How Bob got Here

dose of calmness. Every weekday morning, I'll share a meditation story, offer a simple practical tip about how you or loved one can stay a bit calmer in your life, and then we'll end each episode together with a moment of gratitude. My hope is that I can share what I know to anyone who needs it. Ready, sit comfortably, take a

few deep breaths, and let's begin today's journey. Over the years, I've had the very good fortune of interviewing some very impressive people, business leaders and doctors and professional athletes and guidance counselors, therapists and VA hospitals, And I always enjoy asking them is this something that they knew they wanted to do their whole lives. It's kind of amazing how many people had that feeling inside they had a sense. People have asked me that same question, and I said,

not on your life. I didn't know. I wanted to make an impact in the world, but nobody even knew what meditation was. When I was growing up, my family was really politically minded. When I was seventeen years old, I volunteered to help out with Bobby Kennedy presidential campaign. In fact, I remember going to see him speak on June one and looking around the room with two thousand people, and it wasn't that I identified with being a Democrat or a political party. I just wanted to make a

better world. So there I was thinking, now I've got something. We're going to make a better world than as history records. Four days later, Senator Kennedy was killed. So I went off to college with a career track of I'm going to become a lawyer and then I'm going to become a United States Senator like Bobby Kennedy and change the world. Well, it took me about a month for me to realize that politics was never going to heal the soul of

the nation. And my mom was a school teacher, so I thought, well, how about if I write educational curriculum that a child can learn to help them navigate and survive a very tumultuous, stressful, trauma filled world, particularly inner city school kids. I was just naive, just want to make a better world, and pretty darn stressed, anxious. Where I was working, I happened to meet this one guy. His name was Peter Stevens. There was something just special

about him. He was a good person, he was smart. And I found out he was doing something called transcendental meditation, and I had no idea what he was talking about. I asked him more about it and said, you know, I don't believe in that stuff. He held a pen up and he let the pen go and it dropped into his other hand, and he said, you don't have to believe in gravity for the pen to fall, and you don't have to believe in this meditation for it

to work. Still very skeptical that I went and herd of talk and then I decided, Okay, I'm gonna learn this thing. Imagine, here's this tightly wound eighteen year old kid. No it all sure that this is just bunk. And the first experience was so physically relaxing and mentally familiar and yet unique, and I remember after my first or second meditation, the thought came, oh, so this is the tool I want to teach those kids. That was June nineteen six, and a few years later I began teaching.

Over the years, taught a lot of people, but always in the back of my mind was these kids. In two thousand five, I had become friends with the filmmaker David Lynch. I said, you know, there's this huge need in the world for kids. Our kids are just getting demolished by stress, and particularly kids going to under resource schools and underserved communities. There's sixteen million kids who live

below poverty in the United States. Why don't we start a foundation so we could bring this meditation for free to school kids and then veterans and women survivors of domestic violence. And I'd like to do it in your name, David, who had been meditating himself for thirty years sitting grade. I think none of us thought this thing was going to take off, but I had learned how to write

a press release, wrote it. Next thing I know, there are articles in newspapers all over the world, and that was the seed of a foundation that has now brought the meditation to over a million kids, and now we work with veterans and their families who suffer the nightmare of post traumatic stress disorder, women who are survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, young people and adults who

are battling substance use disorder. But really everybody, as everybody now is at risk for the impact of stress and trauma. So never in a million years what I have thought that I was going to be running a foundation that was using transcendental meditation to make a change in the world. But here I am. My trajectory for teaching is my trajectory.

But there are thousands and thousands of teachers of meditation who took a focused but unforeseeable path to get to this point now where meditation is so widely accepted and appreciated in the world. So my tip here is really simple, be true to yourself. If you're looking for a career path, first and foremost, you have to be true to yourself.

Has to resonate with you. I like to conclude with these thirty seconds of quiet, where you have an opportunity to reflect, appreciate your life, someone in your life, just to slow down for a moment. And the great thing is that when we do that genuinely, spontaneously, naturally, it's very healthy. I'll be right back all right. Thank you for joining. This is Bob Roth. Keep calm, Thanks for

listening today. I hope you heard something that inspires, that uplifts you and that you can incorporate into your own life. Until next time, remember, meditate, be kind, and be true to yourself. Hey, all of you out there, I'd love to hear from you. You can send me your stories, your questions, or anything else on your mind. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at meditation Bob. You can also send me an email at meditation Bob

Roth at gmail dot com. I look forward to hearing from you.