Dhru Purohit Show - How to Stop Overthinking and Tune Into Your Inner Guidance with Light Watkins

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and Pendulum. A lot of people have fear around meditation. They don’t want to sit alone with their thoughts, and many times people give up because they feel like they can’t turn off their minds.  But meditation isn’t actually about what happens while you sit with your eyes closed, and it’s not about turning off your mind. It’s about mind-full-ness—the noticing of the ebb and flow of your thoughts—and the benefits you get throughout the rest of your day. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with our friend Light Watkins to talk about overcoming fear around meditation, creating space from our critical thought patterns, and getting intentional about our values, time, and relationships.  Light has been operating in the meditation space since 1998, first as a practitioner, then as an apprentice to his Vedic Meditation teacher, and finally as a teacher himself. Prior to the pandemic, he was traveling the world from a single backpack and giving talks on happiness, mindfulness, inspiration, and meditation, as well as leading popular meditation trainings and retreats. In this episode, we dive into:    -Breaking through hypercritical self-talk (1:11) -Why our mind is so active at night (12:32) -Light’s minimalist approach to social media (20:06) -Why self-discipline is about honesty (35:17) -How to tap into your inner guidance (37:18)  -The importance of inner work when it comes to relationships (45:31) -How to cultivate happiness (1:07:15) -Light’s approach to meditation (1:11:51) -Spiritual minimalism (1:25:45) Also mentioned in this episode: -The Inner Gym: A 30-Day Workout for Strengthening Happiness -Knowing Where to Look: 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration -The Happiness Insiders  For more on Light Watkins, follow him on Instagram @lightwatkins, Twitter @lightwatkins, and through his website, lightwatkins.com. Listen to his podcast, The Light Watkins Show at lightwatkins.com/podcast. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and Pendulum. Cozy Earth are the most comfortable, temperature-regulating, and nontoxic sheets on the market. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRU. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Akkermansia in a probiotic capsule. To receive 20% off your first purchase of Pendulum’s Akkermansia probiotic supplement, go to Pendulumlife.com and use code DHRU20. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People who have been insomnia acts for years and after a week or two, they're sleeping at night. And they didn't do anything different other than sit down in a chair, close their eyes for 20 minutes twice a day and meditate. Hi, everyone, Drew Prod here. On today's podcast, we're talking about how to step out of negative thought patterns, negative thought patterns that grip you, that take you over, critical, hypercritical patterns that you not have only towards others, but mostly towards yourself. how do you step into more kindness with yourself and not beat yourself up all the time? This conversation that we're having today with my dear friend, Light Watkins, bestselling author and meditation teacher to many high-profile individuals out there is a fascinating conversation about how to step out beyond your mind,

to squash negative thought patterns, to stop becoming hypercritical of yourself, to reduce comparison. And if you're constantly comparing yourself to other people thinking that they have it figured out and you don't, this conversation is for you. Light, welcome back on the podcast. A pleasure to have you here. I want to jump right in and I want to talk about when people come to and they say, I'm hypercritical of myself. I beat myself up all the time.

What do you as a meditation teacher for now, how many years? I've been doing this gosh man for over 15 almost 20 years so as a bestselling author meditation teacher for 15 years somebody comes up to you and says I'm hypercritical on myself I beat myself up all the time why do I do that and what should I do what do you say well first of all we're all somewhat critical of ourselves right what what a practice like meditation does is it creates space in between the criticism and our true identity And if someone doesn't have, hasn't created that space, then there's a good chance that they're attaching their identity to those hypercritical thoughts. And so if I hear someone who's doing that, what it tells me is that they haven't really been investing in their inner work.

And look, let's just be completely 100 about it, right? We spend so much time, attention, energy focus on thinking about wealth, accumulating wealth. maintaining wealth, protecting whatever assets we have. And we treat our inner work like it's some kind of hobby. Like it's a, you know, if I have time to do it this weekend, you know, maybe I'll spend 10 minutes reading an affirmation or something like that, right? We treat it like that. And then we're just supposed to, you know, accidentally find our way into happiness. Like, oops, I'm happy. You know, it doesn't work like that. You have to put as much energy, focus, attention, planning, strategizing into your inner work that you do into your financial life, right?

We should probably be careful that because a lot of people don't put a lot of attention on their financial life either. Well, and that's why people end up in the situations we end up in, right? I mean, you can't expect things to fall into place and to be balanced if you're not putting attention on them. And happiness is not an accident. I mean, we're born, you know, in that happy state, meaning we have that childlike sense of wander and innocence, but then living life causes us to lose a lot of that.

And so we have to really work to get it back. And that's what a lot of the inner quotes work is about, is you have to really be intentional about being present and about feeling fulfilled and having a sense of abundance, like an abundance attitude, like you have to really cultivate that. It's not just going to happen by accident. So to be fair to say, going back to your last answer for this question that I had, would be fair to say that when you see somebody who's hypercritical, again, knowing that we're all pretty critical, and a lot of people would probably even argue that actually most people are hypercritical of themselves. Yeah. So when you see somebody who's hypercritical of himself,

constantly beating themselves up, would it be fair to say that this might be somebody, again, no judgment, but this might be somebody who has not put in the reps. The reps could be witnessing. Meditation is one of those practices to do that to separate the fact that their thoughts are not them. So now there's an identification that they think that they think a thought. And that thought is me thinking that thought, rather than thoughts come and go like popcorn. You know, you just kind of watch them a little bit. So someone who has not yet had the opportunity to put in the reps to create a little bit of space between themselves and their thoughts. Would that be a fair statement to say? 100%. Yeah. And, you know, when I was a kid, I grew up in Alabama. I was scrawny. I wasn't

very athletically inclined at all. And I could never do a pull-up. Like pull-ups were so intimidating to me. And we used to have these yearly, quote, state physical exams or whatever. And part of that was you had to do pull-ups. And I was just like, it was the most frustrating thing and I hated it. And as an adult, I literally forced myself to be able to do a pull-up. And now I can easily do 100 pull-ups. I can do 100 pull-ups, like in sets and reps, not at the same time. But now the idea of doing one or two or five is like, it's like whatever. And happiness is the same way, right? And I wrote about this in my first book, The Inner Gym, where I equate it inner work to exercise, to external exercises and I said that you have to think about happiness like doing a pull-up, right? Everybody understands

the emotion of happiness and just like you understand the mechanics of a pull-up. You grab a bar and you pull yourself up. It's very simple. But if you haven't cultivated the strength to do so, then it's just going to end up frustrating you because you have this idea that I should be able to do it. And for some reason, I can't. And the only reason you can't do a pull-up is is because you haven't built the strength in your arms and in your back. So just doing the reps and the sets to build the strength in your arms and your back, you don't even have to think about pull-ups. You just keep cultivating that strength, and then next thing you know,

you'll be able to pull yourself up. And the same with our inner work. As we make that intentional, every day we sit down, we meditate, we do our gratitude, we make ourselves of service and do all the things that we need to do in order to cultivate that sense of fulfillment inside, next thing you know, you'll be in a situation where normally you would beat yourself up. Normally you would criticize yourself. And yet, without even thinking about it, you'll have this spaciousness in between, again, your identity and those thoughts, and you'll be able to see them for what they are. Oh, this is just a symptom of doing something new.

Anytime I do something new where I'm being stretched and I'm moving in the direction of my full potential, I'm going to have some imposter syndrome. I'm going to have some thoughts telling you. me, what are you doing? This is crazy, right? And a lot of that comes from external sources. Some of it comes from internal sources. But if you have that spaciousness, you don't take it personally. And that's really the difference. People who are more practiced in their inner work and people who are not, is that they don't take it personally, which means you don't take it home. You don't take it into your bed. You don't allow it to keep you up at night, tossing and turning, right? But you're still living your life at a sort of at an edge, but it's a good edge.

It's an edge that's stretching you in the direction of your full potential. You mentioned keeping you up at night. One of the things that is very evident, if you look at the top podcast charts on Apple or Spotify, some of the top podcasts that are out there are, in addition to a lot of our friends and colleagues, my business partner, other people that have been on this podcast, you see a lot of sleep podcast, people who need help winding down at night because of this sentiment that I don't know how to turn my brain off. Why do you think the mind is so active at night right when people are trying to fall asleep, it seems like for a lot of individuals, it goes on rapid fire mode and it becomes so all-consuming that it can either drive anxiety, or it can actually keep them up and interfere with their sleep.

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That's pendulum, P-E-U-L-U-M-L-U-M-L-U-M-L-I-F-E dot com, and use the code Drew 20, spelled D-H-R-U-U-20 for 20% off your first purchase. So what happens is if you live in the pressure cooker, right, meaning you don't have an outlet, you don't have a release valve for the stress, then there's a day where your body, which has, its own algorithm. So the body works the math and the body says, okay, well, this is a pressure cooker, which means you're operating in an environment where your body thinks you're constantly under attack or under the threat of attack. And the body is very efficient, right? It doesn't want to die. It's self-preservation is its number one priority. So it's going to do everything it can do to keep you alive, which means putting you into a fight-flight response, a potential fight-flight response in anticipation of this danger that you've told it that it's constantly

in, in which case you go into the fight-flight response one day and you don't come out of it, right? Now, what's driving the fight-flight response? Stress chemistry, cortisol, adrenaline, etc. And if you are having regular experiences of that, then the body will eventually just say, okay, well, you know, evidently there are bears, tigers, and lions all over this place. Let's just stay in it, which means let's keep the cortisol in the body. Let's keep the adrenaline in the body. These are the most stimulating chemicals the body can experience. So. Yeah, we actually, our body produces cortisol first thing in the morning to get us up and get us ready for the day.

Yeah. Some people have that going on at night because they can't actually. So if you have a concentrated amount of cortisol, which many people do, if not most people do, and you go to lie down, it doesn't matter if you're in a bed or if you're running in the Serengeti, your body is preparing you for running and fighting. And that's why a lot of people aren't sleeping. It's because they're so stressed out and they haven't released the stress. So that's one of the things that meditation does more efficiently than most other things is it helps you release the stress. stress, which is why, out of the thousands of people that I've personally taught to meditate, the number one benefit that people get almost immediately is that they can finally sleep at night.

People who have been insomniacs for a year, sometimes decades, start meditating, and after a week or two, they're sleeping at night. And they didn't do anything different other than sit down in a chair, close their eyes for 20 minutes twice a day, and meditate. You know, I think another thing that plays, and by the way, that's fantastic, if we had a pill that could do that, it'd be the number one bestseller in the world. Trillions of dollars. A trillion dollar company. It also seems to be that one of the other reasons that people feel like their brain is so active at night in addition to not really handling stress throughout the day is we live in the world that is so stimulating during the day.

So many distractions, so many things that we're doing, doing, doing kids, this, that other thing, whatever work, this email. And our immediate sort of focuses on that thing throughout the the day or those things rather, as a lot of people are multitasking. And then at night, when we're starting to put our body into wind down mode, when we're starting to relax and we're not hyper-stimulated, we're not gearing up for a Zoom meeting, we're not doing something else. We're trying to wind down. That's where those thoughts that were always there throughout the day. Those thoughts were always there, those critical thoughts, those anxious thoughts, I didn't do this, I didn't take care of that. What if this? They don't like me. How am I, you know, they're more

successful to me. Those thoughts were there throughout the day. Again, if we don't have a stress release valve, as you mentioned. And then at night, when you're putting your body into wind down mode, it's almost like you don't have anything immediately to be able to focus on. Like, there's not an immediate stimulation or distraction. So now these other thoughts that were always there show up. They rise above the surface, just like the tide going back. And now you can see all the rocks that are there. So I think that that's another piece to it is that we often think like, why is our brain so active at night? Or was our brain active throughout the whole day? It's just that we had immediate other distractions. You know, you hear it a lot for people, especially when

they're going through very stressful times in life. They'll say, you know, I just want to be distracted. I'd rather be distracted than, you know, deal about this thing or feel this loss or whatever else it is. And my heart goes out to anybody in that situation. I've been in that situation before. I don't know if you have, but it helps give a little bit of space because it helps you understand that the challenge and the problem isn't, what do I need to do necessarily at night? Not that there can't be helpful things, but it opens it up and says, what could I actually do also during the day that genuinely brings that thought process down a little bit? because we're listening to it and giving it an outlet and relieving some of that stress and pressure. Thoughts on that? I think that speaks a lot to our priorities as individuals, especially in the West.

I saw some video clip of these guys who went to go find the Dalai Lama and wanted to ask him, you know, why are our Westerners so anxious, you know, all the time? And I think that speaks to that anxiety, that general underlying anxiety that perpetuates through social media and comparison, analysis, paralysis and all that. And one thing he said was we don't make our life altruistic enough. We're thinking too much about ourselves. And I think that that's what the social media and the comparison breeds is, oh, I'm not whatever enough. I'm not, you know, when you're comparing yourself, grass is always greener on the other side.

And I think we're not mission focused enough as individuals, right? And when people hear that, they may think, oh, mission, you know, I'm not Elon Musk or I'm not, you know, whoever, some big person, but you don't have to be a billionaire, you don't have to be a millionaire to be mission focused. You just have to sit down with yourself for half an hour and think to yourself, what are my values? What are my core values in life? Is it family? Is it my spirituality?

Is it helping people? Is it whatever it is, right? Write down a list of maybe 10 of your core values. And then that gives you a sort of point of reference when you're trying to think about how you want to spend your time. What do you want to do? Who do you want to include in your circle, right? What kind of content do you want to follow on social media? Because if you don't have any real direction, then you're going to end up allowing yourself

to get pulled by everybody else's mission and reacting to everybody else's mission. And of course, some of it you're going to be drawn to, a lot of it you're going to be offended by. But if you get really clear about what you're here to do for this point in time, it could just be for these next two or three years, then it allows you. you to focus on something on a day-to-day moment-to-moment basis, and you're still going to be impacted by what everybody else is doing to the extent that you expose yourself to that, but it just gives you a little bit more direction and where you're going so that you can stay more

focused on what's important to you. So let's take, for instance, you when you think about that question, like what are my core values, what are the things that drive me? Just for you personally, what are some answers that come up when you ask yourself that question? So one of the things that I've done recently is, which pissed a lot of people off, surprisingly, is I took a minimalist approach to my social media, right? Because, look, I'm as connected to my social media as anyone else is.

I'm prone to scroll through my social media and just see what's going on. And I just, you know, you can track how much time you spend on there. And I noticed I was spending an hour, two hours, some days. on Instagram and I said you know what I don't want to I don't want to be spending this much time on this maybe maybe I'm just following too many people because that's all you see what you follow and you see what you you click on so I went from following um I think I was following like almost 2,000 people to following like 70 people right just to limit how much uh and did it work because I feel like I've heard other people try that like just asking you just

from like brother to brother. Well, here's what's interesting. Here's what's interesting. Here's what's interesting. What I was expecting was I would go on Instagram and I would see maybe 10 posts because the people that I follow aren't like prolific posters. Right. And it's people who post content that that may inspire me because I do a lot of inspirational

writing and stuff. So I'm always looking for ideas. And I just, that was my criteria for who I, who I kept following were people whose ideas I was already like saving and using as inspiration to then write something about. But what Instagram does is they feed you suggested posts. Right, especially nowadays. Right. And you can't turn it off.

As far as I've been able to tell, you can't turn it off, which really kind of pissed me off, honestly. Because I was trying to not be on there, but they don't have, they don't make it possible for you to only see a limited number of posts. Because if you save something, if you like something, right? And I'll go on other people's stuff and like and save, but I don't necessarily follow them. But then they feed you stuff. So that didn't work.

But at the same time, I still am less prone to be on there and scrolling around because I just don't follow so many people. And so I've become very liberal about that. So let me ask you a question, right? I'd love to dig into this a little bit because we've had people like Cal Newport on the podcast and other people who talk about a minimal approach to this, that. So the problem really isn't spending time on social media. It's almost like indifferent. The question is, what does that do in your life because that's happening?

So I'd love to hear from you. What happens? Does that mean that you have less attention for other things? Does that mean that you're more likely to develop bad behaviors? Does that mean that you more likely to see comparative thoughts inside of your head? So genuinely asking, what happens when you spend more time on social media? what are the derivative behaviors or negative patterns that come from that? Okay, so going back to what we talked about earlier with this whole mission-focused thing, right?

I took some time and really hone in on what am I here to do? What's my why, right? What wakes me up in the morning? What keeps me going throughout the day? Why do I accept certain things and deny other things? So I'm here to spread inspiration. That's my ultimate mission. That's my purpose.

As you know, I've been writing this. daily dose of inspiration email for, I just hit my six-year anniversary yesterday. So that's 2100. And just tell people where they could sign up. Lightwockens.com is a daily email that I send out every morning at 6 a.m. Pacific time. And it's just a dose of inspiration, right? So over the years and over the thousands of messages that I've gotten a lot of my seed ideas from just a variety of sources, social media being one of the major ones. So when I'm on social media, I'm very intentional about that, about, okay, let me see what

inspires me, what triggers a thought or what helps me to recall a story. And so I would say 60% of the time, I'm looking at it with that in mind, right? So it gives me a sense of purpose when I'm on social media or when I'm watching television or when I'm having a conversation with somebody. And so I kind of see these moments, not as throwaway moments, but really as research because I'm going into it with a sense of purpose. And I encourage other people, again, to do that. Like start with your mission and then see if whatever you're doing, however you're spending

time aligns in some way that feels productive or feels fruitful or gives you a outlet for expressing whatever your mission is. And if it does, then great, you know, do do more of that. And if it doesn't, then now you know, do less of that. I'm not a fan of extremes. I'm not a fan of, you know, cut things out, cold turkey and all of that because I don't think that's, that aligns with our human tendencies when you restrict yourself. But, you know, taking it back even further with like say alcohol. Like I don't really drink alcohol. I'm not completely 100% sober, but I remember back, you know, back in the 90s when I was living in New York City, I was in my mid-20s at the time and I was working the math. And I had done a version of the whole mission statement thing back then. And I said,

this doesn't align with what I want to do, where I want to go. It's not helping me achieve my goals. And I think a lot of people haven't really had that conversation with themselves, right? If you look at what you're here to do, what your immediate goals are, what your long-term goals are, and then you go and do an assessment on every single aspect of your life, the way you're relating to people, the types of substances you're consuming, the type of diet you have, are you exercising or not exercising, are you going to church, or you're going to temple, or you engaging in spiritual practices? You know, everything, everything is either adding to your mission or it's taking away from your mission. And again, I'm not into extreme changes overnight, but just taking time.

time to articulate for yourself what your mission is and then using that as a barometer for everything else. If you have the awareness to do so, right, it can really help you streamline areas of your life where you may be bottlenecking your progress. So one question on that, just to connect those two ideas together. So with you spending a little less time, so actually let me back up. So part of what I'm hearing is that, you know, and by the way, for everybody who's listening is like, we're sort of zooming in on social media, but we're really talking about life as a whole, right? So for you spending a little less time following like random accounts and really sticking to things that are more inspirational, did you find that then you're more likely to

look for inspiration like books and like, you know, things that are more enjoyable to get inspiration from? Or was it just genuinely you're spending less time on social media so that opened up more time for you for walking, connecting with friends, nature, working out, you know, that sort of thing. I don't know if it was that specific, but, you know, speaking of walking, like I have a, I have a walk, a step goal, 10,000 steps a day. I don't hit it every single day, but that's- You're on social media. Just messing with you. No, that's my goal. You know, 99% of the days I hit that 10,000-step goal, you know, L.A. is a little bit harder because it's not such a walking city, but I relocated to a place.

Mexico City, where walking is a big part of the culture. So I can easily get 10,000 steps, no problem. But again, that was an intentional thing. When I was thinking, okay, where do I want to reside? Because I can live pretty much anywhere I want. I went through, okay, well, I can walk. You know, they have good high quality food, not expensive. I can be outdoors, the weather's this and that. Like none of these decisions were arbitrary. So when I find myself there, it's very intentional because it aligns with my purpose and it allows me to do the things that I do. I can sit and I can work. I can write in a lot of places.

I can listen to audiobooks, which is how I experience books while I'm doing my 10,000 steps so I can read more, quotes, read more. And while I'm walking, I'm less prone to be on social media because, A, I have a U.S. cell phone carrier so I don't have as much data to be processing and moving. through. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's one of the things I'm writing about in my next book, which is about minimalism, is you have to put yourself in situations where you don't have the option to do the things that you don't want to be doing. Right. And that's something that you and I, you know, we were talking about this the other day about how I was struggling to write my first

book, the self-published book, the inner gym. And you and I've been friends for years. And my process of writing had been dragging on for three and a half years. And I was getting so tired of just thinking about it and not finishing it and stopping and starting and whatnot. And then eventually I reached out to you. And I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly so you can, you know, weigh in if it's different. But I reached out to you and I said, hey, Drew, I really want to finish writing this book. I've prepared this contract that I would like for you to sign. And the contract basically said, light walkins will complete the manuscript of this book

and have it ready to be submitted to Amazon's Create Space for Publication by such-and-such-and-such date, which was about maybe two months out from the date of the contract. And I said, if I do not have it ready by that date, then I will, oh, I gave you a check, a post-dated personal check for $4,000. And I said, you are obligated to cash this check and spend it on whatever you want to spend it on that doesn't involve me. And you signed it, and I signed it. And so I had a level of accountability that was higher than one that I had ever given for

myself. And all of a sudden, all the excuses went away, all the discipline. I didn't need any of that anymore because I was committed to not losing $4,000. I wanted to like not lose the $4,000 probably more than I wanted to publish the book. But publishing the book was a positive symptom of not wanting to lose that $4,000. And I chose that amount because at the time, $4,000 was, you know, I couldn't afford to lose $4,000. and and so it had to be an amount that really got my attention. And I think I finished the book a week early because I didn't even want to have any ambiguity

or gray area around, you know. Light, it's 1159. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Or get sick or something, you know, not finish it. So am I remembering it correctly?

Yeah. Those details are correct. Those details are correct. And hats off for you for doing that. You know, that story makes me feel and think of a couple things that are also linked to what we just talked about with social media. I think the powerful thing about inner work is so often in life, an exact game plan that we have in mind doesn't come to fruition. And in fact, life requires us to evolve our game plan and respond dynamically to things.

So in this instance, here you are. You're an individual that had a specific goal. And you put a very specific date and a very specific date and a very specific. consequence. And if you read a lot of the literature on goal setting, that's kind of like traditional goal setting. Set a consequence, have somebody hold you accountable, have a date, know why you want to do it, boom. I know a lot of people that that type of goal setting may not always work for. And I say good on both. And I've benefited from both of those aspects. Here you are, I'm sure you've had other points in time in your life where a more loose goal or an intention was

more useful. But in this case where you wanted to really create something and build something and you knew your patterns, what you're likely to do, you used a very specific tool. Same thing for me in social media. You know, I've built multiple businesses, sold a business as well too in the past. There's been times where I've been very intentional and said, you know what? I just moved to a new city.

I actually want to ramp up my social media usage because ramping it up will make it easier for me in that instance to connect with people that I previously wouldn't have access to meeting, find people, connect with like-minded individuals, and create a sense of community. Or in other instances, it's like, hey, I need to use social media more for my business because I'm going to need to get it out there. And I believe in the product. And I think it can make an impact for people.

Or I want to grow my podcast audience that's out there. And I think really when I hear people debating, you know, and I know you probably feel this way as well too, about is this the right action? Is that the right action? Should we do this? And it's a little bit sort of like black and white thinking. really when we take a step back, we're actually advocating the power of inner work. Because when you are practicing inner work, and in this conversation, we're talking about meditation,

you can reflect and look at your life and say, rather than an arbitrary game plan, somebody saying out there that social media is bad, I'm just need to use it less, I'm just going to say that I need to use it less in my life right now. Maybe is the answer. If you look at what you need and you look at what you are in your life right now, in anything, I'm not trying to make this about social media, you can, come up with a game plan that is appropriate for your goals. And that really comes back to intentionality. You can't get clear on what your intention is without taking a pause back and

aligning with your purpose. So that's my stump speech on that topic. Thoughts on that? There's so much in there, man. So what you're describing, like you said, you're using intention. Intention. Right. So that's the difference in that the game plan. is a byproduct of the intention, getting clear on our intention, and then we're coming up with the game plan. Or just, yeah, or just having intention. It's surprising how much people don't have intention. They just kind of do things because it's entertaining or because everyone else is doing it. But they never really have that conversation with themselves, right?

And so when I talk about discipline, right? because that's a big topic I've been writing about lately. Discipline is not about the willpower and the determination and all of that. The way I'm thinking about discipline these days, discipline is about honesty, right? Discipline is a reflection of how honest can you be with yourself. So, for instance, going back to the book example, I got to a point where I got tired of lying to myself. That's what really was happening. What was the lie that you were telling yourself?

The lie was, I'm going to finish my book next month. I'm going to do it this week. I'm going to have all the, I'm going to wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning and do it. And I was just lying to myself. I knew I wasn't going to do that. Because my history has shown me that I haven't been doing that. And the best indication of what's going to happen tomorrow is what happened yesterday. So if we can just be honest with ourselves about where we are in our own personal development,

based on our past, right? Not judging it, just I'm being honest with myself about it. Then I can bring intention into it. And then my intentions are always good. Our intentions are great. But then I know that I have a tendency to not follow through on my good intentions. So then I'm going to put stopgaps in place. I'm going to put guardrails in place.

And that's where that check for $4,000 came in, right? Because I knew that if I didn't have that guardrail, then my good intentions were going to eventually probably go out of the window. But if I had the guardrail in place, then I would find the willpower to do whatever I had to do to make it happen. And so that was a reflection of me just being honest with myself. Now, there's another part, another dimension to all of this, which is, um, your inner guidance, right? So I believe that we all have an inner voice that's nudging us and that's prompting us to move in certain directions that are stretching our, stretching us toward our potential. And if you follow it, then you end up turning the volume up on it. And if you

ignore it because you're trying to look for the logical thing because it's rarely logical, then it's going to stay still and small. And they call it the still small voice, right? The voice of inner guidance. It's always there. It's just harder to hear because you have so much on top of it. It's a lot of stuff on top. But the stuff on top is the sort of societal, logical, rational reasoning around what you should do or what you should not do. The inner guidance is all about spiritual growth and development. So to that point, what you need to do for your spiritual growth and development may be completely different from what someone else who comes from your same background and has the same family structure and the same expectations needs to do, right? So you may be guided in a direction that's going to turn you into this thriving entrepreneur that helps some aspect of humanity one day or inspire someone to help some aspect. to help some aspect of humanity.

Someone else may be guided towards family, nine to five job, et cetera, et cetera. And that helps them to give birth to, you know, the savior of the free world or whatever. And both people have their own path. But if they're looking at you on social media and comparing their path to your path based on what you're posting and you're doing the opposite, then that's not going to be helpful for really anybody because you're ignoring your own inner voice. So all the meditation and the inner work does, again, is it creates space in between what you're seeing and what you're feeling so that you can be more loyal to what you're feeling and you can appreciate what you're seeing for someone else's journey, but you don't have to feel that temptation that we sometimes feel to abandon our own inner guidance in favor of what looks glittery in someone else's life. You know, and we're getting the reinforcement from society. That's what success looks like.

Where Drew's doing, you know, he's got all these followers. He's got all these views on his social media. That's success. You need to stop doing what you're doing and start doing what he's doing. But inside, your inner guidance is saying, no, you need to keep posting this kind of thing. You need to keep, you know, or stay off social media altogether. It can be a completely different situation for this other person. And if they're listening to that, they can stay true to that.

And then eventually, they find. their own groove and their own path. And then people are looking at them going, oh, that's the answer to success. I need to get off social media. So you just have to stick with it long enough, right? And be honest enough with yourself and give yourself those guardrails so that you can find your own rhythm, you can find your own flow and you can ultimately blaze your own path, right? Because what Joseph Campbell says, if you can see your path in front of you, then that's not

your path. Your path, you're literally blazing it with the machete one step at a time. What I love about that and my practice of inner work has evolved over the years just as it has for I'm sure most people that are out there is when you practice the inner work and all the different shapes and forms that it takes, meditation being one of them. And my meditation practice has changed over the years. I want to talk about that a little bit here on the podcast. We'll get to that a minute.

What I love about that is that the separation between here is my internal signal and here is the noise. And noise is not good or bad. It's just noise. It's the noise of the day. And sometimes that noise is inspiration and helps you evolve your journey and the expression of your calling. And other times it's a distraction. And only you can know the difference between the two. And in fact, that is actually our life's work is to practice knowing the difference between the two of those things. Yeah, I get that question a lot. How do you tell the difference between your mind and your intuition? right? Because both of them are speaking to you at the same time. And my sort of simplified answer for it is that your intuition will generally point you in the direction of what to do next, right? Whereas your mind or

sometimes people call it your fear will warn you. We'll say don't do that or don't do this. Or it may not work out. Or may not work out. This is a all the reasons, the cautionary tales, right? And it's not to say that we shouldn't listen to that, right? You can listen to it, but if you train yourself to focus on the affirmative, what you should be doing. Or what you could be doing. Or what you could be doing or your potential lies and you move in that direction, you don't really have to pay too much attention to the fear, voice,

or the logical voice because that's going to be there in the background, but it's not really informing you of where to go, right? Again, another way to look at it, it's like if you're driving, you have your GPS and you're playing the radio or you're playing music or whatever, all that can be happening around you in the environment, but the GPS is still directing you on where to go, right? Even though the radio may be talking about this or that's happening in the traffic and the weather, but the GPS is already mapped out the most efficient,

way to get to where you said you wanted to go. So who are you going to listen to? The person on the radio who's sitting in some soundstage somewhere, you know, miles and miles away from where you are, or the GPS, which is right where you are informing you, there's an accident around the corner, take this detour, and, you know, that way you'll get there more efficiently, even though it may not look like that that's the best way to go there. So it's really just training ourselves to hone in on to our inner guidance. And this takes practice. And you're not going to get it right all the time. So you need to split test what sounds like your inner guidance versus what could be your ego or what could be your fear voice or could be your trauma bonding voice or whatever else is going on in there.

And one of those voices is going to, when you follow it, it's going to make you feel more expansive. One is going to make you feel more contracted. And that's kind of a different way to do it. discern which one is which. The inner guidance usually makes you feel expansive. All the other voices either make you neutral or they make you feel a little bit contracted. And ultimately, and this is evidenced by how we feel when we go to a movie, right? When you watch a movie, when you go to a movie and there's the hero of the movie and there's the villain of the movie, right? We inherently root for the hero, which is usually the underdog. And the hero gets to a point where, you know, they have to take this big leap of faith.

And so we're sitting there watching this, and we want them to take the leap of faith. We don't ever want the hero to play it safe, right? We want them to do the thing that as we project ourselves onto them that we think that we would do if we were in their shoes, even though their fears and their concerns and everything. But yeah, we want them to take the chance. And so when there's a fictionalized,

situation, it's easy to root for that person who's got to take the leap. But when it comes to our own lives, you know, it's harder to tap into that energy. And so following that inner guidance allows us to really live in that space. And if you do it with small things, if you do it with tiny things, it'll be easier to do it with larger things. Pivoting from that and using that as inspiration, I want to go into the topic of relationships. Okay. You know, we all know that famous quote well hopefully a lot of my audience knows it because I've shared it so many times on here from ramdas you think you're so enlightened go spend a weekend with your parents or with your family and all your stuff comes up and in a room by yourself in solitary confinement everybody's

enlightened and you go out to the real world and that's where things really hit and you use the word practice practicing with small things what are some of the ways that we can practice within our relationships. That could be intimate relationships. That could be husband, wife, that sort of thing, boyfriend, girlfriend, and also could just be family. And I guess the way to set that up is also, what are the ways that relationships trigger people the most in your experience? I think we have to realize that the real, the only person, the most important person in the relationship is ourselves, meaning we're relating to ourselves. So the way we're interpreting the other person's behavior, the other person's words is the way we interpret it for ourselves.

Right. Do you have, you know, spiritual teachers would often say, do you have a relationship with your partner? Yeah. Or do you have a relationship with your relationship of your partner? Exactly. Are you interacting with them with your sense of identity? And now your ego is just against your egoic projection of them. Yeah. And look, if you have, if you struggle with loving yourself, you're going to struggle with loving someone else. If you have, if you struggle with accepting yourself, you're going to struggle with accepting someone else. So again, we can't escape the inner work aspect even when it comes to relationships, because if you don't have that spaciousness that allows you to be able to give yourself the benefit of the doubt, yes, I'm having these

negative critical thoughts, but that's not who I am, then it's going to be easier for you to hear criticism from your partner and not personalize it, not say that, oh, they're attacking me. This is just something that maybe they're going through or there may be some truth to this. Let me take a look at this and see if there's anything that I can, you know, do differently, right? But if you don't have that spaciousness, then you are prone to personalize most of what they do or say, whether it's intentional, unintentional, innocent. You know, maybe they're even trying to be vindictive or whatever, but it's never personal. And I think Don Miguel Ruiz, you know, following those four agreements, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, do your best, be impeccable with your word. If you can follow those as impossible as they sometimes feel, to the extent that you can follow those is the extent that you will be able to thrive in most relationships, right? If you're with someone who's balanced. But even if we, I think we have to even take it a step back from there. Like, who are you choosing? And from what part? of your body are you choosing this person? Are you attracting this person? Is your pain body

attracting this person? Is your unhealed trauma body attracting this person? Because if you haven't been doing your inner work, there's a really high chance that that's the case. Right. People talk about, oh, my partner's a narcissist and this and that. Well, you attracted the narcissist. So evidently, that dynamic needed to take place, perhaps to teach you how to have boundaries. or how to find self-love, or maybe to get you into somebody's meditation workshop, right? Because you wouldn't have gone there. The universe is not stupid. It knows that we don't typically do things that are good for us until something bad happens.

We don't change our diet until the doctor says, oh, look, your LDLs are really high, or your blood pressure is really high. You're not even thinking about your diet. You're, you know, people are generally young, living off genetics, and what it looks like on the surface must be what It's like on the inside. And when we get into a precarious lifestyle situation where we can't ignore it any longer, that's usually when the change takes place. So in all the years I've been teaching meditation, 90% of the people I teach had something bad happen to them before they came and learn how to meditate and learn how to create

that space. So, you know, the universe uses these kinds of situations, particularly in relationships to get us to wake up, to get us to. start to cultivate more and more enlightenment for ourselves. It seems to be that one measure. If somebody's thinking, like, okay, and I love relationships for this, I had a monk from India that I became friends with who made his way was one of the first teachers that came from the Jain tradition to America.

His name was Gurdiv Chitubanaji. And just for those listening, Gurdhav just means teacher, right? in the Indian tradition. And he had always had this version that I'll paraphrase here. He said, you know, relationships and like, let's say money slash career success are the two biggest areas in life that are great teachers because they're things that society says that once you have them, once you have the right career, which usually means money, status, etc.

You will finally arrive. You'll finally be happy. You'll finally whatever. And then the other version of that, that's let's say the more masculine version. The more feminine version is once you find the right partner, you'll finally be complete.

You'll finally have arrived. You'll finally be there. And those two categories are great teachers because anybody and probably most people listening today, and we all need that reminder still in our journey, is that we know that that's not necessarily the case. And in the topic of relationships, one way that I've seen just for my own life

where I thought I'm so advanced, I'm so spiritual, I'm this, I'm that, I have it all figured out. How quickly I react to my partner, react to something that they're saying that I have some sort of charge to is an indication in that moment, because it's a moment to moment thing, right? And it gets better over time with the inner work.

But it's a moment to moment thing. You could be in a good mood in the morning and not so great mood in the evening because you didn't do your meditation. You didn't do your inner work and you're more reactioning. How quickly I react is an indication of how much I'm stuck in my old thought pattern, behavior, pain, and how much I've forgotten that my thoughts are not me. Is there anything else like that that you've seen in?

the topic of relationships, that's usually a good external indication that maybe you didn't do your stress valve release work today. What's a good indication of that? Well, I think one of the biggest misconceptions about that is that if you are in a relationship dynamic where there is tension or you are arguing that that's a symptom of, you know, this is not working, right? And it's not really about that. People sometimes ask me, because, you know, again, I'm a big into meditation space. Like, you don't get angry anymore, do you? You don't react anymore, do you? And I say, that's silly. Of course I get angry sometimes. And of course I react. And of course I get jealous. And of course I get, you know, whatever emotions anyone has, I have. I get bored. I get jealous. I get, you know,

all of it. But the question is, how long do you stay in those states? And that's what the inner work changes is the lag time in between the thing happening and you releasing it, right? Because if you don't have that release valve, then you can potentially get angry and stay angry for decades. You can harbor sense of anger against this person for a very long time because they haven't satisfied whatever criteria you've placed upon them. They need to apologize. in this specific way at this time, and if they haven't done that, then I'm never going to forgive them, right? And all that's doing is hurting you, because your body is still processing that angry chemistry, which is toxic.

And then that's making all the other things toxic inside of your body, in which case you're making yourself emotionally, you know, physically, sometimes even spiritually, diseased. and then there's a cost to that you're going to have to pay at some point down the line. And so as you continue delving into your inner work and creating that release valve, you'll have the emotion. And then maybe 15 minutes later, you process it and you're back to your baseline. So you're able to be present with the person again. And this is what they talk about at the Gottman Institute,

the people who study relationships and they talk about how they can look at somebody's body language and how they talk to their partner and they can tell within 90% accuracy if that person's going to get a divorce or not. And they say that one of the biggest indicators is how people argue. And if they can, if they say whatever they say in reaction to the other person, but then they can come back to their sort of present moment awareness with that person and they can find a sense of forgiveness with that person, then that's an indicator that that relationship is going to last a lot longer than people who harbor those kinds of feelings. So yeah, you're right. I think relationships are a great simulation for what's going on inside.

And one thing that my meditation teacher used to say was, you know, he was very adamant about this. Relationships don't make you happy. There's no relationship that exists that's going to make you happy. What a relationship is is a showcase for whatever happiness you have inside. So if your baseline level of happiness is very thin, then it'll be a showcase for that thin level of happiness and then whatever else is on top of that, which could be misery, depression, anxiety, it's going to be a showcase for that too.

So if you're getting a lot of anxiety as a result of your relationship is probably because you have a lot of anxiety and sigh. And as you process that anxiety, then you'll start to find more happy. showing up in your day-to-day interactions and your ability to sort of reset back to that happiness state is going to become a lot faster. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, going back to what I was sharing, I think that just to clarify one thing, definitely

100% in alignment with you. And when I was saying reaction, not that we never react, in fact, like a mindful relationship, what does a mindful relationship look like? It just means that you're more likely to apologize and you're more likely to apologize sooner. because we all get it wrong. And to say, you know, I didn't mean it that way or this clarification. And it doesn't mean that you don't fight. You know, we are hopefully, knock on wood, we'll have the Gottman's on the podcast sometime soon.

They reached out. They saw a post that I posted about them, about the work that Yasmin and I, my wife and I did through going through premarital counseling through like the Gottman method. Nice. And a big part of that is just like, you'll get things wrong. You'll mess up. You'll misunderstand each other, et cetera. But can you catch yourself when you're being reactionary?

versus acting, right? So there's acting, which is intentional. There's reactionary, which is unintentional. You're just quickly firing off because you're interacting with your version of what you think the person is saying instead of de-escalating. And when you de-escalate, what does that look like?

Well, when you react, you are stonewalling. That's one of the four henchmen of the apocalypse. If you guys don't know about this, I'll link to this inside of the show notes to expand off of what you were sharing with the Gottman's. they talk about the four most common ways and patterns that show up for people. And if they happen at a certain level of frequency based on their studies and years of research,

they're a predictive indicator of divorce down the line. So one of them is stonewalling. So stonewalling is when people cross their hands and just refuse to say, I'm just not going to interact. And your partner is trying to talk to you and say your husband, your wife, whatever, they're trying to talk to you and say, hey, like, you know, I thought we said this was going to. to happen or that and you just cross your hands because you feel like you're being attacked

or defensive and really look at a child what does a child do if they feel like they're being attacked or they're being defensive or whatever it's the same sort of pattern behavior what would it look like instead of being reactionary that we're acting you'd ask a clarifying question you'd say hey you know the way you said this kind of hurt my feelings and you know this is a sensitive topic like do you mind you know i'm happy to talk about it but could we just bring it down a little bit you do something to kind of create a little bit of a path or maybe an off ramp for connection to actually go into this thing. And it doesn't mean that you might not disagree. Often I will disagree with my wife. We'll have different views on things. And sometimes our voices will get loud. And that's actually

called like healthy fighting. Right. And it's and we laugh and we know how to dispel it and, you know, do all those things. Yeah, I think one of them stonewalling. I think the other one was belligerence where you attack somebody's character. Again, that's a defensive sort of thing. it often happens in reactionary. Oh, you're attacking me. Let me tell you. You know, you're lazy. And that's why you don't,

that's why the dishes are never done. I think another one is criticism, like being hypercritical. And I forgot the other one that was there in the four henchmen. Anyways, you can find the link inside of the show notes. But when I see myself acting and having a little space between stimulus and my response, I'm much more likely to change my tone in a way that even indicates

to the person. that I'm trying to create a path of vulnerability. I understand that they might have had a tough day. I understand that they might have misunderstood something, misread something, or I understand how I may be messed up and that they're genuinely upset, right? Or angry for a reason.

Yeah. There are times that that happens. It's like, you know what? I apologize. You're right. I shouldn't have done it that way. And I see it now. I totally missed it when that situation was happening.

and I want to just say like, I'm sorry and I want to talk about it. I want to talk about it. And that shift in your voice, just a little shift in your voice, which comes from acting, is enough to create a little bit of vulnerability with the other person who still might be going through their anger and feeling it and saying, okay, they're really hearing me. When we feel that somebody's actually genuinely hearing us in relationship, but in all aspect of life,

we're so much less likely to use brute force anger to push them down. down to try to beat them in submission because we feel that they're genuinely hearing us, which allows us to work through our anger a lot quicker and get to like what is the resolution that's there. At least that's been my experience. I'll have toss in one more item, especially on social media is, and the pandemic was a great year for this with a lot of different opinions about all sorts of different subjects that are there, I notice myself sometimes if somebody responds to something that I've posted

in a way that is, let's call it like somebody might say like trolling type behavior, where they're, you know, taking a subject and then more attacking you for your character or who they think, you know, is there, your looks or whatever else it might be. I've noticed that even then when I message the person directly, I don't do this all the time, right? it might be somebody if it's like one or two degrees separation where they're kind of in your world and you're like wanting you know not just some random person that I don't know if I send them a voice note on Instagram or a DM on Twitter that is like hey listen I saw that I want to like let's talk it out right know you have difference opinions this happens a lot in the world of

debating protein and protein sources online with the food world but just initiating that I find that so often, either one, I won't hear back, right? Because maybe the person's embarrassed. I don't know what. They just don't want to engage, whatever. Or number two, they'll apologize. You know what? I know that came off a little harsh. Here's really what I'm trying to say. And I just feel like X, Y, and Z. And they go into this whole thing about all these layers that don't necessarily have to do with me, but got caught up in the energy. And they weren't just responding to me. They were responding to what they felt was an attack on their belief system. But that little opening, which comes from action allows for at least some opportunity for an authentic dialogue between two people

and more likely than not comes to some resolution even if that resolution is hey listen man i know you're coming from a good place i'm coming from a good place we disagree on this topic and just i wish you all the best look man um i think these are all very sound you know ways of handling conflict And people can read Gottman's books. People can read the Four Agreements books. But at the end of the day, if you don't have that space, it's not going to help you. You're not going to be able to assimilate and integrate these principles. And it's like, you know, we were talking about financial advisors earlier before the podcast.

And, you know, I sat down with our mutual friend who's a financial advisor. And we talked about, you know, the benefits of buying a property. versus the benefits of investing in the market and all these things and how risky do you want to be. And it wasn't a very passive conversation. It was very intentional. It was very direct. I was asking all these very specific questions. And I put a lot of thought and time and energy into my investment strategy based on very sound information. And it's been a little up and down over the last few years, but for the most part, it's going in the direction that I wanted to go in because I didn't throw caution to the wind, right? And I think, again, going back to our original premise with inner

work, you don't meditate for what happens in meditation. You meditate for those moments where you are reacting. And because you meditate it, your ability to catch yourself in mid-reaction and go, oh my God, I'm doing it again. I'm still playing out that thing that I've been playing out since I was seven years old when my mommy and daddy didn't, you know, do what I wanted them to do. Now I'm projecting that onto my partner and I'm able to catch it a lot quicker now and then try to have a conversation around it and, you know, and go through the whole thing with the stonewalling and all that, the five horsemen.

if we don't have the inner work creating the foundation for us, we're not going to be able to do that. It's just not going to happen, right? Intellectually understanding it is not the same thing as embodying it. And you can make the argument that once you embody it, once you create the space, you don't really even need to read the book. What the book does is it gives you language around what you're already feeling like doing. Like I want to find unity. I don't want to find disconnection here. And if you don't have the benefit of that foundation, then your best idea that you can come up with,

because this is being perpetuated by the stress reaction, which the first thing it does is it shuts off your prefrontal cortex, which gives you the ability to say, oh, my God, this happened when I was seven. It's happening now. There's a connection. That's where that part of the brain is emanating. from, right? If you don't have access to that, the best idea is this person's attacking me, I need to fight them, or I need to stonewall them, or I need to run, I need to escape the

situation, break up with them, right? Those are your best ideas, and those are all functions of the fight-or-flight reaction. So all the inner work is doing is diminishing the influence of the fighter-flight reaction, and then once that gets diminished, it opens you up to all these other possibilities, right? We can have a conversation, we can get a mediator, we can take a little bit of space just to kind of cool off a little bit and then go back and revisit the conversation. We can go and speak to our mentor about, you know, best courses of action. Like there's a million different options other than running, fighting, and stonewalling. And are we exploring those? And if we're not exploring them, can you be honest with yourself about that and say, I need to do something

different. I need to double down on my inner work. And that can be your why, right? You're not sitting there just to stare at the back of your eyelids. You're sitting there to be a better partner, a better parent, a better boss, a better employee, a better neighbor, a better friend, better to yourself, a better citizen of the world. That's what you're getting from it. That's what you're investing in every time you sit down and close your eyes. And that's the value of it that you can then apply to every other aspect of your life. It's just going to get better. Amen to that. All of that. All of that. topic of the inner work, you know, a few years ago, was this the first book, Inner Gym? Yeah, Inner Gym was the first one.

Explain that concept. And let's tease out some of the messaging from that book, which is, of course, it's all throughout your writing and all the different things that you talk about. And what are the tools in the toolbox in addition to meditation, which we'll talk about that too, that are part of us developing that inner gym? So the Interim, the subtitle is 30-day workout for strengthening happy. and I propose these inner exercises and I use the metaphor obviously of the gym. They're inner exercises that help you to cultivate and stabilize happiness.

So obviously stillness is one, meditation, gratitude is a big one, slowing down, just slowing down, literally what it means, just taking your time, doing things, walking, eating, not being in such a hurry. all the time, exercising patience, random acts of kindness, receiving. Receiving is a big one, right? Because you're talking about that reciprocity, the give and take. We're really good at giving things. A lot of people aren't that great at receiving things. But if you're not receiving, then you're prohibiting someone else from giving. So just looking at that and being aware of that. And then the book is really a workout guide. It literally is prompting you every first. five days to practice a different one of these inner exercises. And at the end of the day, the outcome is that you feel happier inside, right?

The premise that the sort of, you talked about when we were first discussing this years and years ago, you were saying, you know, because you have been working with people who had written bestselling books before. And you said, you know, like, you got to pick a fight. You have to use your book to pick a fight. You have to stand for something. You have to stand for something. And generally when you stand for something, you kind of are in a fight against something else.

Correct. And so the fight that I chose, which was already how I was feeling, was this idea that you hear a lot in the spiritual community, which is happiness is a choice. And so I was saying you need to work your happiness muscles because happiness is not a choice. right it's not as easy as wearing a blue shirt as opposed to a yellow shirt right that's not how happiness works if it was easy to choose to be happy why aren't more people choosing it if it's just a choice right it must be something a little bit deeper than that it must be like a muscle just like the pull-up example like you can you can't choose to do a pull-up if you haven't cultivated the strength to do a pull-up you have to cultivate the strength first and then you can do a pull-up

if you want, but it's not even that big of a deal anymore. And so, so that was the premise of that first book was about what happiness truly is and then how to cultivate happiness. And then as you know, the second book was about meditation, which is the first book that was really about this, this practice, which I think is the key habit to all the other habits. If you want to do inner work, if you're not meditating, it's harder to be grateful if you're not meditating. It's harder to do random acts of kindness if you're not meditating. It's not that it's impossible. It's just a lot easier if you're cultivating that space inside because you're not taking things personally. And it's amazing. It's remarkable how much we don't do because we take things personally.

We're afraid of what people think, right? We are over analyzing everything that happens in and around us. Oh, everyone's watching me. No one's watching you. No one cares what you're doing for the most part. unless you're harming people, nobody really cares, right? But if we walk around with this baggage of, oh, what are people thinking about me? It prohibits us from doing so many things. And that's in the category of taking things personally, right? It's never personal. Even if they reject you, usually they're just at some level of self-preservation.

They're just looking out for themselves. They don't really care about you. You're just another person standing in their way of whatever their own personal goals are. So you have to be able to understand that. And if you have that little spaciousness in between the act and how you feel about it, it allows you to keep moving forward or find another way to move forward and not give up on yourself and your own potential and your own dreams and goals. So let's pick up from there.

Meditation can mean a lot to a lot of different things and a lot of different people. Just describe your approach and how you teach people meditation. I consider myself to be sort of the meat and potatoes meditation teacher. aside from like my name light and all that people usually think i'm more airy-fairy but i'm actually very very practical i consider myself to be a healthy skeptic when it comes to these kinds of things and my overall goal is to help people become self-sufficient with meditation which means being able to meditate without any kind of guidance without the use of apps ideally and and without needing to constantly go through someone like me in order to have an experience.

So that's how I first enjoyed meditation. I dabbled for a long time and never felt like anything really was happening. And then I met a teacher who trained me in a self-sufficient way. And the style was Vedic meditation. And that was the first time I actually enjoyed meditation, which is how I defined success in meditation, is to practice a style that you actually enjoy. Because a lot of people don't think it can be enjoyable.

And that hasn't been my experience. I've experienced what it's like to hate meditation but still do it. And now I know what it's like to really enjoy it and to look forward to it in a way that people may look forward to playing with puppies or going to brunch or doing things that are just, you know, that feel good. And so I teach people to have that experience. And it's funny because I was at an event the other day. there was probably, I don't know, 100 people at this event, I was speaking. And there was one guy in the room who I had met and worked with eight years prior. And I do this thing when I'm giving these meditation-related keynotes

where I just polled the audience to see who the real meditators are versus who are the people who are just saying they meditate. And I start with, you know, raise your hand if you meditate it every day this week and you'll get maybe half the people, maybe a little bit less, raising their hand. And then I'll say, okay, keep your hand up only if you've meditated every day this past month. Usually, you know, two quarters or two thirds of the hands will drop. And then I say, keep your hand up if you meditated every day for the past three months. And everybody's hand dropped excepted to one person.

And it was the guy I happened to work with eight years ago. Even meditating on like clockwork ever since we worked. together eight years ago and I didn't really even see him ever since then but that is my standard when I'm working with people is to train you in such a way that you actually become a daily meditator not just someone who says oh yeah I meditate but what you really mean is I meditate once a week or once you know a couple times a week or maybe a few times a month whenever the kids go off to grandma's house or whenever you know you have some free time you see it as a part of your your spiritual hygiene regimen, just like you brush your teeth every day.

You know, if I were to ask that same group of people who brush their teeth every day for the last three months, everybody would raise their hands. It wouldn't be a very remarkable thing. Nobody cares what your, you're brushing your teeth experience was like because everybody does it. So how can we get meditation to that place? Because imagine the world if everybody woke up and meditated for just 10 minutes a day. Imagine how much that would change. change how we interact with each other on social media and Twitter and all of that and how we just

interact with each other in day-to-day life. It would dramatically improve things if we all did that. And so I obviously can't work with everybody because it's just one me. But the reason I'm writing all these books, and I mentioned I'm writing about spiritual minimalism now, which is really a book on meditation with some minimalism principles sprinkled throughout. But that's really what it comes back to. And it keeps coming back to that creating space inside so that you can be more of yourself on the outside. So if I was in that audience, you know, my hand would have come down probably early on. Yeah. And meditation is something that I cycle in and out of. And I I used to feel bad about it because I would say, yeah, I haven't been meditating.

You know, I'd go on these streaks, then I'd get out of that cycle of like, let's say a daily meditator. And I used to feel bad about it. Yeah, I've gotten out of it. And now I'm not saying this is right. I'm not saying this is wrong. I'm not even saying that you have to comment against it, but I just always want to be transparent with my audience, is that I don't feel as bad about it.

I don't feel bad about it at all, actually. And I see it as more as like, there's many beneficial things in my life that I cycle in and out of. That doesn't mean that I don't want to enable that practice. It means that I know that working out is amazing. And there might be weeks at a time that I don't have that as a rhythm and a routine in my life. Yeah. And it's not even that I'm trying to say anything against that.

Is this that that's what I just want to transparently share with my, you know my audience i'm sure you have other people in your life that find themselves in that situation even people that have 100% learned and taught from you and i don't imagine that you have you know any kind of judgment against that uh but do you have any thoughts or reflections that you want to share yeah two things number one people oftentimes assume that something bad happened to me that got me into meditation and the reality is because i like to be transparent too the reality is i always felt calm and happy. Like as far as, as long as I can remember, I've never felt particularly stressed. I've never felt particularly anxious. Knock on wood, you know, I feel like I'm very

fortunate in that, in that regard, because there's so many people who haven't felt that in a just basic, natural way. I had a very good childhood. And I've generally made choices in my life that have enhanced me in a way that I've been proud about, you know, in hindsight. And so on paper, I shouldn't really be benefiting all that much from my meditation practice. And so what I got from the practice that I did not have before, because I didn't even know that I didn't have it before, was I just got a lot more connected to the voice of my own inner guidance. So my intuitive voice became so loud and so strong. And how that benefits me now is it allows me to make bolder choices that I probably

would not have the balls to make otherwise, right? Because, you know, again, there's so much. you can lose from a success standpoint, from a material standpoint, when you make both choices in life. They usually are very risky on paper. But at the same time, there are things that you think about all the time. And we all have that. We all have these ideas that we think about all the time. Oh, I want to be an entrepreneur or I want to be nomadic or I want to, you know,

start up this nonprofit or whatever it is. usually it's going to be something, if it is truly bold, people are going to talk you out of it. They're going to try to warn you about all the things that can go wrong. And by the time you get through that whole cycle of listening to all the things that could go wrong, you may be thinking, Jeff, well, it's not worth it. It's not, you know, I don't want to lose what I've accumulated. And that's kind of how personal growth, spiritual growth, reaching our potential, following our true path, it requires us to move through that potential rejection.

And so I would say that the reason why I've been able to do the things I've been doing recently, which is living out of a backpack in my 40s and being nomadic and becoming a minimalist and all of these kinds of things, which I never saw coming. It just kind of, I felt myself being guided in that direction is because I have a such a clear relationship with my inner guidance. And I know what it feels like. And I know that if I don't do it, my life is not going to get better. It's going to get worse. And that's where I get anxious. It's not following that voice. And so following it while scary and while taking a lot of courage, it actually keeps me balance. It keeps me centered. It keeps me present. It keeps me being all

the ways that I know that I need to be in order to thrive. And I'm not unique in this. I see this all the time with people who practice on a regular basis is that they start thriving spiritually. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention was, again, going back to the financial model, right? Sure, people don't necessarily put as much emphasis on their inner work and because they may be calm, they may be, you know, relatively happy and all of that. But again, those same people have checked their bank accounts, you know, twice a day and they've checked their investments two and three times a day. And they know, generally speaking, where everything is, which direction things are moving in, what they need to move around to make them thrive a lot more. And they don't, they don't make random choices

when it comes to things that they truly, truly care about. Because maybe the Those things allow them to have a sense of freedom that they ultimately want to enjoy in life. And so what I argue for is even if you don't feel like you need to do inner work, it will give you a sense of freedom that you have no idea that you even need in order to do the things that you're truly here to do. And ultimately, you know, there's not just seated, eyes closed meditation. There's what's called Bhakti yoga, which is another form of meditation, is meditation and action, which is something I see you do a lot. You know, you're so generous, you're so helpful. You're always using your resources to help other people find their path in life. And that's a very meditation, that's a very meditative way to live your life, right?

It's living a life of service. and being able to reallocate the things that you have in a way that allows other people to flourish. And so I would argue that you actually do meditate every day. It's just not with your eyes closed and on a cushion. Well, I appreciate that, brother. And yes, and thank you for that. I appreciate that.

Acknowledgement. And I do think about community service a lot, those things. And I also, when I was talking about meditation, I may not always do TM medicine. meditation the way, or Vedic meditation rather, in the way that you've taught me, but I might do like a two-minute falling still practice. I might do, I really enjoy yoga nidra on days especially where I'm really trying to execute that calling that I tapped into previously and I'm in execution mode because I go through these different cycles in life and I'm in kind of one of those execution modes right now and launching a new business with my business partner. I do a lot of yoga nidra where I might do a nap and a reflective thing. a scanning in the body. And most of the time I'm actually not even falling asleep. So some sort of component of reflection that is there. And of course, Vedic meditation, TM being one of those components. So it's been super helpful in terms of having the courage to connect with that inner voice and saying my inner voice would not, it's not a misguiding of me. It's only wanting to

bring it out. That doesn't mean that you don't have to deal with the realities. You know, if your inner voice tells you that you need to go in a different direction and you're in one relationship, that doesn't mean that you're not going to have to deal with the toughness of breaking up with somebody and the heartbreak that comes with that on both sides or if you're in the wrong business partnership or if you're working on the wrong project and you spend a lot of money, time, effort, and energy, you still have to follow through on the actions of those things, but that initial decision of this is the step that I'm going to take, that's the hardest decision for most people in their life to say that at least this is something that I want.

And not only do I want it, but I deserve it. I deserve this thing that I want to create. And not in an entitled way in a sense of if I'm here to self-actualize and bring my highest talents and gifts to the world, that also means that I'm most likely going to be able to be the most service to other individuals. If you don't feel good and if you're not on the right path of whatever your version of your life's expression is, you're not going to be able to help people to the degree that you want to.

you're going to be miserable dealing with the day-to-day stuff that most people are dealing with. There's no room and space to focus on anybody else at that time. So definitely some aspect of inner work on a regular basis. All right. You mentioned something. I want to explore it and tease it out a little bit. And that was spiritual minimalism. So what is your twist on the world of minimalism?

And what are you trying to bring into that understanding? standing for the folks that are out there with this new book that you're working on. Yeah, I'm writing a book now about how to live a more fulfilled life using the principles of spiritual minimalism. And, you know, there's tons of minimalism books out right now. Most of those minimalism books are about, you know, how to methodically clear out your closets, your garage, get rid of clutter, that kind of thing, create more. They're focused on physical. External space. Yeah. Yeah. And so spiritual minimalism implies creating internal space. So it's what we've been talking about, spaciousness, creating space inside.

And the more space you create inside, the less attached you are to thinking that you need stuff on the outside. So you become less prone to accumulating stuff needlessly in order to feel secure or to feel fulfilled or to feel happy externally. And obviously, okay, so there's seven principles related to this. And this is a little sneak peek of the book? Yeah, it's a little sneak peek. I won't go too deep into it. But obviously meditation is one. Cultivating the voice of inner guidance is very, very important.

That's like literally the first principle. If you don't have that, none of the other stuff is going to work. And then following your inner guidance, following your curiosity. I talk about, you know, people have a big problem with purpose, feeling like they don't have a purpose. And that's, again, because we equate purpose to this big, it's got to be this big idea. You know, I've got to clean the oceans or I've got to get rid of starvation or something like that. And I say that finding your purpose is kind of like finding corruption. You know, when they say, look, the way you find corruption is you follow the money and then it'll lead you to whoever the person is in charge of the corruption.

to find your purpose, you follow your curiosity. Whatever you're curious about, right? It could be video games, could be gardening, could be raising kids. Follow that. Just do that. Do what makes you naturally inherently curious. And that will lead you to your purpose, right? And then you can argue that you're already on your purpose, even if you're just aware

of what you're curious about. So that's a part of it, celebrating the freedom of choice. and giving what you want to receive, right? In other words, understanding that there's no free out there. Like, if you want to feel happy inside, you have to make an exchange. You have to make some time to cultivate that. If you want anything of value, you have to offer something of value, which is where service comes in. So there are all these principles.

And through incorporating these principles, your version of minimalism, in air quotes, minimalism is going to be different from my version, right? My version is living out of a backpack in Mexico City indefinitely. Your version may be something completely different from that. And only you will know what that looks like once you start employing these principles. And someone else's version could be completely different. And I think that we need to stop placing expectations and boundaries on so many people when they say I want to be spiritual or I want to be this or I want to be that. And just, you know, everyone has their own expression of these things.

And I think we need to get into a place where we can celebrate that, right? And that even comes down to relationships again. If your partner is less financially prudent than you are, right? instead of attacking them for not having the same awareness financially that you have, find what they're good at and celebrate that. And that's how you get them to reciprocate and celebrate what you're good at. Maybe they're really good at physical fitness and you're not. And so you celebrate that.

They celebrate your awareness of finances. And so that becomes really the day-to-day opportunity is what can I celebrate in my partner today? What can I celebrate within myself today? and through that sense of celebration, that creates expansion there, which again is what we all want. We want abundance. We want abundance. But it's less about acquiring abundance, more about feeling abundant. If you feel abundant, you don't need to own anything.

You can just celebrate what you have and treat it as though you owned it for the time being, then that keeps you more anchored in the present moment. So that's the gist of spiritual minimalism. I used to be so into when I was younger, like, buying clothes. And I would always, I would get this like sort of high, this dopamine rush, even on the way to the mall and get excited about spending my paycheck on buying all sorts of different clothes. I'd be like, I'd like, I'd like love to go like to express. I don't know if you know that brand. I don't know.

Of course. Yeah, it does. But back in the day, whatever is wearing those different. I was just in there a couple days ago. Okay. So it's still there. I didn't even know if it's still around or not. And like getting all these different shirts and having these things.

And I really felt those, if I look back at that time, I felt as those possessions were like an extension of me. Right. It felt like an extension of me and like I can be. And obviously there's nothing wrong with people having, you know, clothes and it's less about we've had the minimalist on the podcast before. It's not about the total amount of the things that are there, but it's really a reflection of, as you're saying, why are you trying to. add all this stuff, what are you making up for? Or are these, you know, just things that you have for enjoyment and you understand like, hey, I'm intentionally purchasing this for a reason, right? So not how much stuff you have, but what is that relationship with that stuff? And definitely

for me back in the day, there was the filling the void and trying to be different because I also felt when I was younger, I felt like how can I stand out? How can I be different from other people? And I didn't really know and I didn't really know who I was. And I'm saying younger, but I was in, you know, high school. And so I felt like clothes and being super into that was my expression of doing it. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. But as I started to go further and I realized, what was I really craving? I was craving wanting to be intentional with my relationships, having something to talk about. At that time, maybe I was not necessarily talking about clothes because I didn't want to talk about clothes, but you're getting complimented for that.

Now I get complimented for things. It's like I'm being complimented for, hey, thank you for introducing me to this speaker that you've had on your podcast. It's still a compliment. It still feels good. I'm not relying on those things because sometimes it's there. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's the opposite.

How dare you talk about this subject on the podcast? And it's more a reflection of I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to feel like I was a participant in the conversation. And when I understood that that wasn't really, from material possessions or if it was from material possessions, it's fleeting. You get it for a quick second and it's gone away. It doesn't actually make you necessarily a better person.

My entire mindset started shift and I just felt like I didn't need as many physical possessions that filled my life. I was getting that. I was I was I was getting that from just intrinsic stuff that I had control over. and 99.999% of that didn't cost anything. Yeah, man, I have a funny anecdote about that. In high school, I also was spending a lot of time thinking about what I was going to wear. And one day I thought to myself, is anybody even paying attention to what I wear?

Right? Like, is the time I'm investing in this returning on whatever I'm getting back from it? And so I decided to run an experiment. And I wrote about this in my upcoming book, I decided I'm going to wear the same thing every day for a week. And just see. In high school? In high school. Yeah.

High school. I think it was a senior in high school. And back in those days, I had on these khaki, like cargo pants and this like purple long sleeve mock turtleneck. That was the style, I guess, in Alabama in the 90s. And I wore that outfit every day. I would wash it at night and wear it again the next day and the next day and the next day. Literally not one person said anything. I don't know if they noticed or not, but nobody said anything.

That's got to be an anomaly for back of the day. I feel like, you know, kids that I grew up with in the school, like kids are so attentive. Like, yo, are you wearing the same jeep? Dude, that's what I was expecting. Was it because you're a handsome guy, tall, you know, back then? But it was, I tell you, it was, it was, it was some of that favorable genetic lottery treatment. It was liberating because I realized, wow, I'm spending all this time. And if they did notice it, nobody cared enough to say anything.

And then I kind of suspect it. Well, maybe they didn't say anything because everyone's so worried about what everybody else thinks about them. And that was my first indication that it's not really even about me, you know? Like it's everyone's basically absorbed with what's happening in their world. and again it's as anecdotal I get it but it freed up a lot of space for me to like not put so much energy and attention into that I mean I still obviously care a lot about how I'm presenting myself but but it was a it was a interesting little and and this is what I'm talking about it's like if you are wondering those things run the experiments you know do the split test and see for

yourself so that you can be more intentional if you're wondering hey am I do I show up better with or without alcohol, go off alcohol for a couple months and just see what happens. You may surprise yourself. Maybe you do show up a lot differently and maybe that is a lot better for your stated goals that you want to achieve in your life, right? And now you have a point of reference instead of just doing what you've always done, but you're not getting what you say you want to get and you're not sure why. You got to change things up. You got to do things a little bit differently. Yeah, and part of that as an adjacent from it is that also sometimes people will notice. When I stopped, I never really drank that much growing up. And in college, I didn't

really drink at all. And it wasn't until later on in life, I got kind of into wine. I was hanging out a lot of like pure food and wine in New York City. If anybody's seen the documentary, Bad Vegan, who knows, maybe we'll have Sarma on the, uh, she was a close friend of mine back in the day up until, you know, like 2012. But there was a group of friends that we used to go. And drink on the weekends in New York and the culture and everything. And I pulled back from that because I actually was like, I don't like drinking that much. It's nice every so often.

I didn't really drink growing up. I like to try wine. It's an experience and that. But I don't want to drink as much of as I've been drinking here in New York City. And I did have friends who were also in the health space, but just also kind of got into drinking. And it was our bonding thing on like Friday night or whatever. Or we'd be at the place.

And they're like, you're not drinking tonight. They would notice it. They would say stuff, but then to know and to hear that inner guidance and say like, yeah, actually, like, I am not drinking. I feel so much better. These are the reasons why. And by the way, no judgment on you. You could do whatever you want to do.

But these are the reasons why I'm not doing it. So I have run that experiment where I do wear the same stuff pretty much every single day now. You know, I have a few different, you know, clothes. I got smart and I bought just multiple versions of that, those clothes, those shirts, sweaters, jeans and people do notice sometimes. I'll say it's funny. I think I saw you that last week. I say, you know what? You're probably right because I buy the same set of clothes that I love. It simplifies my life and I give all my attention to my businesses, my family and the things that I want to create in the world. It's the best hack ever. You should try it if you ever want to do an experiment.

And I love those moments because I know why I'm doing it. And it doesn't matter what anybody else says about the situation. I'm grounded in my own internal guidance and I'm sure it's the same for you. Yeah, it comes back to intentionality. Like doing anything with intention is better than doing it without intention, right? And just because it means you put thought into it and just putting that little thought into it. And again, starting with, like we started the conversation, what are your core values? What's important to you? Is family, business, is all that more important than dressing differently every day. If so, then you can make that decision to have a capsule wardrobe or to have a uniform so much easier than feeling overwhelmed by this thing that really isn't aligned with

what your core values or your mission is in this lifetime or at this point in your life. And once you make, it's freeze up so much space, so much energy, so much of your attention if you just take the 30 minutes to sit down and just say, okay, what's important, what's most important to me in my life. In other words, if my life was on fire and I could save five things from my life, what would it be? Would it be my health? Would it be my family? Would it be my relationship? Would it be? What would it be? You could run out of the house with five things from your life. What would it be? Okay. That's your values. So you don't even have to put more thought into it than that. Then once you have your values and you have an opportunity, hey, light, do you want to come to this

cruise ship party thing that's two weeks or do you want to go to your grandmother's birthday, you know, then the decision is easy to make because my family relationship is way more important than partying on some cruise ship at this point in my life. Maybe when I was 20, the cruise ship thing would have been a little bit more important because I would have wanted to have that social experiment and understand what that life was all about. But now that I've been around that block several times. I don't need to run that experiment anymore. So I can make these other decisions a lot easier. And when I was writing the book, you know, that's when you really get clear about what your priorities need to be because there's so much FOMO involved in writing a book where you have to

spend countless hours by yourself on Sunday, fun day, on Christmas, holidays, birthdays, like every day, if you need to do your writing, you need to do your writing. It doesn't matter what else is going on. People are inviting you out to brunch, drinks, all this stuff, dates, right and you have to like stay focused if you want to hit your deadline and and you know and you realize that's my priority my priority is not just writing a book but spreading a message and using the time that I have in my life to to expound upon the things that are important to me that I've learned so that maybe some kid 300 years from now it stumbles across this book and in the future version of the library and and they get a little dose of, you know, inspiration from my experience to do something

amazing and profound. And so, you know, getting that clear about your why never makes your life worse. It only makes your life better. Like, thank you for the inspiration in this conversation. If somebody wants to take the next step on that and wants to jump into this world of meditation, how can they begin to learn with you? So the quickest way, I have a community called the happiness insiders. And the happiness insights. And the happiness insights, Insiders is all about inner work. It's about imagine of investment community, focusing completely on your money and your investments and your assets, but it's all about cultivating that foundation of happiness inside. That's why it's called the Happiness Insiders. And so you start

off with a seven-day meditation kickstart, which gives you a basic premise for becoming self-sufficient as a meditator. Then you go to a 108-day meditation. meditation challenge where you meditate for 10 minutes a day for 108 straight days. I think the 21 day habit building thing is a myth. I don't think that really is enough. I think you need to do it for a few months. And so 108 days, which is obviously an auspicious number in the spiritual world, 108. But it takes you over three months of consistency.

And we've had an 85% completion rate. The industry standard with online challenges is about. 3%. So this challenge is constructed to give you everything that you need in order to actually meditate. You get quality instruction, you get community, you get accountability, and you get support, and you get to the end of that, and then you have a bunch of other challenges. You have a movement challenge if you want to get in better shape. Everything is the tortoise approach as opposed to the hair. So very, very thin edge of the wedge, starting off very, very small, and then building from there. And then there are a ton of master classes such as finding your purpose, manifesting

abundance, radical authenticity, how to move on from a breakup. And these are all taught by you. All taught by me. Yeah. It's just because, you know, on my social media, I have tons of clips of, you know, my insights about different things. This is a more, they all come from this community. So this is a more concentrated way to just, and stepwise approach to mastering. these different inner exercises and practices. And that's what I think is missing out there because we all agree, oh, yeah, I want to do more inner work, but how do you do it? Where do you start?

What's the blueprint? How do I know what the first step is? How do I know what the end goal looks like? So I'm gifting people with that blueprint for basically just creating all of that happiness and space inside so that they can start to live their best life on the outside. I love it. Well, we'll link to that below along with the books. And you also have, every so often you have in-person workshops for meditation.

Correct. That you do. Just explain what they are, like where do you do them and the frequency? Like, where do you go if they want to learn with you a person? I still conduct Vedic meditation trainings and workshops, which are usually four-day in-person trainings. I did one. It was great many years ago. And I had a beautiful experience.

I grew up with a lot more of a formalized approach to meditation that was weirdly formal. You have to sit this way, you have to look this way, you have to do that. You have to sit for an hour. It always has to be an hour. And doing your course really helped me sort of understand how, I mean, I knew a lot of that stuff was not really hitting the mark. And it was great. It was a great course experience. Yeah, it's 20 minutes twice a day in a way that makes meditation feel enjoyable, as enjoyable as meditation can feel like you're just sitting there watching Netflix or something.

And my goal with those is to teach people how to be self-sufficient, so how to do it on your own. And I do those a few times a year. I'll do these little tours where I'll go to like L.A., New York, London, maybe some other places, and work with people for four days. And by the end of it, they know everything they need to know in order to meditate in a very confident way. So I've got a Mexico City thing coming up in Fourth of July weekend, if this will even be out by then. But other than that, I'll be teaching usually once a season, a couple times a year, something like that. So if people follow me on my social media, which is just at Light Watkins, they'll find information about that.

Beautiful. Well, thank you, brother, for being in town during this time and hopping on the podcast, a little impromptu conversation. And I think that the real takeaway that I'm hoping that the audience walks away with is that if you can, through the power of inner work, which meditation being a crucial component of that, start to hear that inner guidance and be able to, there's noise in life, right? Just behind us right now, there's a car that's backing up or a truck that's backing up, making a delivery. But still, we have to record this podcast and do our thing. I can't let it distract me. And that's life. Life is going to have noise.

But if we can tap into that inner guidance, we can still move forward and make progress on the things that matter to us. And only you know what matters to you. And if you hear that voice, you can be bold and courageous and taking the step forward in the right direction that you want to. So thank you for reminding our audience. And the only other alternative is to always be preparing to fall back, which is just not that inspiring when you're always preparing yourself to fall back. And it will make you say. Yeah, the most inspiring choice you can ever make at any time is to move forward to take that leap of faith. Light Watkins, thank you, sir.

Thank you.