Essential Practices for Finding Success and Joy in Everything You Do with Suneel Gupta

00:00:00.000 | If you want to find your dharma or inner calling and learn to integrate your ambition, work,

00:00:06.540 | and well-being to create a balanced and joyous life, then you'll love today's conversation

00:00:11.500 | with Sunil Gupta, the co-founder of the Gross National Happiness Center, where we'll share

00:00:16.120 | the ancient wisdom of dharma and ways to incorporate simple yet effective daily habits into your

00:00:21.440 | life so that you can find success and joy in everything you do without sacrificing your

00:00:27.180 | professional ambition.

00:00:28.840 | And if you like what you hear from me and all the hacks, please give us a thumbs up

00:00:32.420 | and subscribe to help the algorithm.

00:00:34.260 | All right, let's get into it.

00:00:38.220 | Sunil, thank you for joining me again.

00:00:43.860 | Chris, it's really good to be back.

00:00:46.220 | This whole book you wrote is based on dharma, this concept that's thousand years old or

00:00:50.600 | more found in various Indian religions and philosophies.

00:00:53.900 | So I'm curious what it is about this millennia old concept of dharma that you thought was

00:00:58.380 | so important that people today need to understand it and even practice it.

00:01:02.820 | Dharma is a timeless solution to, I think, the emptiness that so many of us are feeling

00:01:08.020 | right now, especially at work.

00:01:09.740 | You know, most of us believe that the number one determiner for our mental health is our

00:01:15.020 | job and yet very few people right now can actually say that they are enjoying their

00:01:19.820 | job on a day-to-day basis, it seems.

00:01:22.660 | And dharma is really this way of how do we bring the joy back into what we do each day.

00:01:28.700 | And what kind of impact do you think that could have on someone's life?

00:01:31.740 | Is it just being happy or can it go beyond that?

00:01:34.700 | Yeah, I mean, I think it's more than happiness, at least it is for me.

00:01:39.140 | You know, I think it's about finding some meaning in what it is that we do.

00:01:45.040 | And I know meaning is a big word, but I think the way that I sort of look at it and I think

00:01:49.340 | that when I go back and I look at the way that my ancestors would think about dharma,

00:01:54.580 | it's that there are sort of two kind of ways that we can look at success in life.

00:01:59.900 | There's outer success, which is wealth and its status and its fancy LinkedIn profiles.

00:02:07.540 | And then there's inner success, which is truly are you enjoying what you do each day?

00:02:12.980 | And the point of dharma isn't necessarily to shame outside success or to shame the idea

00:02:19.700 | of wanting nice things or having a career that is ambitious that other people respect.

00:02:26.340 | What it is saying though is that we can get all that stuff and still not feel inner success,

00:02:32.700 | which is really meaning and a sense of purpose in what we do.

00:02:36.260 | And I know that I've experienced that and Chris, you and I have had enough conversations

00:02:39.420 | to feel like you, I think at least a certain degree, have experienced that as well.

00:02:43.580 | Whereas like you were getting the outside rewards, you were in jobs that other people

00:02:48.340 | found to be interesting, but at the same time, it wasn't really lighting you up.

00:02:52.580 | And at a certain point in time, it can be very easy to be walking a path that doesn't

00:02:58.660 | actually feel like your own.

00:03:00.580 | So the idea behind dharma isn't to shun, again, the idea of wanting nice things or doing things

00:03:07.580 | that are really interesting, but it's more about beginning with inner success.

00:03:12.020 | What is it that actually lights you up?

00:03:14.420 | And investing in that, even when we are overwhelmed with other things in our life.

00:03:21.060 | And I think that's where I wanted to write a book that really challenged philosophy through

00:03:27.460 | the lens of today's day and age, fast paced, overwhelmed, lots of comparison.

00:03:33.900 | How do we bring this concept of dharma into what's happening today?

00:03:37.420 | Yeah, it's funny.

00:03:38.420 | You talked about me and I look back at my history and every job I had, maybe until very

00:03:45.340 | recently, I wasn't excited about.

00:03:47.580 | I thought I couldn't do this job forever.

00:03:49.300 | And in fact, the reason why I've been so passionate about personal finance in my life was because

00:03:55.340 | I thought I have to save as much money as possible because I haven't found a job that

00:03:58.700 | lights me up sustainably.

00:04:01.180 | Any job I started, it would light me up for a period of time.

00:04:04.780 | Maybe it was six months, 12 months, at some point, I was like, "Hmm, I'm no longer lit

00:04:09.980 | up by this.

00:04:10.980 | Am I ever going to find something that lights me up?

00:04:12.860 | I don't know."

00:04:14.060 | And I stumbled into it through a series of trial and error, but it would be great had

00:04:19.620 | there been a book that I could have read to be like, "Hmm, this isn't lighting me up.

00:04:23.140 | What would?"

00:04:24.300 | And I love that you broke it into practices.

00:04:26.340 | So maybe I've pulled a few of the ones that I thought were exciting to talk about and

00:04:31.260 | maybe we could talk about a few of them.

00:04:32.860 | Obviously, I really enjoyed the entire book.

00:04:34.820 | So if anyone wants the rest of them, there is an entire place to get all of those.

00:04:38.900 | But I think at the beginning, the first one is about uncovering your essence.

00:04:43.220 | And I'm sure I'm going to butcher some of these names, but I'm going to call it Zooka.

00:04:47.580 | And maybe that's a good place to start because I think a lot of us are thinking, "I know

00:04:52.260 | what I'm good at.

00:04:53.260 | I know what I'd like to do, but I don't really know what I should do."

00:04:56.300 | Yeah.

00:04:57.300 | So Zooka is really about your essence, uncovering your essence.

00:05:02.780 | And this is the way that my grandfather described dharma to me, which is like dharma has been

00:05:07.220 | called many different things.

00:05:08.700 | You'll find different definitions.

00:05:10.460 | I think one that comes closest is inner calling, but my grandfather called that your essence.

00:05:15.660 | We all have an essence.

00:05:16.980 | And the question is, are we expressing that?

00:05:20.140 | The key, I think though, Chris, and this is where I got it wrong for a lot of years, which

00:05:24.780 | is I always assumed that essence equals job.

00:05:28.700 | Essence equals job title, right?

00:05:30.860 | So my essence is to be a programmer.

00:05:33.140 | My essence is to be a product manager or to be a lawyer.

00:05:37.140 | Those are occupations, but they're not an essence.

00:05:40.300 | An essence is more, it's deeper than that.

00:05:42.660 | It's I enjoy helping people.

00:05:44.220 | I enjoy designing things from scratch.

00:05:46.340 | I enjoy assembling products or growing other people's careers.

00:05:50.580 | And the idea is that when you can come back to that essence, it opens up a universe of

00:05:56.580 | possibilities because there are always multiple ways to express that essence.

00:06:02.460 | And one of the stories in the book is about a nurse named Karen that really felt like

00:06:08.740 | her dharma was to be a writer.

00:06:10.780 | That's what she wanted to do.

00:06:11.780 | She wanted to write, but she couldn't afford to do that.

00:06:14.260 | She couldn't afford to quit her job and she had spent a lot of time investing in the profession

00:06:18.540 | of nursing.

00:06:19.540 | And she was actually doing pretty well as a nurse, so she was torn, like I think a lot

00:06:23.200 | of us are.

00:06:24.200 | She was showing up to the hospital.

00:06:25.200 | She was doing the work, but she wasn't emotionally connected to what she was doing every day.

00:06:30.140 | Eventually, the way that she ended up finding her dharma was not by quitting her job and

00:06:34.100 | becoming a writer.

00:06:35.300 | The way she found it initially was by patient paperwork.

00:06:39.220 | Like literally while other nurses and doctors would fill out the clinical details of a patient

00:06:43.100 | form and hit print, she started to actually write about the patient.

00:06:47.220 | Who were they?

00:06:48.420 | What did they love?

00:06:50.500 | How did they spend their evenings and what really mattered to them?

00:06:53.500 | And she would pour these details into these patient, really clinical patient forms to

00:06:57.940 | the point that every single one of these forms almost turned into like a mini novel.

00:07:01.980 | And she would start to pass these forms around the hospital and they would get distributed

00:07:05.740 | by others because it really reminded them of the humanity of what it is that they do.

00:07:10.300 | Now again, her profession was nurse and that stayed the same.

00:07:14.740 | She didn't quit her job.

00:07:15.740 | She didn't make any type of lateral shift, but the essence of being a writer was something

00:07:19.980 | that she was now bringing into her day to day, right?

00:07:23.620 | And that's kind of the point of this first chapter of Sukha is if we can dig below the

00:07:27.740 | occupation mindset that so many of us have been put into and go deeper into the essence

00:07:33.380 | of what it is that you love, like ultimately what is that thing that you feel like really

00:07:39.020 | embodies who you are, then you can start to find other ways to express what you do.

00:07:43.580 | And in the book, I offer some ways that we can sort of start to get to that.

00:07:48.380 | And the metaphor that I love is Michelangelo would look at a block of marble and he would

00:07:53.460 | say the sculpture is already inside.

00:07:55.460 | I just need to chisel away the layers that are in its way.

00:07:58.740 | And I think Dharma operates in very much the same way.

00:08:02.940 | I can almost guarantee for you and me and anybody who's listening right now, there is

00:08:07.220 | an essence that you've already been in touch with at some point in time, right?

00:08:10.340 | It could have been when you were a little kid, it could have been last week, but you

00:08:13.300 | kind of had been, you've had brushes, incidents with this essence.

00:08:17.060 | We just, it may be buried under deadlines, under drop-offs, under all the other things

00:08:22.180 | that we have going on in our lives.

00:08:23.820 | And we can start to kind of chisel away those layers.

00:08:26.620 | One of the ways that we can do that is through good questions.

00:08:29.500 | I think good questions are an amazing sort of way to kind of come back to who we are.

00:08:34.100 | One of the questions that I love the most is what would you do for free?

00:08:39.060 | If compensation was not a factor, what is it that you would want to spend your time

00:08:43.180 | doing anyway?

00:08:44.460 | And that's not to say that like all of a sudden you can flip a switch and go work for

00:08:47.860 | free or that you should work for free.

00:08:49.820 | But if you can clearly answer that question, right?

00:08:52.500 | What's that thing that I would keep doing even if I wasn't getting paid?

00:08:56.060 | Now you're starting to get closer to this thing inside of you that wants to express

00:09:00.100 | itself no matter how the outside world reacts.

00:09:03.100 | There are a series of those types of questions in the book that help us get closer to that

00:09:06.380 | essence.

00:09:07.380 | And these are the chisels.

00:09:08.380 | Is that right?

00:09:09.380 | These are the chisels, yeah.

00:09:11.540 | The other thing that I think is really interesting is what I call the bright spots chisel.

00:09:15.260 | The bright spots chisel.

00:09:16.340 | And what I mean by that is in my career, I spend a lot of time writing, meeting with

00:09:21.100 | people who have succeeded at their highest levels.

00:09:24.140 | But I spend the other half of my time I think meeting with people who are miserable in their

00:09:28.020 | careers and helping them come to a place where they can actually do I think their best work,

00:09:34.820 | reach their potential.

00:09:35.820 | And one of the things that we spend a lot of time talking about is, all right, you don't

00:09:39.660 | like your job, but what are the moments, what are the bright spots right now in your day

00:09:45.500 | that you really, really do look forward to?

00:09:47.180 | I don't care how small they are.

00:09:48.900 | I don't care if they last for literally just a minute, but what are those little interactions

00:09:53.420 | in your day that are the bright moments?

00:09:56.820 | Because misery in a lot of ways is it can be a very useful tool.

00:10:02.220 | It can actually illuminate very clearly the parts of your world that you actually want

00:10:07.340 | to spend more time on.

00:10:08.500 | It can be a very useful way to get to the moments that actually bring us joy.

00:10:12.900 | And so by identifying these bright spots, you can start to see a pattern.

00:10:17.280 | For me, for example, when you and I got to know each other, Chris, I think I was a startup

00:10:20.820 | entrepreneur, right?

00:10:21.820 | I was working in tech and I'd spent most of the past 10 years really trying to make that

00:10:27.940 | work.

00:10:28.940 | And I guess to a certain degree, it was kind of working.

00:10:31.820 | I had a startup that had raised some money and it was doing reasonably well.

00:10:37.620 | It wasn't hitting a home run, but it was doing reasonably well.

00:10:40.700 | But I think the bigger thing was that I wasn't really enjoying being a startup founder.

00:10:45.620 | Not nearly as much as I thought I was going to, right?

00:10:47.860 | I liked the idea of being a startup founder much more than I liked the act of being a

00:10:52.140 | startup founder.

00:10:53.380 | But the day-to-day of what I was doing and managing and trying to build a product and

00:10:58.400 | looking at growth charts and figuring out the metrics, I wasn't that into that, to be

00:11:02.900 | honest with you.

00:11:03.960 | But there was one part of my day that I always look forward to, and that was when I had a

00:11:08.340 | chance to hear customer stories.

00:11:10.980 | Anytime when we had a health coaching business, we were helping people lose weight, then any

00:11:15.700 | time that I received an email or I got on the phone with a customer or I could hear

00:11:19.740 | some kind of story about how this was useful to them, what their life was like before,

00:11:25.820 | what it was like during, and what has changed, that to me was like, it wasn't just interesting

00:11:31.580 | or validating, it set me on fire.

00:11:35.100 | The idea of hearing that story, the idea of sharing that story, whether that be with teammates

00:11:39.520 | or whether that be in investors, I could feel literally my body come alive.

00:11:43.580 | And in the days when I had that moment where I could talk, where I could tell stories,

00:11:47.820 | I felt alive.

00:11:48.820 | And in the days that I didn't, I felt completely vapid and blank.

00:11:52.940 | So what that told me was like, hey, in this job that I know is not for me, I've identified

00:11:59.940 | this act of storytelling that I really, really like.

00:12:03.640 | That's what convinced me to start sitting at my desk every morning before work to write.

00:12:08.140 | I'm like, if you like to tell stories, you can just write to a page.

00:12:11.380 | So I started to write every single morning.

00:12:14.020 | Those are the things, those pages ultimately turned into blog posts and then turned into

00:12:18.320 | articles and now books.

00:12:20.460 | Yeah.

00:12:21.460 | It's interesting how we both went through this arc of startup founder.

00:12:25.660 | It felt like an identity that suited us, but also at the same time didn't.

00:12:30.060 | And here we are now both creating content as a future role, which is not what we originally

00:12:35.700 | intended and in some ways both stumbled on it.

00:12:39.580 | When you talk about these questions to ask yourself, I'm curious if it's easier to ask

00:12:44.140 | yourself or to talk about it with a partner, talk about it with a family member or a friend.

00:12:50.460 | Do you think one method or maybe it's different per person, but helps you uncover these things

00:12:55.380 | better?

00:12:56.380 | You know, you and I both, I think the last time we actually hung out, we were like talking

00:13:00.660 | about our partners and how like we would be like completely lost in our freaking lives

00:13:04.540 | without them.

00:13:05.540 | Right.

00:13:06.540 | And I feel, I very much feel that way about Lina.

00:13:08.860 | I guess there's two things about that.

00:13:12.660 | One is that I have found it useful to spend some time thinking about things alone before

00:13:18.500 | I share with anybody, including Lina.

00:13:20.780 | And the reason for that is because when I come up with a new idea or a new concept or

00:13:25.220 | I'm like, "Oh, you know, maybe this is something that I need to start doing or really focusing

00:13:29.060 | my time on."

00:13:30.660 | You know, that idea is always sort of like a newborn baby right at the gate.

00:13:35.740 | And if you share it too early with people, it might be a little too fragile.

00:13:39.780 | Right.

00:13:40.780 | And so the way they respond to that might cut a little bit deeper than you sort of,

00:13:45.820 | you know, than you, that it might, if you gave it a few days where you could reflect

00:13:49.500 | on it yourself.

00:13:50.500 | Right.

00:13:51.500 | And build just maybe a little bit more conviction for it.

00:13:53.620 | Right.

00:13:54.620 | Here's why I'm into it.

00:13:55.620 | And you can start to kind of poke holes in it yourself.

00:13:57.900 | So for me, for example, like the idea of writing a book, like, you know, writing a book is

00:14:02.900 | not like that is not a great way to make money.

00:14:07.700 | I knew that.

00:14:08.700 | Right.

00:14:09.700 | And writing a book is not a great way to necessarily, if you want to like be known and get your

00:14:15.100 | content out there, like, and get your ideas out there, like you're much better off like

00:14:19.300 | writing articles.

00:14:20.600 | And so like when I started to think about writing a book, you know, I'm like, all right,

00:14:25.220 | I'm going to spend the next two to three years.

00:14:27.420 | Nobody is going to really know what I'm working on.

00:14:29.500 | I'm not going to be able to share it with anybody.

00:14:31.780 | There's a good chance that it's not going to make any money.

00:14:34.100 | Right.

00:14:35.100 | Like there are all these sort of things in my head.

00:14:36.340 | And I needed to spend some time myself writing about this before I kind of went out and shared

00:14:41.180 | it with anybody, including Lena.

00:14:42.860 | But then after I did, that's when I kind of opened it up and I went to a few people that

00:14:46.620 | I really trusted and said, hey, like, you know, what do you what do you think about

00:14:50.860 | this?

00:14:51.860 | But again, I think spending a little bit of time alone, you know, I call it in the book,

00:14:55.900 | I call this sort of wandering time, like nonproductive wandering time and really kind of just like

00:15:01.260 | sitting with that idea for a little bit.

00:15:03.380 | I think it really makes a lot of sense.

00:15:05.020 | There's another hack I think would might be useful here that I have found extremely valuable,

00:15:10.980 | which is like, as soon as I found, as soon as I started to get more connected with my

00:15:15.860 | essence as a storyteller, all of a sudden, this world of options began to appear.

00:15:21.220 | It was like, oh, you could start a podcast, you could write a book, you could do, you

00:15:24.580 | could write articles, you could, you know, you could be on stage like there are all these

00:15:28.580 | different ways, of course, you know, stand up comedy, there are all these different ways

00:15:32.420 | that you could express yourself as a storyteller, right?

00:15:34.860 | So then the question is like, how do, what do I do?

00:15:37.780 | Because like, that's too much stuff.

00:15:39.780 | I can't do all that.

00:15:41.900 | And so, one of the tools in the book is what I call a Dharma deck, a Dharma deck, which

00:15:46.660 | is anytime something like emotionally inspired me, I would literally write it down on an

00:15:51.620 | index card.

00:15:52.620 | You know, you go take stand up comedy class, begin writing proposal for book.

00:15:57.980 | And I would, over time, have this almost stack of index cards that I felt like were all options,

00:16:03.780 | all ways for me to express this essence of being a storyteller.

00:16:06.540 | Now, what I would do is about once a week, I would go to a quiet place or take a walk,

00:16:11.500 | and I would take that stack of index cards with me, and I would sort them from top to

00:16:15.060 | bottom.

00:16:16.060 | The ones that had the most emotional pull for me, the ones that were calling me the

00:16:19.860 | most, stayed at the top of the pack.

00:16:22.180 | The ones that didn't went to the bottom, bottom half of the pack.

00:16:24.660 | And what you notice over time is that there would probably be like somewhere between one

00:16:29.460 | and three cards that will always just stay at the top of the pack, right?

00:16:33.700 | No matter what, it's like those are the ones that you don't want to give up.

00:16:36.300 | And what I realized is like writing a book definitely stayed at the top of the pack for

00:16:39.860 | me, and that's why I decided to pursue it.

00:16:42.340 | I love this.

00:16:43.620 | It's funny because I think back to my Dharma, which I haven't quite figured out or my essence

00:16:49.060 | to say.

00:16:50.060 | I haven't done all the work.

00:16:51.820 | I've read the book, but haven't done the work.

00:16:54.340 | But storytelling is a similar one.

00:16:56.140 | I loved pitching a company.

00:16:57.860 | I loved recruiting employees, telling them why we're doing this, what we're doing.

00:17:02.100 | There are many hats you wear as a founder.

00:17:03.900 | But that one for me was particularly moving for me, which is funny because now I'm similarly

00:17:09.860 | creating content down a different path.

00:17:11.740 | But...

00:17:12.740 | This is what you're doing.

00:17:13.740 | Back to your example with Karen, the nurse, I'm curious.

00:17:17.180 | Is there some percentage and there's probably not an exact number of your job that needs

00:17:22.780 | to be associated with your essence in order for it to work?

00:17:26.900 | So I think to her example, if patient intake forms were 1% or 2% of her job, is that enough

00:17:33.420 | to sustain the other 98%, 99% that you maybe don't feel as connected with?

00:17:40.700 | Such a great question, Chris.

00:17:41.780 | And I haven't been asked that question before.

00:17:43.900 | And the answer is I don't know is the short answer.

00:17:50.460 | What I will say is that the difference between 0% and 1% is like astronomical, right?

00:17:59.100 | Even having touch points with your dharma each day is I think something that can be

00:18:05.500 | a complete game changer for people.

00:18:08.580 | In the case of Karen, this patient paperwork, you're right.

00:18:12.220 | I mean, most of her time was probably spent talking to patients, right?

00:18:16.340 | But very few of it was actually spent writing these patient forms.

00:18:21.160 | The sense that I get from her and from the other stories that are like this, like the

00:18:25.140 | assembly line worker who decided that they were going to actually create a record label,

00:18:30.860 | once you start having this touch point every day, you start to embody this persona, right?

00:18:38.140 | So for Karen, she may have been doing things that had nothing to do with being a writer.

00:18:43.620 | She wasn't sitting down and she wasn't actually doing these patient forms, but she was meeting

00:18:47.860 | with patients.

00:18:49.620 | One of the things that she was probably doing during that time is starting to think like

00:18:52.340 | a writer.

00:18:53.340 | I want to hear your story.

00:18:54.520 | And so I want to start asking you questions that go beneath the surface of the symptoms.

00:18:58.500 | And I want to start learning more about your life, right?

00:19:00.820 | That was sort of her persona as a writer.

00:19:03.940 | For me, same thing, storyteller, startup founder, two very different worlds.

00:19:07.620 | But when I started to connect with myself as a storyteller, I started to feel like a

00:19:12.260 | storyteller at work, right?

00:19:13.740 | In fact, one of the things that I did is I actually wrote on a piece of paper, you are

00:19:18.980 | a storyteller.

00:19:20.500 | And I kept that in my pocket.

00:19:23.020 | And anytime I was sort of like, you know, in a place where I felt like, oh, I feel completely

00:19:28.660 | lost right now, or I feel like I'm like not doing what I meant to do, I'd pull out this

00:19:33.020 | piece of paper and I would remind myself, hey, you are a storyteller.

00:19:35.700 | Now, did that mean that I like dropped everything I was doing and went and told stories?

00:19:38.780 | No.

00:19:39.780 | What I mean is that when I went into the next meeting, I could embody myself as a storyteller,

00:19:44.420 | right?

00:19:45.420 | I kind of had this reminder of like, yeah, this is who I am, right?

00:19:49.620 | This is what I do.

00:19:50.900 | And I'm expressing that in a way that feels maybe a little bit different than somebody

00:19:54.100 | who's writing novels or writing screenplays.

00:19:57.380 | But I can still embody myself as a storyteller, even if I'm doing something that's not completely

00:20:02.300 | related to it right now.

00:20:03.540 | Yeah.

00:20:04.540 | And for people listening to this thinking, how do I take this essence of mine and embody

00:20:08.180 | it in my job?

00:20:09.740 | It doesn't actually always have to be in your role.

00:20:12.540 | And this makes me think of a particular person.

00:20:14.980 | My wife was at Lyft for 10 years and there was a guy named Paul.

00:20:18.500 | And he was, you know, always had all energy and could connect with people.

00:20:23.780 | And he volunteered and said, "Could I MC all hands for the company?

00:20:28.660 | Could I be the person that gets everyone excited for the meeting?

00:20:31.620 | I don't need to do all the presentations, but could I just run the all hands meeting?"

00:20:36.260 | And for almost a decade, he ran the all hands meeting and I didn't work there, but I think

00:20:43.020 | I probably went to one or two meetings, but it was like he brought that energy.

00:20:46.300 | But that was 1%, 2%, 3% of his job.

00:20:49.260 | He had an entire other job.

00:20:51.460 | And so, whether you're the person that might volunteer to work the booths at the conferences

00:20:56.360 | your company goes to, there are opportunities maybe outside of even your role at any company

00:21:02.020 | where you might be able to bring some of this and go from that zero to one.

00:21:06.300 | So I just encourage people to make their manager known.

00:21:10.660 | Make it known to your manager what your thing you're trying to do is.

00:21:14.100 | There might be opportunities you aren't thinking of.

00:21:16.100 | Totally.

00:21:17.100 | It's such a good point, man.

00:21:18.460 | Because I, again, I think like where we go to and where I went to for a very long time

00:21:23.260 | is, well, I need to have a particular job in order to express this essence of mine,

00:21:30.260 | right?

00:21:31.260 | I can't tell her, "Oh my gosh, that has nothing to do with startup founders, so I need to

00:21:35.180 | quit that job and I need to go do something else," but no, I'm not going to go quit that

00:21:38.300 | job.

00:21:39.300 | I have a team.

00:21:40.300 | We've raised a little bit of money.

00:21:41.940 | I have investors.

00:21:42.940 | I can't do that, but I can start to find ways to express that through what I'm doing.

00:21:48.580 | There's another story in the book about a woman who's a project manager inside a tech

00:21:51.980 | company, and she really wanted to be a teacher, right?

00:21:55.860 | And she talked to her husband about it, and they really went back and forth, and ultimately,

00:21:59.420 | they found financially, they could not make that work.

00:22:02.820 | They needed her healthcare insurance.

00:22:05.820 | She was earning a pretty good salary.

00:22:07.100 | They needed that to stay afloat.

00:22:08.460 | The family's based in Detroit.

00:22:10.020 | And so she was stuck in this moment where she was like, "Gosh, I wish that I could have

00:22:13.140 | wound the clock 15 years before, and I could have gone down the path of becoming a teacher

00:22:18.300 | because that would have made me really happy."

00:22:20.060 | And so every day, that's what was consuming her at work.

00:22:23.620 | But when she sat down with a mentor of hers, she was able to dig down to the essence of

00:22:28.140 | what it was about teaching that ultimately made her come alive.

00:22:32.140 | Then what ultimately made her come alive was that she loved helping people grow.

00:22:37.340 | That's why she wanted to be up in front of a classroom.

00:22:39.500 | That's what she wanted to be doing, working with students.

00:22:41.340 | She wanted to be shaping the arc of people's careers.

00:22:44.620 | And so the question then became, all right, well, okay, if teaching, obviously teaching

00:22:48.060 | is a very clear way to express that, what are the many other ways out there that are

00:22:52.880 | ways to express that?

00:22:54.340 | And what she found is learning and development inside a technology company is actually one

00:22:58.860 | way to do that.

00:22:59.980 | So she started to throw her hat in the ring inside the same company for these opportunities

00:23:04.660 | that would allow her to take what she knew already about what the organization did and

00:23:09.380 | start to grow other people inside the company.

00:23:11.580 | And so she did and flourished, became a huge rising star inside the company, started to

00:23:17.940 | speak on stage about how to develop and grow other people.

00:23:21.360 | Her career completely bloomed and she never had to leave the company.

00:23:24.460 | She never had to shift her industry.

00:23:26.180 | She didn't have to lose her salary or the healthcare insurance.

00:23:29.300 | I think that what I love about your show, Chris, is that in some ways, I see your audience

00:23:35.600 | as people who feel, I know when I listen to your show, I feel sort of stuck with something

00:23:40.380 | and you offer sort of a way to kind of get unstuck.

00:23:43.240 | And that way is not necessarily always the most complex thing, which makes it beautiful,

00:23:48.700 | right?

00:23:49.700 | Because of the beauty and the simplicity of it.

00:23:52.320 | This might sound really simple, right?

00:23:54.660 | Like the idea of, well, connecting with the fact that she wanted to help people grow doesn't

00:23:59.320 | seem like an earth shattering insight.

00:24:01.400 | And that's the beauty of it.

00:24:02.400 | It doesn't have to be, right?

00:24:03.760 | There's something inside of you that you can connect with and once you do, it just opens

00:24:09.720 | up all sorts of possibilities.

00:24:11.920 | You asked me for other sort of tactics.

00:24:14.800 | There's another one that I really love, which is like what I call the magazine walk, magazine

00:24:19.360 | out walk.

00:24:20.360 | And what I love to do is when I feel like I'm trying to explore what it is that makes

00:24:24.520 | me come alive, what's my essence, I'll go to a magazine aisle, whether it be in a bookstore

00:24:30.440 | or whether it be in an airport store, and I'll literally very carefully, slowly walk

00:24:34.400 | from one side of the magazine aisle to the other.

00:24:37.280 | And I will try to tune out what it is that I feel like I should be picking up, right?

00:24:43.120 | Like I should be picking up the Wall Street Journal because I should be staying on top

00:24:46.360 | of the business news or I should be picking up Harvard Business Review because I need

00:24:49.900 | to be staying on top of what's written in that.

00:24:51.760 | And I kind of tune that stuff out and I emotionally connect to what's actually really pulling

00:24:57.480 | for me.

00:24:58.480 | Like what magazine covers are really sort of grabbing my attention.

00:25:03.040 | And slowly, and it's a very slow exercise, one by one, I'll pull out the magazines that

00:25:08.400 | are really vying for my attention emotionally.

00:25:11.360 | And if I then lay those magazines out on a table, I'm like, "Oh, okay, well, it's pretty

00:25:16.200 | clear," right?

00:25:17.280 | And for me, like when I started doing the magazine aisle walk, I was living in Detroit

00:25:21.360 | at the time and I would literally go to this local library and I would walk from one side

00:25:25.520 | of the magazine aisle to the other, inevitably, it would end up being a combination of like

00:25:30.360 | storytelling oriented stuff.

00:25:32.000 | So it'd be like script writing, movies, books.

00:25:35.680 | But the other that really surprised me was spirituality, right?

00:25:39.560 | And to me, I've never really been like a big spirituality guy, but I realized that there

00:25:48.400 | was a lot that was pulling at me.

00:25:50.720 | Articles by Ram Dass and Maria Popova and Ryan Holiday even, the stuff that they were

00:25:55.680 | writing about like stoicism, philosophy, and spirituality was pulling me in a really, really

00:26:02.640 | deep way.

00:26:05.040 | One of the reasons I ended up writing this book is because I was like, "Wow, a combination

00:26:08.640 | of like getting into this ancient philosophy and also being able to tell stories that bring

00:26:14.120 | that to real life in the modern day, I couldn't think of a better way to spend my time."

00:26:17.640 | Yeah.

00:26:18.640 | Well, I'm very fortunate you have.

00:26:21.200 | And we talked a lot about exercise to spend time on, time you spend on work, thinking

00:26:26.920 | about time, but I want to move to prana because it's not always about time.

00:26:32.520 | So maybe let's jump in here.

00:26:34.120 | I mean, prana, the definition of prana is like this extraordinary energy.

00:26:39.520 | This is like almost think of like a tank of energy that all of us have, but we don't always

00:26:44.280 | know how to access that.

00:26:46.880 | And one of the reasons for that is because when we think about investing in a project

00:26:52.360 | or investing in an idea, the thing that we are so conditioned to think about is like

00:26:57.800 | time, right?

00:26:59.000 | How much time am I going to give something?

00:27:02.160 | And ultimately what tends to matter most when we look at sort of great projects that have

00:27:08.160 | come alive across all of these different industries wasn't really time, but it was heart.

00:27:13.840 | How much heart did you really give that?

00:27:16.000 | That's why you see movies like The Clockwork Orange that were written in a few days, right?

00:27:21.320 | Great Gatsby, all these great works.

00:27:23.600 | They were written in a fraction of the amount of time that you might think because all of

00:27:27.280 | a sudden there was this creative burst of inspiration and they were to sit down and

00:27:31.280 | just like really, really bang it out.

00:27:33.400 | And that's just kind of proof that like what we're really trying to optimize here for is

00:27:37.240 | heart and not time, right?

00:27:39.960 | And so it's much better to be fully like full hearted with your dharma than it is to be

00:27:45.560 | fully scheduled.

00:27:46.560 | And you know, the example that like is very similar, I know like you've had like people

00:27:50.040 | talk about meditation on this show.

00:27:52.080 | You know, I went and spent time at like, you know, a monastery and what I was kind of surprised

00:27:56.440 | by, I guess I'm surprised now to have been surprised, but at the time I kind of expected

00:28:01.360 | that these monks were like sitting around and meditating all day.

00:28:04.640 | And the truth is they weren't, right?

00:28:07.120 | They were meditating for three or four hours a day, but the rest of that time was spent

00:28:11.960 | like working the land, doing all the stuff that they needed to do, doing the duties that

00:28:16.360 | they needed in order to make the place actually function, right?

00:28:19.580 | But their life was dedicated to meditation.

00:28:22.600 | The point being that just because you're dedicating your life to something, just because you care

00:28:25.980 | about it doesn't necessarily mean you're spending every waking hour doing that thing.

00:28:31.020 | What is more important is that you're finding ways to really bring your best prana, your

00:28:35.800 | best energy and your best heart to those moments.

00:28:38.720 | So, you know, for me, like, you know, writing for a half hour every morning is way, way

00:28:45.280 | better and produces much stronger longterm results than if I was actually spending two

00:28:50.300 | hours in the afternoon writing, it's just, it's just literally the degradation of my

00:28:54.520 | brain.

00:28:55.520 | It's literally the degradation of my creative horsepower.

00:28:57.280 | I mean, I can sit down and I can write, but it's not going to end up being any of the

00:29:02.960 | pearls that ultimately make it into the book.

00:29:05.640 | Like 99% of what I write ends up in a trash bin, right?

00:29:10.080 | And so what I'm looking for is like these little pearls in this, you know, in this piles

00:29:15.940 | of horseshit that I write each day.

00:29:18.080 | And it turns out that like the little pearls are much more likely to appear in that half

00:29:22.580 | hour morning session than a two hour writing block in the afternoon, right?

00:29:26.400 | I know that about myself.

00:29:27.760 | And so for me, my dharma is to write and to tell stories, but it's not like I spent all

00:29:32.100 | day every day like doing that.

00:29:33.980 | I mean, I've got kids, I've got, I've got other, I've got other work that pays the bills,

00:29:38.660 | you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of other things going on, but I have to make

00:29:41.600 | sure to have this commitment.

00:29:44.440 | The second thing about that then is like, how do we, how do we then like condition ourselves

00:29:49.720 | so that we have the right energy at the right moment, right?

00:29:53.480 | And for me, this was sort of a big breakthrough, which is that like, I've always sort of looked

00:29:57.860 | at rest and recovery as something that you did in long periods, right?

00:30:02.200 | So I would, I would take myself to a breaking point.

00:30:06.120 | I would take myself to the red and then I would say, I need a vacation, right?

00:30:10.840 | And my wife and I, we would plan this.

00:30:12.320 | We'd be like, Hey, like we have this one week vacation scheduled.

00:30:16.080 | I would literally look at three months between now and then, and I'd kill myself, right?

00:30:21.120 | But the problem with that is I would literally return back from vacation with less gas in

00:30:26.440 | the tank than before that three, three month period even started.

00:30:29.560 | Right?

00:30:30.560 | And, and the science kind of bears this out.

00:30:31.760 | I mean, most people actually return from vacation and say they're more stressed one week after

00:30:37.200 | they return than one week before they left.

00:30:39.680 | Right?

00:30:40.680 | Point being like vacations are like a wonderful, can be a wonderful thing.

00:30:44.400 | They're great for reconnecting with family and seeing new places and spending time with

00:30:47.880 | friends, but they're actually not, they're actually not as effective an instrument for

00:30:52.920 | dealing with burnout than we may assume.

00:30:56.320 | What tends to work much, much better is when you can actually have frequent focused recoveries

00:31:01.560 | throughout the day, every single day.

00:31:03.360 | In fact, like average, like average high performers, whether it be in business or be in music or

00:31:07.980 | be in sports, they're taking somewhere around eight breaks every single day, right?

00:31:14.340 | Eight, about one an hour throughout a work day, which like I know sounds extraordinary,

00:31:20.420 | but when I started to put this into practice, I used what I call the 55/5 model, which is

00:31:26.140 | like for every 55 minutes of work, I'm taking five minutes of focused recovery.

00:31:31.100 | Right?

00:31:32.100 | And that five minutes can be doing anything, like literally anything.

00:31:34.740 | It can be sipping on a cup of coffee, it can be doing pushups, it can be taking a walk

00:31:38.420 | to the mailbox and back, like doing whatever it is you're doing, but you're not multitasking

00:31:42.180 | it.

00:31:43.180 | You don't have your phone with you when you're doing it and you're like, you're like getting

00:31:46.220 | some like quasi rest and quasi sort of work done at the same time, those five minutes

00:31:50.700 | are deliberately nonproductive.

00:31:52.660 | You're focused on rest and people have a very hard time with this.

00:31:56.780 | I know I did.

00:31:57.820 | And the reason for that is because what we feel like we're doing, again, we're in a time

00:32:02.260 | based model, is that we're shrinking the amount of time, productive time we have in our day,

00:32:07.940 | right?

00:32:08.940 | You already feel squeezed as is.

00:32:10.340 | If you're shrinking five minutes from every hour and you're working, let's say nine hours

00:32:13.900 | a day, you're shrinking your schedule by 45 minutes, which is significant, right?

00:32:18.980 | We could use that 45 minutes.

00:32:20.860 | But if you give this a shot, what I can almost promise you based on experience from myself

00:32:25.940 | and from watching others put this into practice, is that five minutes is going to make the

00:32:29.860 | other 55 minutes far more productive, far more effective, far more imaginative.

00:32:34.940 | You're going to be far more collaborative, like all the things that we associate with

00:32:38.740 | success.

00:32:39.740 | You will have more of that in the next 55 minutes than you did if you were just waiting

00:32:45.020 | to the end of the day to finally like unload and burn yourself out because it's just clearly

00:32:51.620 | not working.

00:32:52.900 | As I read this and as you talk about it, I think about how Google has this speedy meetings

00:32:56.500 | feature where you can say set these meetings to 25 minutes for like a 30 minute meeting

00:33:00.980 | is now by default 25 and an hour meeting is by default 50.

00:33:05.100 | But it takes the ability to turn the meeting off at 50 because so often it's like, "Oh,

00:33:10.580 | I know no one on this call scheduled the next 10 minutes so we could just run over."

00:33:14.900 | And then I was thinking about, I remember when I had a Zoom account that was free and

00:33:18.500 | it's like, "Oh, there's that timer."

00:33:19.940 | And it's like, "This meeting is going to run out and we are going to turn it off."

00:33:23.180 | And I've been in meetings like that.

00:33:24.900 | So if anyone out there knows of a way that I could hack Google Calendar and Google Meet

00:33:29.260 | to just actually shut the meeting down at 50 minutes to force everyone to end, I would

00:33:34.220 | love to see that feature in action because I find it hard.

00:33:38.940 | I can schedule the five or 10 minute break, but it's really hard to actually take it.

00:33:43.780 | Yeah.

00:33:44.780 | It's funny because I'm on all these different platforms now for virtual stuff and you are

00:33:49.500 | too.

00:33:50.500 | And I noticed like on Microsoft Teams, when they set the meeting for a certain length,

00:33:54.300 | they will actually say, "Five minutes left in the meeting," and then they'll have a countdown

00:33:57.740 | timer.

00:33:58.740 | Now, I don't think it actually shuts off at that time, but the fact that there's actually

00:34:01.780 | a bit of a countdown timer, I do find to be somewhat helpful.

00:34:05.620 | It's like, "Hey, this is the meeting you called.

00:34:09.000 | These are the people whose schedule you're dealing with.

00:34:12.080 | Everybody is assuming this one thing.

00:34:14.080 | Let's put a little bit of a countdown timer in the last five minutes."

00:34:16.580 | I find that to be somewhat helpful.

00:34:18.740 | But I agree with you, man.

00:34:20.660 | I was the kind of guy who, if I had two extra minutes in between meetings, I would go to

00:34:24.860 | my to-do list and I would grab like, "Oh, what can I knock out?

00:34:28.860 | What can I knock out quickly?"

00:34:30.220 | And to be a little bit of an energetic hit that I would get from that.

00:34:33.700 | But the problem was that throughout the day, like clockwork, I would end up slumping.

00:34:39.100 | At the end of the day, I was far less energized than I was at the beginning of the day.

00:34:44.420 | And that hurt because there were some times where there was key meetings, key moments

00:34:48.900 | that were in the afternoons.

00:34:50.380 | I remember when I was raising money, even, and I was out there pitching investors, yeah,

00:34:55.740 | some meetings were in the morning when I was fresh, but there were a lot of meetings that

00:34:58.100 | were in the afternoon.

00:34:59.540 | And so I know that looking back, I would perform with far less quality, I would be far less

00:35:07.540 | compelling in those afternoon meetings than I was in the morning.

00:35:10.580 | And part of the reason for that is because that morning I was spent grinding.

00:35:14.380 | And then I would walk straight into that meeting and I would take all the baggage from that

00:35:17.100 | grind.

00:35:18.100 | And then I would take time to kind of reset myself.

00:35:20.340 | Maybe if you look at people who I think are like, if you strap for time, who do this very

00:35:25.260 | well, and they don't have five minutes, I think one of the most important things you

00:35:29.380 | can do is to provide some type of transition for yourself in between two big moments, right?

00:35:35.300 | And again, if you only have 30 seconds, even if you have 10 seconds, it is deliberately

00:35:40.540 | saying I'm going to be nonproductive for a period of time.

00:35:43.780 | And the difference between zero and 10 seconds, whether it's closing your eyes and taking

00:35:47.500 | a breath or literally getting up and stretching, doing something will be like game changing,

00:35:53.540 | right?

00:35:54.540 | If you're having these transitions throughout.

00:35:56.660 | And it's different for everyone.

00:35:57.860 | For me, the afternoon meetings and the afternoon pitches were actually really great because

00:36:02.820 | I didn't have anything to worry about.

00:36:04.500 | If I go into a meeting at eight, I'm all these things, what came in overnight?

00:36:08.940 | What emails do I have to respond to?

00:36:10.860 | But by the afternoon, I've been able to catch up on all the other stuff.

00:36:13.700 | So I think it really depends on a per person basis.

00:36:17.460 | Sometimes my wife asks, "Why were you up till two in the morning last night?"

00:36:21.800 | Because we both have to get up, we have kids, we got to get up at six to seven, the kids

00:36:26.140 | are up, we're up.

00:36:27.140 | And I was like, "Well, I just had this bout of energy.

00:36:30.240 | And I felt like I could get done in two hours what I would normally take 10 hours to do."

00:36:36.260 | And so I can catch...

00:36:37.260 | Now, the hard part is forcing yourself to use that time you saved to actually recover.

00:36:42.900 | But sometimes when I find this prana, I'm like, "Let's capture it when it's there."

00:36:48.980 | And sometimes it surprises me.

00:36:52.020 | That's a really good point, man.

00:36:53.020 | We can't always count on prana.

00:36:56.140 | It's tough to predict when your prana is going to be really high.

00:37:00.480 | There are patterns for sure.

00:37:02.200 | For me, I remember when I was at the office day in and day out, I would try to work out

00:37:09.180 | in the middle of the day.

00:37:10.180 | I had a newborn at home.

00:37:11.640 | The mornings were very tough.

00:37:12.640 | And when I went home, I wanted to spend time with the family.

00:37:15.180 | So I try to work out at around 12 o'clock.

00:37:18.460 | And then I would end up scheduling meetings at one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock,

00:37:23.100 | four o'clock.

00:37:24.100 | But what I found is that after I finished working out, I felt really good.

00:37:28.260 | I felt really creative and awesome.

00:37:30.440 | And I was like, "All right, well, why am I scheduling a mundane meeting at one o'clock

00:37:36.180 | in that case?

00:37:37.180 | I should be scheduling a block of time, at least a half hour, where I can get back from

00:37:41.140 | the gym and I can go to my desk and I actually can write down a few things that are really

00:37:45.220 | important.

00:37:46.220 | I can spend some time doing some deep work."

00:37:49.300 | And when I did that, that changed things as well.

00:37:51.460 | I mean, it's a great point.

00:37:53.420 | Figure out where the pockets of your day are where you tend to have your highest prana.

00:37:58.800 | But then also, sometimes it'll just happen spontaneously.

00:38:01.860 | And when it does, try to give yourself enough flex where you can capture it.

00:38:05.580 | Yep, I definitely do that a lot.

00:38:07.960 | We talked a lot about breaks.

00:38:09.140 | There's one break that you referenced in the book that I thought was super interesting

00:38:12.620 | and it's a worry break.

00:38:15.580 | Yeah.

00:38:17.180 | So this one surprised me as well.

00:38:19.340 | I ran into a leader who had a sand timer on his desk.

00:38:24.340 | A lot of what I do for work is I go out and I study people who are at the top of their

00:38:28.380 | game and I try to unpack their habits.

00:38:30.820 | And in this case, what he had a reputation for was being very, very calm, even though

00:38:37.020 | he worked inside a very cutthroat culture.

00:38:39.700 | People loved working for him and he had exceptional results.

00:38:43.660 | The board loved him, the rest of the C-suite loved him.

00:38:46.500 | So I wanted to figure out what it was.

00:38:49.260 | Was he naturally like this or were there some hacks, some things that he put into practice?

00:38:53.580 | And I noticed a sand timer on his desk and I asked him about it.

00:38:57.280 | And he said that what he would do is every time there was a worrying thought, something

00:39:02.060 | that was nagging at him and it wouldn't go away, what he would do is he would go into

00:39:06.420 | his office and he would shut the door and he would take this five minute timer and he

00:39:10.300 | would flip it over.

00:39:11.560 | And for five minutes, he would focus on nothing but that one worry.

00:39:15.020 | So I was like, "Okay, that's pretty interesting.

00:39:18.380 | What if it's something that you don't really have control over?"

00:39:20.420 | He's like, "It doesn't matter.

00:39:22.300 | I'll spend five minutes worrying about it anyway."

00:39:25.460 | And I was like, "Well, I got to be honest with you.

00:39:26.940 | This is like, this doesn't sound great to me.

00:39:29.420 | It sounds like a recipe for anxiety more than anything else."

00:39:33.660 | But as I dug deeper into it, what I realized is that there's a lot of science behind this

00:39:38.820 | practice of taking a worry break.

00:39:41.660 | And the reason for that is because when we have a worrying thought inside our head, what

00:39:45.700 | we tend to do, a lot of us will tend to try to push it out or compartmentalize it and

00:39:49.940 | to basically say, "Hey, I don't have time for you right now.

00:39:52.060 | I'm focusing on this other thing."

00:39:54.180 | When we push things out, what they tend to do is they tend to grow louder.

00:39:58.420 | So what started as a whisper will grow into a conversation and eventually it will grow

00:40:01.780 | into a shout, right?

00:40:03.100 | It wants to be heard.

00:40:05.480 | It's kind of like kids in that way.

00:40:07.220 | Worrying thoughts want to be heard, and if they're not heard, they're going to continue

00:40:10.880 | to get louder and louder and louder.

00:40:12.960 | There's a saying in positive psychology that you may have heard, which is like, "What

00:40:15.660 | you resist persists," right?

00:40:18.260 | And so counterintuitively, while we may think we're doing ourselves a service by trying

00:40:22.260 | to push these thoughts out because they're not positive, we're actually giving them a

00:40:29.200 | lot more runway inside our head.

00:40:31.460 | They're actually becoming louder and louder.

00:40:33.140 | Counterintuitively, one of the things we can do is we can actually say, "All right, I'm

00:40:36.220 | going to give you a fixed amount of time.

00:40:39.120 | I'm going to sit down and I'm going to give this nagging worry five minutes of my time.

00:40:44.220 | And for that five minutes, I'm going to stay true to it.

00:40:46.100 | I'm literally going to do nothing but worry about this one thing."

00:40:50.380 | And strangely enough, what will happen at the end of that five minutes is that it won't

00:40:54.980 | be that the worry went away.

00:40:56.780 | You may not have a problem for this.

00:40:58.100 | It might not even be something you have control over.

00:41:00.580 | But what it will do in almost all cases, I've noticed, is it will actually turn the volume

00:41:05.380 | down on the worry so that now you can actually get on with the other parts of your day because

00:41:12.220 | it felt heard, because it wasn't something that you were trying to push out.

00:41:16.220 | You gave it its due time and now it settles a little bit more.

00:41:20.540 | I love this.

00:41:21.540 | It's almost like you can exhaust the worrying where you're like, "Well, I don't have anything

00:41:24.520 | else to say to worry about it and maybe the next time it goes away."

00:41:30.580 | On a higher note than worrying about the worst in the world, let's talk about elevating things

00:41:36.740 | to be a little happier, a little more exciting.

00:41:39.060 | Let's talk about Leela.

00:41:40.460 | Yeah.

00:41:41.460 | Yeah.

00:41:42.460 | Leela is really think of it as the blend of work and play.

00:41:48.020 | How do we start to think of work a little bit more like play?

00:41:55.060 | It sounds probably cheesy.

00:41:57.740 | I know the first time I thought of Leela and I started digging into this really ancient

00:42:02.860 | practice.

00:42:03.860 | I'm like, "Well, it sounds very lovely, but it doesn't sound quite practical."

00:42:07.140 | You work hard and then you play hard.

00:42:09.100 | That's the mentality we've been brought into.

00:42:11.620 | But then I started to see these really top performers.

00:42:14.620 | People like Phil Jackson, NBA coach, but it was also a player who literally, as he was

00:42:20.220 | a player, wrote in his locker room on a piece of scotch tape, "Make work your play and play

00:42:26.340 | your work."

00:42:27.780 | That was the mentality that he brought into the NBA as a coach.

00:42:31.300 | Look at what he did.

00:42:32.300 | One of the most winningest coaches of all time.

00:42:35.340 | He raised greats like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan.

00:42:40.540 | Those guys, when they talked about Phil Jackson, they would talk about that philosophy in particular,

00:42:45.580 | and they would say that is the thing that they ultimately ended up learning the most

00:42:49.420 | from him, which was to blur the lines between work and play.

00:42:52.620 | Because when you do, you can actually reach even more exceptional results.

00:42:57.220 | In all the concepts in the book, I really tried to find where it was echoed.

00:43:01.540 | These Eastern concepts that were over a thousand years old.

00:43:08.780 | What was happening in the world of science, and what has happened in the world of science

00:43:11.920 | that provides some grounding for these?

00:43:15.060 | In all cases, I could find something.

00:43:16.820 | In this case, for Lila, it really came from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his work around

00:43:21.540 | flow.

00:43:22.620 | If you look at the state of flow, what he was really talking about in many cases was

00:43:27.660 | being able to feel like even though you were working, there was a notion of play that was

00:43:32.500 | associated with it.

00:43:34.160 | One of the things that Csikszentmihalyi made a distinction of is people who tend to be

00:43:38.500 | exotelic versus autotelic.

00:43:41.260 | Exotelic means that they are focused purely on the goal, the result of the work they're

00:43:46.140 | doing.

00:43:47.140 | But the people who are autotelic were the people who were focused on the process and

00:43:51.420 | enjoying the point from here to there.

00:43:54.780 | The assumption that I think a lot of us make is that the people who achieve the top of

00:43:58.300 | their game are exotelic by nature.

00:44:00.700 | By the way, we're kind of a blend of all of them.

00:44:02.780 | We're not one or the other.

00:44:04.740 | We kind of tilt one side or the other, but the assumption that we, I think, make sometimes

00:44:09.580 | is that people who achieve the medals, people who get to the very, very top are the ones

00:44:15.380 | who are exotelic.

00:44:16.380 | They're the ones who are focused on the prize.

00:44:18.980 | That's what they really want and they will not rest until they get it.

00:44:23.060 | What Csikszentmihalyi, I think, did an exceptional job of in his body of work around flow was

00:44:27.740 | showing how there was just as many people out there who tended to tilt autotelic, who

00:44:32.620 | tended to focus much more on enjoying the process, getting some joy out of that, because

00:44:37.660 | when you got joy out of something, you wanted to keep doing it over and over again.

00:44:42.740 | One of the techniques that we talk about in this chapter is what I call high-quality habits.

00:44:50.620 | The business that I had started before really focused on health habits.

00:44:54.020 | How do we build health habits into our life?

00:44:56.500 | One of the things I realized is when we're trying to get somebody to lose weight and

00:45:01.220 | they loved bread and they loved pasta, but they decided to go on a carb-free diet, it

00:45:08.300 | would last for a short amount of time and sometimes you would see people who got exceptional

00:45:13.220 | results quickly, but it very rarely lasted, almost entirely on all cases that we studied.

00:45:20.380 | We work with tens of thousands of people.

00:45:22.380 | They would end up yo-yoing back to the condition they were in before.

00:45:25.820 | On the other hand, when we found people who adopted what I call a high-quality habit,

00:45:29.620 | which is a habit that they want to do over and over again, they actually love the habit.

00:45:34.060 | For example, drinking two glasses of water before every meal, which is a habit that some

00:45:40.660 | people can get really into.

00:45:41.900 | It can be really fun.

00:45:43.100 | You can put little mixes into your water, electrolytes.

00:45:46.700 | You can have cool-looking bottles.

00:45:48.220 | It can become part of your persona and there's a lot of fun that can come from that.

00:45:52.500 | People who were able to adopt that habit, we saw end up having lasting results because

00:45:57.620 | they were eating less.

00:45:59.060 | They were having more energy throughout their day and it was something that they just wanted

00:46:03.180 | to continue with.

00:46:06.180 | I think the same is true for our dharma.

00:46:07.980 | There are certain things that we want to bring into our lives and we're like, "I don't really

00:46:11.300 | want to do that, but I feel like I should do that," and those habits very rarely stick.

00:46:16.620 | On the other hand, finding something that you really actually enjoy doing, something

00:46:20.940 | that you want to do over and over again, I think it was Kevin Kelly and I quote him in

00:46:24.980 | the book.

00:46:25.980 | I always butcher his quote, but he's like, "We spend so much time in our lives trying

00:46:30.780 | to figure out better ways to do tasks."

00:46:34.380 | What we need to be doing is we need to be spending time in our lives figuring out what

00:46:39.020 | tasks we want to do over and over again because we actually love it.

00:46:44.820 | When you can find those things, when you can find those habits, you're on a clear path

00:46:48.620 | to sort of blurring this line between work and play.

00:46:52.100 | In the health example, I'm sure cutting carbs would probably be more effective than just

00:46:57.900 | drinking two glasses of water.

00:47:00.220 | In the short term.

00:47:01.220 | In the short term, but I guess in the long term, if you bring it back, the water is more

00:47:04.380 | helpful.

00:47:05.380 | Yeah.

00:47:06.380 | I mean, this is exactly what would happen is we would see people because the platform

00:47:11.060 | that I started was called Rise and you were matched with a health coach, so you had one

00:47:15.380 | person that you were working with.

00:47:17.100 | The number of people who were like, "I'm cutting carbs and this is what I'm doing,"

00:47:21.660 | or the people who had cut carbs and then gained it all back, it was almost cliche to talk

00:47:28.740 | about because it would happen all of the time.

00:47:31.660 | People who went on paleo and lost like 30 pounds and they felt fantastic and then ended

00:47:40.780 | up gaining it all back.

00:47:42.900 | We saw that, I guess, way more often than the people who were actually able to keep

00:47:46.740 | it off.

00:47:47.740 | Now, I think the point of this all isn't to knock on paleo.

00:47:51.940 | The point of it is if you're suffering as a result of paleo, if you really like carbs

00:47:58.340 | as something you enjoy and you're denying yourself that, then that is not a high quality

00:48:04.500 | habit because it's not something that you want to put on repeat.

00:48:08.660 | For that reason, it makes it much, much harder to stick to.

00:48:11.820 | You're basically cashing in on your willpower every single day, which is a very hard thing

00:48:16.580 | to do and it becomes even harder when you have other things going on in your life.

00:48:21.100 | You're busy, work picks up, things are happening at home.

00:48:24.740 | It becomes even harder to keep a high quality habit.

00:48:27.940 | On the other hand, something like water, again, to your point, it's not the kind of thing

00:48:31.380 | you're going to shed weight with very quickly, but it's the kind of thing that you can keep

00:48:35.360 | in place over time so that people that we saw that not only lost the 20, 30 pounds that

00:48:40.620 | they were looking to lose, but actually kept it off, were the ones who adopted these really,

00:48:46.100 | really simple habits that they actually really wanted to put on repeat.

00:48:50.540 | So dieting, sports, how does Leela fit into a more traditional workplace?

00:48:56.620 | I think Leela fits into traditional workplaces when we can start to find the little things

00:49:01.940 | throughout the day that actually give us some joy and also help us find our dharma.

00:49:10.340 | For me, for example, with the storytelling, finding little pockets, little moments of

00:49:15.100 | the day when I was actually sitting down and I was actually writing, and I would do this

00:49:19.460 | just for five minutes every day, five minute pockets throughout the day.

00:49:23.260 | I was sitting down and I was starting to spend some time actually writing these ideas, and

00:49:27.940 | that was these little pockets of joy.

00:49:29.580 | That was a habit that I want to put on repeat.

00:49:32.040 | The other one that I feel like is really helpful was when I talk about Toni Morrison, who's

00:49:37.340 | a single mom, she had two kids at home.

00:49:41.620 | She had a full-time job, but she really wanted to write.

00:49:46.860 | For her, the high-quality habit started when she started waking up a half hour early before

00:49:52.620 | the kids were up, and she'd have her cup of coffee, she'd watch the sunrise, and she would

00:49:57.860 | just brainstorm and daydream about what are the ideas that I would want to bring to life

00:50:02.660 | through a novel.

00:50:03.660 | She would really just start to write these ideas down.

00:50:07.180 | It's not like a book happened immediately, just the same way that if you were drinking

00:50:10.740 | water throughout the day every day, you're not going to lose weight immediately.

00:50:14.780 | But those mornings, that high-quality habit ended up being the thing that ended up being

00:50:19.780 | sort of like all the inspiration that she ended up turning into her books, became a

00:50:24.860 | Nobel Prize-winning author as a result of those mornings.

00:50:29.260 | What is that thing for you that you feel like you enjoy so much, and again, it's not like

00:50:34.500 | something that you feel like you have to do, but you actually kind of want to do, and how

00:50:39.060 | do you then start to build that into your day in some small way?

00:50:43.100 | Would that be in the morning?

00:50:44.100 | Would that be sprinkled throughout your day?

00:50:46.300 | What's that thing that you feel like you can put on repeat?

00:50:48.260 | Yeah, it almost feels like if Sooka is finding your essence, Leela is bringing your essence

00:50:56.140 | into your daily routine so that it feels more like fun.

00:51:01.020 | Yeah, well said, man, because I think that we talk a lot.

00:51:06.460 | Whenever I think there are conversations about purpose and meaning, sometimes we can tend

00:51:12.540 | to focus on finding what that thing is for you, and maybe not enough time talking about

00:51:18.220 | what it is that we need to do in order to fit this into a busy, overwhelmed, fast-paced

00:51:25.100 | modern schedule.

00:51:26.540 | I think Leela is one of those answers.

00:51:28.740 | I think it tees us up perfectly.

00:51:30.260 | I wanted to last talk about Kriya, which is that if you don't actually take action on

00:51:35.380 | all of this, what is there?

00:51:38.780 | Maybe let's close there.

00:51:41.300 | We didn't hit on all of the principles.

00:51:43.060 | We didn't hit on the I don't even know how many rituals and tactics you put in the book,

00:51:46.980 | but there were so many.

00:51:47.980 | Obviously, there will be more that people need to go find elsewhere, but this felt like

00:51:52.260 | a good way to wrap it all up.

00:51:54.060 | Yeah.

00:51:55.060 | I mean, there's over 30 rituals in the book.

00:51:58.180 | I kind of look at this as sort of, in some ways, like a menu.

00:52:01.460 | There are things that are going to work for some people, and there's things that are going

00:52:04.100 | to work better for other people, but being able to sort of test these different things

00:52:07.460 | in your life, I think, are the ways, the paths that we can use to, I think, figure out what

00:52:13.980 | it is that makes us come alive and express that.

00:52:17.340 | With Kriya, with action, nothing happens unless we have movement, right?

00:52:22.780 | We can sit behind a desk and we can talk about purpose all day, but how do we put purpose

00:52:26.280 | into action?

00:52:28.660 | The thing that I love about sort of like Kriya is that there are really some great tools

00:52:34.780 | today that I think I had to kind of figure out how to ... When I started to put them

00:52:41.300 | into practice myself, it really started to kind of change things for me.

00:52:45.180 | One example of that is the two-way door versus the one-way door.

00:52:49.920 | You may have heard Jeff Bezos talk about this because he talked about it in a couple of

00:52:53.460 | his shareholder letters.

00:52:55.580 | But basically, the premise is that oftentimes, when we are thinking about a decision, taking

00:53:00.380 | action on something that we want to go do, it is very easy to confuse that as a one-way

00:53:08.220 | door, meaning that if you go through and it doesn't work, you're not going to be able

00:53:13.860 | to come back through when it's actually a two-way door, right?

00:53:17.700 | You go through, doesn't work, you're able to come back to where you were before, right?

00:53:21.100 | You may have lost a little bit of time, but you probably gained a lot of information and

00:53:25.140 | a lot of experience along the way as well.

00:53:27.580 | The bigger point is that oftentimes, we treat these decisions with such weight and with

00:53:31.660 | such gravity that if we do it, it's like we're walking into an abyss where we have to make

00:53:38.060 | it work when the reality is that there will be other options.

00:53:42.740 | Other doors will open, plus you will always be able to walk back through.

00:53:46.180 | For me, running for office was that thing.

00:53:51.140 | I felt compelled for a while to want to move back to my hometown outside of Detroit and

00:53:57.380 | run for office.

00:53:58.380 | I was really, really scared about it.

00:54:00.460 | I was scared for a lot of reasons, but one of them was I felt like if I did that, I was

00:54:05.300 | going to torpedo my career.

00:54:07.100 | I'd spent 10 years in Silicon Valley, I'd been working as a startup founder, I'd developed

00:54:12.420 | all these relationships, and I felt like I'd finally found a way to financially make a

00:54:16.700 | place like San Francisco work and here I am, I'm going to torpedo all that and move back

00:54:20.180 | to Detroit and run for office, and I really wanted to.

00:54:23.460 | I really wanted to get involved, but at the same time, I felt like it was going to blow

00:54:26.740 | everything up.

00:54:28.020 | It wasn't until I really started to think about it as like, "Hey, listen, this is not

00:54:32.100 | a one-way door.

00:54:33.780 | You go and you lose.

00:54:36.340 | There will be other doors that will open, and if they don't, for whatever reason, you

00:54:39.700 | will always be able to walk back through.

00:54:41.780 | What you will have lost may be a little bit of time, but what you will have gained is

00:54:44.460 | a lot of wisdom, and you'll never regret not having done this thing that you were emotionally

00:54:49.760 | pulled to do."

00:54:51.060 | That is ultimately what got me through.

00:54:52.860 | It wasn't some burst of courage.

00:54:55.700 | People would always say, "That's a very gutsy thing to run for office and to leave everything

00:54:59.660 | behind and go do that and move your family to Detroit," and I was like, "Well, I thank

00:55:04.340 | you for saying that, but not really."

00:55:06.020 | For me, it really came down to this idea of I actually don't have a lot of courage here.

00:55:10.500 | I am very scared, but I'm also grounded in the idea that if this doesn't work, I'm not

00:55:17.420 | going to be in a place of complete pointlessness.

00:55:20.180 | I can come back through the door because it is a two-way door.

00:55:23.900 | I can always move back to Silicon Valley if that was what I chose to do.

00:55:26.860 | I can always go back into working into tech.

00:55:28.980 | It may take a little while to find something, but I will.

00:55:31.820 | I have to have some belief in that because it's true.

00:55:35.420 | Ultimately, the other thing that might happen is it may open up many other doors for me,

00:55:40.420 | which is what happened.

00:55:41.960 | I went to Detroit, I gave it my all, I knocked on over 10,000 doors, election results come

00:55:48.380 | back in, and I lose.

00:55:51.540 | As a result of that, everything had changed.

00:55:55.300 | I had learned so much about myself in that process.

00:55:59.180 | I learned about what I cared about.

00:56:01.140 | I learned about what I want to spend my days doing that at the end, I was like, "I don't

00:56:06.500 | want to move back to Silicon Valley.

00:56:08.700 | I want to start getting on stage the way that I was during the campaign.

00:56:11.780 | I want to start speaking to audiences.

00:56:14.900 | I came up with the idea for a television show, which I'm now making with American Express."

00:56:19.860 | All that stuff happened when I was on the campaign and as really as a result of doing

00:56:25.060 | that.

00:56:26.060 | Again, the thing that I would encourage anybody who's listening right now to take a decision

00:56:32.780 | in your life.

00:56:33.980 | Just take a decision that you're thinking about, something that maybe you're afraid

00:56:37.340 | to do, and ask yourself deep down, "Is this a one-way door, or is this a two-way door?"

00:56:43.260 | Because there are some one-way doors out there, but the vast majority of decisions out there

00:56:47.900 | are not one-way doors, they're two-way doors.

00:56:49.580 | If it's a two-way door, the only thing I would say is lower the bar a little bit.

00:56:54.580 | Don't feel like you need to have this abundance of courage or guts in order to go do this

00:56:59.340 | thing that you want to do.

00:57:00.860 | Instead, ground yourself in the fact that even if you do it and it doesn't work out,

00:57:04.380 | you're going to be okay.

00:57:05.860 | You can always walk back through.

00:57:07.420 | Yeah.

00:57:08.420 | I think far too many people think decisions are not reversible, and I watched a great

00:57:13.380 | talk on speed when it comes to building products and building companies.

00:57:17.380 | It's like, if a decision is reversible, just make the decision.

00:57:21.300 | It's like almost default to a decision, and then you can come back to it later.

00:57:25.900 | But another tactic you mentioned that I really liked was to make it to do less hard, less

00:57:33.140 | to overcome, make it to learn.

00:57:35.740 | Please share that a little bit.

00:57:36.860 | I spent, like so many people, every January 1st coming up with, "Here are my to-do lists

00:57:42.260 | for the year.

00:57:43.260 | Here are my big goals."

00:57:45.980 | Like many people, I would abandon that list, stop looking at it sometime in February.

00:57:53.320 | What I found to be much more gripping and I think compelling for me was when I started

00:57:58.820 | to think of it less as a to-do list but a to-learn list.

00:58:02.460 | What are the things that I actually want to learn how to do right now?

00:58:07.020 | Here's where I want to grow.

00:58:10.040 | For me, even though it's a little bit hard sometimes to quantify that, it makes it just

00:58:19.020 | far more exciting.

00:58:20.940 | For me, for example, I wanted to learn how to develop a television show.

00:58:25.760 | When I write that down, all of a sudden, now it opens up all of these ways that I can do

00:58:33.060 | it.

00:58:34.060 | But I think the most important thing it does for me is it makes me less afraid to fail.

00:58:39.780 | Because we all know that failure is a wonderful teacher and success can be a really lousy

00:58:45.140 | teacher.

00:58:47.000 | If my to-do list is I need to have a show up and running by the end of the year, well,

00:58:52.560 | all of a sudden, I'm jammed with fear and insecurity to the point that I actually don't

00:58:56.820 | want to look at that goal anymore.

00:58:58.620 | But if my goal is to learn how to develop a show, well, then I know that I need to put

00:59:02.660 | myself out there.

00:59:03.660 | I know I need to actually start doing the work.

00:59:05.500 | I know I need to start meeting with people.

00:59:07.260 | I know I need to start getting into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to actually pull something

00:59:10.780 | off in Hollywood.

00:59:13.060 | But it no longer makes me so afraid of going out there because I know I'm going to probably

00:59:17.780 | fall on my ass a few times while I'm doing it and that's okay because I'm actually satisfying

00:59:22.580 | this to learn objective, which is I want to know how to create a television show.

00:59:27.460 | I think especially even going back to the beginning of this conversation on your finding

00:59:31.320 | your essence, just learning more things can help you explore.

00:59:35.980 | And so, I think back to one of the reasons I partnered with Masterclass was that I found

00:59:40.180 | it to be such a great tool to go watch videos, be like, "I like storytelling.

00:59:44.720 | Do I like stand-up comedy?

00:59:46.300 | Let's go learn what it takes to actually do this professionally."

00:59:48.980 | You know what?

00:59:49.980 | I don't think that's me.

00:59:50.980 | Like, you know, I like telling jokes, but I don't think it's a career.

00:59:53.700 | And so, I think the more you can expose yourself to learning other things, the more you can

00:59:57.900 | kind of come up with ideas of what ignites you and what doesn't.

01:00:02.540 | And it's so much easier than like that would have been a much easier thing to do than like

01:00:07.020 | do a stand-up routine, which is a loftier goal.

01:00:10.700 | Maybe I would learn more from it.

01:00:12.180 | But even just learning how the industry works was a much easier goal to accomplish, you

01:00:17.620 | know, from the safety of my own living room.

01:00:20.260 | Yeah.

01:00:21.260 | Yeah.

01:00:22.260 | Totally.

01:00:23.260 | So, I feel like we didn't even brush the surface.

01:00:25.340 | There's a lot more there.

01:00:26.600 | Where can people kind of get the rest?

01:00:29.180 | Yeah.

01:00:30.180 | So, the book is out.

01:00:32.060 | It literally just came out yesterday.

01:00:34.460 | And you can find it.

01:00:35.460 | You can find it everywhere.

01:00:36.460 | It's on Amazon.

01:00:37.460 | It's on Barnes & Noble.

01:00:38.460 | So, wherever you get your books, it is available in print and audio as well.

01:00:42.540 | And it's called "Everyday Dharma".

01:00:44.180 | Awesome.

01:00:45.180 | Did you do the audio or who's reading?

01:00:46.900 | I did.

01:00:47.900 | I did the audio.

01:00:48.900 | Yeah.

01:00:49.900 | Yeah.

01:00:50.900 | And, you know, it's funny.

01:00:51.900 | I recorded it at this booth in Santa Monica.

01:00:53.540 | And a lot of what's inside the book are, you know, the stories of like my ancestors.

01:00:59.500 | Like I tell the story of my grandfather and our first conversation about dharma.

01:01:04.660 | And it was just a bizarre experience, Chris.

01:01:06.060 | I mean, it's funny because I started to cry during the actual reading, you know.

01:01:13.740 | And the sound engineer is kind of in my ear and I got my headphones on and I realized

01:01:17.260 | like he's crying as I'm reading it as well.

01:01:19.900 | So, like if you hear me kind of breaking up, like during the audible recording at a point,

01:01:26.140 | it's because I'm weeping.

01:01:27.140 | Well, I feel like now I got to go back and listen to try to find those moments.

01:01:32.420 | But thank you so much for writing it.

01:01:34.220 | I love all the tactics.

01:01:36.060 | I think anyone listening to this show, you know, knows that one of my passions is not

01:01:40.980 | just learning about how to make change, but the specific actions and tactics and in the

01:01:45.300 | case of your book, you know, 30 plus rituals.

01:01:47.620 | So really love that.

01:01:49.340 | Really enjoyed the book.

01:01:50.340 | Thank you so much for sharing it and joining me today.

01:01:52.940 | Chris, this is awesome.

Essential Practices for Finding Success and Joy in Everything You Do with Suneel Gupta

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