Reduce Stress, Relax Your Mind and Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying

00:00:00.000 | If you want to find a way to finally make meditation work

00:00:03.040 | so you can unlock your full potential and find your purpose in life,

00:00:06.560 | then you'll love this conversation with Light Watkins.

00:00:09.600 | He's a legend in the space.

00:00:11.360 | He's been teaching meditation for 15 years,

00:00:13.920 | and he's developed an incredibly effective way

00:00:16.400 | to make the practice work without feeling like work.

00:00:19.760 | So let's help you unlock your potential.

00:00:22.000 | And if you enjoy this conversation,

00:00:23.600 | please click the thumbs up and hit subscribe

00:00:25.760 | because it really helps the algorithm.

00:00:27.760 | All right, let's jump in.

00:00:28.880 | [Music]

00:00:34.640 | Light, thank you for being here.

00:00:36.400 | Thanks, Chris. I'm excited, man.

00:00:38.080 | I'm excited to be here on All The Hacks.

00:00:39.920 | I want to start the conversation in the meditation arena

00:00:43.440 | because it's where I first came across you.

00:00:45.600 | And it seems like everyone I know, myself included,

00:00:49.600 | have taken our own invitation to try meditation.

00:00:53.760 | We've started it, and so few people I know have done it consistently.

00:00:58.080 | And I think you have a little bit of a contrarian view here.

00:01:01.040 | So let's just start.

00:01:02.400 | What are people getting wrong when they think about starting meditating?

00:01:05.840 | Oh man, so many things.

00:01:07.600 | Just a little context.

00:01:11.760 | So I was considered...

00:01:14.800 | I consider myself to be a meditation dabbler for several years.

00:01:18.160 | So I was one of those people.

00:01:20.240 | You know, I would start and then I would stop for a long stretch of time

00:01:22.880 | and come back to it and pick it up again

00:01:24.640 | and then just do it for a week or two and then stop.

00:01:27.360 | And then I met a teacher in Los Angeles in 2003

00:01:34.000 | who gave me what I now recognize as a more minimalist approach to meditation.

00:01:42.800 | And what I realized was that I was just doing way too much.

00:01:47.360 | I was doing too much.

00:01:48.400 | And that was one of the reasons why I was having so many clunky experiences.

00:01:53.840 | And I was labeling my mind as a monkey mind.

00:01:57.280 | And so, I would say, you know, one of the biggest misconceptions

00:02:00.400 | is that you need to do all these things.

00:02:02.080 | You need to let go of this and notice that

00:02:04.640 | and witness your thoughts like clouds in the sky

00:02:06.400 | and focus on your breath and vision the white light.

00:02:08.480 | And you don't need to do any of that stuff.

00:02:10.800 | In fact, it works a lot better.

00:02:12.720 | And when I say better, I mean you have more delightful experiences

00:02:16.880 | if you do less and then if you do least.

00:02:20.000 | And ultimately, if you can do nothing and just practice pure being,

00:02:25.200 | that's when it works the best.

00:02:27.200 | So, I learned how to do that.

00:02:29.760 | I learned how to operate in concert with my thinking mind.

00:02:33.120 | And that was a big game changer for me.

00:02:34.880 | It literally made me an enthusiastic daily meditator within a couple of days.

00:02:42.000 | And before that, I was probably one of the most reluctant meditators

00:02:46.160 | because I just felt like my mind was all over the place.

00:02:48.720 | I was sitting there with my eyes closed, waiting for the time to pass.

00:02:52.080 | My body was writhing in pain.

00:02:53.520 | It just felt like torture.

00:02:55.520 | And then I went to feel like dessert.

00:02:58.960 | And it was amazing.

00:03:01.360 | And I recognized that I wanted to be on this mission

00:03:08.720 | to help introduce as many people as possible to this feeling.

00:03:12.720 | You don't have to be somewhere laid out with the eye mask on

00:03:16.160 | in the middle of nowhere.

00:03:17.520 | You can - it's like you bring that serenity from that experience wherever you are.

00:03:22.480 | So, you can have that experience in the back of an Uber.

00:03:24.720 | You can have it on an airplane.

00:03:26.480 | You could have it in your aunt's living room.

00:03:28.800 | You can have it in your office chair.

00:03:31.040 | Wherever you happen to be sitting and you have the ability to close your eyes

00:03:35.360 | for 10 or 15 minutes, you can drop right into that experience.

00:03:38.800 | And that's the power of that shift I experienced in meditation.

00:03:43.440 | And I'm just - I'm excited to introduce as many people as possible to that.

00:03:47.360 | And all the books I've written have been about exposing those misconceptions.

00:03:53.280 | And my most recent book, Travel Light, same thing.

00:03:55.440 | It's just like - it's bare bones, minimalist approach, stripping away things that are -

00:04:00.240 | that I consider to be unnecessary for having that particular experience.

00:04:04.960 | -And what does the science say?

00:04:06.800 | When you strip all that stuff away, do you have the same impact on your life

00:04:10.960 | and the same outcomes?

00:04:11.760 | -You know, it's interesting.

00:04:13.280 | The science actually - there's been a lot of people studying meditation recently, okay?

00:04:20.640 | The godfather of meditation research is this guy named Dr. Herbert Benson.

00:04:25.600 | He's a Harvard cardiologist.

00:04:27.920 | He studied the stress response for many, many years.

00:04:31.200 | He was one of Walter Cannon's protégés.

00:04:33.440 | Walter Cannon was the professor who coined the term fight-flight reaction at Harvard.

00:04:42.080 | And Benson was tracked down by these meditators from the local Cambridge

00:04:48.320 | Transcendental Meditation Center because no one had ever really studied it properly.

00:04:54.080 | And this is like in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

00:04:58.320 | And he dismissed them.

00:05:00.240 | He said, "No, I'm not studying you guys."

00:05:02.000 | Because back then, studying something like meditation would be akin to, you know,

00:05:07.760 | studying spirit animals now.

00:05:09.760 | Like, no serious professor is going to bring in people who claim to have a spirit animal

00:05:15.760 | into the laboratory and study them.

00:05:17.680 | But they kept coming back.

00:05:20.560 | They were persistent.

00:05:21.600 | And eventually, he figured he had nothing to lose.

00:05:25.440 | And when he connected them to all the different measuring devices,

00:05:28.560 | he was shocked by what he saw.

00:05:31.600 | He basically - again, this is somebody who was probably one of the world's experts

00:05:36.000 | in the fight-or-flight reaction.

00:05:37.520 | He saw that everything that happens in the fight-or-flight reaction goes in the opposite

00:05:42.560 | direction during what he later coined as the relaxation response.

00:05:48.720 | He's the one that came up with the term relaxation response.

00:05:51.600 | He wrote a New York Times best-selling book about the effects of meditation

00:05:57.040 | called The Relaxation Response.

00:05:59.520 | And the reason why his research is relevant to this day is because back then,

00:06:04.800 | they could test anything they wanted to.

00:06:07.840 | Nowadays, you can only test one or two things.

00:06:10.000 | And there's got to be time apart.

00:06:12.560 | And you can't, you know, stick rectal thermometers up in the people

00:06:16.480 | and do all these kind of invasive measurements.

00:06:20.080 | Well, he was able to do everything.

00:06:21.360 | It was completely unrestricted.

00:06:22.880 | It was free range back then.

00:06:24.320 | And so, he's got the most thorough results of anyone who's ever tested meditation.

00:06:32.480 | And so, the relaxation response, according to his research, gets triggered by three things,

00:06:40.560 | basically, three essential things.

00:06:41.920 | Number one, you have to be sitting comfortably, comfortably, right?

00:06:47.680 | So, we think about meditation and we think about it as someone sitting with their what?

00:06:51.840 | Back straight, shoulders back, chin up.

00:06:54.240 | Ideally, with your legs crossed, maybe even with your fingers together.

00:06:58.960 | That's the sort of classical posture for meditation.

00:07:04.640 | But to trigger this response that he saw where you go in the opposite direction of the fight flight,

00:07:11.520 | you have to actually sit with back support.

00:07:13.840 | You don't need to cross your legs.

00:07:15.360 | You don't need to hold your shoulders back.

00:07:16.960 | Even your chin can be dropping forward as though it looks like you're falling asleep,

00:07:22.400 | but that's not actually what's happening.

00:07:24.640 | Then he said you need a passive attitude, passive attitude, which means the opposite of focus.

00:07:32.080 | Focus is an active attitude.

00:07:36.800 | You're trying to exclude experiences.

00:07:39.200 | You're trying to exclude the noise, the distracting thoughts, the distracting sensations, right?

00:07:45.520 | And you're supposed to be thinking about the fact that you're meditating.

00:07:48.000 | Well, he said don't do that.

00:07:49.120 | Just let whatever your mind is thinking about come into the experience.

00:07:54.400 | And then third, you want some sort of anchor point to come back to, whether it's your breath,

00:08:02.480 | whether it's a mantra, whether it's a word, a sound, something that's actually soothing to you,

00:08:08.000 | something that is sort of like your happy word or anchor.

00:08:12.720 | And if you have the combination of those three things,

00:08:16.240 | you can have the most profound experiences in the meditation.

00:08:20.400 | And then if you continue exposing yourself to this state,

00:08:24.320 | this relaxation response over and over and over, eventually you can stabilize it.

00:08:30.000 | Your body can stabilize it.

00:08:31.600 | So, this is another thing, another misconception that people have about meditation is that

00:08:36.160 | I can just meditate every now and again and I'll still get the benefits from it,

00:08:40.240 | but it doesn't work like that.

00:08:41.520 | It's not - it's kind of like working out, right?

00:08:43.760 | Let's say you just worked out on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

00:08:48.640 | Are you going to get as strong working out twice a week as you would get working out

00:08:53.360 | five times a week, right?

00:08:55.920 | It's still beneficial to work out twice a week versus not at all,

00:08:59.280 | but if you want to stabilize the strength, if you want to cultivate it so that it's there

00:09:03.920 | all the time, you need to do it more often and the same applies to meditation.

00:09:08.880 | It needs to be a daily practice and that's because the main thing that's keeping you from feeling

00:09:17.200 | fulfilled, happy, content, peaceful, that thing isn't taking any days off and that is the stress.

00:09:24.640 | The stress is coming in every day.

00:09:26.320 | The stress is like, you know, P90X or something.

00:09:30.880 | It's like working on you every day.

00:09:33.280 | So, in order to counterbalance that, you need to do the thing that is like kryptonite distress,

00:09:40.320 | which is the meditation because the meditation supplies the body with biochemicals that can

00:09:44.480 | dissolve the stress.

00:09:46.080 | You need to do that every day.

00:09:47.200 | So, I think for some people listening, the idea of, "Oh man, so if I want to get started with

00:09:51.920 | this, I need to commit to a daily practice forever," can be daunting.

00:09:56.720 | But I know, you know, when you wrote Bliss More,

00:10:01.600 | you talked about how you could succeed in meditation without really trying.

00:10:04.960 | So, how can we break this down for someone that maybe feels like what you just said

00:10:09.280 | is overwhelming and will take a lot of work and maybe realize that it doesn't have to be that hard?

00:10:15.920 | Yeah, and I would go further and say it shouldn't be that.

00:10:19.040 | You're not going to do it if it feels hard to do.

00:10:21.280 | We don't do things as humans.

00:10:22.720 | We don't do anything that's hard to do on a consistent basis.

00:10:25.760 | So, we have to get meditation out of the chore category.

00:10:30.640 | It's out of the "I have to" category into the "I get to" category.

00:10:36.640 | Because last time I checked, people who are chain smokers don't have - they don't need

00:10:40.560 | any willpower to smoke a cigarette.

00:10:42.560 | Coffee drinkers don't need any willpower to drink a cup of coffee in the morning.

00:10:46.160 | Sugar addicts don't need a willpower to eat that muffin in the morning, right?

00:10:50.480 | They get up and they are craving those experiences because they have conditioned their body

00:10:56.960 | to become effectively addicted to those experiences.

00:11:00.880 | And guess what?

00:11:02.880 | Meditation can get there as well.

00:11:05.760 | So, in order to get there, you have to learn how to do it in a way that feels legitimately

00:11:15.440 | enjoyable.

00:11:17.200 | Not that you're faking like it feels enjoyable.

00:11:19.600 | It has to literally feel like it's enjoyable.

00:11:22.560 | And there's like a couple of things that people do to spoil the experience.

00:11:30.960 | And one of those things is they treat their mind like a monkey mind.

00:11:35.520 | You know that term "monkey mind"?

00:11:37.280 | Which implies that your mind is exceptionally busy, right?

00:11:42.560 | Now, I don't want to negate the idea that you have lots of thoughts.

00:11:48.160 | I believe you when you say that your mind is very busy.

00:11:51.520 | Because guess what?

00:11:52.240 | Everybody's mind is busy.

00:11:54.560 | My mind is busy.

00:11:56.640 | My mind has all kinds of thoughts.

00:11:58.800 | The problem is we think it's not supposed to happen.

00:12:02.800 | We think that our mind is supposed to just automatically stop having all these thoughts

00:12:07.680 | the moment we close our eyes.

00:12:09.360 | And that's not the case.

00:12:10.400 | The mind is going to have thoughts in the same way that the ocean is going to be wavy.

00:12:19.120 | Water is wavy and the mind thinks.

00:12:23.200 | And so, what we need to do is understand how to move around in concert with the thinking

00:12:31.280 | mind during meditation in the same way that you learn how to swim.

00:12:35.600 | When you learn how to swim, the wavy water is no longer an issue.

00:12:39.760 | In fact, it's quite enjoyable.

00:12:41.360 | If you don't know how to swim, then it's a nightmare.

00:12:45.120 | The water is a nightmare.

00:12:46.400 | The same water that someone else is enjoying for you is a nightmare.

00:12:50.720 | Because it's going to potentially drown you.

00:12:53.120 | And guess what?

00:12:54.080 | You increase the chances of the water drowning you by doing too much.

00:12:58.560 | The person who knows how to swim does less and they can just like actually float there

00:13:04.400 | by doing nothing.

00:13:05.520 | By doing nothing, the water will actually support you.

00:13:08.640 | You'll float.

00:13:09.760 | By trying to move and fight the water, you drown yourself.

00:13:12.960 | Same is true with the mind.

00:13:14.160 | By doing too much, the thoughts start to drown you.

00:13:19.440 | By doing less, you can actually move through your mind in a very gradual way.

00:13:25.360 | And the more you can embrace the thinking mind, and in fact, you can get to the point

00:13:31.520 | where you're celebrating it.

00:13:33.680 | And what I mean by that is not that you're sitting there imagining yourself at a mind

00:13:39.520 | party or anything like that, but you're just understanding that this is a legitimate part

00:13:45.760 | of the experience.

00:13:46.480 | And it's a necessary part in order for you to reach that state of depth that you ultimately

00:13:51.200 | want to get to.

00:13:52.320 | And what you'll find is that by adopting this added - this genuine attitude of nonchalance,

00:13:58.800 | the thoughts start to become fewer and fewer, the mind settles more and more, and eventually

00:14:04.640 | you can drop into a state where you're no longer aware that you're even thinking.

00:14:11.840 | And now, when you're in that state, literally, there's no awareness.

00:14:18.480 | So, you never know you're there while you're there, because thinking that, "Oh, I'm here,"

00:14:23.600 | that means you're not there.

00:14:24.880 | You're not there anymore.

00:14:25.840 | So, it's through this mechanism of using your nonchalant attitude to kind of steer your

00:14:35.680 | way back into that state, you keep losing awareness.

00:14:38.960 | And I'll give you an experience - for people who think, "Oh, no, that's not possible."

00:14:42.240 | I'll give you an experience that you've already had to show you that it is indeed

00:14:46.160 | possible because you've already experienced it, okay?

00:14:48.800 | Everybody has had the experience of sitting on their couch or sitting on their bed and

00:14:55.200 | it's late at night and you're trying to read a book or you're trying to watch a television

00:14:59.200 | show.

00:14:59.520 | And then time goes by and you're stuck on this one line in the book or large portions

00:15:08.080 | of the show have passed and you don't remember what happened, right?

00:15:12.320 | There was a gap in your awareness, but you don't remember sleeping.

00:15:17.040 | You also don't remember reading or watching the show.

00:15:21.120 | So, where were you?

00:15:22.880 | You were in this other state and that loss of awareness is symptomatic of a transition

00:15:33.920 | of consciousness.

00:15:35.040 | You're actually about to move away from your waking consciousness, which is where

00:15:39.680 | you were aware of what you're reading, into your sleeping consciousness.

00:15:43.920 | And anytime there's a shift in your consciousness state, there's a loss of awareness.

00:15:48.400 | And that relaxation response that I referred to earlier, Herbert Benson's work, he identified

00:15:54.400 | that as a fourth state of consciousness.

00:15:57.040 | So, there's the sleeping state, which we all have, the dreaming state, the waking state,

00:16:03.600 | and now we have the meditation state, the fourth state.

00:16:06.560 | And so, when you're going into the fourth state, there's a loss of awareness and it's

00:16:11.840 | consistent with the same thing you experience going from waking to dreaming to sleeping

00:16:18.240 | and back to waking.

00:16:19.200 | -Okay.

00:16:20.240 | So, with that example, I can recall a situation like that as recently as I think last night.

00:16:26.080 | For me, it's if I'm really tired and I'm reading my daughter a book, every now and

00:16:30.880 | then, I'll notice that I just read a line of the book that wasn't in the book.

00:16:35.120 | I just made something random up and I non-intentionally and I'm like, "I don't know

00:16:40.400 | where that came from."

00:16:41.200 | Obviously, I wasn't sleeping because I was reading, but I didn't read what was on the

00:16:44.880 | page.

00:16:45.200 | Okay.

00:16:46.960 | So, you've sold me.

00:16:47.680 | What process would you walk someone through or method to try this out?

00:16:52.320 | If someone listening is like, "Okay, can I start this?"

00:16:54.560 | -It's not too dissimilar from what Herbert Benson described.

00:16:58.320 | You sit comfortably, you close your eyes.

00:17:02.160 | And when I say sit comfortably, I mean sitting upright.

00:17:05.200 | You can lean back on something, but you need to sit.

00:17:08.160 | This is not a practice you do lying down.

00:17:10.080 | You sit upright, you're comfortable, you lean back on something for back support, you close

00:17:16.800 | your eyes and immediately, you're going to get hit with a wave of thoughts.

00:17:22.640 | Now, you're in the water, okay?

00:17:26.080 | If you just treat your thoughts like you're in water and the idea is not to fight the

00:17:33.200 | thoughts at all, not even a little bit.

00:17:36.080 | Don't judge them, don't shame yourself for having them.

00:17:40.880 | Don't think that you have too many or too little or anything like that.

00:17:46.480 | Just - it's just like just going into water and you know, sometimes it's a little bit

00:17:50.720 | cold or it's warm or it's a little choppy or it's - there's an undercurrent.

00:17:54.640 | You know, you just - you may notice the quality of the thoughts, but you're not even trying

00:18:00.400 | to do that.

00:18:00.960 | It's just a - it's just a natural inclination when we are moving into a body of water, right?

00:18:09.200 | So, same thing with meditation.

00:18:10.400 | You may notice the texture of your thoughts or the color or the - you know, the quality

00:18:16.320 | of the thoughts, but it's - there's no judgment around the idea that you're in this body of

00:18:22.640 | thinking and you give yourself some time to just kind of acclimate, right?

00:18:28.480 | Eyes closed and then you just start to literally do less.

00:18:34.000 | You start to literally do less.

00:18:35.600 | You start to just shift away from the tendency to control the experience which is what we

00:18:42.640 | all have in the beginning to this idea that "okay, well, I'm just going to enjoy it

00:18:47.040 | for whatever it is.

00:18:48.560 | I don't have any expectation, I don't have any anticipation of any kind of result".

00:18:52.960 | And you have some sort of timing device that you're using to track how much time has gone

00:19:00.640 | by and whatever you said you were going to sit for 10 minutes or 15 minutes, you just

00:19:05.760 | have that experience and then keep, you know, peeking at the clock whenever you are curious

00:19:12.000 | about the clock.

00:19:13.040 | No judgment around how much time is passing and then eventually you'll see that 10 or

00:19:17.600 | 15 minutes have passed and then you slowly come out.

00:19:20.720 | And I mean, I break all this down in my book Travel Light, there's a whole 10-step process

00:19:25.760 | but that's essentially what it is.

00:19:28.480 | If you want to use your breathing as a sort of anchor point to come back to if you are

00:19:33.600 | aware that you're meditating but you were just thinking about taxes or you're just thinking

00:19:38.720 | about dinner or something like that, you can come back to your breathing.

00:19:41.440 | But guess what?

00:19:42.000 | You're going to go right back to your dinner thoughts or your to-do list and that's fine

00:19:45.600 | too.

00:19:45.840 | You don't have to - it's not about trying to keep that stuff away, it's about seeing

00:19:49.840 | that all is a part of the experience.

00:19:51.520 | So, most of it is just your attitude really at the end of the day.

00:19:55.360 | You know, let's say you're sitting down, you're thinking dinner, "Oh, what am I going

00:19:57.840 | to make for dinner?"

00:19:58.800 | Would you try to encourage someone to maybe say, "I can think about that later" or just

00:20:03.760 | think about it.

00:20:04.240 | Think what you're going to make for dinner, you know, make the mental grocery list of

00:20:07.360 | what you need to buy or acknowledge that you're having that thought and that you can come

00:20:11.600 | back to it.

00:20:12.160 | So, here's - okay, this is an interesting point.

00:20:15.040 | When you say come back to it, right, where are you going to go when you say come back

00:20:23.440 | to it?

00:20:23.760 | Okay, I'm going to come back to this thought.

00:20:24.960 | Where are you going to go?

00:20:25.680 | Some other thought about something else.

00:20:29.760 | So, you may as well just indulge yourself.

00:20:32.880 | This is a practice of indulgence.

00:20:34.480 | Indulge yourself in whatever's happening and just know that you can't screw it up really.

00:20:40.320 | So, the more you practice this, this lack of resistance, the deeper you will set yourself

00:20:46.720 | up to go in the meditation.

00:20:48.000 | And eventually, again, as you go deeper, just like when you're reading the book to your

00:20:54.160 | child, you're never going to know the part where you drop off the abyss and you lose

00:20:59.200 | that awareness.

00:20:59.840 | And if you look for it, it's not going to happen.

00:21:02.320 | You're sitting there going, "Okay, I want to lose awareness now.

00:21:05.760 | When am I going to lose awareness?

00:21:06.880 | I can't wait to lose awareness".

00:21:08.320 | You're going to be aware the whole time.

00:21:10.240 | So, you legitimately want to be just indulgent in whatever you're thinking about and then

00:21:15.360 | without even realizing it, you'll drop off, the time will start going by faster and the

00:21:20.880 | experience will feel really good.

00:21:22.720 | And you'll be one of those meditators that you don't want the time to end.

00:21:26.480 | Now, the beauty of that is when you come out, guess what?

00:21:30.400 | You'll have a more orderly thinking because the mind has this beautiful way of organizing

00:21:37.920 | the things that are most important, second most important, third most important.

00:21:41.680 | You'll start to make connections between things that seem to be unrelated.

00:21:45.600 | You'll start to spot themes in your life which will allow you to then prioritize what you

00:21:55.120 | should be doing now versus what you thought you should have been doing.

00:21:57.600 | For instance, you know, "Oh, is it more important to send this email right now or

00:22:02.720 | is it more important to spend time with my kid reading my story?"

00:22:05.920 | A lot of people are confused about that and a lot of people may say, "Oh, the email is

00:22:10.640 | more important or spending time with my kid is more important", right?

00:22:14.640 | And it's not to say that spending time with your kid is always the most important thing.

00:22:18.400 | Sometimes I could imagine scenarios where sending that email is more important or you

00:22:22.560 | won't have a house to read - to read a story to your kids.

00:22:26.720 | So, you know, but you have to be able to discern that without putting too much thought into

00:22:31.440 | it because as I talk about in Travel Light, the heart voice is your internal GPS that

00:22:39.920 | a lot of times we'll hear but we'll ignore in ways that we would never ignore our actual

00:22:45.600 | GPS in our phones when we're trying to get somewhere.

00:22:48.560 | You know, you'd be ridiculous to ignore it.

00:22:50.480 | Every now and again we do it because it just - no, this can't be the right turn.

00:22:54.960 | We ignore it and then what does it do?

00:22:56.880 | It reroutes so that we still end up at the destination, we just take a little bit of

00:23:02.000 | a scenic route and so, the heart voice does the same thing.

00:23:05.840 | You can't really screw up, you just end up taking the scenic route sometimes.

00:23:09.760 | But it'll always guide you on what to do next if you're listening to it.

00:23:13.280 | -Any tips for kind of paying attention to it or prioritizing it?

00:23:17.120 | I think sometimes we all know what we want to be doing and we're not doing it.

00:23:21.600 | In the book, I liken this to sports, like a basketball arena, right?

00:23:28.400 | So, you have the players on the floor, that's you and then you have all of the fans and

00:23:33.280 | those are the voices in your head and so, the heart voice which is also known as the

00:23:38.320 | still small voice, the heart voice is usually up in the nosebleeds and down on the floor

00:23:44.160 | seats, you have the fear voice, the voice of social conditioning, the voice of your

00:23:48.720 | parents and teachers and coaches, the news, right?

00:23:53.040 | All the voices that you've listened to the most in your life and so, those are the voices

00:23:58.800 | that the player, you would hear the loudest in your awareness, not even just in meditation

00:24:04.720 | but in life in general.

00:24:06.320 | And the still small voice, they're shouting as loud as they can but you can barely hear

00:24:11.600 | them just because of proximity, it's so far away because we haven't been listening to

00:24:16.320 | that still small voice.

00:24:17.920 | The still small voice is the one that's telling us to do the right thing, to stop looking

00:24:21.920 | for shortcuts, to take the extra - go the extra mile, right?

00:24:29.280 | Somebody said there's never a traffic jam on the extra mile because so few people take

00:24:33.360 | it and it's basically reminding us that there is no way to happiness, happiness is a way.

00:24:42.160 | All the cliches, give what you want to receive, there's no throwaway moments in life, all

00:24:47.760 | these cliches, that's what the still small voice is reminding us of always.

00:24:53.680 | And when we start listening to it more and more and acting upon it, then effectively

00:25:00.000 | we move them out of the nosebleeds and down to the floor seats and that's where we want

00:25:05.040 | them to be.

00:25:06.040 | We don't want them to be a still small voice, we want them to be a loud annoying voice like

00:25:12.000 | the floor seat people because that way it's harder to ignore it.

00:25:16.080 | And what you'll find is the more you listen to it, A, it's going to take you out of your

00:25:20.520 | comfort zone more often than not, but you're always going to be at the right place and

00:25:24.640 | at the right time for you.

00:25:27.040 | And you know, everything that's wonderful in your life, the best stories you have usually

00:25:35.200 | are describing moments where you listen to that voice, where something told you to dot

00:25:41.680 | dot dot and you did it and this amazing thing happened and that's the thing you now talk

00:25:46.680 | about on podcasts and you write about in your books and you make movies and songs and choreographed

00:25:52.040 | dances about because that's what the heart does.

00:25:55.400 | It always takes us on this little adventure, whereas not listening to the heart is what

00:26:00.080 | creates drama.

00:26:01.080 | So, you're either creating adventure in your life by listening to it or you're creating

00:26:06.120 | drama in your life by ignoring it.

00:26:08.360 | There is no neutral path, it's either adventure or drama.

00:26:11.920 | And if you look at drama, you could always reverse engineer it back to a moment where

00:26:17.360 | you ignore your heart.

00:26:19.280 | Interesting.

00:26:20.280 | I know one other thing you've talked about, just finding ways to create more of those

00:26:25.120 | moments where they become stories you tell, it's just being more present.

00:26:29.440 | Any tricks for either being more present or, you know, kind of getting other people you're

00:26:34.040 | around to also do that?

00:26:35.840 | Good luck with that.

00:26:38.180 | Let's start with you.

00:26:39.180 | It's hard enough to get you present.

00:26:42.200 | But no, the one hack I would use for getting present is you have to become radically grateful.

00:26:51.400 | Become radically grateful.

00:26:52.800 | And what I mean by that is you have to be really intentional about finding as many things

00:27:00.440 | as possible that you can be grateful for in this moment.

00:27:04.120 | There's this guy named Brad Lee, he's big on social media and he says - he uses this

00:27:08.820 | one example that I just love.

00:27:11.060 | He says, you know, if I were to give you $10 million just as a gift, how would you feel

00:27:21.420 | about that?

00:27:22.420 | If I just gave you $10 million?

00:27:23.420 | And then, of course, the person he's talking to says, "I feel amazing, that'd be great

00:27:26.620 | if I had $10 million".

00:27:29.160 | What if there was a catch?

00:27:31.620 | And one catch is you can't wake up tomorrow.

00:27:36.640 | Would you still be excited about that $10 million?

00:27:38.700 | Would you still take it?

00:27:39.700 | And everyone would say, "No, I wouldn't take it.

00:27:41.700 | If I couldn't wake up tomorrow, no".

00:27:43.180 | He says, "So, what you're saying is just by waking up, it's the equivalent of someone

00:27:49.300 | giving you $10 million".

00:27:51.420 | So, when you wake up in the morning, are you grateful like somebody just gave you $10 million?

00:27:57.300 | Obviously, the answer is no.

00:28:00.020 | we take that for granted. But if we ran that thought experiment, we'd all say the same

00:28:04.580 | thing. We'd love to have $10 million, but not if it means we can't wake up in the morning.

00:28:09.060 | So, right off the bat, that's something you can be grateful for. I woke up today. I woke

00:28:14.020 | up today, I have all these opportunities, all these possibilities. I can breathe, I

00:28:19.340 | can taste, I can smell, I can see, I can feel, I can walk, I can run. You know, you can just

00:28:26.300 | go down the list and just start thinking of all the things that you're grateful for.

00:28:31.420 | I saw a guy here in Mexico City the other day. I was just walking down the street with

00:28:34.380 | a buddy of mine. This guy was on crutches and he was tethered to this dolly where he

00:28:40.300 | was carrying all this crap. It's like a homeless guy in the middle of the street, stumbling

00:28:46.140 | his way down the street. And one of his legs was like disfigured. I was like, man, that

00:28:51.420 | guy would give anything to just be able to walk normally, you know, and not have to rely

00:28:56.860 | on these crutches. And here we are walking, just completely taking it for granted. And

00:29:00.820 | I just dropped into gratitude in that moment. So, you know, if you can't see it for yourself,

00:29:05.700 | when you see other people who don't have the same blessings that you have, hopefully, you

00:29:10.620 | know, use that as an opportunity to remind yourself how blessed you are. If you're huffing

00:29:15.140 | and puffing because the elevator's out and you just walked up three flights of stairs,

00:29:20.060 | there's somebody out there that would give - that's not that far away from you right

00:29:23.100 | now that would give anything to be able to walk up those three flights of stairs, right?

00:29:27.940 | If your television is not working because the cable's out, but you can see there's somebody

00:29:33.160 | out there that's not far from you that would give anything to be able to see that the television

00:29:37.260 | doesn't work. So, you know, just radically dropping into gratitude will get you right

00:29:42.860 | into that present moment. And then from the present moment, you'll be able to see other

00:29:47.180 | things, other opportunities that are hiding all around you. And it's kind of like those

00:29:51.140 | magic eye puzzles, you know, those magic eye puzzles, those patterns -

00:29:54.660 | I was never good at those.

00:29:56.180 | Yeah, some people aren't because you're always trying to find the thing. But if you just

00:30:00.740 | surrender to it and you just allow it to be as chaotic as it wants to be without trying

00:30:05.900 | to control it, that's the condition that needs to happen. It's not that it's a suggestion,

00:30:12.300 | it needs to happen in order for the image to be revealed. And so, life can be like that

00:30:17.500 | too. The more you surrender to what is happening instead of playing the woulda coulda shoulda

00:30:21.860 | game and that again, that's presence. That's a foundation of presence. You'll start to

00:30:27.460 | see things and feel things that other people would not have an easy time seeing or experiencing

00:30:37.220 | because you really have to be connected to that moment in order to have that download,

00:30:41.820 | to have that epiphany.

00:30:44.980 | And then every moment becomes special and sentimental, right? And it's not just the

00:30:51.020 | old china set that your auntie's grandmother passed down, you know, sitting in the drawer

00:30:56.860 | somewhere collecting dust. Everything is sentimental, just like that china set is sentimental because

00:31:01.780 | you're present. So, there's a relationship between presence and feeling that sense of

00:31:09.820 | connection with all of the things that are around you and that way, everything is special.

00:31:14.140 | And that doesn't mean you can't also have huge, big, ambitious projects at work and

00:31:19.060 | be excited and you just need to live in the moment and just accept that everything is

00:31:22.860 | what it is, right?

00:31:23.860 | All right. So, I'll give you the difference in those two experiences. There's two kinds

00:31:29.620 | of people out in the world, okay? There's people who are looking for happiness on the

00:31:35.620 | other side of that project and there are people who are engaging in that project because they

00:31:41.220 | feel a sense of happiness inside, because they feel a sense of fulfillment inside. So,

00:31:45.980 | they're informed by where to put that attention next. And that project seems like a perfect

00:31:52.380 | outlet for what they already have. In other words, they're not looking to get happier

00:31:58.260 | on the yonder side of that achievement.

00:32:00.860 | And that's a big mistake that we oftentimes make is we think that the project or the achievement

00:32:08.660 | is going to lead to happiness. And so, we'll indulge ourselves in this project a lot of

00:32:17.180 | times at the expense of our health, at the expense of our relationships, at the expense

00:32:22.380 | of our connection to family because we think that, "Oh, I'm going to make all this money

00:32:26.260 | and then everybody's going to be happy once I become a multi-millionaire". And oftentimes

00:32:32.700 | the opposite happens, right? Starting with you, you're not any - if that was true that

00:32:38.460 | achieving things will make you happier in a lasting way, then think about it. You would

00:32:44.300 | still be as happy as you were the day you walked across the stage to get your high school

00:32:49.060 | diploma. Remember that day, how happy you were? And the day you got your first real

00:32:53.380 | job and the day you got the promotion and the day you got your Tesla and the day you

00:32:58.940 | moved into the nice house, right? There were these spikes of dopamine and joy and serotonin.

00:33:05.180 | But then after a week or two or a month, you settled back into wherever you were before

00:33:10.860 | you achieve the thing. And that's kind of how it goes.

00:33:15.420 | And so, the whole spiritual perspective is that happiness is not found outside through

00:33:21.580 | experience, it's found inside through cultivating it with your inner work. Practices like meditation,

00:33:28.300 | practices like gratitude, feeling more present, more in the moment. And if you do that, then

00:33:33.380 | not only are you going to have the spike of joy, but it's going to become stable at some

00:33:37.980 | point and it increases the baseline level of fulfillment, contentedness, peace and joy.

00:33:44.460 | And the way you know it's happening is that you need less and less to feel content. You're

00:33:52.780 | able to let go of control more and more to be present. And so, yeah, that's where you

00:34:00.380 | start to shift in the why, why you're doing the things that you're doing. It's not to

00:34:05.860 | try to get happy, it's because you're happy. That's why you took this job. That's why you

00:34:10.700 | dated this person. That's why you're engaging in this particular project.

00:34:15.020 | And everybody else on the outside may not understand, why did you give up being an investment

00:34:21.820 | banker to work at a homeless shelter, right? That's what felt aligned with the happiness

00:34:29.100 | that I have inside. And that's how I wanted to contribute. And so, you were feeling like

00:34:36.420 | your soul was being sucked at the investment banking situation and in the homeless shelter,

00:34:41.100 | you're lit up inside. And then what ends up happening is because you're so engaged and

00:34:48.140 | present in that homeless shelter position, somebody notices. And then they tap you to

00:34:55.060 | become the head of social workers in that city and then in that district and then in

00:35:02.180 | that state. And then next thing you know, you're on some panel in the White House, helping

00:35:06.540 | to engineer legislation around that work because you're the one that's obviously so engaged

00:35:14.700 | in it. And that took a leap of faith away from something that you thought was the higher

00:35:20.300 | paying job, but actually compared to how it was making you feel inside, it was the lower

00:35:25.500 | paying job. And the surface level lower paying job was actually the higher paying job because

00:35:32.860 | it lit you up more. And then it ultimately manifested in you making five times more because

00:35:39.940 | now you're a thought leader in that space. You're on the keynote circuit, you're writing

00:35:44.600 | books about it because you are so passionate about that work. And that's what we need to

00:35:49.340 | understand is that, again, the heart is already guiding you, but it's always going to take

00:35:53.880 | you out of your comfort zone and into your growth zone. And that's exactly where you

00:35:57.500 | want to be because that's where you need to be in order to stretch into the potential

00:36:02.500 | to fulfill that vision that you have for yourself.

00:36:05.100 | Yeah. I've even found that maybe the role at the homeless shelter in this example doesn't

00:36:11.540 | turn into the thing at the White House that's so much more lucrative for you. But maybe

00:36:16.700 | it puts you in the right state of mind to find another project that you start that becomes

00:36:21.180 | that. And so, I spent a lot of time talking about money, and there's this whole financial

00:36:27.960 | independence retire early movement. And what I've seen is that people who end up saving

00:36:32.860 | up enough money to retire thinking they're never going to do anything, end up spending

00:36:36.620 | their time on things they love, and then creating these second careers, which actually meant

00:36:41.680 | they probably could have "retired" per se, in quotes, a lot earlier.

00:36:47.900 | Because when you have the time and space to find things you're excited about and only

00:36:51.720 | work on those, very often, not always, but very often, they end up turning into things

00:36:57.180 | that can support you and your family in ways that you probably didn't imagine beforehand.

00:37:01.580 | Yeah, 100%, man. And all roads lead to Rome. All roads lead to your purpose. You can't

00:37:08.140 | screw it up, actually. So, even if you stay in that investment banking job long enough,

00:37:13.340 | eventually it'll become so painful if it's not aligned. What I mean is if it's not aligned,

00:37:18.780 | sometimes it is aligned. And you end up, again, like somebody like Jamie Dimon, and you're

00:37:23.060 | creating policy or at least influencing policy that could be bringing economic empowerment

00:37:28.700 | to certain communities and things like that. Or you're writing about it, or you're speaking

00:37:32.980 | about it. But either way, you can't really go wrong as long as you're... My work is all

00:37:39.660 | about just awareness, bringing more awareness to doing the things that you're doing and

00:37:45.240 | checking in and seeing if this feels aligned.

00:37:48.460 | Because I want you - I want all the listeners to have the adventurous route. I don't want

00:37:53.980 | you having the dramatic - I don't want you being in a hospital and you can't use half

00:37:58.260 | your body because you stayed in it too long and then it manifested physically. And even

00:38:02.860 | that's a part of your purpose. Maybe you'll end up writing about that, right? But that's

00:38:07.060 | just a more - it's not the more enjoyable path. The more enjoyable path is the path

00:38:12.220 | of the unknown, where you're choosing this consciously. You're choosing, "I'm gonna leave

00:38:18.300 | this and I'm gonna do this other thing because it lights me up inside. I don't know how it's

00:38:22.340 | gonna turn out, but I'm trusting that it's going to lead me somewhere that is gonna allow

00:38:29.220 | me to become more useful. So, if retiring early lights me up inside, then that's gonna

00:38:36.860 | lead me somewhere that's gonna allow me to become more useful. If continuing to work

00:38:42.180 | lights me up inside, then that's gonna lead me somewhere. You know, if you're like the

00:38:45.300 | Picasso where, you know, Picasso isn't thinking about retiring from painting because he loves

00:38:49.660 | it so much. So, if your work is so close to your heart in that way, you're not thinking

00:38:55.580 | about "when am I going to retire", right? All you're thinking about is "when can I go

00:38:59.100 | and keep creating and keep finding solutions". So, whatever path you're on, you're gonna

00:39:05.620 | get to the - you're gonna eventually arrive at the awareness that you've been on your

00:39:12.700 | purpose the entire time and everything was preparing you.

00:39:16.460 | - And what would you say to someone who's like, "Gosh, I know I'm not in the right thing,

00:39:19.420 | but I don't know what the alternative is". You know, they hate the investment banking

00:39:23.380 | job but they don't have an alternative right now. They don't have the thing that lights

00:39:28.500 | them up.

00:39:29.500 | - So, I'll tell you what they do have though, they have curiosity about something. And the

00:39:35.180 | reason why they may dismiss it is because it doesn't make sense. It doesn't align with

00:39:41.860 | whatever they think their thing is. And I'll give you an example about this, okay? So,

00:39:46.940 | I remember one time I was teaching meditation, which I've been doing for 15 plus years now.

00:39:51.580 | I was teaching meditation in New York City, staying at an Airbnb. And I'm thinking, you

00:39:59.220 | know, it's my dream job and I just want to get as many people as possible into these

00:40:03.080 | meditation trainings and expose people to this knowledge. So, I'm walking through Union

00:40:11.460 | Square one night, which is in the middle of Manhattan on my way back to my apartment after

00:40:16.840 | teaching a class. Something tells me to go to Barnes and Noble, which is at the north

00:40:23.340 | end of the Union Square and to get a Rubik's cube and to learn how to solve it just out

00:40:30.420 | of the blue. Like again, it's 9.45 at night, I get this intuitive hit. And immediately

00:40:38.560 | I started thinking, well, it's almost 10 o'clock, they're probably closed, I'm kind of tired,

00:40:43.460 | just want to go home. But again, I had been doing so much inner work that my still small

00:40:48.460 | voice now became the loud, annoying voice. It was like, "Get your ass up in Barnes and

00:40:53.120 | Noble right now, get that Rubik's cube, hurry up before they close." So, I'm like, "Okay,

00:40:58.340 | cool." So, I go and I get the Rubik's cube because I spent a lot of time in that Barnes

00:41:01.980 | and Noble. So, I knew where the toy section was and they had one Rubik's cube left. I

00:41:06.740 | paid for it. I was like the last person in the checkout lane before they closed. And

00:41:11.700 | I get home and my friend calls. This is my friend who - I talk to him about money and

00:41:16.620 | all that all the time and business strategy. And he goes, "What are you doing?" And I said,

00:41:22.060 | "I just got a Rubik's cube and I'm learning how to solve it." He goes, "What?" I said,

00:41:26.500 | "Yeah, I got a Rubik's cube." He goes, "What are you doing playing with the Rubik's cube?"

00:41:29.420 | And he starts giving me all this litany of reasons why I need to put the Rubik's cube

00:41:33.260 | aside and spend that energy on more productive things.

00:41:38.740 | So, this isn't the first time I've bewildered my friends with my weird quirky, you know,

00:41:46.340 | interests. So, I just kind of ignored it and I went on Google and I researched how do you

00:41:52.940 | solve a Rubik's cube? I had no idea. Turns out there's an algorithm to solving the Rubik's

00:41:58.900 | cube. And you just have to memorize this sequence and you can solve a cube. I thought you had

00:42:04.220 | to be a genius to solve a Rubik's cube. It turns out that's not how it works. So, I started

00:42:08.820 | going through the sequence and mastering the turns and it took me about three days to finally

00:42:13.900 | learn how to solve the Rubik's cube within a few minutes, which is the most amazing thing.

00:42:17.700 | If you're ever on a New York subway and you pull out a Rubik's cube and you start solving

00:42:21.060 | it, it's incredible. People are like gawking at you because they think you're a genius,

00:42:26.380 | but you're not a genius. You just learned the sequence.

00:42:29.900 | So anyways, I'm bringing this Rubik's cube with me everywhere I go now because it's like

00:42:34.440 | a little party trick. And then it dawns on me one day that the way you solve a Rubik's

00:42:42.980 | cube, which is how everybody solves it, you solve it in rows. You start with the bottom

00:42:47.620 | row, the middle row and the top row, and then you do some more turns and the whole thing

00:42:52.420 | gets solved. The way that works is very similar to the way meditation works. It works in essentially

00:43:00.820 | in levels. So, the base level is like rest gets restored and then from there, your immune

00:43:08.860 | system comes back online and then your reproduction system comes back online and then your hormonal

00:43:15.280 | balancing system, the endocrine system comes back online, et cetera.

00:43:19.340 | And then the whole thing comes back into balance. And I was like, man, this is - I never would

00:43:24.060 | have guessed that there was a connection between a Rubik's cube and meditation. I was so curious

00:43:29.360 | about it that I decided to make a video. This is back in like 2006 or 7. So, there was this

00:43:36.220 | new website, newish website, YouTube. And I was like, I'm going to do a YouTube video,

00:43:40.340 | my first YouTube video. And I got my point and shoot camera, there were no smartphones.

00:43:46.600 | And I turned my living room in Venice, California into like a little makeshift studio. I was

00:43:51.820 | like setting it up on shoe boxes and stuff. And I created this video where I demonstrated

00:43:56.940 | solving the Rubik's cube and then I had to learn how to put captions over it. And that

00:44:05.020 | video, I uploaded it, it went viral. And people in the meditation community started sharing

00:44:11.740 | it like wildfire. And guess what? More people came to learn meditation.

00:44:18.180 | The thing that I wanted ultimately, my heart voice knew that that's what I wanted and it

00:44:26.240 | took me on this really beautiful adventurous path to get the result that I was after, that

00:44:32.660 | I never could have imagined in a million years. The first step was to take your ass in Barnes

00:44:37.180 | and Noble and get that thing, get that Rubik's cube. And then spend a few days learning how

00:44:41.340 | to solve it and then use it as a party trick and then figure out how to make a YouTube

00:44:45.940 | video, figure out how to do captions, iMovie, you know.

00:44:49.140 | So, the whole path took a lot of work. It took a lot of focus. It took a lot of saying

00:44:55.060 | no to things because I was working so intently on this project. But the end result was I

00:45:03.460 | had this thing that was now driving people to learn how to meditate. And that's how curiosity

00:45:11.020 | works. You never know where it's going to lead to. You just trust that if it's genuine

00:45:15.780 | and it's sincere and your intentions are good and you follow through with it and it's not

00:45:20.900 | harming anybody, it's going to lead you to the place that you've always envisioned for

00:45:25.940 | yourself but in the most unpredictable and amazing way possible.

00:45:30.500 | So, the answer I guess is if you don't know what you should be doing, just follow the

00:45:34.380 | curiosity and see where it goes.

00:45:35.980 | Follow the curiosity. That's the gateway to your purpose. I say in the book, you don't

00:45:39.780 | have to ever worry about your purpose, just follow your curiosity and your purpose will

00:45:43.020 | find you.

00:45:44.020 | I love that.

00:45:45.020 | That's the hack.

00:45:46.020 | In many ways.

00:45:47.020 | That's the hack to finding your purpose is follow your curiosity relentlessly.

00:45:50.500 | No judgment.

00:45:51.500 | Just see where it takes you.

00:45:52.500 | Yeah.

00:45:53.500 | Well, you mentioned meditation a few times and it brought me back to a few questions

00:45:55.900 | I didn't ask and I want to come back to because I think it's important. I know a lot of people

00:46:03.660 | are thinking there's a lot of things I could do to make my life better. I could start eating

00:46:08.380 | better. I could start exercising. I could be sleeping better. So, I've got two questions.

00:46:12.340 | One is how would you weigh those things, right? If someone's trying to decide they're not

00:46:17.180 | exercising now, they're not meditating, they're not sleeping well, maybe they're not - all

00:46:23.300 | these things. How would you prioritize which one is the higher order impact on your life?

00:46:28.780 | That's a great question. Okay. So, here's how you want to look at it. You need a key

00:46:32.980 | habit. You need a key habit, okay? So, let's say you choose exercise. You decide I'm going

00:46:42.580 | to go to the gym, you know, like clockwork every day. Is going to the gym going to make

00:46:49.700 | you want to be kinder to your family? Maybe, maybe not. Is going to the gym going to make

00:46:57.500 | you want to sit down and meditate? Maybe not more than you did before, right? So then,

00:47:03.700 | okay, maybe I can eliminate the gym. Okay, what about eating healthy? Is eating healthy

00:47:07.580 | going to make you want to go to the gym? Maybe, maybe not. Is it going to make me want to

00:47:11.420 | be nice to my family? I don't know. Is it going to make me want to be more purposeful

00:47:15.220 | in my life?

00:47:16.220 | So, you can keep going down the list and what I've found is that actually meditation is

00:47:22.180 | probably one of the best key habits because it gets rid of that one thing that makes you

00:47:28.180 | not want to go to the gym which is stress, that makes you not want to eat healthy which

00:47:32.300 | is stress, that makes you not want to be nice which is stress, that makes you not sleep

00:47:36.980 | well which is stress. So, stress can be tied to most of the bad habits that we have in

00:47:46.360 | our lives. When you can eliminate stress by exposing it to its kryptonite which is again,

00:47:53.580 | it's not that meditation is the superman. Meditation will help manufacture endogenous

00:48:00.340 | chemicals such as serotonin, dopamine, and anandamine and all the bliss chemicals, oxytocin

00:48:07.860 | that melt stress away inside of the body. And when you have a body that is freer of

00:48:13.940 | stress then you naturally feel more inclined to do the other things that you know you want

00:48:19.940 | to do in order to have the best life possible.

00:48:23.540 | The other thing about it and this is potentially even more important is that meditation is

00:48:28.500 | kind of like - it's like you know Wonder Woman's lasso. When she lasso somebody, her superpower

00:48:35.380 | is that lasso forces them to tell the truth. Meditation is like a truth serum. It's really

00:48:40.780 | hard to bullshit yourself when you're meditating every day. It's hard to lie to yourself about

00:48:45.680 | what you are going to do, what you're not going to do, you know, and walk around pretending

00:48:50.260 | that things are the case when they're not the case and you find yourself having more

00:48:54.900 | moments of boldness, more honest conversations.

00:48:58.580 | You're calling yourself out more about, you know, BSing yourself and then that's also

00:49:04.140 | - that also plays a role in you forming good habits because you're now able to say, "Okay,

00:49:11.220 | I know I'm not going to wake up at six in the morning to work on my memoir. So, maybe

00:49:15.580 | I need to institute some other sort of system that's going to put me in a better position

00:49:20.620 | to do that. And maybe that requires getting some accountability. Maybe I need to drop

00:49:25.080 | money on a coach because that's what I really pay attention to is when I spend money on

00:49:28.740 | something." And so, you do that and that's your path, right?

00:49:34.020 | And again, this is - it's different for everybody but I think the thing that's lacking for most

00:49:37.780 | of us is honesty. We're lying to ourselves about what we think we're going to do. Our

00:49:42.780 | intentions are great. We have the best of intentions. It's just that we don't have any

00:49:46.220 | history of evidence that we're going to actually do these things that we're telling ourselves

00:49:51.580 | we're going to do. And if we're honest with ourselves about that, then we can put ourselves

00:49:55.220 | in a better position and there's a million ways to do that.

00:49:58.020 | I have two thoughts. One, is there a length of time you think someone needs to at a minimum

00:50:02.780 | kind of commit before they feel like they might be able to check in and see some benefit?

00:50:07.140 | Obviously, if you just meditate one time for 15 minutes, you're not going to see a ton

00:50:11.700 | of impact on your life.

00:50:13.860 | It's less about time and more about understanding what you're doing. If you don't know what

00:50:17.380 | you're doing, even two minutes is going to feel like a torture, a nightmare. But if you

00:50:22.100 | know what you're doing, 20 minutes is not going to be long enough. You're going to want

00:50:24.860 | to go longer than 20.

00:50:26.700 | So, provided that you know what you're doing, then you want to do about minimum 10 minutes,

00:50:33.820 | maximum 20 minutes.

00:50:35.660 | But how many days do you think someone should commit to doing this? I mean, I know you probably

00:50:41.220 | would say all of the days, but is there, you know, go for three weeks and see what happens.

00:50:47.300 | Go for a month, go for a week.

00:50:49.140 | You need to do it 90 days in order for it to become a habit, in order for your body

00:50:52.520 | to get used to the chemicals being released during the meditation. And then it becomes

00:50:56.420 | - it's in the same category as coffee, cigarettes, you know, sugar. You don't have to plan it.

00:51:03.860 | Your body will just naturally crave it and you'll rearrange your entire schedule to do

00:51:08.380 | it.

00:51:09.380 | So, if you want to give yourself that level of freedom, and that's - it's a freedom.

00:51:14.180 | You have to earn it, but it's a freedom.

00:51:16.100 | That consistency leads to the freedom of, "Oh, my body is craving this experience now."

00:51:21.140 | So, yeah, 90 days, three months.

00:51:23.580 | 10, 20 minutes a day.

00:51:25.340 | I would say 20 minutes a day for three months in a row. And you will be - you will find

00:51:30.720 | yourself dependent on meditation.

00:51:34.020 | And you said, you know, a coach, accountability. Are there other ways that are maybe not as

00:51:39.780 | expensive as a coach? Could you have a friend? Could you have a partner?

00:51:42.940 | You know those videos where it says, "If I lost everything, this is how I would rebuild

00:51:46.740 | my wealth." If I didn't know anything about - if I lost all of my experience in meditation,

00:51:51.780 | what I would do is I would get my - I would even get Travel Lite, which is my recent book.

00:51:56.700 | I would get my book Bliss More, which is my How to Succeed in Meditation Without Really

00:52:00.860 | Trying book.

00:52:01.860 | And I would read that book and I would listen to the audio of that book, which will be an

00:52:07.140 | investment of about 20 bucks.

00:52:09.420 | And I would do everything that that book tells me to do, which is essentially to adopt that

00:52:14.540 | nonchalant attitude and to be consistent for 90 days.

00:52:17.660 | And it helps, you know, there's all kinds of questions that everybody and their mother

00:52:20.900 | has had with meditation.

00:52:22.340 | Should I be focusing my breath? Should I use crystals? Should I do it at this time? Should

00:52:25.900 | I do it right before bed? Should I do it right after I eat?

00:52:28.300 | All those questions are answered in that book and it'll give you the playbook for getting

00:52:32.780 | a practice started.

00:52:34.500 | And then once you start to get enough positive experiences, maybe you want to take it to

00:52:38.140 | the next level where you actually go and study with somebody.

00:52:41.820 | And what gets unlocked at these levels, you know, when you start to study with someone

00:52:45.780 | else? Do you get more out of it?

00:52:48.380 | Oh, 100%, yeah. It's like learning how to swim from a book. I mean, technically you

00:52:54.340 | can do it, you know, they'll tell you, okay, you need to torque your body here, you need

00:52:58.300 | to elongate, you need to move.

00:52:59.580 | But there's nothing like having a teacher watch you swim and give you real-time feedback

00:53:05.740 | and give you drills and, you know, and answer your questions in real time.

00:53:11.540 | So, having that verification and validation of technique and form and experiences can

00:53:18.340 | really accelerate your enjoyability factor when it comes to meditation. Otherwise, you're

00:53:25.460 | kind of reinventing the wheel every day.

00:53:27.780 | I think we covered a lot of things. The one thing we didn't talk about, which is funny

00:53:31.000 | because I think travel is a very common theme of the show. I love to travel, we have whole

00:53:35.860 | episodes about places and you know, one of the things that as you were talking about

00:53:42.700 | happiness and happiness, it made me realize, you know, you only have a backpack.

00:53:47.940 | You know, I said in the intro, but for people that don't know, I don't mean, you know, you

00:53:51.740 | have a backpack. I mean, like all of your worldly possessions are fit in a carry on

00:53:56.380 | a small backpack. I realized you probably... It's not that you thought getting rid of your

00:54:02.140 | possessions would make you happy. It seems like you realize you're already happy without

00:54:05.660 | them, why have more?

00:54:07.540 | But talk a little bit about the transition to so few things and what that's unlocked

00:54:13.580 | for you.

00:54:14.580 | Yeah. People ask me, you know, "When did you start becoming a minimalist?" And what they're

00:54:18.180 | expecting me to say is that, "Oh, I became minimalist on May 31st, 2018 when I moved

00:54:23.540 | out of my two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica and into my carry-on bag, which was the first

00:54:28.460 | apartment I had was my carry-on bag. And then a year later, I downsized into a backpack

00:54:32.900 | when I realized I had too much stuff." But the real answer is I became a minimalist in

00:54:39.700 | 2003 when I started taking my meditation practice seriously. Because what that did was it helped

00:54:45.860 | me to create internal space. And it's the internal spaciousness, aka fulfillment, that

00:54:54.340 | genuine sense of fulfillment that allowed me to become more and more unattached to things

00:55:01.740 | going in the way that I thought that they should have gone in.

00:55:04.460 | And if you think about it and this is, you know, the listeners can run this thought experiment.

00:55:09.180 | I want you to think about the last time you suffered, the last time you experienced suffering.

00:55:14.500 | And let's just keep it really light, emotional suffering, okay? Not like you got hit by a

00:55:20.140 | car but just emotional suffering. I guarantee you, it was for one of two reasons. Either

00:55:26.820 | something didn't happen in the way that you thought it should have happened or it didn't

00:55:31.860 | happen in a time you thought it should have happened in.

00:55:35.300 | So, all suffering, not pain, but suffering, which is the soundtrack on top of pain, all

00:55:41.940 | suffering leads back to some expectation. And that expectation is tied to our past.

00:55:50.340 | Because we've learned, we've been conditioned to believe that something needs to happen

00:55:54.100 | in this amount of time or it needs to happen in this way. And maybe we've experienced pain

00:55:59.940 | throughout the years that has helped to hardwire that expectation. And if it doesn't happen

00:56:05.940 | today or tomorrow in the way that I think it should happen, then I'm having a bad day.

00:56:12.140 | And that's what makes a bad day, is a day that we can't adapt to change. It's really

00:56:18.660 | that simple. And a good day is a day where we may be experiencing lots of demands and

00:56:24.340 | lots of pressures but we're moving through it, we're navigating it successfully, we're

00:56:28.780 | adapting to it. And that feels good, there's a feeling tone that comes from that. When

00:56:33.540 | you have a day full of demands and you're just able - you're hitting every single one,

00:56:38.540 | you're moving through them, you're learning things, you're present, you're engaged.

00:56:43.700 | And if you have a string of those kinds of days, then that leads to a successful life.

00:56:49.260 | I'm talking about feeling tone now, not like, "Oh, I have more money than the next person".

00:56:54.440 | But you can have all the money in the world and still feel like a failure and still feel

00:56:58.420 | - and still suffer. Or you could be in a situation where you just have a modest amount of money

00:57:03.580 | but you've adapted to the changes in your relationship successfully, you've adapted

00:57:08.300 | to the changes in your family dynamics successfully, you've adapted to - you know, there was a

00:57:13.220 | storm in your area and something happened to your house, you adapted to that successfully.

00:57:18.300 | And every time you are able to successfully adapt to something, you get gifted with some

00:57:22.780 | insight, some perspective that allows you to help others, to be more useful in the world.

00:57:28.540 | So, maybe you wrote something, you started a blog, you started a podcast, you helped

00:57:33.300 | people in some way and that comes with its own sense of gratification and fulfillment.

00:57:38.260 | And so, you keep that happening from all sides and that's what a successful life is at the

00:57:43.460 | end of the day. So obviously, you know, practices like meditation are helpful for that because

00:57:47.620 | it allows you to just be more present.

00:57:49.860 | But then it's not enough to just, you know, solve everything. You still have to be the

00:57:55.060 | best version of you out in the world, whatever that looks like. And you still have to be

00:57:59.020 | moving forward and progressing and growing and stretching into your potential. And that's

00:58:03.580 | where you really get the biggest wins in life is when you're doing that as a process, not

00:58:11.700 | as a destination, but as a process.

00:58:14.260 | It's funny because I feel like almost anyone you talk to that practices minimalism in terms

00:58:20.020 | of material items, their answer seems to be, you should get rid of your things. And yours

00:58:24.500 | is like, I haven't heard you once tell me that I should live out of a backpack. It's

00:58:29.180 | more like that comes later after you figure out.

00:58:31.820 | The backpack experience is my version of stretching into my potential. So, I'm not ever telling

00:58:39.100 | anybody else to do that, but you have your version of that and your version of that may

00:58:44.020 | be starting the business, starting the podcast. It may be starting the garden. It may be volunteering

00:58:50.220 | at a homeless shelter. It may be something that stretches you, something that's a little

00:58:54.060 | bit uncomfortable, right? And that's what the backpack thing was for me. The idea of

00:58:58.420 | doing it, it was something that excited me, but it also made me really uncomfortable because

00:59:05.500 | there was, you know, I was in my forties, I was in my mid forties when I made that decision.

00:59:10.620 | I was childless and didn't have a relation. I'd just broken up with my girlfriend and

00:59:14.660 | I felt like I had all of the metrics that one would need. I have my shit together. I'm

00:59:21.500 | a good looking guy. I'm tall. I'm successful in my career. I have a purpose, a passion.

00:59:28.580 | I've got this beautiful apartment, 10 minutes walking from the beach, under market value.

00:59:32.900 | I've got money saved up. I've got a supportive family, strong connection to my parents. I've

00:59:37.300 | got all the things, but I can't seem to get a relationship that makes me want to take

00:59:45.020 | it to the next level yet. And I'm not getting any younger. So, it's like, you know, I could

00:59:53.140 | have easily talked myself out of that and thought, you know, this is silly. This is

00:59:57.060 | stupid. Women aren't going to be excited about some old ass dude who lives from a backpack.

01:00:02.940 | You know, that's not going to make them want to get married and have kids. So, it was like

01:00:07.660 | flying in the face of the conventional wisdom, but that wasn't the instruction. The call

01:00:14.420 | from inside was now's the time to have this experience. And I'm still in process. I'm

01:00:19.580 | still not married. I mean, I have relationships and stuff, you know, and those are wonderful,

01:00:23.860 | but we'll have to see how everything turns out, you know, but I've learned a long, long,

01:00:29.140 | long, long time ago that when you ignore that inner calling, things don't get better. Oftentimes

01:00:34.100 | they get worse. And if we have more time, I could share some of those experiences with

01:00:38.260 | you, but when you do follow that inner calling relentlessly, things only ever get better.

01:00:44.900 | You only ever win. And when I say win, I'm not talking about money, although that could

01:00:49.900 | be one of the symptoms. You can sleep at night knowing that you did your best and you lived

01:00:57.700 | your life in alignment and integrity with your heart. And that is the biggest win that

01:01:03.620 | I can imagine.

01:01:04.620 | - Are there any other topics or, I don't know, tactics or optimizations and throughout this

01:01:11.380 | that we missed?

01:01:12.380 | - I mean, there's tons. I feel like I included a lot in this book specifically with things

01:01:17.340 | like working out.

01:01:18.340 | - All right, let's give us one there.

01:01:21.220 | - Well, I have this, you know, again, working out is tough for even people who've been working

01:01:26.580 | out for their whole life, like myself. I put myself in that category. I didn't really look

01:01:32.740 | forward to going to the gym until I started taking the minimalist approach to working

01:01:37.500 | out. And what that means is doing less, but doing it with a level of quality that left

01:01:47.660 | you wanting more. And so, instead of going to the gym and doing a whole hour long regimen

01:01:55.740 | where you're super setting this and that and doing this and finishing with that, I just

01:01:59.900 | do one exercise. I do one - there's like five to 10 lifts and I'm focusing on resistance

01:02:10.300 | training now because it's just important for maintaining muscle mass. But there's like

01:02:15.300 | five to 10 lifts that you can do that basically hits the whole body over the course of doing

01:02:21.260 | those five to 10 lifts. And so, I've broken down my whole week in accordance to those

01:02:26.100 | lifts. They call them compound lifts, which means they help you contract multiple parts

01:02:34.140 | of the body. So, for instance, squatting. Squatting affects your legs, it affects your

01:02:39.460 | core and it affects your back. So, squatting is you standing underneath a bar on a squat

01:02:45.580 | rack and you just bending your knees and squatting down as much as is comfortable and coming

01:02:52.140 | back - pressing back up. And so, Thursdays are my squat day. So, I do one exercise, five

01:03:00.260 | sets of five squats and I go for progressive overload, which means doing a little bit more

01:03:05.180 | each time and that's it. That's all I do. So, the whole workout takes me like 20 minutes

01:03:10.540 | and then I leave the gym. Even if I want to do more, I leave the gym. Then I come back

01:03:14.540 | on Friday and I do pull-ups and I'll do five sets of five weighted pull-ups. And then I'll

01:03:21.220 | come back on Saturday and I'll do arms. And like that, Mondays are bench presses and Tuesdays

01:03:27.820 | are dead lifts. And so, I have something for each day.

01:03:32.140 | And then what I do is I do affirmations instead of counting down reps. Instead of going five,

01:03:38.380 | four, three, two, one or one, two, three, four, five, I'll do an affirmation. An affirmation

01:03:44.780 | is a positive saying that helps to integrate something that you want to experience in your

01:03:53.100 | life. So, for instance, you could say "I am perfect whole complete". "I am perfect whole

01:04:01.620 | complete", that's an affirmation. "I am perfect whole complete". I need for nothing, right?

01:04:06.100 | In other words, you could also - on the next set, you can do your wife. Jill is perfect

01:04:11.980 | whole complete. And then your kids, Dan is perfect whole complete. Jane is perfect whole

01:04:17.460 | complete, like that.

01:04:19.060 | And so, it just gives you a different energy when you're lifting because it's like you

01:04:22.740 | got to finish the sentence, otherwise they're not going to be perfect whole complete. And

01:04:28.580 | at the same time, it's almost like the lifting becomes like a meditation or like a prayer

01:04:34.060 | for you. And it's a different energy, you know, it's a different way to bring excitement

01:04:38.820 | into the experience. And you did something useful for other people. So, it just checks

01:04:45.680 | a lot of boxes, which is what I mean by spiritual minimalism is, you know, doing more with less.

01:04:53.620 | You could have counted numbers, you know, there's no harm in doing that. But now you've

01:04:59.220 | got to still do your prayers, you still got to do your affirmations, you still got to

01:05:02.740 | do your meditation, all that. But you can combine all that too and make it into this

01:05:06.540 | really beautiful special ritual that you get to enjoy.

01:05:10.860 | So, I have a lot of tips for that inside of the book, how to bring more of that meditative

01:05:17.420 | component into everything you're doing, even like walking things into, you know, bringing

01:05:21.780 | - instead of just sitting there counting your steps, you'd make it into like more of a meditation

01:05:25.620 | as well.

01:05:26.620 | Yeah, there were a lot of those in the book that I enjoyed reading. There's some stuff

01:05:29.300 | on communication that I thought was really interesting. And so, I'm not going to ask

01:05:32.740 | you all of them because anyone here can just go and check out the book as I did.

01:05:37.180 | And yeah, so before we wrap, two things. One, I always like to ask people, especially people

01:05:42.780 | who live abroad, is there - if someone's coming to where you are in the world, there's a little

01:05:48.020 | bit of a detour from everything we've said, but how would you recommend them spend a day

01:05:52.300 | or two, maybe with at least one or two specific things that you love in the city?

01:05:58.140 | I'm in Mexico City and first of all, if you live in the States, it's a very easy place

01:06:04.260 | to get to. Most cities have direct flights to Mexico City. And if you only have a day

01:06:11.260 | to spend in Mexico City, I would say to get yourself maybe an Airbnb in an area called

01:06:21.700 | La Condesa. And in La Condesa, it's one of the most - they refer to it as like the bubble

01:06:28.420 | of Mexico City, right? It's where a lot of the expats live and it's one of the most walkable

01:06:34.500 | areas. And there's like a thousand cafes, there's a bunch of little shops and there

01:06:40.540 | are central parks. There's one park called Parque Mexico. So, I would just say just land

01:06:49.980 | in La Condesa somewhere, anywhere and just walk around and you can just kind of roam

01:06:54.700 | around and you can use Parque Mexico as your sort of central point of focus. So, if you're

01:07:01.540 | moving, if you get lost, just walk - look at your map on your phone and walk towards

01:07:05.540 | Parque Mexico. And the closer you get to that park, the more cafes, the more restaurants,

01:07:10.140 | the more shops you're going to see. And it's a great place to just get lost and not have

01:07:13.940 | an agenda at all.

01:07:15.580 | And everyone's out walking and there's these beautiful little paths that are tree-lined

01:07:19.620 | and tons of dogs if you're a dog lover and outdoor seating for - in these cafes. So,

01:07:26.260 | it's just a wonderful place just to kind of get lost and roam around. And if you are a

01:07:32.100 | student of language, you can practice what little Spanish you may know with the vendors

01:07:38.540 | and whoever's around. And yeah, I would say that's - you're going to stumble upon some

01:07:44.940 | wonderful food and some really charming little shops and lots of street vendors and things

01:07:50.980 | like that.

01:07:51.980 | Just don't - whatever you do, don't drink the tap water. Don't try to - don't brush

01:07:55.420 | your teeth with it. Just use bottled water for that. You can drink tap water at the restaurants

01:08:00.460 | because they filter it.

01:08:01.460 | - I will say, I think there's one actually right near the park. I think that El Morro

01:08:06.940 | is a churrascaria - or churrea. I can't remember the way to pronounce it. But they have amazing

01:08:12.380 | churros. And I'll push you to give one recommendation if there's a place you like to eat, if someone's

01:08:18.100 | looking for a snack.

01:08:19.100 | - All right. So, it's a small little cafe but they have a little something for everybody.

01:08:23.060 | It's called Canopia. Canopia. C-A-N-O-P-I-A. My friend Rocio runs it. It's right in the

01:08:31.580 | heart of Condesa and it's a beautiful little place. Really eclectic crowd. They're open

01:08:38.160 | all day long and yeah, it's like a nice little wine bar vibe at night. It's a nice little

01:08:44.420 | sort of lunch-breakfast type of spot during the day. So, I would say check out Canopia.

01:08:49.140 | - Love it. Thank you. Okay. Where can we send people who want - I mean, we talked about

01:08:53.940 | the book Travel Light. It's out now. By the time this comes out, check that out. Bliss

01:08:59.160 | More for meditation, everything. Where else can we send people?

01:09:03.460 | - You can find me on the socials @lightwatkins and you can also find me at lightwatkins.com.

01:09:08.720 | - And the podcast. I mean, if you're here, if you're listening to a podcast, you have

01:09:12.880 | your own.

01:09:13.880 | - Podcast is The Light Watkins Show.

01:09:14.880 | - Yeah.

01:09:15.880 | - So, I would say the website lightwatkins.com is the portal for everything that I'm doing.

01:09:19.800 | The books, the podcast, the online community that I have and everything else that I'm doing,

01:09:25.080 | the retreats that I'm doing, et cetera.

01:09:27.040 | - Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. This is awesome.

01:09:29.400 | - A hundred percent. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for having me.

Reduce Stress, Relax Your Mind and Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying

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