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