai and Europe as well. Oh wow, um yeah, I think similarly. And he was in he went, he was in crush he was in Russia and Scotland. Yeah, so walk me through like a typical day in the life of that experience. Yeah, so you wake up at four am every day no matter where you are. And four thirty is collective prayers and meditation. So four thirty till

about five fifteen. Then five fifteen till seven thirty is personal meditation time. So that's personal meditation practice often in a communal space with other people, can be private. Two and then seven thirty to eight is seven thirty to eight thirty is a class or class on philosophy from the bargut Geeta or the Schumant Bargutum or one of these spiritual texts or punishads puranas. Instead, I'll be an hour class given by one of the senior monks or

senior teachers. Usually one of my favorite things to look forward to in the day because that's I was like kind of like I was always waiting for that, because the classes were just so powerful and hearing people who've studied all the commentaries in the books. And then eight thirties breakfast. Breakfast is usually in India would be some kind of Indian dish kind of similar to I don't know how to describe it, it's called flat rice. That's

the easiest way to describe it. So some simple food and then from then on it wouldn't be different every day. So the way it was split up is the morning was about yourself, and the afternoon and evening were about service. And that's where I I fell in love with this routine of self and service. And I think today now the world's coming a lot back to self love and I feel like that's where we got to experience both

very clearly. When you spend half your day taking care of yourself, you spend the other half serving, you get this beautiful synergy between the two. So for the rest of the day, we'd be out feeding children, we'd be out building the sustainable village that we were at, we'd be out teaching, we'd be out helping, like, we'd be out doing something and that would change every day depending on what the need was. Sometimes would be chores as well, like washing your clubs. I mean washing monk robes are

not fun at all. They're these huge bed shoots. So yeah, that's sounds like seven days a week. Do you get a day off or you can go, you know, do whatever you want. You know. I always I was one of those guys who wanted that day off. I was like, I was like, if I make it a five of the four ams, can I skip the other note? You

don't get to It doesn't work like that. And I mean there's a lot of reflection time in the day that you get and you have to really work through a lot of stuff because your ego gets in the way, your opinions start to get in the way. And living community is a real experience. Like when you live community with that many men in one place, it's like you really have to face your ego, your pride, your competitive mentality, your comparison on a daily basis. It's really tough. Did

humanity ever just percolate to the surface and dudes start fistfighting? No, like, no one ever actually, Like the only time monks would ever get from the humans are humans. Yeah, I don't care how much you're meditating now at some point, you know, No, it was never that that. The only time the monks ever got into physical was when the special sacred food

came out. So there's sacred food that's often and like there's these sweets and we didn't you know, we didn't eat a lot of sugar or anything like that there. So whenever these sweets came out there, these milk sweets sometimes, and so these sweets were like the kind of like, yeah, yeah, I've never spent time in an ashram, but I've been well, we should go to I would like to. I mean, I like to take you. I would enjoy that. I'm being serious, I'm being deadly serious. We should go together

to the I go back every year. Yeah, I still do. Yeah, every year. So I go back every usually December January appeared because the weather is good to go then. Yeah, for anyone who's not from India, like I struggled during the hot times in India too, So that's the best time if you're visiting. But I'd love to take You'd

be so fun, it would be cool. Yeah. In my experience of you know, sitting in meditation with various you know, swamis over the years and and and being around you know, various types of those kind of communities, Yeah, the thing that I noticed, like the humanity that I see in that is the um is the institutionalization of the guru. Right, and then it becomes like this pecking order of who's close to the higher consciousness, and there seems to be

a lot of jockeying around. Like that's where I see like the sort of character like the you know, our innate humanity percolating the surface and manifesting and character flaws. Yeah, for sure, that's a really good point. And I saw that too, And I feel like, I feel like my teachers did a very good job of not trying to create, enjoy, or build that type of culture. They tried their best,

but the follower's mentality is so strong. So I'll give an example, like, so, so whenever I was with one of my teachers, if we travel together, whether and and you know, I'm I'm you have to put yourself in the mindset of I'm a very junior monk and spiritually

very junior too. So I'm like, I'm like right at the bottom of the pile, right, And it's like when I would travel with the senior most teacher, there was a respect in where we pay physical respects as you've probably seen before, where people pay physically bow on the floor to show respect to teachers, to etc. And and he at seventy years old, there was never a day behind closed doors when no one else was watching that he wouldn't get back and pay those respects on the floor,

And to me, that was the that was the moment where I was like, he's real because there was no more no one to show off to. I was not senior that I deserved it, like there was no you know, from from the point of view of a hierarchy, even though there wasn't one. But he would have the humility and the human humanity to recognize that if a soul or if a person is showing me respects, and I'll showed those respects back. And I felt that at seventy years old, I'm you know, I'm like twenty two years old,

like a seventy year old man, Like that's beautiful. Like then there was some beauty in there, and that was that was part of it, and the other part was the you know. And it's funny because we talk about this a lot, even even with the other monks and other people that about. My teacher would never have a favorite or a number one, and he never verbalized this,

but we all knew it. And and one of the senior monks he always said to me, he said, if you want to be the number one, you won't last very long right, and he literally said it to me. He goes, if you want to be his number one, go to right hand man, all that kind of stuff. He goes, you're not going to last long here, because he said, anyone who wanted that position, they never got it because he doesn't want it to exist, and so

you will fail. And I remember having this conversation with him and he's, you know, because he's been so close to him for so long, and he said to me, he said, there are times this is wrong with us. He goes, there are times when I've had to be really close to support him, and there are times when I've had to move away and step back and let him do what he needs to do. And it's like, he goes, it doesn't work like that. So I think that good leaders always try and avoid creating that culture.

But our follower mentality is so strong that we want someone to worship and idolize, and we want that we're seeking on. Our identity is informed by proximity to that person. Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, And there's two types of proximity. So I'll tell you anyways, sparking all these memories, so we're walking on this beach in South India. It's called Setubund. It's a very holy place and like literally the tip of South India if you were to look

at a map. And so we're walking on this beach, it's about twenty five months and our senior teacher and we're all walking behind him, and everyone's trying to walk close to him, and he's just walking like he's not even talking to anyone. He's just walking and he's doing a walking meditation and everyone's around him. And it was there that I had had a realization. I was like,

there are two ways of being close to him. Either I push everyone away and try and walk through the middle, or I push everyone closer and be close because everyone else is closer too. And I was like, I remember having a real reflection point at that moment. I was like, wow, like, these are the two options in life we always have. You either get closer to people because you try and push everyone else out of the way, or you get

closer to people because you take everyone with you. And I was like, I'm going to try to do that second one for the rest of my life. If I want to be close to someone, I'm going to take everyone close to that person. I'm going to be that guy who's trying to and that's my hope, you know, that's my meditation. Yeah, that requires that you dispense with the zero sum game mentality. Explain it meaning that your success can only come at the expense of others, right, Yeah,

as opposed to the universe is infinitely abundant. Yes, and there's room for everybody here. Yeah. Yeah, a non fear based perspective. Yeah, and think like a monk, I call it. There are an infinite number of seats in the theater of happiness. So we in our minds have started to believe that every we thing. Now, if you're booking a cinema theater or a movie theater, there's a finite number of seats. You got to get tickets to the Olympics,

there's a finite number of seats. There's tickets to the Coachella, whatever it is. It's like, there's a finite number of seats. And so that finite, finite, finite finite has been drilled so deeply into us. But there are an infinite number of seats, and there's a seat with your name on it in the theater of happiness. And just because I'm already in there, doesn't mean you can't be in there. Just because you're in there doesn't mean I can't be

in there. And as soon as you realize that, you free yourself from realizing there is a seat with your name on it, and all you've got to do is claim your own seat, and no one else can take that seat from you. And when you start living like that, you can collaborate, you can grow together, you can build together, and you see this as being the epitome of I was just reading Bob Iger's book, and in there he talks about how it was and I may get a few of the names wrong, but I think it was.

It was Steven Spielbok for sure. As George Lucas, I think it's Quentin Tarantino. You're saying they used to get together and they would critique each other's movies before they came out, so to give each other feedback. You're talking about some of the best of all time, like being

comfortable showing their work to their competitors. Now that's the point, right, Like I've never watched the Quentin Tarantino film and felt I was watching a Steven Spielberg film and I've never watched a Spielberg film thinking I'm watching a George Lucas film, which just shows a how incredibly creative and talented they are, but also how much they trusted what they were off to the game. Yeah, and that to me is such

a powerful metaphor. And I mean it's not even metaphor, it's literal of how you live in a There are an infinite number of seats in the theater of happiness. On the subject of happiness, you know, I think you would agree that we're suffering from an epidemic of loneliness and you know, depression, and you know, people are seeking for answers in different ways of living. There they're sensing their lack of you know, their lack of contentment with

the path that they've chosen for themselves. And you go online and somebody's telling you to, you know, find your

bliss or you know, seek out your passion. And I think that that's although perhaps coming from a good place is not necessarily helpful and perhaps damaging because it leaves that person thinking, well, I don't I don't know what my passion is or you know, I'm not happy, but I don't understand the path forward to find that happy penis, And I'm unsure about what steps I need to take in order to gird my life with more purpose and

to try to find more fulfillments. So with the experiences that you've had, like, how do you speak to that person or meet them where they're at to try to get them to reframe their perspective on how they're living. Yeah, So I think, first of all, it has to be a twofold approach. And what I mean by that is there is an aspect of it that is thinking and reflection, and there is a part of it that is action and experimentation. These are the two aspects of anything in

our life. And the biggest mistake we make is we do too much action and experimenting without reflection, or we do too much reflection without action and experimentation. So let's let's bring them down. So let's start with the thinking and reflective approach. This is approach you can do on your own. This is the approach you can do right now listening to this. This is approach that I half of it that I lay out in think like a monk. So the first thing I ask people to reflect on

is four areas. The first area, it's things that you have an expertise in but have no passion for. Make a list of three things that you have a expertise in but no passion for. So for me, I give the example of Microsoft Excel in numbers. I'm okay at it, but I don't enjoy it, like I don't have a passion for it. Right, So write down three things in there. Then the next box that I want you to fill out is ask yourself, what do I have no expertise in but I have a deep passion for. So for me,

it's neuroscience. I am not an expert in neuroscience. I couldn't perform brain surgery on anyone, and I couldn't scan anyone's brain, but I'm super passionate about it. I love reading about it. I love speaking to neuroscientists. It's something for me. Social media used to be in that category for me, once upon a time. Social media is something I wasn't an expert in or didn't know much about,

but I was passionate about learning how to communicate. Then the third box things that you're not tease and no passion. What are those things in your life that you're like, Oh, don't like them, not good at them? Right? Maybe doing your taxes, I don't know whatever, right, like pretty much everything everything else, everything else. Yeah, And then the fourth and final boxes, what are you passionate about? And what are you an expert? And that's the box that you're

trying to find. So that box may be empty right now. This is the thinking of so do that reflection experts. The reason why it's so important is because most of us, first of all, don't even know what expertise is and a passion is. And now when I say passion, I'm not just saying find your passion, I'm saying what do you like doing? What do you get joy from reading about? What? Even if you're watching a TV show? What is it about that TV show that keeps you captivated? Well, when

you listen to this podcast, what part about it? Which person stands out to you? It's you having to read in to every part of your It's like, start with something as simple as what's your favorite cuisine? Most people go, I don't know what my favorite cuisine is? Well, think about the last time you walked out of a meal. You were happy when you ordered it, you're happy when you ate it, and you're happy the next morning. That's

probably your favorite quisine. Try and find those patterns in your life, because all of us have a karmic pattern in our life that we've just not zoned into. So I'll give you another example. Let's look at the pattern of the best decisions you've made. If you looked at the best decisions you made in the last decade, and let's say you pick three right, Three is a pattern? For me, That's where I'm gonna I'm making that up. It's totally my choice. It's subjective, but it's my opinion.

Three things are a pattern. Look at the three decisions you made in your life where you knew it was the best decision when you made it, not when you've got the best result, but you knew it even before the result happened, that you made the best decision. I guarantee you, if you reflect on those three decisions in the last decade, you will find the same parameters, the same environment, and the same decision making thoughts and thought process that got you to your best decision. So I'll

give an example. When I decided to become a monk, I believe that was my best decision when I made it not because one day I'd be able to write a book about it, Because no idea or I'd even be here. So I was going against the grain. No one agreed with me, and most people thought it was the worst idea. When I left being a monk, I was going against the grain because most amongst I joined with status monks. No one agreed with me, and I was completely solved that I was doing the right thing

for me. When I quit my safe corporate job to do what I do now, I was going against the grain because most of my friends were happy with their salaries. I was doing something that felt really right to me, and no one agreed with me, And so I found that that's generally the pattern of my life. My best decisions are those three things now that may not be for you. Your best decisions may be the opposite, So

that reflection is really important. Second half action. Take the next month, Take the next thirty days, and every weekend plan a new activity, workshop, seminar, course, book, podcast, to listen to, person to shadow, person to experience with. Take a Saturday and Sunday and try it out. You've got eight things you can now test. There are eight days, eight weekends in a month roughly test something new on each of those, going actually do something. So this is

no more thinking, no more reflecting. If you want to be a chef, where you think you want to be a chef, go and do a cooking class. See how naturally it was for you. See how much fun you had doing the process. Take eight different things and try them out. When you do both of those together, within thirty days, you could figure out what you genuinely are passionate about as a starting point. That may change, it may evolve, but at least you've got somewhere to start.

And the biggest mistake is we're sitting there doing a personality test trying to figure out what our passion is. Obviously you're not going to know right. A lot of it goes back to if you could just live in the mindset of the child within, like what did you what were the choices that you made when you were a kid about what you like to spend time doing. I think that's also a good place to say. I agree, and I think those are really powerful exercises. The expertise

piece can come later. Yeah, it's not about that at that moment. Absolutely, and more you engage with those activities that you naturally enjoy. You're creating opportunities, You're creating an environment in which opportunities can come later. To further explore that, there's a difference between a lack of expertise and inexperience. Right, we think we lack expertise in something, but actually we're

just inexperienced at it. And that's the point of that second element of you don't have to be the best at something when you start doing it, but as soon as you start doing it, you've now given yourself that opportunity to grow. And I think we all know this. There's always something we've all learned and become better at it. But if you're fascinated by you're probably more likely to invest more time, right, And so yeah, don't but it

is also important. There may be things in your life that you have an expertise in but you don't have a passion in. But then ask yourself the question why don't I have a passion here? Because you could add meaning to it, Like there are so many skills that we have that if you added a bit of meaning, you added some purpose to it, you added why you are doing it, you could actually find a great use for it, and I think a lot of us are

underestimating how powerful expertise is. You may have strengths that it's just underutilized by your current job, but actually it could be really well utilized by someone that you felt activated you. Essentially, everything that you're saying are tools for greater self awareness. So when you say, when I made this decision to go be a monk, I knew in my heart it was the right decision for me despite externality.

Same thing when you made the decision to leave. But you're somebody who had spent an inordinate amount of time developing your self awareness. You're a very integrated person because of all the inside work that you've done to get to a place where you not only are in tune with your instincts, you're able to rely upon them, you

know what I mean. And I think most people are so disconnected from themselves and either lack adequate self awareness or are just living their lives so reactively that their impulses or their instincts are either unheard or entirely unreliable. And I think that people make decisions and set goals for themselves in that state that lead them terribly awry. But intuition is a muscle that everyone can build, right,

it really is. I really believe that. There's a study that I mentioned and Think like a monk where I talk about how men and women are asked to be alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes or give themselves an electric shock. Thirty percent of women chose an electric shock and sixty percent of men chose an electric shock because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes. Now here's the root of all human suffering. Yeah,

now here's the thing. That Intuition comes from asking yourself questions, basic questions, simple questions, just as it would getting to know Rich. Getting to know Jay is the same process. After I eat something, did I like that? Did I not like it? The next morning? Did I like that? Did I not like it? When you ask people what are your favorite movies? You know how you feel when you walk outside a movie. You don't need to do a personality test. You don't need to do three months

away in Costa Ricaller. You don't need to do that to know whether you like something or you don't like something. You can do a sense check with yourself every single day after doing an activity, and if you literally after you did anything anything you do, stop and just ask yourself, did I enjoy that? Yes or no? Simple question. So let's say I say yes, what did you enjoy about it? Let's have that conversation. What did I enjoy about it? What part of it was uncomfortable but you still got

excited about it? These are three simple questions that can lead you to greater self awareness. I've done the same with every area of my life, and you should really become like an encyclopedia in your own life. Like if someone goes to me, what's your favorite movie, It's like, I am a big fan of thrillers. My favorite director and producer of all time is Christopher Nolan. My favorite movies A Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, and The Downright Trilogy.

They're all Christopher Nolan movies. It's there's such a pattern in our lives, and everyone has that pattern. We just have to look beyond the debris that's all there, of the noise and the dirt that's stopping us because there's just so much distraction. But that practice of self inquiry is really the definition of leading an examined life. Yes, exactly, And that's all we have to do that. We just

have to ask ourselves questions. The problem is we are demanding the answer from our partners, the universe, our teachers, people. We demand, we go, why is this happening to me? What's the meaning of this? That's not a question, that's a demand, and a question is a genuine heartfelt request. A question is do I like this? Like? That's a question is soft and powerful. A question is not loud and weak. And our questions are actually demands, and that's

why we don't find the answers well. Their demands be also because they're they're foisted outward. Yes, if they're turned inward, the questions become, you know what, what what is? You know, what is the fear that compelled me to do that? Like? What what childhood wound am I trying to solve by you know, having this exchange with this person or making decision X, Y or z exactly, And that's exactly it. Demands are outwards, questions are inwards. It's beautiful, absolutely, that's it.

So you spend three years in the ashram, and you emerge, you make this decision to return. First of all like, you know, what, was there a sense at some point that you were going to always stay there? And if so, what changed? Yeah? So my my dream was that I would do it for the rest of my life, and I believe that as a monk, I'd be able to write and teach and share and hopefully be able to share that message anywhere and everywhere and where the where

are your parents at this point? What do you mean intends? How are they processing? So? I've always described my parents as very neutral. They've been neutral participants in a beautiful way, and I mean they're a good way. I love my parents. They've they've never been overly pushy, and they've never been overly encouraging. They kind of always been neutral. It's a

really weird situation to be in. So my parents don't massively celebrate everything I do, but they don't get upset when things don't go the way they thought it would. So your mom's not asking you when you're going to go to medical school stuff? No, no, No, he knew I wouldn't get in. You know, I didn't go to my graduation ceremony, so I never got that picture of me holding the I graduates, but never got the picture,

and so my parents really gave up on me. Maybe no, they you know, they gave in to me at that time when I decided to make this decision, and then they were open to whatever happened. And I wanted to do it for the thirst of my life. And then

two things happened. One was I was really pushing it and really testing myself physically, and I could see that my health was was stumbling from it because I was just like trying to do all the fasts and meditating for longer, and my almost competitive ego and also competition with myself mindset constantly wanted to test. And at the same time I started to feel like and this was really tough, like to admit it, and I don't think

I admitted it then, and it's only happened afterwards. I think that my meditation and self awareness got me to a point where I realized I wasn't a monk in the sense of that that wasn't my path. That I felt that I wanted to share wisdom in a certain way, that I wanted to serve people in a certain way, and a big part of me felt that that wouldn't be realized through that lifestyle. And that doesn't mean that I knew that one day we'd have billions of views

or that, you know, all that kind of stuff. Like it wasn't It wasn't like numbers, and it wasn't fame. It was just like, I feel this deep calling to be with people and serving this way and share wisdom in this way and teaching this way, and talk about movies in the way I talk, and I wanted to be immersed in mainstream culture. And as a monk, I didn't even know who won the World Cup that year, like I didn't, I had no idea, and so that

was a big part of it. And then my teachers also, I think, started to see that I definitely consider myself a rebel, and I think becoming a monk is one of the most rebellious things you can do because it's totally anti society. But I think they could see that rebelliousness in me, and they could see that I wouldn't necessarily last with that mentality as a monk. I think as a monk it comes with sacred, sacred commitment. It's

a sacred commitment to what you're doing. And I think I realized and they realized around the same time that it wasn't like that, and I didn't realize that at the time. I realized in hindsight, And so when my teacher said to me that he felt that I should leave so I can share what I've learned, at that time, I hadn't yet admitted to myself that I even knew what I would do, and said that really felt like a breakup. It really felt like he was like, you know,

it's not you, it's me. It's kind of like also a breakup, right, less relief, more like he was condescending to you. Correct like, because I hadn't yet admitted it to myself, it felt like I had failed. And I think that's why what failure actually feels like when you haven't admitted something to yourself is it feels like failure. Whereas now I look back and I go, wow, I should have felt relieved. I should have felt like someone just opened up a gateway for me to go off

and be myself. And I didn't know that then. Yeah, So when I left, I was probably in the most depressed day of my life. I moved back in my parents, everyone around me now saying we told you so, you wouldn't make it like and then you know what is making it deciding to spend your entire life and that what I think. No one knows what made it mean for me, but it's it's what I mean is it's that perspective of like, oh, you couldn't even live as a monk, like why would you come back? Or like,

oh no, who's going to hire you now? And I heard that over and over again, like how are you going to make money? Who's going to hire you, who's going to talk to you? Like will you be able to reintegrate? And it was hard, like hearing that noise as soon as you come back, rather than like, oh, we so have it every like. It wasn't like a welcoming party. And that's what my parents. My parents were very supportive. I'm talking about the external Yeah noways, yeah,

I got it. But you emerged from that experience with a very powerful tool box, and it's one thing to implement or practice those tools in the construct of a very controlled environment at the Ashram, versus trying to take them into the chaos of the world. Yeah. Absolutely, So what was that re emergence process like and how do you think about the applicability of that timeless wisdom and that toolbox in terms of how we navigate the you know,

vicissitudes of the modern age. Well, I even foold myself that the tools I'd learned were non transferable. So in the in the in the immediate moment, even I, even after having all that trade is useless. I was just like, great, like what do I do now? And and and it came from again the noise because I applied to forty companies. And when I say forty companies, I mean I send them all specific tailored resumes and cover letters. And I got rejected from all forty before into ad agencies. And

I'm talking about entrustment banks doing it. Yeah, investment banks, financial institutions, consulting firms, strategy, that's just the universe doing you a favor. True, But I didn't know that then. Like you know, I was like, I can't rely on my parents forever. And my parents are not financially well off or you know, so I can't just leach off of them, and I need to figure out how to make money. I'm twenty six years old, and what am

I going to do? So I was applying to companies that would have given me a job three years before, and I'm struggling and I'm getting all these nose and you know, when you're seeing rejection after rejection after rejection, you really start to question what you have. But I realized that those three years, and I describe it this way and the way you said that the three years being a monk were being at school, and the last

seven years since I've left have been the exam. And I can genuinely say so far that every tool that I have tested from my monk talk, it works. And the biggest one, or most most likely the most powerful one that I've felt is there's a beautiful verse in the Monu Smithee I talk about in the book, and it says that when you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you. And what I mean by that, and I will broaden purpose to mean what it needs to mean

for anyone listening. You have to protect your strengths, your calling, your passions, your interests, your skills. You have to protect them like a precious jewel, because the whole world will come at you and tell you that it's not a jewel. The whole world will come at you and tell you that it's worth nothing. And if you don't protect it. It can't protect your value back. And most of us, as soon as we get questions, we just chuck the jewel out. We just chuck it away and we go, oh, yeah,

that wasn't worth anything. And then later on in life you realize you threw away a precious jewel. So I love that verse because that's what I was being tested to do. Is I was about to go sell myself sure, and just go back into the world that I came from and just chuck out that jewel rather than like, hey, I learned all these things I wanted to serve. I became a monk because I wanted to serve. How can

I still serve? How can I not just throw that all out and pretend that it doesn't matter, And how can I apply the discipline and the mentality and all of the great skills because guess what, when, surprise, surprise, no one wants to hire someone with monk on their resume for three years. And that's what I had because they couldn't see the transferable skills. I had to see them. So they were thinking, oh, he's probably just going to be really quiet in the office, right, Like, what is

he going to do? But I knew that that choir was intuition. I knew that that choir was solitude, not loneliness. I knew that that quiet was the power, that ability to read things, reading between the lines, to connect with people. And so I ended up still getting a job at Accenture. That's the first thing I did was it came about nine months, ten months after I had left the Ushram.

For ten months, I spent every day in the library reading spiritual book, spiritual text like The bugget Eater, and then reading self development books and business books and trying to reintegrate. So it spent I spent about ten months literally reintegrating. And then when I get my job, I remember they did an induction day. And you know at these big companies, they have these induction days where they try and do team bonding. So my first day of work was a pizza making class with all a hundred

graduates who had also been hired by the company. So I turned up at this pizza making class and I'm just like, what am I can I do? Like, I don't drink alcohol. I've never gone back to drinking, so I still don't drink. I was like, Oh, I don't know if I'm going to be able to eat half the pizzas that we make, and how am I going

to engage and how do I talk to people? And I remember being really uncomfortable that day because I was having to decide again who I was going to be in a world that I knew who I would have been before and now with everything else I learned. So I remember just finding one or two people having a really deep, meaningful conversation with them, and I found my people, and I found a smaller group, whereas I think if I'd gone before, I would have been the loudest person

in the room and networking I was. I was totally different. And I'm still really close friends with one of the guys that I met that day, and I love it. You know, it's been it was. Accenture was an amazing experience. So at Accenture your job was it originally or did you morph into this role as kind of the social media person there? Yeah, I don't really understand how that what happened? So I started out as as an as

an average analyst. I had the company where you just get a typical job, correct, correct, And what happened is that in our first year they ran a competition where they were going to choose a group of people to be trained by some social media experts that they were working with to try and build the social media and digital department inside the company, because that was new then. It was like a big, big area of growth at

that time. And so thankfully I got into the twenty in the competition, and then I came out number one in the full competition and one, and so I got this coaching. And this coach not only became a coach from a professional standardpoint, he became one of my closest friends names Thomas Power. He lives in London, and he just I don't think he taught me everything about social media. I think he really opened in my mind. He would

constantly push me to never settle. So if we made a breakthrough or something like I got a promotion of the company, he would never see that successful. What's next? What are we going to build? Like? He would just give him gave me this mentality of just growth mindset, believing more was possible, and just being able to apply all the tools that I'd learned. And so I end up creating this social media role at Accentia, where I'm creating all of this content. I'm learning how the biggest

brands in the world use social media. I'm working with executives on social media presence and understanding Twitter and LinkedIn, and I just get exposed to this incredible world and that's where I get to learn these skills. Right. So that's basically, you know, the Ashram for learning how to become this social media maven with the unbelievable knack for

creating virality. Yeah, and it wasn't that like I never created you know, viral content while I was at Accentia, but it just started opening up my mind to what was possible. Right. It was just like, oh, these are the tools. Feeling comfortable with failure, getting it wrong. It gave me a playground, right, It gave me an opportunity.

And this is what anyone who's listening in to this right now, watching this, and you're working at a company, your company is giving you an opportunity to learn, to grow, to test. I learned so much about digital and strategy working at Extension that I could never have got from reading a book or going to a course or a seven because it was there, like I was there with it every day with a company that was five hundred

thousand people, you know, a global organization. So that's when when I hear that people are dissatisfied with their jobs and their companies. My biggest question is have you learned everything you possibly could from that place, because the truth is, you could find a lot more meaning and passion in a place that you don't want to be in because you realize it could be the answer and key to what you could do in the future, and there is

so much to gain. Yeah, that's a cool lens. So what's interesting about this is I didn't really fully understand like that you kind of went into this corporate world before I thought you kind of we're hired as a consultant after you already figured out all this social media stuff and they hired you for that purpose. No, no, no no,

So that's fascinating. But what I think is really interesting here is from an outsider's perspective looking in, it would appear that so many of these these you know, timeless wisdom concepts don't square with living in the modern world. Like when we think of detachment, we think of asceticism. When we think of competition, we think of you know, the zero sum game, etc. But I think when you peel back the layers, they're they're they're really highly compatible.

So I'm interested in kind of exploring. Yeah, that's how you take these ideas into the world and how they that's how they inform and how they inform your decision making and kind of how you you you know, see yourself. Yeah, I love that. And there's a big difference between, especially from the bug with Gita's point of view, but there's

a big difference between detachment and indifference. And I think in our limited mindset sometimes we think that detachment means difference, or detachment means disconnecting, and actually detachment means and I quote this incredible writer where he said that detachment doesn't mean that you own nothing. Detachment means that nothing owns you. And when you look at detachment through that lens, it means can I use everything that I have for a higher purpose? Can I use it and engage it rather

than be consumed and used by it? Now, granted, that's a very high platform to live on and it's not easy, but the point being that detachment is not indifference, that detachment doesn't just mean, oh I don't want anything to do with this it's actually, how can I use this for more than what it's being used for right now?

And that's what's known as by Rupagaswami's He quotes about probably about five hundred years ago, he created and coined a term called yukta veriragya, which means using everything for a higher purpose. So he talks about how real renunciation, real detachment, real asceticism is how can I use this for something more than myself and it's not about just

getting rid of it? And I love that principle and I think that that's a very that's a very practical principle that we can all employ living in the real world. So for monks, detachment is real. Like we didn't have beds, right, we didn't have a place that we slept. We slept in a different place every night. But if you're not a monk and you want to apply that same principle, this is how you think about it. You recognize that I don't want to be in a position where I

am consumed by everything. Another addition to detachment is detached from the result, focused on the process. That's another definition in the above good get to that you're not attached to the fruits of your labor, but you're completely committed to the labor, the process itself. And that's something that we miss so often that we think being detached means not caring about what happens. Actually it means caring about

the process and not caring about the result. So when we're talking about writing a book, and you know you've written books, and when you're writing a book, if you're writing a book and all you're thinking about is how many copies am I going to sell? Now you're not going to write a good book. Now you're dead out of the gate totally. You're dead straight away because all you're thinking about how many copies am I going to sell?

Is this going to rank? If that's what you're thinking about, you're now not present, which means you're not going to write a good job, a good book. Whereas if you would dedicate to the process, the result is a given, the results a natural end. To dedicate to the process, I fully get having a process oriented mindset and approach to everything that I do. On the higher purpose piece, what I find myself doing is deluding myself a little

bit sure, treating a little bit of denial. Like perfect example, we're here doing the podcast. Now I can say, and there is a sliver of honesty in this, that I'm doing this for a higher purpose. I am like, when I sit down for these conversations, I'm trying to be as present as possible and you know, deliver the best content that I can in service to the audience. At the same time, I'm profiting off of this, really, and I know that if I grow the audience, that then

I can charge more and get more advertised. You know, Like sure, there is a very self serving as I and I'm always you know, unsure about how those two worlds like butt up against each other. So intentions are all percentages. So what you just broke down, you may have and this is me everyone included. You may have a fifty percent pure motive and fifty percent impure motive. Or you may have a seventy five percent pure motive and you maybe twenty five percent impure. The point is

it's a process of purification. But guess what, running away from it doesn't remove the impure intention doing it, being humbled, seeing it fall apart, failing growing, being told you're terrible, and having to reprocess that. That is what purifies you. So the belief that if I run away from that which brings me down, and you'll run away with it like it stays with you because it doesn't become purified.

And that's the process of purification. When you look at a muddy glass of water, it needs to be purified to be drinkable, and we're the same. We just get muddy. But with us, what happens is when you're in the world, when you're a monk, you're getting cleansed a lot every day when you're in the world. It's described in India

as to a dirty elephant. So the elephant goes and bathes in the water, and then it rolls in the mud, and then it bathes in the water, and it rolls in the mud, and it does this all in So that's what we're doing. When we have impure and pure motives, we're doing both. But guess what, when you're aware and you start being honest with yourself and what you just did was beautiful, you're like this, I'm not going to be in denial. I'm not going to let myself delude myself.

And what happens with that greater self awareness, you'll get closer and closer and closer to being able to do things with a purer motive. And that may mean at some point that you're like completely going to detach from ads or sponsorships or whatever it may be. But that won't just happen if you stop that. That desired doesn't go away just because you don't externize it. Well, the irony is that the more the more service minded I am and the more pure I am in my approach,

the better it all is. And that ends up being more enriching to you know what I mean. So you can make the argument that that somebody should be selfless and in service for selfish motives, like you can be like if I if I'm trying to appeal to somebody who is a selfish person, the appeal is, well, if you're in service to people, your life will improve. So even if you're doing it for selfish reasons, it's still the right thing to do. Exactly. That's it, That's exactly.

It hit the nail on the head, that's it. Yeah, that's it. And if that's what gets you started, Hey, that's what gets you started. So what trips you up? I'm like, now you're in the world, you're very successful. You've got a million things going on, the books coming out, your videos are you know, you've got billions of views and all this kind of stuff. I would imagine your life is lined with spiritual minefields. That's right. I mean

you're being we're all being tested. But you know, what are the tests that you're facing and where do you still find yourself tripping yourself up? What is it that you're continually having to revisit? Well, I think the biggest test is so since I turned eighteen, I've always had my two hour meditation practice a day. And when I was a monk, obviously we did more, but the majority of the quality of it happened in the day in

the morning. For me, now with my crazy schedule, one of the biggest things being tested is my routine, my depth, my quality. And you know, in in the modern world people may say, oh, yeah, you meditate for two hours. My monk teachers would say how deep with those two hours? Like, they don't care about the two hours, you know, they

talk about depth and quality, not quantity. So for me, the quality and quantity of my meditation is constantly being tested because there are supposedly more important things that I have to do, whether it's social media, whether it's audience, whether it's writing, whether it's doing right instead of being. And so my being is challenged, and that, to me is the biggest thing that I have to watch out for constantly is when I'm traveling, I have to prioritize

my routine. When I'm moving around and I'm waking up later than I always am, or I'm on a plane for too many hours a day, I can't let go of that. And I think that I'm sharing that as a very real battle right now because that's what I'm grappling with. And so for me, that's that's a big one. And I really think that my meditation is is where the purity comes from. Like that's my bath, that's my purity bath every day, Like you miss your bath, like

you'll smell it's the same thing. Well, it's rigged that way. I mean, all this, all the being got you to this place to where now you don't have time for the being because it provided you with so many gifts and opportunities. Correct, And so I'm just very uh I'm I'm saying this as much to answer you a question as I am for my own vigilance. Like the more I say this, the more I verbalize it, the more vigilant I become. Well, God would just tell you to

wake up earlier. Yeah, and you know, like, I mean, that's part of it. But I think it depends how and you may find this. I find that mentally creative careers or purposes are different and they require good sleep. And so I'm a big believer. I'm a big believer in eight and a half hours of sleep. I sleep eight and a half hours a day. I'm sleeping before midnight, usually by nine thirty ten PM, to get my HGH

to be maximized. And I think people I know a human growth homemone for anyone who doesn't know, but I'm sure your whole audience would know. But sleeping after twelve, your human growth hormone is not having the moment that it could have, and so you're limiting the quality of your sleep when you sleep after midnight. So for me, I'm I'm a big believer in figuring out your routines. So that's one thing. That's one thing that I'm challenged by. Another thing that I'm challenged by is and I'm trying

to share. I want to give you real ones that I'm grappling with rather than the obvious easy ones of like oh, there's so many opportunities and what to say no to and stuff like that. But I'd say another one is finding spiritual community. So finding deep community. I think I've been very fortunate. I think La has been good to me and we've made some really amazing friends here. But I think I go back to India every year to live with the monks. I take my wife as well.

We go together every year, and that for me is my reconnection to remind me of how important that practice is. Because even while I'm here and I'm like, oh, I'm doing all right. I've been meditating every day, I'm doing good. I'm doing good, and then you go back and go, oh wow, like you know, there's so much more that I've totally missed. So that kind of reawakening and humbling every year is really powerful for me. When you go and meditate with the experts and you're like, oh, okay,

I get it. Yep, I've got a lot of work to do. And I think that looking in the mirror, and you can only look in the mirror when you're surrounded by people who are who are practicing with greater depth, and so I think that that's a real challenge as well, of surrounding yourself with people who who are aspiring for the same levels of death right. And it goes back, you know, to kind of reiterate your sliding doors example,

to this experience. You had this blessing of being exposed to this monk at an impressionable moment in your life. Like had that not happened, your life would have had a completely different flavor to it totally. And it goes to this point of you know, not only seeking out mentors, but putting yourself in a position where you're exposed to different ideas, right, Like, you can't model or become something that you're not exposed to. Yeah, exactly, no, you can't.

And that's the biggest thing, right We've all heard it before. You can't be what you can't see, and I think we don't see If we don't see enough of something, you don't realize how important it is. And that's why I mean the biggest, the biggest monk approaches to everything

are so powerful. Like we talk about routines. Monks have incredible morning routines, mindfulness and meditation practice is we know that you know some of the most successful people in the world, and you've interviewed some of them, and I've interviewed some of them, and They've all got a deep

meditation practice. You know, breathwork is so powerful. Like I'm I'm breaking this all down in the most simplest ways of how even just self and service like that to me as a concept of how monst of their lives of half self half service, like all of those is such brilliant foundation points of how we can construct our lives to find peace and to and to live with purpose, Like there are these simple constructs that we can all adopt.

Clarity is a superpower for sure. As said by somebody we both interviewed, you've all know a Harari love you right, who also has a you know, strong meditation. He goes away. I think this year he did or did he do sixty He was telling me we were talking just before and he he told me he used to do sixty days and now because of his busy schedule, he still at thirty days. Yeah, exactly every year. Yeah, And I love that about him, and he will tell you, and

I'm sure he told you as well. That his books are a product of that practice, because he requires that level of solitude to develop the clarity that's necessary to write his books, which really are these ten thousand foot

perspectives on how we live right. And it's one thing to be on of opossmum meditation or in an ashram where you're stripped away of those distractions, but you know, we live in a world where the noise is overwhelming and the distractions are not only omnipresent, they're they're specifically constructed to be as highly addictive as possible. And this is an interesting dynamic because your work requires you to have distance from those things, but you leverage those mediums

to basically, you know, to have this career that you have. Yeah, and I think that it's a It's a beautiful thing because the tools are not going to go away, and social media is not going to go away, so learning how to use it effectively. Like I was just listening the other day, I really want to interview him too. I was just I watched an interview with Jake Joke Jay Cole the other day and mixed him up with

a football player nearly, but j Cole the rapper. His music is fantastic, And I was watching he's very reflective, and he was saying that he took a break from social media to get away and he realized that when he came back, nothing went away. And and and this was the point that I'm making that learning how to engage is more important than disengaging. And this is something that's missed. Disengaging is the first step to re engage more effectively. It is not the step and the final step.

And I think a lot of us look at disengagement as the achievement or the final step, when actually disengagement is the beginning step of effective re engagement. Does that make sense? Yeah? Like that, And I think that that's the mistake. People may people say, oh, I went on my social media seven day as I'm going to be brilliant when I come back. No, because you haven't still

figured out how to re engage. When I became a monk, it disconnected me from the noise, but my re engagement into society has been more powerful because of the disconnection. But not seeing the disconnection as an end. And so when you decide to disengage from anything, learn that actually re engaging is the skill you want to develop. When you learn how to re engage, reconnect, renew, like, when you can do all of that effectively, that's when you

win the battle. So for me, what helps me re engage with social media is, first of all, I am a creator, not a consumer. I consume to create or I create and I don't consume. So what I mean by that is when I come on too social media, I'm going there to share or to infuse energy. I don't go there to get energy. And if I go there to consume, it's to learn to create better. So that's a very clear rule for me. I'm not a consumer of soci not scrolling and looking at what everyone

else is saying, not in an unintentional way. Like I may follow you to see if you've interviewed someone, and I'm like, oh, Rich, ask that really good question. I

won't ask that question. I can ask you from this angle, so that that will help my audience, right, Like, that's that's consuming to create Or oh Rich got that amazing guest, Like maybe I should reach out to them, you know that kind of like And so I think being a consumer is important to being a creator, but it is not consuming just randomly and unintentionally and even if I'm being random on social media, it's intentional. I'm like, I'm going random to see what comes up on my feed

because I want to see what's winning. So that's one point. The other barrier that I've made is me and my wife have created no technology times and zones in the home, and we break this all the time, but it's a good rule. So we decided that we would not have phones. And I recommend this to have phones in the dining room or the bedroom because it's more fun to eat and sleep with people. So don't you know, don't ruin those spaces where there's time for bonding and connection and conversation.

And most people these days are sitting in their beds on their phones, on their devices and then go to bed right rather than talking or reflecting on the day or asking someone how their day was, whatever it is that you want to do. So I feel like creating barriers and times have really helped me. And even if I fail at it sometimes and we don't always follow it, it's still a useful thing to have. The other thing I have is I make sure and this has changed

my life. Just don't look at your phone in the morning like that just the morning time is so powerful. So I wake up at six on my best days, and that's my generic across the board, five days a week, and I don't look at my phone until eight fifteen when I go down to the gym because I'm meditating in the morning and I've got my personal practices. So that just not looking at the phone in the morning, you're already now not starting the day as a consumer.

You're starting the day as a creator. I think I heard you say that you lock your phone in your car. It's true, it's a true story. So I literally that

was when I came back from being a monk. So when I came back from the usher, when I moved back in with my parents, I used to leave my phone and my laptop in the car, locked in the trunk outside because I knew that if I kept it downstairs, I would trick myself into going to get it, even after three years at the ash room, even after three years at the ashram, because that's how stuff, this stuff is designed. But again, it was disengaging to learn how

to re engage, and re engagement means rules. You have to set rules for yourself. You have to set rules that you can follow and rules that you can commit to. And I think the simplest one for me is if you don't like and I don't know how you live, but I live. My life is very scheduled by the minute in the hour, even if it's free time or reflection time. And I like living like that because it doesn't give me an excuse. I don't really have many

gaps in my day where I can just aimlessly do stuff. Well. It takes the decision fatigue out of everything, correct. I mean, one hard and fast rule that I have that I break fairly regularly is I never schedule anything before twelve nice. So my morning time is meditation, journaling, and then I go out and a train and that's usually that's that's my solitude. That's an active version of meditation that involves trail running or you know, going swimming or whatever I'm doing.

But I give myself like that seems very indulgent to most people. And I have the privilege of being self employed, so I can do that, and I understand most people can't do that. But by adhering to that rule like I, you know, people will say, oh, can you do this conference call at nine in the morning, I was like, no, I'm not available until twelve. Sometimes I I, you know, I have to bend for that or whatever. But by making that kind of a parameter and a priority, that's

improved my life tremendously. Exactly. Yeah, that's beautiful, and I think that, like you said, if there are people out there who can't make those decisions, make it in the power that you do have. So if that for you is you don't do anything before nine am. If if your idea is you don't do anything on Sunday before noon, you know, whatever it is, like, find your mini version

of that and see how that changes your life. You may not be able to do it to the degree of saying I'll never do anything before that time, but you can do it one day a week. You can do it for an hour a week, you can do it for ten minutes a week. Like that expands. I feel like the better we use our time, the more time expands for us. And I think we feel time is limited because we often don't use our time effectively. Yeah. One thing I wanted to touch on with you is

this idea of element environment and energy. Oh yeah, yeah, so I talk about how there are there, Yeah, there are three things that we're all missing in our lives or we're not aware. It's self awareness. So the first is our element, and that to me is your your dharma, your passion, you're calling. It's when you feel you're performing at your best. It's what what what power? What power situation? But not not external, but what power mode do you find yourself? And so I love being in this mode.

I love beaking on stage. I love reading, studying and learning. I love writing, I love synthesizing, Like that's my power mode, that's my element. I love being in the element. Now that comes with figuring out your dharama and your passion and your purpose and everything we spoke about. The second area of environment is what environment do you thrive in? Now? The reason why I fell in love with your home is because I love solitude and I love silence and

I love being alone. And so right now it's just me and you, and I was just like, wow, this is really nice. And so I have an office for my team, but I work from my home office because I don't like being around lots of noise and people. And you're going to manage all these people? Yeah, exactly. But driving the big social media machine. Yeah, and it's hard, and so you know, and I'm still and this is what I mean by this is a challenge, right, do

you protect your purpose or do you give in? This is exactly It's like, I have to work from home because that is who I am. I love being alone to create. I need time, I need space. I needn't. I can't deal with too much distraction. I don't enjoy it. And so I've had to craft my life in a way to do that. And just just to clarify, when I was at Accentia, I did not have my own office. I did not have a corner office, I did not

have any office. I worked on the floor. And I was able to do this then by putting on my headphones, or by being very careful about who I spoke to and who I connected with, or finding a space where I could build my own. So you can craft these spaces too, even if you don't have them. But environment, it's really important to know what environment you thrive in, because I think for most of us, our environment is just something we accept based on what we get, and

we're not good at crafting. Environment. Could be something as simple as playing the right song. It could be having the right background on your desktop because it brings you to life. It could be having crystals in front of you. This is an environment. When I walked into that, I

was like, oh, books and crystals kind of table. You know, It's like there's so much This is an environment and everyone can create the environment, whether they're at an office desk, where they're in a cubicle, whether they're on the train. You have to create that environment. And finally, it's what

energy do you vibe with? And what I mean by that is you can look at it as simple as fast paced energy or slow energy, but you can also look at it as frequency of do you succeed and are you more challenge when you're around people that are teaching you and guiding you, or do you succeed in

an energy that is where you're teaching. Like, knowing your energy of power is so important, and I feel for so many people their energy is low because they're constantly in low energy spaces, so places like bars and restaurants every day. Of course you feel tired, of course you feel exhausted. Of course you don't feel energized in the morning.

It's probably one of the worst ways to end the day, and we think that it's decompressing, and actually no, it's just depressing, right, It's like there's no decompression, there's just depression that comes with that because you just get exhausted and you're body in your mind are now dealing with what's called cognitive load, because your mind in a bar is not only trying to listen to the person talking

to you. Your mind is trying your brain is trying to process all the other cluttered sound because it's trying to make sense of it. Now, guess what, your brain doesn't realize for a long time that there is no sense in it because it's still trying to process, process, process, So it's getting drained. And so you have to know what energy you thrive in, and if you need a day to take care of your energy every week, you

have to invest in them. Well. I think answering those questions, like grappling with like what is the energy in which I thrive? What environment suits me? You know, what is my element? All of this goes back to self awareness to it. You know, I think if you ask most people what kind of environment do you thrive best in? I would venture to imagine that most people aren't really sure.

They don't answer that they don't know. And my answer is to that is that that's what I expect, And that's why I'm encouraging that, because I'm not trying to give you the answers for you because I don't know, and I can't know, and no one can know. But what I do know is that if you ask yourself of the right questions more often, you will very quickly find out. Just like everyone knows whether they like Mexican food or not, it's the same thing. It's not complicated,

Like it's really that simple. It's like, you know whether you like Mexican food or not. Okay, you like Mexican food. Do you like burritos or tacos? You know the answer to that, Like, it's not complicated, And it's the same with energy and environment and element it's just no one's ever asked us. No one's ever asked us what's your favorite energy? Right, imagine being on a first date and someone goes to you, what environment do you drive it?

No one asked that. Everyone asked what's your verite color, what's your favorite food, what's your favorite movie? Start applying that same questioning to how you live your life. It's asked that about people you meet when you you live to I remember I was given a very interesting offer once by a very wealthy individual, and I remember and it would have been very lucrative for me. And I remember coming back from that evening and speaking to a very dear friend of mine and he was like, how

did he go? Because I was very excited for that meeting. It was very early in my career. I was very excited for that meeting. I didn't think I've ever met someone of that caliber before, and it was quite a moment for me. So I told him I was excited. I wasn't when I come back. When I got back, he said to me, like, so, how do you go? And I said, I said, I don't think I'm going to work with him, And he was like, why not.

It sounds like an amazing opportunity, it's lucrative everything. I was like, I just didn't vibe with this energy, Like there was just something about it that just I didn't feel like. I felt like if I failed, he'd say I told you so, and if we won, then he'd take the credit. And I just that's not the kind of partnership I like. I like partnerships which are win win where we're supporting each other and so so easy to judge that. But you will forget that if you

don't ask yourself when you walk out. See, when we walk out of parties, we talk about the food in the drink, We talk about what people were wearing, all useless information. We rarely go do I like hanging out there? Or do I not like hanging out there? Do I energized or do I not? Those are much better questions to ask then oh, did you like her shoes? Well?

Expanding that level of self earness to better understand how other human beings operate is incredibly valuable, especially if you're in a relationship, Like if you're somebody who who you know needs solitude, like you said, that doesn't mean that the person that you're with thrives in that dynamic, Like that person may need something different and being able to, like, you know, grock that will provide you with incredibly powerful

and important relationship tools to maintain that relationship. Otherwise, if you're expecting them to process in the way that you do, you're setting yourself up for a lot of problems. Exactly so for me and my wife, it's a really good point, which I'm really glad you raised that for me. For me and my wife, she succeeds and thrives when she's around her friends and family, and I succeed and thrive when I'm when I'm on my own or with her, but on my own in terms of a creative way.

And so we know that when I want that time, that's when she usually goes back to London and spends time with her family, or when she wants to go spend time with her family in London or has our friends over here, that's when I'm going to get more

time to do that. And so we found that we both require very different things, but we've tried in our relationship to time them, her for me and me for her, timed them at the same time so that we both get that and so I can be traveling alone, like I just went to New York for a week, but she was here and her friends had moved into our

place for a week with her. You know, it's like it's it's finding out the things that work, and it's you supporting them to have that environment, and they support you to have your environment, rather than like you saying, oh well, I like being alone, so you should be okay being alone too, Like, we both know that doesn't work, so yeah, yeah, yeah, respecting that and also understanding that that person has their own independent experience and and and

being in a place where a healthy, healthy place where you're trying to support that person in their own personal self actualization journey as a poe those to making it like a compliment to your own journey. I think it's important, right, Like, yeah, it's important to be to have your independence within a relationship and not be you know, overly defined by the other person. Yeah. I could couldn't agree more. And I

think with with couples, that's the challenge. We look for similarities in likes and dislikes, you know, when you when you're dating someone or you're meeting someone yours, like, oh, do we like the same food, do we like the same things? Do we both like being alone? Do we both like this? And you look for likes and similarities and quite superficial things that are not actually relevant to

the quality of a relationship. What's what's really the heart of a quality of relationship is do you have the same likes and dislikes? As to how to build a relationship in terms of your values about a relationships about values. Yeah, I mean you can be my wife and are completely different and so me too. Is that you know, a lot of people are shocked that it works. I mean, we've been together for twenty years, so we figured a

few things out. But it's because we share core of values, even though you know, and from a surface perspective we look very different. Yeah, and core values not just from the point of view of the deeper thing that builds you both, but I mean core values of how you view a healthy relationship. Yeah, like me and my wife both view a healthy relationship as one where we support each other to reach our own goals. That's a value

in a relationship. It's not even just a value. Another value of ours is that we both know that we can trust each other, that we're always acting for each other's benefit. Right, That's a value we both share that we both share the value of. Once you sleep on it, it's done. We both have that. So when we've fought about something, or we've disagreed about something, when we've got to sleep the next day, we're not bringing it back

up is as ammunition. It's gone. And we both had that value before we met, and so those are relationship value and that's what you need. Values that are similar or not just values in Oh, we both value spirituality, that's that's there. But this is a deeper level of that. Yeah, it's not about avoiding conflict or not arguing or not having definitely fights over things. It's about how you process that and communicate to get to the other side and you know, minimize the half life. Yeah, I mean, I

mean John Gottman, who whose institute is phenomenal. Yeah, he's been at the Gartman Institute. I haven't been. Yeah, I met and met a confidence that we both spoken. I can't wait to have him on my podcast. But John Gottman's done all the research on relationships, and he talks about the number one skill needed to have a long lasting relationship is not date nights. It's not walks on the beach, it's not flowers, it's learning how to fight. Yeah, And when I read that in his work, I was

just like, that is so true. I love that because you are going to fight, but most people don't know how to fight. And just as there's love languages that Gary Chapman so beautifully explained, I believe that there are fight languages, and what I mean by that is there are fight responses or languages that you naturally have. So, for example, my wife's fight language is she likes to be quiet, reflect and think and not talk about things until she processes. My fight language is totally the opposite.

I want to figure it out right now, I want to open up. I want to extrapolate on to break it down. Guess what. In the beginning of our relationship that really didn't work because she was quiet and I was like, why are you quiet? Why are you not telling me what's going on? Have I done something wrong? And I'd be forcing her to share it, and then she would share prematurely and feel like she said something she didn't mean now and now I'm upset at what I forced her to share with me. And so we

really had to learn each other's fight languages. And I've learned that her fight language is better than mine. And so now the approaches she needs space, I need space, and we come back together and discuss it when we're both ready. And it sounds basic, but so many relationship issues occur because people's fight languages don't match mindful fighting.

Mindful fighting fighting is that is the antithesis of mindfulness in the sense that you're you're being reactive in the moment, like something comes over us and we're just we're just spouting whatever, and we're repeating these recursive patterns that are embedded deep within us. And to the extent that you could take a step back and deploy the skills that you learn through meditation and the experiences that you had in this ostramp to create distance between your impulse, yeah

and the next best move. You're taking out an insurance policy for a better outcome. Absolutely, yeah, I agree with that. It's well said. Well, I appreciate you coming here to talk to me. You are an inspiration to me and millions of people out there. The content that you're putting out into the world is definitely raising the the vibration of consciousness, and that's what we need now more than ever. We need to bridge these gaps and learn how to communicate.

Long form conversations are one way to do it. The videos and everything that you kind of you know, produce as as really like a spiritual offering to the world. I think is m is a gift. So thank you for thank you, and I'm excited to see how this book is received by the world, and uh, and what you decide to do next, my friend, and you've always got a welcome seat across from me here. Thank you. Man.

I was also going to say, you've I've been I've been school today and how to host a really good podcast. This has been from a veteran. This has been a lot of fun and it's uh, yeah, you're brilliant to talk to him. And I've really explored so many things today. So thank you so much for helping me re explore and learn and question so many of my own beliefs and values. I really appreciate anyone who can help me do that. Thanks. So the book is think like a monk,

available everywhere. Support your local booksellers, but you can also, of course, always get it on Amazon. You can learn more about Jay Jetty dot me. He's a beast on Facebook, which is interesting because it's like I thought we were done with Facebook, but you're like huge on Facebook. That's a whole other podcast. Just google Jay Chetty you can find him everywhere. Than man, Thank you so much. Manche Hey, we didn't even talk about being vegan. We didn't do that.

Next time, Yeah, next time. Yeah, we got a lot more tea. We should do more stuff together regularly. Right on. That's great. That was awesome man, Thank you. I hope that was good for your audience.