Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 452: James Beshara

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

James Beshara, brilliant entrepreneur, philosopher, and Bhagavad Gita-infatuate, joins the DTFH! Check out James' podcast Below the Line! You can also learn more about James on his website, or follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: BetterHelp - Visit betterhealth.com/duncan to find a great counselor and get 10% off of your first month of counseling! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Purple - Visit Purple.com/Duncan10 and use promo code DUNCAN10 for $200 Off any mattress order of $1500 or more!

We are family. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting, and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford, and Jay Farrar.

Oh, and thereabouts for kids. Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in-store, and we're never short on options at jcp.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. My nipples have inverted.

My palms they've done stigmata. My legs are escalators that my body can't get off of. I thought I was the person with a person-sized soul. But now I've been fractalized within the cursed cave hole. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Kaleidoscopic alien viewfinder. Used to have a body now. I'm just some carpet fiber.

Used to speak a language now. I can only hug. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Please God, I swear if you'll just give me back my body. I'll stop drinking tequila, and I'll start taking Pilates. I'll get to know my neighbors, and I'll join the Peace Corps. Don't want to be inside of this Kale No More. That's Trapped in a Kale by Francis Bacon.

You can find that on my Sound Club. Why do I keep making up fake names for these songs? Am I embarrassed anymore? Why am I embarrassed? This is a sign of insecurity. I'm just kidding. That's not my track. I wish it were.

That's Collexus Martino, and the track can be found on Another Night in Gale fell from my roof, which is the album on Ornex Records, a subsidiary of Darien 438. Boy, do we have a great episode for you today. Entrepreneur, philosopher, and my new friend, James Bishara, is here with us today. You're about to get your mind exploded by this brilliant human who is an entrepreneur, but also as infatuated with the Bhagavad Gita as anyone I've ever met. He's awesome. Do you hear that in the background?

I'm actually recording this in the astral realm. We're going to jump right into this episode, but first this. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Is there something interfering with your happiness that's preventing you from achieving your goals? Like maybe you find yourself in the midst of a global pandemic that you thought was receding, but now seems to be coming back. Even though you're vaccinated, you've got kids, and you know that there's a possibility

that you could actually infect your kids with the new variant. On top of all that, you're doing everything you can to support your family and be a good dad, but you're not exactly sure how to balance work with hanging out with your kids, giving yourself the time you need, but then if you can analyze your schedule, you realize that a lot of the time you're just on the internet, you're not actually working, so when you're telling people that you're busy, it's kind of a deception, and you're beginning to wonder if there's no way to escape becoming some version of your parents, the bad parts of your parents, and not the good parts of your parents, and so you're sort of losing sleep

when you wake up in the middle of the night and think about that. Well then BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. You can start communicating in under 48 hours. It's not a crisis line, it's not self-help, it's professional therapy done securely online. There's a broad range of expertise available, which may not be locally available in many areas. The service is available for clients worldwide.

You can log into your account anytime, send a message to your therapist, and you'll get timely and thoughtful responses, plus you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions so you won't ever have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room as with traditional therapy. Who wants to do that? Who wants to sit in a therapist's office with other people in a kind of shared realization that you're both going to therapy? Not there's anything wrong with that, but come on, the reason I'm in therapy, or at least part of it, is I don't like it when I start feeling vulnerable because I try to

live in my super ego, but I'm constantly getting sucked down into my id and it would be really nice if I could just figure out a way to live in between those two in a healthy way. BetterHelp is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change therapists if needed. It's more affordable than traditional offline therapy and financial aid is available. BetterHelp wants you to start living a happier life today, visit their website, read their testimonials that are posted there daily. Visit BetterHelp, that's H-E-L-P dot com, forward slash Duncan, and join the over one

million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. In fact, so many people have been using BetterHelp, they are recruiting additional therapists in all 50 states. Right now, my beautiful listeners will get 10% off your first month at betterhelp dot com forward slash Duncan. Thank you BetterHelp, and we're back friends. Listen, I don't want to keep going into this and my attorneys have advised me not to talk

about it anymore, but listen, I am not saying that after the wild animal attacks that have been happening to people who haven't subscribed to my Patreon, there is going to be a new round of attacks from insects and snakes. Up until this point, it's only been mammals attacking people, small mammals attacking people who haven't subscribed to my Patreon, but and I'm not saying that the next round is going to be snakes and insects. I'm not saying that that would make me seem insane. Like I was threatening people saying, look, the only way I can protect you from an increasing

number of attacks from varying creatures, cold-blooded, warm-blooded arachnids, et cetera, is by going on my Patreon. And I'm not saying that at all. My attorneys want me to emphasize that. But if you did want to subscribe to my Patreon, Patreon dot com forward slash DTFH, you would get instant access to commercial free episodes of this podcast along with lots of extra stuff. All right. That's the Patreon plug.

Today's guest is brilliant. He is an angel investor. He's a CEO. He started massive, massive companies and he's got a really wonderful podcast called Below the Line Podcast and we are becoming really great friends. I'm excited to introduce you to him. He's like a wonderful example of the place where spirituality and business intersect and that is a real, living, thriving place that I completely resonate with.

So get ready. If you want to connect to him, you can follow his podcast on Twitter at go below the line or just follow him on Twitter at James Bashara. Check him out. Follow him. But first listen to this episode. Everybody please welcome to the DTFH the brilliant James Bashara. James, welcome to the DTFH.

I, you know, I'm so thrilled that we are becoming friends. I won't get into the details of how we met, but wow, it's really super cool to know somebody like you. I've already like just from like a few conversations with you, like my life is getting better. You're like plugging me into things that I'd never heard of before. And the reason I'm really excited to have you on the podcast is because I spend a lot of time having conversations with people about some pretty ethereal stuff, some mystical stuff and spiritual stuff.

But you are this amazing intersection between a lot of the spiritual stuff that I'm interested in and real world, pragmatic entrepreneurial action. And that's pretty cool to me because I think a lot of people think those two things don't necessarily intertwine. Well, I am so excited to be, well, any, any conversation with you, I'm excited to have mics or mics on or not. So I'm really excited in, in our first conversation, I was telling you that, that I see comedians in general have this amazing ability to connect these disparate points and in beautiful, hilarious

ways. And it's such an awareness as well as the articulation of the, the observation that the community is making that, that is so beautiful. And you do that not only with hilarity, but you also do the philosophical viewpoints so, it's just so seamless. And it's really beautiful to, to listen to because it's like a good laugh. You just never know when there's going to be some knowledge nuclear bomb that is, that has dropped around the corner.

So I, I, man, I'm excited to, to chat with you any day of the week. Well, thanks. You know, I got to say, you're the first person on this podcast as far as I'm aware that's been in Time Magazine, 30 under 30, you're young, you're this young like Batman entrepreneur person who, and I'm really interested in that. I'm really interested in the, like, what, what do you think is the difference between you and all the other people out there who may be in the, would like to like not have a boss, would like to have their own business, would like to start, get their own thing going,

but they just don't do it. There's no way for me to, to, to really know, to be honest, or, and certainly no way to, to concisely articulate what is the thing. But I will say that I believe the real answer, and this is actually somewhat dissatisfying for, for a lot of people, but I think it ultimately is enlightening, is that I remember hearing that Yo-Yo Ma said it takes three generations of families being serious about music to create a world-class musician. And so it's not just the precocious 13 year old saying, I want to be a world-class musician

that, that makes it happen. It's multiple generations. But I'll get to the, the, I think the enlightening part, but that's always dissatisfying, dissatisfying because people want to, in many ways, and I'll get to the reality of the story because it is so not a Batman-esque story. It's so not a 30 under 30, like had it going on and still have it going on type of, type of story. And I despise those.

I started a whole podcast that I've told you about to really unearth the real stories of people and the real backstories, but that articulation of Yo-Yo Ma saying takes three generations of families being serious about music to produce a world-class musician. I think about that a lot in the sense that my great grandfather was an entrepreneur. And he started a general store, hitchhiked his way from, basically comes over from, from Lebanon and Syria, hitchhiked his way to a tiny town in Oklahoma at 16 years old. It's just jumping on trains, getting, you're getting into strangers' trucks until he goes, until there isn't a, then he gets on a train that's going through Oklahoma and he says

to himself, I'm going to create, I'm going to go until there's a train stop that doesn't have a general store. And then I'm going to create a general store. Wow. And, and that's, I mean, when I, when I would hear that story of my great grandfather, I would just, I'd be blown away by the simplicity and the brilliance of that of, all right, I'm going to create a general store, but I'm going to go where there's no competition. I'm going to stay on this train until there's a stop where there isn't a general store at

16. I mean, this motherfucker was just, he was, you know, what would suck is if he, you know, he was on the train with someone else with the same plan and they're like, all right. Four days in, wait, that guy's structure looks a lot like my structure. Wait, G E and it's like day 17. It's like finishing up the R A L. It's like, fuck general what? Not a store. No.

Yeah. Exactly. So please continue. So then my grandfather goes from a small general store and then he owned a flower shop next to it, my great grandfather. My grandfather moves from that tiny town, Haskell, Oklahoma to Tulsa, Oklahoma and owns, starts with a laundry mat and then turns that into a few different laundry mats. And then my dad ends up running the, the oldest recruiting firm in Texas, moves from Oklahoma

to Texas and sets up shop in Dallas and starts a recruiting firm that he, he builds out, you know, finding executives for companies. And Dallas just tends to do well and take off and, you know, it's headquarters for a bunch of companies. And so each generation has just taken a little bit further. So I think that that is dissatisfying for people to hear because it's not the thing that can change your life on a Tuesday to, to whatever version of success might be there. But what is enlightening, and I think is, I think about this so often as well, a pastor

in San Francisco, a church that my wife and I went to for 10 years said one time is that we inherit the virtues and the sins of our, of our parents. And that's deep. All right. For me, it hit me in a couple of different ways, but, but, but I certainly felt like, okay, I feel like I inherited the, the both of virtues and sins of my parents, but in many ways it's even deeper for, for me, at least from the perspective of, I got to be really mindful of what I'm doing because my kids are going to inherit whatever example

I'm saying. Right. Yeah. I mean, that is a, I know you have two daughters, that's that. And I've got two sons. This is a terrifying and beautiful thing to know, to know that and to, I, I don't know if you've experienced those moments yet where you're like, Oh my God, I am right now a drain pipe out of which is dripping the poison of my parents and into time.

You're like, and I don't want it to, you feel like you feel like an open, I don't know, sewer dripping into some beautiful pure river and you're like, how the, I don't, I don't want to be this, but I, but suddenly this, it's just comes out and you know, so how do you mitigate that? What would be an example, especially for those that don't have kids, they probably, I can think of a handful, but I want from, you know, to, from you, what would be a specific example? Getting into like a vile argument with my wife in front of the kids, you know, where we're like really fighting with each other and looking each idiot in both share like

this overwhelming love for our kids and for each other, both of us looking, watching each other turn into demons, you know, looking at poor forest watching us like, what the fuck is this? Like, I thought I was the only one who did tantrums around here. Like, what is this? And, and, and, but, you know, we, we've had conversations about it, you know, because it's like, look, if you're going to be married, you're going to get into arguments. Like you're going to fight, you're going to get into arguments.

Like, so we've had the conversation. Do we have the argument in secret or do we have it in front of the kids? And we have heard you don't do the secret arguing thing because they need to see that there's conflict in life, but they also need to see resolution. That's the main thing is if you can get in the fight and the argument and the disagreement and, and then afterwards also don't get, don't make up in private, let them see that you have resolved the situation or compromise, then I think they get a, some approximation of reality, which is we don't always get a lot.

People don't like, because you're arguing or fighting, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the apocalypse. Anyway, no, no, that's, no, that's huge for them to see that continuation to it, to see logic play out, I think is extremely powerful for a young mind. To see illogical sequence of events play out is confusing. We'll confuse them forever. So they don't see you fight, but then they see this bitterness, this, um, right. This kind of, you know, just a really sour exchange for a day or for two days.

And they don't know why that's, they think, Oh, when you love someone, you, you can treat them like that, I guess, instead of conflict to resolution and love. And it's like, wait, you can get in a fight and then be hugging and holding each other two hours later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But that being said, that, you know, in the, in the fights, when I've gotten really angry and when we've gotten really mean to each other, I feel like I'm making, painting a picture of it.

That's a little prettier than it is, you know, I just, I, like, so this is something that I, I am, feel really like nervous about cause you, I, you know, the cliche about that you always hear, you'll never love anything more than your kids, you know, that's real. And so I feel what you're talking about there, but what about you? How do you, how are you, how do you mitigate it? How do you deal with that responsibility? So, you know, that, and, and I hope we talk about this a little bit or throughout

the conversation of these, these knowledge nuclear bombs that just go off and then like the ground is leveled, you can't unhear that. And so that was one of, one of them in my life was that we inherit the virtues and sins of our parents. And then immediately with a three and a half year old and a, a nine month old, I heard this maybe actually before we had kids, but it stuck with me that, you know, what, what are my imparting to our children? And, and it shifts, it really has shifted my viewpoint of, of, you know,

parenting to this thing where it's like, they're going to be a thousand generations that are going to inherit whatever I impart. It's not just this exchange on a Tuesday afternoon. Like one of, one of which where I was like, what are you doing? Um, and I was observing what I was doing is maybe two weeks ago, my family and I, and this is where, where I think, um, I'm going to love, hopefully for many years, love surfing with you on, on, uh, conceptual articulations of God. I think about God all the time.

I mean, it's, uh, there isn't anything that I don't think that I think God is the only thing that I, um, think about. And, and whenever I, I'm distracted by something that is of here, the now, the, um, whatever it is, uh, complaining about it, $7 coffee in Los Angeles. In some way, I'm misinterpreting God. Um, and so that concept of, of like, what are you, the giving a, you know, imparting a vice, I remember about 10 days ago, two weeks ago, telling my three and a half year old, God's watching you.

Oh yeah. And I took something so beautiful that I've critiqued. I mean, you and I have actually, the critique of taking, um, taking this, this beautiful, um, I think life altering concept of understanding God, but then using it in a macro sense, political, you know, from King James, uh, and his divorce that you were telling about, uh, that we were talking about all the way down to trying to get my three and a half year old to do what I want her to do.

And it's, and I was, uh, thankfully aware that I was doing it, but I was like, shit, this is how it begins, man. There you go. You elf on the shelves, God, you know, it's the thing. I, yeah, I was, when I'm talking to forest about God or Jesus or, uh, I just realized like, well, what does he think I'm even talking about? Because we don't talk about it as, I don't know how to like, really talk about it with him, uh, anyway, I definitely haven't gotten to the point

where I could do like the police state with God. That's all, that's all I've really talked about, uh, God with her. Yes. I mean, we, she sleeps with, and this is not of her own accord. She sleeps with a Bible. I'd say, you know, on the offset, uh, of this conversation for, for listeners, um, I'd be very hard to kind of figure out what category I am in terms of a, um, religious influence, but the, but yeah, she sleeps with a Bible of her own

accord. We talk about maybe stories of, of Jesus because he has a children's Jesus, uh, children's Bible from her grandmother. Um, and, and so we'll talk about that. Maybe that's 10% of the equation. 90% of the equation has been around the concepts of hell have gotten into her head of just like punishment, God punished, and she's three and a half. And I was part of that because two weeks ago I'm telling her God's watching.

Um, and I don't even remember the circumstance. I think it was like coming out of her, uh, not listening to, to her parents, but I was just like so, so blown away by a holy shit, man. You have so sent it's just so manipulative to use this, uh, beautiful thing for a tool of my own, um, yeah. And it's like, I, I, you know what? I love this idea that when you're, when you're a parent, you, it isn't just your children you're affecting.

It's like your actions are reverberating through a genetic echo chamber that potentially can go on for millennia. Who even knows how long, and it's this simultaneous like surrender. I think a little bit just to the reality of like, look, we'll do the best we can. We'll be good enough to your, and for me, also the other realization is like shit, even when my parents were lost in their own, like, um, you know, lost in their own karma, they were doing the best they could because, you know, any parent loves their kids, like probably, probably unless you're dealing with like, I don't know.

I'm obviously there's exceptions and maybe this is a little naive to say, but probably your parents were doing the best they could do because they loved you that much. And so if you had particularly rotten parents, you can't even imagine what they would have been like if you hadn't showed up in their life. My God, they, you know what I've got only knows without you what they would have been because they were at least experiencing raw love. And then whether or not they could overcome their own particular like gravity

wells, addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, you know what I mean? They were still, you were experiencing probably the best they could do. You know, and for some people who are thinking like, oh, really? Well, my fucking dad was taking me to the goddamn bar, you know, at eight a.m. Is that the best he could do? Yes, that was the best he could do. Right. That was the best.

And you might have never been able to hear his articulation of devices and virtues he inherited that he had to deal with that are the exact same logic that, you know, the person sitting and that therapist chair on a Thursday afternoon is complaining about their parents. Well, let's bring in the whole fucking story. Let's bring in their parents story. Let's bring in what they had. I mean, it's that the yeah, that's a never ending, a never ending loop.

And I think that's that's a very that's a very positive thing because you're a part of that never ending loop. And there's gravity to the conversations that examples set for your three year old, because yeah, whatever you're going to impart, they're going to go on and impart to their children and so on. So yeah, I don't think it's a stretch to say if you believe this presumption that we inherit the virtues and vices of parents. I feel very fortunate for for my my parents and upbringing.

If we believe that, then yeah, there's it's not like it just stops a generation or two down the road. Well, but James, do you don't you think that I mean, I'm not going to argue with yo-yo ma, at least about music, but don't you think that in this hyper connected world that we're in that those rules, they don't apply the same way anymore? I mean, I get three generations minus the internet, but now we've become everyone's children.

Now we've become the children of whoever we pay the most attention to no matter how old we are. So don't you think there's a new possibility for people to? Yes. Yes. So yeah, I think totally. And I think, uh, and there's absolutely examples of this, of entrepreneurship, um, out of out of nowhere.

I think, um, if the conversation is around entrepreneurship, professional success, or these stupid, stupid frigging lists, um, that people come up with, um, of entrepreneur, young entrepreneurs, which are so idiotic. Um, I mean, even though you despise them, well, well, first off, Forbes 30 under 30, that's like, or time 30, 30, 30, that's literally just a blogger, um, that is just reaching out to their network asking, Hey, who, who should I put on this list? Maybe they get 80 names from their first and second degree connections.

And, and those lists are rarely ever indicated above who, you know, who goes on to have positive impact in the world 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road. This episode of the DTFH has been sponsored by Squarespace.com. Number one shout out to my friends over at lotionclown.com. Based on an assessment of their website, my guess is they probably cleared their first, I don't know, million dollars since they bought the domain name using Squarespace and built that website using Squarespace.

I gave surprise lotionclown.com away a few podcasts ago. Now it is a thriving business. You can go check it out right now. It's got testimonials. You've got recordings of people calling for their clown or talking about their experience with a surprise lotion clown. Wonderful experience. By the way, if you not to diverge into some other promotion here, this is a

Squarespace commercial and surprise lotionclown.com is a Squarespace website. But my God, I just have to say there's nothing that makes me feel more relaxed or gives me that I'm at home on a nice Christmas morning than when I hear that fluttering tap of the gloved hands of a lotion clown puttering at my window to let me know that I'm about to get a surprise lotioning. The point is I love you, my listeners, so much that I want to give you the keys to your future prosperity. And that's what surprise lotionclown was, but I'm not just going to stop with

that. I'm throwing this out now. The domain is available. I can't believe it. Lotion songs.com is available right now. Lotion songs, because here's the bottom line. We all know what spa music is, but right now it's very difficult to find those classic lotion songs that we love to hear played when a clown is rubbing lotion into our trembling, generally very dry and stressed out bodies.

Here's an example of a classic lotion song. It's so dry ankles like the desert sky you're my lotion guy when I'm feeling dry you come around lotion guy you're the answer to my gross lotion guy I hear you coming up my stairs it's lotion time you can put the lotion on my feet you can put it on my teeth you can put it on my feet with the lotion everywhere that you cry put it in my my mouth put it in my mouth got a lotion guy lotion guy don't I need a lotion guy where do you need a lotion guy you can hear lotion guy lotion guy lotion guy will you be my lotion guy put my lotion in my mouth it's lotion time used to be so dry ankles like the desert

sky you're my lotion guy when I'm feeling dry you come around lotion guy you're the answer to my lotion guy I hear you coming up my stairs look even if you don't want to make a lotion themed website and you'd rather just focus on maybe your pottery business or the business you have where you sell your stinky socks to dudes all over the country square space has got everything you need they've got award-winning templates that you can use they've got shopping cart functionality sizes to any screen they've got amazing customer support and if you want to do email campaigns they got that too they are a brilliant incredible super advanced hyper technological website that you can use to make a beautiful site in seconds or if you want to make

something deep complex subtle and refined like dunkitrustle.com you could do that too square space is the web design nexus of glory that you should be heading to and right now if you had overdue squarespace.com forward slash Duncan you can try them out and when you're ready to launch use offer code Duncan and you'll get your 10% off your first order of a website or a domain let me reiterate lotionclown.com it's gone but lotionsongs.com it's waiting there for you like some diamond shining in the sands of a mystical lotiony beach thank you square space I'm sorry I just have to tell you this I just got my sperm count I'm you know I'm old I might want to have

another kid let me tell you great sperm count 108 million like the doctor was like what the fuck he's I got one ball I the other one I cancer and I had radiation therapy I've done acid since I was in my 20s you know I was you know fully prepared for the doctor to be like these fucking things this is not even sperm it's just some milky dead stuff coming out of your cock friend but he was like wow all I'm saying that for is I'm proud of that and I think you should I don't give a fuck if I'm not making this well I'm not crafting them probably a blogger in my testicles is making this but still I have okay you should be proud okay uh and there's um yeah there's there compliments I think you're twain and mark twain said he can go to uh

two weeks on a single compliment so that compliments are helpful um they keep it they encourage you um yes but it's a it's just I I think about it and it's not so much I guess I told you the story about uh the preceding generations I think about um the I honestly think about the future generations of you know my kids and kids kids I'm just setting that example where it just really starts way earlier than people think again having said that there are plenty of examples uh Steve Jobs dropped out of college uh was adopted didn't know his his um you know his actual um his actual birth parents and turns out to be one of the best entrepreneurs of uh all time so yeah there's there are both sides um to that I guess what I want to impart to listeners is that it's it is um trying to

go from zero to a hundred and a lifetime based on you read about someone like Elon Musk I think that that can be more depressing if you feel like all right we all started from the same place and then became that versus okay this is where I am now let me go let me try to go 100 steps forward knowing that my kids will be better off to then go 100 steps forward and their kids um you know and I love that I get it I get it oh I love that that's wonderful right because you become otherwise you could become just a self-flagellating self-hating masochistic then you become one of those like it's you know uh what do they call it grind culture or something you know that like that awful I think it's awful because it's that's why people start a company it doesn't go well uh to some narrative

complete bullshit narrative in their head that oh well I was hoping this app would be worth a billion dollars in a year like that you know one thing from that kid that started when he was 20 or from that fake version of Instagram uh so Instagram in Silicon Valley Instagram is is commonly used as an example of they just started it sold her for a billion dollars you know the next day uh and the truth is they they had fucked up so bad for a year that they rebranded the product completely just kept going and then sold it two years later yes for a billion dollars complete lightning in a bottle but they had been fucking up for 12 13 months in a row and then they started to put together the piece and kept going and I think the false narrative of like oh I heard on

a podcast that it's just these steps and then I really should quit my job and I'll be an entrepreneur I'll be you know successful by implementing these three four five steps 12 months later is just so I think we lose out I mean I this sounds like a I think it can sound like a peripheral argument to to what we're talking about but I think it's I think it's so core to how our culture should talk about entrepreneurship should talk about um the reality of creating it's so fucking hard yeah and that's the narrative that we should be putting forward so that people know when they are 12 months in and it's not you know going to to plan and some smooth graph up into the right towards whatever financial goal they have they should know oh this is how it's actually this is

what it's really like right because you know what it's it's the we're talking about it's like a disease a psychic disease that is infecting people during those montages and movies right someone decides to start a fucking business they play a song it's the end of 12 months their business is running great or maybe they're doing home repairs or whatever the thing is it's a song at the end of the song and you see them painting and working and they wipe their brow or whatever but it's a two-minute song in the movie and and somehow that gets in people's heads where they think oh yeah that's just what it's like it's like a year or so of suffering and then probably you'll be okay but you know I know you must have been there I certainly have been there where you're like well

there you're thinking like here are the steps a few more things go wrong and there's some possibility that I'm not going to be able to I'm gonna have to live in my car you know what I mean like a couple more things go wrong I don't think my parents are gonna have you felt that oh fuck yeah yeah what have my mom told me at one point um well you know at one point I was just failing in LA I was just failing I was working at the comedy store how old were you I want the whole I want the long version you want the whole the long virtual I'm a late first of all I'm a late bloomer so like I go to college I get a degree in psychology I go to LA uh work at the comedy store for a while get lucky enough that Rogan starts taking me on the road I'm touring with him

a little bit but I just hit a wall man like I hit a bad spot where it's I must have been late 20s early 30s at this point and how long had you been on this grind because even in that that narrative the montage of just you went from LA to struggling and people don't hear it was six fucking years of struggling not yeah 90 days or however long but how many years had you said okay I want to do this too then hitting a wall and your late 20s early 30s uh yeah I well I guess it's definitely it must have been six it must have been six years at least I mean shit went really bad for me for a long time like it didn't like I like I'm a late I did not take anything seriously really I was I was doing the thing where you're like trying to like turn your

laziness into like some kind of revolutionary attitude because you're so beat above everything that you're like I'm not really gonna apply myself any kind of real way I mean it was all the all the fables you know the my kid watches on tv now you know the stupid crickets playing as violin instead of saving up food for the winter and the ants have to like do different I think there's different versions of the story but that was me just fucking off you know like not taking it seriously and then grind this slow descent into like a really the kind of life you could expect to have if you're not like really like planning you know that was happening to me and and it was bad it was really bad it was just humiliating I was you know I was borrowing money from my mom

I'd have to ask her for money in my late 20s early 30s and then finally she's like I'm not giving you anything like you can't I'm not gonna help you anymore she knew she couldn't help me anymore you know what I mean people were like helping me I was having to ask friends to pay for my parking tickets and stuff man it was bad you know like really really bad and and finally I just got to a point where I realized that if I didn't make it work if I didn't like I didn't make it work then I was gonna leave LA with my tail between my legs and who knows what you know maybe go back home convince my mom to let me live with her for a little bit while I get my fucking life together well who knows what you know just like and all of it was I was I had so many great opportunities

I was kind of squandering you know like there were like a lot I was squandering I wasn't working as hard as I should have been working that's my story it's really a kind of depressing um in the sense that it was like uh you know when I when I look back on it and just think like shit I bet if I just applied myself a little bit more if I had like been a little less interested in like you know partying and and like having like the fun that LA can offer you and a little and listen I remember like I'm sorry man this is no no I knew dude this is um this is what people should hear this is that the experience stretching of that little montage or the part in your own story that we're even talking about this topic you went from struggling in LA to or moved to LA

to struggling without mentioning the part that the person that's listening to us right now that's in year four right needs to hear right right right right right yes I mean yeah I hear you man that's beautiful too I do think you're right about that's like why create some kind of uh yeah if you if I tell the story wrong I will leave out all the embarrassing parts because you know there's certain like confessional things where you uh where you're still cool making the confession but a lot of this stuff was like legitimately humiliating you know like and it's so beautiful like people need to hear that because and this is this is the whole reason that that I started talking about this so much on on my podcast was because that person that's in year four we need

what they're going to create you listening to this right now that's in month 13 yeah that's in month 59 I had Steven Pressfield on my podcast recently who's he wrote an amazing book called the the War of Art and he's also written he actually wrote Bagger Vance Legend of Bagger Vance based on the Bhagavad Gita that yeah the Legend of Bagger Vance the the book and then obviously the movie but the book is based on the Bhagavad Gita Bagger Vance had no idea Bagger Vance Bhagavad Gita what oh fuck that's crazy that's so funny because I know him more for the War of Art right than I do for the art that he made which is exactly I know and he and he tells me all the time he's like I'm a fiction writer I just happen to get known for my non-fiction books

but my you know dream is to write fiction and so his first published book was 27 years when he's 53 now he's written like 12 best-selling books but it was 27 years after he said I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna be a writer wow and those are the stories that we need because we need his books that motherfucker and I hope you don't mind the cussing but it is um the Irish Catholic upbringing inheriting vices the that book the the War of Art we needed that book yes and that book spawned countless countless creative endeavors and creative careers because people talk about that book there's written 20 years ago people still mention it as when I published that episode I heard from 12 13 14 friends that said that

that book was is the singular most impactful book they ever read that didn't write he didn't even get his first book published for 27 years and and he ends up writing the book that could spawn I don't know 10 000 other creative careers but so keep going on the humiliating part um when you when you say the humiliating it was humiliating it was humiliating I was like you know I was like in romantic relationships with people a thousand times more successful than me who are like becoming a fat like exponentially disinterested in me as they're kind of watching me like do that thing you know I know it's just a thing that can happen to people where you just like you think that I think I think most people feel their soul and when if you feel your soul then you feel a lot of

power and you feel a lot of like possibility but that's not enough you can't just recognize this thing inside of you that is like a seed that's going to grow into something potentially you actually have to water it and like go through the there's you know right you know when I was at the comedy store as the talent coordinator in the unprecedented thing app and where the owner made me a paid regular which she generally didn't do and people were on that side of the fence to the point where when I became the talent coordinator other comics were like don't do it man you will not be a comic if you do that you can't do it and I did it because I needed the money I needed a job and I and she made me a paid regular which is unprecedented and awesome and and but I remember

she said to me you know yeah there's no shortcuts I'm gonna put you through your paces and like but she had identified something in me which was like I wanted to take shortcuts you know I wanted to not go through my paces and not suffer the same way all the other comics are the paces you have to bomb your fucking ass off on stage all the time you got to go on stage all the time like five nights a week five nights a week yeah you have to go up all the time I still didn't do that but I you know I didn't but you do have to you really do have to like there's no way out of what out of it there's no way out of it and yet maybe the neural lace is gonna allow us to like do real shortcuts or something like that but there's really no way out of it and and so yeah

you know that was um that was an an unprecedented moment but I remember her it was like kind of a warning or a reality check with me we're just like look it's so I make you this thing who cares you know you still have to do the work there's no way out of it you gotta do the work and then and so anyway it was humiliating it was like till it till finally it wasn't anymore because I was so backed into a corner and like I was in a sublet I was living in a sublet in Atwater Village before Atwater Village got expensive $650 a month uh I think I had somewhere around three or four thousand dollars that was it and what was your mindset like before you felt these inflection points start to go in the direction you wanted to go what was the mindset before

maybe the euphoria of things stacking up your way I had a great therapist who like turned me on to this the mindset was I've got to get help so the mindset was this is now serious it's not fun anymore this is serious like I'm experiencing a series of of basically self-inflicted failures that are completely related to me being like a slacker and I don't I don't want to live like this anymore I'm gonna run out of chances like I'm out of already out of chances it felt like so that this therapist I was with is like look you're waking what time do you wake up oh you know like 11 or 10 all right you're not doing that anymore you're gonna wake up it's you know you gotta wake up early now you're gonna wake up really early and and you you're gonna like call people

and ask if you can work for them and help them and like that's he was just he gave me this like really cheesy course online called the 100-day challenge I think or something yeah yeah it's clip art and shit but the guy's like tough loves you and he's just like right now right down five people who can help you get where you want to go but not like you know handout help but like you like you know part of failure is you don't ask to collaborate you don't ask for help you you just think you can do it all on your own because you know you know it's so true isn't it true and you feel like the people that could help you most are the ones you want to ask least because you're like I just want to show them I'm worthy of their help first I want to show them that I am badass

then on the other side of that I might ask them for something yes that yeah exactly so it's like I didn't I think the guy just identified all the things that happen when people are failing and then reverses them on you like you know or you I was doing the thing where you don't look at your bank account I don't know I bet you've never I don't know if you've ever been there but it's it's a thing we do and I'm really low yeah I in uh so I studied development development economics which we chat about the application of economic theory towards developing regions of the world and I lived in Cape Town South Africa it's working in the townships at Cape Town South Africa for two years and I had I knew I had this support system on my parents but I was making about

two grand a month no no 1300 a month in the beginning and it was in South Africa so 1300 went kind of you know decently far but that those two years were so stressful and I was starting I was creating a company my first startup um on the nights and weekends then I quit my job so stupidly quit my job with no I guess I could ask my parents for uh money and did at many points but I quit my job thinking like no I'm like five months away from this taking off and so and and those every night of those five months was so scary because I was like what did I I just jumped off the ledge yeah and I have no idea what I'm doing just falling into the future and it was yeah so I that that that amount of stress and anxiety I mean they've proved it out it actually

decreases your IQ really yeah so oh fuck that's so crazy so yeah so to make matters worse you're sort of experiencing stress related like reduction of your ability to process information and so which is exactly what you need you know but that all that being said you know you there you must admit um there was something thrilling about those nights too there's something incredibly because powerful about it because you go from you go from like I remember when I finally left the comedy store and that was my last like paycheck job and I remember watching like the paycheck go into the ATM that I was depositing and just thinking like that's the last one of those that you're you know what I mean like they just ate your last thing yeah you know that's it's

about to get real and you are you are you are certainly in the uh Gita sense you are certainly saying okay going into battle and you might be excited about it because we as creators before you really start to create and put it on the line you don't know how much of a battle it's going to be but yeah it is it is exciting to say yes to the battle and don't you think that's as important a thing to admit to it's like yeah six year grind five year grind and at some point in that grind it's like fuck the battle thing fuck this this is not but if you've been cocooned in a job long enough and suddenly you're now you've gone from I guess the comparison could be you've gone from someone with a little farm a sharecropper to being a hunter-gatherer it's a it's a whole

different universe that you're in all of a sudden and that and that is I think in that inherent and so vices of virtues one of the biggest virtues we should impart to those around us not just children because it's obviously we inherit the vices and virtues of our community as well is that virtue we should impart is that you said yes to the battle so hell yeah we should we should absolutely make a note and and call out that part of the story because that is that is probably the most critical part the yo-yo ma stuff maybe that's like the background that I think about it's just transgenerational and by the way also one of the reasons I think about one of the reasons I think about this a lot is that within extreme

abject poverty you can it's very transgenerational and that I just think about so many people that that want to jump into entrepreneurship to get away from whatever situation they're in and and it it might not be the right call for them because this this place where you have no safety net I I don't know if I'd recommend it for that many people but for those listening that feel that call and they feel the call towards it not the not the push away from the shitty job that they have right now like oh it'd be so great to be my own boss because that is not the case you as you could probably test there was even in those times when you didn't have a boss I'm sure you were stressed the f out it's not like it's

you know rainbows and unicorns but I will say that for those 10 20 30 percent of people that might be listening to this that are that are hearing the call and ignoring it that vice is going to be imparted to those around you whoa right oh that's intense right it's not just like you're letting yourself down it's like just everyone around you doesn't get to you know watch what can happen because that is it that that's like a gift you know there's a people talk about in the comedy world it's like you're it's weird like success like success is contagious like where there's a weird thing that'll happen where suddenly one of your friends will book something for the first time and even though you might feel like like you know you inside like you just want to like

just just out there dude oh totally in Silicon Valley that's that is you see a friend raise around raise around the funding and and you're just like eating mayonnaise sandwiches and they raise around and funding for two million you're like what the and it's your best friend and so you're texting more it's at least a close friend maybe not your best friend but I remember and you're texting like congrats man so excited in the back of your mind you're like with that fucking idea that's a terrible idea the systems broke but yeah so so that I think that's another important thing to do I admit is there's a natural human thing that happens at least for I think most people most comics I know you know that's one of the ways you know a comedian is

beginning to get successful as other comedians are talking shit about him all the time you're like oh wow that's amazing they're about they must be taken off everyone's pissed oh yeah he does suck I'm gonna follow him on Instagram to see what he's doing so right yeah yeah but but uh but yeah but I do there there's a contagion that starts happening one of the ways to sort of soothe that darkness is to just like play around the idea that it does seem to be contagious like people succeed in groups I don't know what that is and so there's a term for it called seniors have you ever heard this term uh what's his name it's an art there's an artist or the musician I heard it came from um god anyway go ahead yeah yeah I had I had only heard

this in a conversation um with Mark Andreessen who's a super famous investor and he was on he was an investor in my company and um and just a really great mentor but he mentioned it and it was um I can't people can google who first said it but it was just the concept that um genius can't exist alone and that genius is is a network and a fabric and it can get identified personified in one person but it's actually those people seek out each other just like you would seek out just like the musician would seek out the absolute uh you know extremes of of tactics of practice of you know even a self-isolation to get as good as possible well they're also going to seek out who could potentially help me get even better or get me towards where I want to go and so you see

these clusters of people um and and I the way they were talking about was Bob Dylan going from Minnesota to um to Bleecker Street in New York he would not be Bob Dylan without that scene that he went towards and he knew it we don't know it we he moved there because he knew it but the stories get told is like oh it's Bob Dylan it's you know it's yeah amazing and you see these clusters New York Silicon Valley um LA and and it is yeah they I mean moods are contagious as colds I think success is as contagious as colds as well when you like you said when you when you're like that that he's no better than me it's yeah it's like you're and so when you're talking about people who are like born into poverty like or not just even in a poverty like most I think

statistically most people get born into families where their parents have a boss that's normal it's nothing weird about it you know it's like that's just the way it is it's a I that's the way it was for the entirety of my life um and and yes it is it is a part of it and I think that there's probably maybe a significant portion of that that part of that equation that is purely natural and it is their own version of saying yes to the battle I mean being the first to graduate you know from their family and then take a job and and move up the ranks at AT&T that's their version of saying yes and then I think there's a significant portion of that equation where there that family member is inheriting the vice of the person not saying yes to the battle

wow yeah oh wow right that thing where you like you recognize like true genius in a person like in and I've seen it inarguable like oh my god that is a the not the like yeah that guy's a genius see that but an actual like holy shit like a tesla but because of who know like a variety of who knows what they're not going for it and and it's a it's a it's a dark thing to see and we and that's I mean not to bring it this will be the last time I bring it back to this point but that is what we need we got some big big fucking problems yeah and we need those people and we're going to need them way more over the next 10 20 30 years than we ever have before and it is I mean these things are on you know global these problems aren't local like oh we need to figure out a new

fishing spot for our village like this is global everyone is impacted and we need those people to know what they're really getting into say yes anyhow but then I think of the beautiful thing on the other side of that is that then they they aren't so deterred by month seven month 17 month 39 being so terrible they're like oh yeah this is like this is the story not the I think what goes through so many founders would be founders would be creators heads is this story isn't like anyone else's maybe I need to go back and take the job at at Intel right yeah I mean it's see it seems like what you're saying is you know it's the and maybe this is an obvious thing it's the intention first of all it's like if you're

and we talked about this off mic and I've been thinking about it a lot uh you know earlier in in this conversation you were talking about look you don't want to jump into this because you're running away from something out to you the energy of running away from something is will dissipate the you're gonna and it dissipates entropy and it's the antithesis of running to something you know it's too it's it looks the same but it's completely it may maybe the expression on the face of someone running away from a bear is going to be a little different from someone I don't I don't know you know they say in um Advaita Vedanta which is something we've chatted about oh and I these are the philosophical conversations that I love

I love having with with brilliant people like yourself is you know that that they say you should you should be grasping for this knowledge like gasping for air when you're submerged yeah and one is going towards it and one is uh is you know seemingly running away from um you know death yeah I I oh that that's an interesting point I mean it's like when I'm running away from something though I'll tell you mixed in to that run is gonna be a lot of anger and fear and weird like shit in there whereas I'm running to something I'm excited if I'm learning like if I'm sitting down to practice piano or if I'm like deciding to spend some time you know working on a song or learning how to like or writing uh the writing I'm not as

excited about but still there's this kind of excitement there's this like okay here we fucking go we're gonna jump jump in this thing again versus if I'm just like blindly trying to escape something that I don't want to look dead in the eye or something two different things but you are so understanding your intention seems really important but the off-might conversation we had you were telling me about the difference between seeking success like seeking success through peace if you try if you're trying to achieve success but it's the the methodology is chaotic then you can expect chaotic success if you're trying to achieve success but there's peace within it maybe you can help maybe we could talk about it again because clearly it didn't sink in

as much as I am like no I feel like I'm not articulating I think I think you're um well you're certainly uh right in that and and this is my viewpoint but also this is a pedantic viewpoint um and for for listeners uh that may have never heard of the term Vedantic Vedanta is a means end of knowledge it's a 5000 year old um Indian philosophy that that is really sits at the source of all Eastern philosophies uh so then Hinduism is built on top of it as the adage goes Buddhism is Hinduism made for export a simplified version which which they all these are all needed because it you need this convergence divergence but um you follow it back to uh this the the Upanishads and the Vedic scriptures Vedanta um it it says what what I mean if I

were to ask 10 people on the street what do you want that Alan Watts has a great soliloquy where he says you don't know what you want and if you um all it takes is for you to take take five minutes to write down 250 words of what you quote unquote want not a uh placeholder of like a one happiness or something but you write down or I want uh I want 10 million dollars because then I can live off the interest or whatever but you write down 250 words what paradise looks like to you and just that exercise of having to write down 250 words what paradise looks for you you realize you have no fucking clue what you're talking about right and it's when you do have to expand the language beyond placeholder words and so Vedanta uses somewhat of a placeholder but

says what we want is peace and peace and prosperity yeah and to get prosperity if you want both start with peace and so you start with peace because if you are going for for prosperity and you don't really know which tool in the you know golf club set it's going to get you there you choose chaos you choose dishonesty you choose selfishness you choose whatever is the wrong golf club because you don't pick out the peace golf club then that's the type of prosperity you're going to have and you will you will have missed the chance to utilize peace whereas if you use peace then one you maybe you choose maybe you say okay my prosperity is this piece and I don't need that that other version but no matter what if you say okay look I'm playing the game of peace first

then you're only going to choose here you're you'll only be left to be able to choose the prosperous path that is through peace that is that is so that is perfect genius that is the ant that is that's a solution that I've been stumbling around for a long time like that is the thing it you because how many people you must know so many people who made the wretched mistake of thinking that prosperity will give you tranquility peace and it's it's the most satanic mistake you can make because you will go for prosperity like you were invited to go for spiritual wisdom you'll go for it as though you were running out of air you'll go for it with the exact same passion and energy and all the stuff that gets mixed into the Instagram embarrassing Instagram

grind memes that you see all the time and you'll get it it'll work it'll fucking work you will get it you would something will happen you you you might stab some backs or you know who knows what you end up doing but you actually get it and then you're sitting in your nice fucking hotel room at the end of the day slurping back benzos like they were m&m's because you can't fucking sleep and you're trying to ignore the fact your hand is shaking a little bit and you look at your phone and you just feel like a general gross emptiness and maybe your cock hurts because you've been compulsively masturbating and you know what I mean yes well that is the graphic that's accurate in that you're you're just going for if you don't have peace

you're gonna seek distraction yeah I'm telling you man and if you got prosperity the distraction that is at your fingertips is dangerous oh yes a big thank you to purple for supporting this episode of the DTFH my friends it seems like the entire universe is trying to keep us from sleeping this summer you've got super hot unnatural diabolical temperatures my neighbors three of them have gone insane from drinking some poison moonshine not to mention the never-ending swarms of cicadas smashing into my windows and of course I have two count them two peepers who love to watch my naked body as I sleep you have a purple mattress you can sleep cool and comfortable no matter what the world throws at you that's because

only purple mattresses have the grid its unique ventilated design allows air to flow through guaranteeing you sleep cool even when it feels like a thousand degrees out we're not that far away from that based on what some climate experts are saying and the grid is amazingly supportive for your back and legs while cushioning your shoulders neck and hips no matter how you sleep I'm like memory foam which remembers everything the grid bounces back as you move and shift so you never get that I'm stuck feeling you do with memory foam darlings they sent me a pillow it's like something they plucked from a UFO if aliens use mattress technology I promise you they use purple mattress mattress technology and I know we've all been completely freaked out by blaspheming annoying

pillow vendors you know who I'm talking about it this is not that this is an actual amazing high-tech way that you can transform what it's like to sleep or lay in bed it makes the pillow I made it feel like my head was levitating you could try your purple mattress risk-free with free shipping and returns and they've got financing purple is comfort reinvented right now you'll get 10% off any order of $200 or more go to purple.com slash Duncan 10 and use promo code Duncan 10 that's purple.com slash Duncan 10 promo code Duncan 10 for 10% off any order of $200 or more purple.com slash Duncan 10 promo code Duncan 10 terms apply thank you purple so it is and you know that's I yeah you I 10 years in Silicon Valley and I mean at the at the

epicenter and I always feel like I need to tell people I have I feel like my whole 20s it was just failure all the way through um so this you introduced me kindly as someone that seems to have it together and that's not it at all it's it's someone that at least can look back and say good god you did not have it together when with that awareness and talk about how I did not have it together now I was I will say that I do love um the the day to day design of my life now but it's through really ancient philosophy and reflection and daily meditation on it that that it at least has given me enough peace to say no to so many paths of chaos that I could have I would have when I was younger said yes let's I mean my first my first company I'll tell you my

first company the ambition behind it was um Duncan you'll appreciate how silly and stupid this uh ambition was I looked at Facebook I was a senior and Facebook was valued at and college and Facebook was valued at um a billion dollars yeah 2008 billion dollars and I said I want what I want to build something bigger than Facebook that that no that's exactly exactly that was that was um that was exactly like my own internal dialogue is what would be cool something bigger than Facebook bigger than Facebook and then and then I was like cool and that's my you know if everyone thinks that's cool well something cooler than that is going to be even cooler and and I sat there and this is the way to not build a startup set you know on your path in your career sit on a couch

and I call it concepting literally was sitting on my couch I was thinking what would be the biggest idea possible and so that ultimately ego engineering so that I can be the biggest hero possible and did you call that ego engineering ego engineering yeah and and concepting is is what you do when you're ego engineering well you're you're thinking on the on a couch with my notepad you know this one right here um one like it and thinking what what would be the biggest thing that will essentially get me the most love yeah connection admiration and um and prosperity and this is a bit of a sidebar but that the way to build something of value and to get a ziggler famous one of the og's of of the self-help space motivational speaking space also Dallas Texan

said give others everything that they want and you'll get everything that you want it's a reverse it's not this is what I want love aberration to be the number I want to dominate the world so this is how I'm going to go do it it is the successful the really massive companies and the happy successful peaceful creators are on the other side and typically it's through a shift it's not like they were just born this way they're on the other side where they're thinking not on a couch how can something be as big as possible dominate the world they're sitting they're not sitting at all they're just doing and doing and doing and they realize oh people in the community find this thing over here useful okay let me do a little bit more whoa okay unexpected

but they're finding more of this useful okay well then I'm going to do more of that and instead of just writing down how you're going to dominate the world you're listening to one person on a Wednesday to another person two Saturdays from you're listening to people say oh I love it when help me with this oh you're so helpful with that oh I love this thing that you do and you're you it's the opposite of concepting actually there's there's no mind to it at all you're getting out of the way to to what the natural skills you're given that in Vedanta it's swadharma your nature you're getting out of the way of your nature and and yet to capstone that um Alan Watts his his autobiography is called In My Own Way which is just so beautiful because

it's both him doing things his his own way that doesn't map to oh this other dude is building a billion dollar company let's build let me build something bigger it was doing in his own way but also the recognition of like oh fuck I'm in my own way get out of my own way and let nature take its course including my own nature wow yeah oh man that is that is so brilliant I I can't tell you how many times I've made the mistake of just fortunately I never tried to do a startup but I certainly there have been times where I've been like oh yeah here's the idea that will be the biggest fucking idea to ever happen in the world and I remember talking like kind of seriously talking to people about it but luckily I just I just never never went deep did

you go deep in your bigger god I went six years in um wait what was so I built a company called Tilt and uh it was a social network for money and and that was the idea it was like oh what would be bigger than Facebook a social network built around money that would be bigger mix up PayPal and Facebook and it's bigger than both of them combined and I love it yeah exactly it was built for people to say I love it and it would be like it would be like you know the village of 200 people and you saying hey I'm gonna go get 17 bears and we're gonna eat for years and and everybody being like I love it go do it yeah um and then you getting out there and me getting out there and having no idea how to kill a bear much less 17 of them and for six years I'm building this company get to

100 employees um and we get to a 400 million dollar valuation and I'm 27 years old I'm like this must be the right I must be doing things right yeah fast forward um few two years later and we're selling the company in a fire sale um it is we end up selling it for a fraction of that after layoffs after going to the ER with a heart condition because I was drinking six seven cups of coffee every day wow and and thinking luckily Adderall gave me a headache I was prescribed it but gave me a headache thank god because if it didn't I that Adderall is probably the the biggest that's next to the opiate crisis and then maybe the benzo crisis uh that's coming after that the the thing we're gonna hear about in the next five to ten years is Adderall uh abuse and and it's so

sticky I had to flush mine down the fucking toilet man like I have I'm I'm an addictive personality if it makes me feel good it's getting flushed down the toilet pretty much unless it's like my kids are my family you know I mean because I can't I won't stop eating it yeah well and that's sodvik so in and Vedanta and we've chatted about this before there's there's Thomas Rajas and sodvik and um and it dude that's pure Gita what you just said if it makes me feel good it's going down the toilet because and the Gita I think one of the the I think the most powerful contribution of the Gita is and the Bhagavad Gita for listen oh well it's your podcast you've talked about the Gita so your listeners know the Gita yeah but no please like dude I love the Gita I think the Gita

is one of the most amazing one of my one of one of my teachers is two rooms over so I hope he's able to listen to this uh Joseph Emmett and uh and his teacher is is a teacher in in India uh Swami Parthasarthi if anyone's interested in this philosophy Vedanta treatise by Swami Parthasarthi that's what you should go read Vedanta treatise um and uh spell treatise but pronounce treatise and in the Gita which is a core a core text within Vedanta core text within Hinduism um it's so badass and Americans we never hear about it it's this prince who is this badass warrior and you know this so I'm going to do this for 60 seconds because you already know it but for listeners but I love hearing it like that's what that's one of the cool things about about it

it's infinitely repeatable it never stops being cool to hear the story so do as long as you need to do I love the story and the story is like oxygen so if you're so right and that you can say it over and over again because you can't get enough and we're so starved of these ideals and you know humans being memetic creatures you know we we need these ideals to me to mine not memetic like a mean but memetic like a mind we look at these ideals and they inform us um they inform us like information but that's what gives us form is the ideal and in the Gita um I think next to the story of Christ these are the two most powerful narratives and ideals that uh we have that humans have ever come across and the Gita the story is this prince it's a 700 uh verse uh text that you could read

an hour and a half um but the concept and it's it stands in this larger Mahabharata this epic that is like it's that thing would take you a two years to read through um it's very long but right in the geometric center of the Mahabharata the the epic is the is the Gita Bhagavad Gita and Song of the Lord and it's in the geometric center of the epic that's so cool so cool it's this there's just probably thousands of years to culminating a philosophical thought culminating in just this whole narrative structure of it's this civil war the epic is about this civil war between these two families and right in the middle of the civil war is the 700 verses called the Gita and right and the Gita what the Gita is again you know this but is a conversation between a charioteer

and perhaps the most feared prince the most uh competent warrior prince Arjuna yeah and he is scared shitless yeah and he wants to go right in the middle of the two armies so in the geometric center of the Mahabharata you've got uh the Gita and the conversation in between this massive civil war that actually takes place in between the two armies in the middle of the battlefield and it's a conversation between Arjuna the warrior prince and his charioteer Krishna and the charioteer charioteer charioteer Krishna is the personification of God so he can't fight the battle but he can't inform what Arjuna can and should do and and he has this this conversation with his charioteer with God in this battle and and it's um it's just so beautiful so powerful

and every one of us you know I mentioned some of these things that we're talking talking about might relate to 10 percent or 20 percent or 30 percent of listeners this relates to 100 percent of people listening to this conversation right now every one of us has a battle going on within within ourselves whatever that battle is there is some type of struggle and there is some type of decision to be made yeah to move forward and act or to shy away and Arjuna's problem his struggle even he's he's the most feared prince he's the most revered and feared prince so competent as a warrior and yet he's telling Krishna I don't think we should have this battle it's civil war and he is all you use this term the last time we talked which I love spiritual bypass we're all

so smart we come up with brilliant justifications to not to not proceed in the face of fear and to not go into into whatever that battle is and by the way this isn't like an application for war or or anything that's a violent action Gandhi actually used the Gita towards as his reference for obviously one of the most peaceful revolutions in human history so it's it's not it's not for a literal you know battle that you feel like you might need to have but Arjuna is trying to shy away from this this war that I mean this is years in the making and he's saying no we should just quit now we should stop and the reason we should stop Krishna my my sage is because cousins shouldn't kill cousins yeah brothers killing brothers

family shouldn't kill family and we should we should stop and Krishna's like basically in the American vernacular Krishna's like you pussy why wait you know what he said yes yes please this is my favorite line in the Gita that by the way I didn't know was in the middle of the Mahabharata so you've blown my mind because to think that in this the the dialogue that takes place between these two great armies is happening in the geometric center of this is just insane to think about that is crazy but the one of my favorite verses in it is uh it's translated into smiling in the midst of the two armies smiling in the midst of the two armies Krishna speaks so here so this this is the yes on one side you have the the the dejected prince it's so poetic he's dropped his

sacred bow Gandava and he is saying I'm going to go into the woods and live as a renunciate wouldn't it be better to live in the forest than to you know to be stained with the blood of people who've been my teachers people who are in and that and he names earlier he's naming revered people on the other side that he absolutely loves and respects yeah yeah people he grew up with it's a family battle so it's like and so it is truly like and and also I think it's important to note and I do know it is important to say the fucking thing isn't an like advocating war it's because but not all wars are the same and sometimes whether you like it or not you have to fight there's no way around it there's nothing that can be done except to fight and in this case it was the they were they were

philosophically correct in what was happening it wasn't there was a it was it was there wasn't some fuzzy maybe we should just back off this was justice justice the four he was in the rotten position of being the actualization of justice in the world and so that you know that and I think what's lovely about you you know bringing it into people's lives is that you know there's a big difference between me being like maybe I should send this shitty email to Janet and really let her know I fucking feel and me being like no I actually have to do something now that I don't want to do that is not it's you know like you know when it's time to get out of a relationship you know when it's time to get out of the job you know when it's time to like set things right

there's a big in other words Arjuna knew in his heart I think the right thing and that otherwise it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been a problem for him that's why he was tortured and I well I think I think the um and yes he said it with a smile on his face so it's like a friend telling another friend you pussy dude come on yes you know it's like it's like uh good well hunting and and um and you have you've got um you know Ben uh Affleck's character saying like dude you have to like if you're still here 20 years from now drinking beers in this construction site I'll kill you you got to act you have you have a mind you have a uh a capability and you've got to do something with it and your and your your friend telling you like dude get off your ass on the couch

with a smile because it doesn't really matter to the friend this obviously doesn't matter to Krishna but it matters to Arjuna and and it matters to his community he needs to fight this war yeah and it's not only will uh he attain you know Krishna says um fame and heaven so prosperity and peace by action by fighting this war but he'll have neither if he doesn't and everyone's gonna die anyhow even if you think like I'm gonna go convince everybody let's peace out it's like no this battle is happening and you can either be a force of good of actually winning it or you can be a you know pu 55 why and go to you know sit under sit under a tree and the um and I think that the I bring up the the Gita one because by the way I think the midnight gospel is so Gita

man pure Gita I I watched three episodes this week and it is pure Gita in that uh the Clancy character at least in the three that I saw this week the Clancy character has no reason no reason to go into these insane worlds and yet she's just like oh let's go let's go boom boom is there a time is okay because Clancy I'm not I I think this is there's certain aspects of it where I've I'm not going to interpret it for anybody but Tim like you'll as you keep watching you'll begin to see that Clancy is trying to his maybe like it's attempted to go out into the woods and not deal with his life but in this case the woods are the he's in the the chromatic ribbon and like because that because you know that that um you'll see as you continue to watch but this was it was

thank you I I hope it did capture some of that that uh that story because I think I think there it is the story if you're a human being is the story like you you are in the in the grand scheme of things you are being asked to do something that seems impossible and is scary and is terrifying in it you can't it's not something that is going to let you just phone it in like you got to fucking do it and and there's just no way around it and uh and then the grand scheme of things is different for everybody but then every single day every single fucking day you find yourself in a situation where you can choose between and it's like what you said earlier you can decide between running away from something trying to evade something or like helping people and letting that be your path letting

the path of peace letting because it's a hell of a lot easier isn't it just like sit on the couch and like and that's not peace and just as a call as something that requires um an underscoring yes sitting on the couch is not peace and anyone that sat on the couch for more than six weeks straight knows the mental agitation the tor the torture that goes on in our heads and that's because we are created to create and creation and and creation is informed action yeah so we are created to act we you know the real the real statue of the Buddha should have been him walking because everyone sees him sitting down but he was walking all over India he wasn't just sitting under the banyan tree until he died that mofo was in constant action walking all over India teaching

constantly it was not this reclusive renunciation although that can be its own peace and its own action and its own right if you're called that way but the the the important thing is to heed that call towards towards action and to not or at least to avoid the unnecessary um torment of action then you want informed action and uh I think that's where a philosophical informed action informed action and that's where I think a philosophical rudder is is so important the I mean we chat about peace then prosperity that's that informed action to not go towards prosperity think it okay I'll get peace on the other side the informed actions oh wait don't sacrifice that peace right now because I won't get it on the other side unless I start there but you gotta do

what that you have to just like you said tune into the Dharma what is the thing and also important to note is that Arjuna was not alone there he was in the presence of God right and was connected to that and also this the other thing I love about it we talked about it off mike is he was still not wanting to listen to us to him you know that was what's cool is like I love that such a very human thing is like it's not just and also when you look in in most mythologies not all of them but most mythologies anytime a human gets the quote it's obviously good fortune but in the moment it seems like misfortune of being invited by the divine to go and do some insane thing I mean look at Moses they're always like I think you have got the wrong number friend you I hope if not I hope

you've got the rail yeah you wait because it's not me Moses had a fucking speech impediment you know and a bush is telling him to go I didn't know that yeah that was that I was yeah apparently had some kind of stutter or something so it was it was like here you have a burning bush telling a stuttering person to like walk into Egypt and free his people and so there was it's just like I think you got the wrong wrong person well the the and the reason that the Gita came up even though I'm always especially for you like we you are a surfer that can handle 50 foot waves of philosophical conversation so I love I love one and case in point bring up the Gita and you're telling me parts of it that I think I missed the smiling aspect smiling in the

midst of the two armies yeah yeah smiling so so good and and the reason I brought up the Gita was I think one of the most profound informed insights of the Gita that has helped me is is that what is bitter in the beginning is sweet in the end and what is sweet in the beginning is bitter in the end yeah and to you recognizing if something makes you feel good you throw it down the toilet that is so so in that is such informed action that is so beautiful and thanks I'm glad you see like that because I'm always embarrassed like anytime I'm like dumping pills or drugs into the toilet it means I've punched the ticket so it's always kind of like a it's like a funeral because I'm like because it's just like well because you know I Adderall what a

wonderful high I mean I'm sorry I gave you a headache but dear god like there's a reason everyone likes to take fucking Adderall it's like it's like it's a wonderful thing I do have ADHD it it did serve a purpose at some point in my life but you gotta have that honest at some point you gotta be like okay wow you have insomnia huh wow I wonder why you're not sleeping what could it be right let's go through the I'm not a doctor but I can go through the list long long list of things that it could be there's like a thousand things it could be let me see it let me see is it well maybe it's this horror novel I'm reading is could that be what's keeping me up at night oh I need to turn my phone is it is it the hundred milligrams of speed or is it

I need to turn my phone I need to delete Facebook and Instagram it's not the speed I think it's no I was sitting at dinner with a friend of mine once who had insomnia and we were talking and you know she was saying she has a really rough time sleeping it's the end of the meal and you know the waiter comes by and it's like okay anyone want to search like I think I'll have some espresso and I was like do you often order coffee did you know she had insomnia at this point she was talking about you know having insomnia so but I you know I don't want to be a jerk or anything but only because I recognize in her my own my own self it's like when I was addicted to ketamine it's like whoa why am I not sleeping I mean surely it's not that I'm doing rails of ketamine at fucking midnight

could this be keeping me up maybe you know I but I think that so for me I like that you see that is a good thing for me I always it is like it's a sad and embarrassing moment where it's like I couldn't keep my hand from putting these tablets into my mouth so now I can't have the tablets around anymore and thank god it works you know I was telling my wife I dumped the fucking Adderall I can't do that shit anymore and she's like Duncan like you can't just have them refill the prescription if you want it's like no it's symbolic it is of course I could do that but it's like uh it's saying goodbye you know you gotta say goodbye to it if it's not working anymore you gotta acknowledge that sorry for the long no that's no that's you know that's um I asked my teacher uh once about

what should I um if there's something that I really want that I know is not good for me and it actually was related to chocolate um but this but this was metaphorical I was I asked him the dumbest of uh tactical things to the grandest of questions but I was asking I was like dude I'm eating too much chocolate we like put it in our fridge and every night I'm just like oh it's dark chocolate so it's it's good for me but it's the really lazy it's like 55 percent it's not the really dark chocolate okay and so it's basically just candy and I'm yeah eating so much of it and I asked him I was like what what would the Vedantic viewpoint be of of how to stop um this this craving for chocolate that I have every night and he said um do it with the intention of stopping it

wow and I was like okay he's not saying don't do it he's not saying suppress the that desire but do it with the intention of stopping it and by god I stopped it probably I don't know seven eight days later it was just it eroded the that informed that informed part of that action became bigger and bigger and bigger so that I think it's it's not just symbolic that's that's the I think that's the action on the other side of information of you knowing like this is what I need to do I need to watch this I need to do this yes anytime I get addicted to something and I'm not ashamed to say it happens more frequently not so much these days I'm I'm running out of things to get addicted to

anybody have any suggestions let me know that and you are so self-deprecating you are I think you are do you have a lot of wisdom to share and I love that you have this podcast I love that you get to talk to millions of people I can't believe I get to talk to you man this this is so fun to talk about but you know like the I've heard Ramdas talk about addiction and it's there's a YouTube clip of him talking about it and it's quite controversial for people who because you know some people they can't use to quit and those are like you know like like chronic alcoholics I have people I love whose lives have been saved by 12 steps you know and like they're like no you don't you don't see the thing is like if I smell a beer if I if I you know if I if a beer gets in

my mouth there's a biochemical reaction that probably will I'll end up in jail probably like I'll just go to jail from that it's a disease and I get it so there's that there's like a it's a genetic disorder I think it affects one out of four people or something and I know there's a lot of argument regarding addiction theory and all that but I just know people whose lives have been saved I'm just making this as a preface before I talk about this other way of doing it because someone listening you might be somebody looking for an excuse to get fucked up but you know if you get fucked up it's never worked out for you and if you drink and you're like this time I'm drinking to quit you're gonna end up in jail or dead or something so don't do that but there's another

version of it where if you do like just bring mindfulness into the equation so for me that that looks a lot like what you're saying which is if I'm taking a if I if it where I am now fully mindful of the fact that I am I am out of control I'm I don't it's not serving me anymore there's no use coming from it it's not helping me do anything other than giving me this like very fleeting feeling that leads to a rotten fucking crash then in that mindset that's how I'll take the pill you know thinking like here we go so what let's just try this again and see if this time it works like you know it's not you know you don't like it anymore it makes you feel sick you're so tired you're so over it but we're gonna take it again and then what your teacher told you that's when

it starts working for me where it's like I become so it's informed action informed action yeah but it's revolting I'm no I don't want to be a slave of some pharmaceutical fucking company or some stupid tab I don't like the way it feels it makes me feel so weak I'm a dad I don't want to be like a fucking like I'm not taking like their people I know have to take it or they won't get out of their fucking house you know they're like they they're they have ADHD and it helps it makes their life better but the moment that stops happening you got to be honest and get flushed the pills I'm sorry everybody that's sorry I know that's it well what is that might be a bummer for people to hear but what is better in the beginning is sweet in the end and and that's that is that is it that

the person listening is I'm listening to this thinking about okay what are the things that I know are sweet in the beginning but I know are better in the end better at the end that I need to reorient myself towards what is so it's it's not just that I have anything figured out but for the listeners that are dealing with something I was addicted to caffeine because Adderall gave me headaches I would have been massively addicted to Adderall caffeine is brutal dude it's it is so brutal it is obviously one of the most powerful drugs in the world second biggest import in in the country behind oil to give you a sense an economic sense of our addiction to it I was drinking six to seven cups of coffee a day and it was just this first for a handful of different

reasons they ended up sending me to the ER with a heart condition but is your condition better I did I ended up having an operation I I can drink about one coffee a day wow and I I typically drink matcha green tea um because it's far better it's just a better it's basically nature's time-release caffeine so I don't crave another coffee you know two hours three hours later but the um the that that concept of informed action of eating that chocolate or whatever it is for for you listening to this knowing with the intention of wanting to stop yeah that's it's so powerful because then you start to in your case you start to become more and more aware of even that you're almost like choosing to um or through an informed sense ruining the set

and setting to have that drug to have that pill you're like yes oh I know this isn't a good set and setting this probably isn't going to be a good trip and then it ends up being becoming true it's the same for you pick up the bottle and you're like this isn't going to be good and it's the set and setting for you know is is so critical for any um experience not just drugs but the um I think that that is anyone listening to that it's like this is a bummer this is a fucking you know downer to here that I the the siren song that I need to curb whatever it is that is the Gita and it's not a uh hey you need to run away from bliss as a prince and go into death man you gotta do it it's just gotta be better for you it's not it's the reverse

it's you need to run in what you think might be death and you're going to have absolute bliss on the other side so for anyone listening and thinking this is a bummer and so you know buzz kill dude this is the gateway to the ultimate buzz yeah it is like that is the good freedom man it's like everyone's always yapping about freedom they want freedom this it is the Bhagavad Gita is about freedom real freedom actual liberation not like you know pretending that you're free because you can gratify your senses or do you know whatever your mind is telling you to do at any given moment that's not freedom that's that's complete imprisonment and and and and yeah I it's that's that's why that book is so liberating is it's just a god telling someone

about how to be free and not just in one way that's the other beautiful thing about it is there's it's different like it's it's sort of categorizing all the yogic systems within it like some people do this some people do this some people do this swadharma your own nature and and yeah through the information it's what I love about Vedanta is it's so practical um it is so practical there are no rituals there are no um there are no it's it was a critique on culture it's not this cultural thing you're you jump into where there's rituals there are no shouts shall and you know thou shouts and shall not there are no there's no even real concept of sin the only concept that gets close to is uh to sin is that which agitates you so it's not like oh you broke a rule that this

this person up above gave you and and your probation is now going to be revoked and you're going to be in prison it's actually like oh no you just hurt yourself you that's your own agitation so you know if someone let's say eating meat to someone is is agitates them well then it's a sin and it's in that area code at least that they shouldn't do it because it's agitating for someone else I can eat meat not care then that's not a sin there is no you know list of of commandments but within Vedanta what is so beautiful about it is so the path to liberation moksha avana enlightenment whatever the term is because you know language breaks down when you get to this this point of things but the the path there is through action and the action that you want to

take is informed action so you're constantly just drinking from the fire hose of information of knowledge so that you're making sure your action is it's your compass the information is your compass but you still got to do the walk but obviously every as much as you can you want to make sure you're on course and that information aspect you hear the a knowledge nuclear bomb I'd love to tell listeners a few of the other knowledge nuclear bombs that have gone off in my life uh lately and or in the last few years that really I couldn't unhear um because they made too much sense and the knowledge bomb goes off you look down and you see oh north is this way and you shift course um yeah and it's that it's that uh simple you know oh north is over here you start to shift

course it's not like I don't get this but I guess I'm gonna do it because then there's gonna be some I don't know some reward on the other it's like no this makes absolute practical sense so that informed action is the path towards liberation towards bliss and within that informed action you just you end up spending so much time informing yourself and it's very much like an addiction they call it I'm sure you're super familiar harm reduction therapy as a as a potential uh compliment or potential replacement of 12 steps harm reduction therapy is yes you can harm yourself but let's aim you aim for you to reduce that harm over time by actually informing you how you are harming yourself yeah as much as possible that's cool no I'm not familiar with that

I've heard of harm reduction and but I've never heard of like harm reduction there I'm completely not familiar with that that's really cool well the the gist of it is um and I run at one of the companies that I run is a beverage company and we donate uh five cents from every bottle I'll send you some uh it's five cents from every bottle towards uh mental health services for the under housed and poor and we you we go through a partnership with this organization that that practices harm reduction what's the what's that this company I don't want to make it a commercial for it but it's called magic mind it'll change your life it's the best product that you've ever heard and it's going to uh put a couple extra commas in your bank account magicmind.co are you

kidding no I'm joking the uh I didn't want to make a commercial but if it's gonna be a commercial I'm gonna make it the most badass commercial wait no what do you mean the commas what I didn't mean are you kidding I mean how does that it'll add it'll add a couple extra zeros in your bank first of all James you are welcome to do any commercials you want no it's not like you're doing snake oil over here you've got like a you've got a track record it's okay people are listed I'm sure no no one's like no not a commercial listen to my fucking commercials you know what I mean no nobody's like trust me you can do it well I don't I uh it's called yeah magic mind and it is a matcha uh neutropic uh functional mushroom um energy shots it's what I what I had to do when I went to the

ER my doctor was like you can't drink more than 80 milligrams of caffeine a day uh and I was like what it was that three cups of coffee two cups of coffee he's like no that's a half a cup of coffee and I was running a company at that time 50 employees 15 meetings a day 26 I just was and out of my mind chugging I mean I say six to seven cups of coffee I was probably drinking much more than that because you were doing way more than that that's the coffee I was also drinking Red Bulls and it was just stimulants I later learned that people with ADD um typically go towards stimulant um addiction yeah and people with trauma typically go towards um depressants which is makes sense may yeah very interesting but it made sense and if you got both you do

speedball yeah exactly if you got both there's an option for you to combine and uh you're not left out but the um so I was just addicted to stimulants and and so when he said you can only drink 80 milligrams of caffeine a day I was like and told me it was a half a cup of coffee because at first I was like okay what is that three cups four I can probably I knew I needed to cut it down so I guess half a cup of coffee I was like there is no fucking way I can get through 15 meetings a day running this company on half a cup of coffee so then he said you should switch to matcha green tea it has this stuff in it called elthinine that decreases your cortisol your body's stress hormone that is getting spiked every time you're drinking cup of coffee and I just

thought my anxiousness my stress was coming from thought it was coming from running a company but it was actually heavily contributed to uh right by the five six seven hundred milligrams of caffeine I was drinking a day Jesus Christ I mean up toward towards a gram but the um the uh so within this company I wanted to support the whole concept of of kind of my approach to things is mental wealth and if people want to google mental wealth you can see a post I wrote about it and I love that thing you sent it to me I read it it's brilliant oh I love it so smart man it's a really really smart way to convey some like pretty deep Vedic ideas but in kind of like a cool western way it's really smart man really thank you so much yeah the uh that's that uh work towards mental wealth

it's magic minor that rituals part of it uh sleep diet exercise stress management and then exogenous compounds like um matcha green tea or coffee if that's your you know thing or Adderall if that's your thing within reason yeah but the abuse part that got me into this uh this vein of wanting to support mental health for the other house in the port the homeless I started the company at San Francisco and there's a massive homelessness epidemic there so and within that realm the best organizations I found they were practicing harm reduction therapy that that was psychotherapy also with um with substance abuse therapy and and ultimately getting people you know it's it's like you look at the homelessness

issue and you say well is it mental health or is it substance abuse and it's like it's the same thing oh I got you I know what you're talking about I got you and and so within that substance abuse there is abstinence and 12 step and then there's harm reduction where it's it's just therapeutic sessions where you can come in you they actually have stations where you can use you yeah I'm all for that that's the salute to me that is the you've talked about that before yeah yeah you talked about that on jre before this bullshit where it's like no we before they can have housing they've got to like be off drugs and sober it's like well then they're not gonna fucking take the goddamn housing you think they want to be shooting up in a tent no but they want

to be shooting up and they'd rather be shooting up in a tent than like in a place where they're not like able to take the thing that if they don't take they get sick they they could die they have seizures like it's way the ship is sailed man I get harm reduction I love that you're involved in that and that's so cool and so when I started to look at the organizations that had the best reputations of helping the poor they all tended to be harm reduction therapy organizations and San Francisco is the tip of the spear of the amount of funding the the number of experiments being tried to help the homeless the amount of funding just the amount of energy and so I kept seeing this and I was like shit that's informed action yeah that is information first then do

what you want and that's what Krishna says in the Gita's now you have the information you have the knowledge do as you do as you will that's the end of the Gita it's it's you don't even know what happens in the battle you want to hear by the way for 60 seconds you hear the coolest part about the Gita that I only heard recently yes one of the coolest parts of it is that do you know the story right before the Gita the Mahabharat yeah there you mean Ram and Sita a little bit but actually right before the Gita starts you have you have the Kaurava and the the you have both princes I can't diet Dio dice I'm gonna forget the other princes name Arjuna and Dio Drona Duro Dashtra or something yes something like that yes Drona Drona Diro Drona maybe Joseph won't

hear me and he'll yell it to me um the so the two rasta no it's Dio Dio something but the what is it Duryodhana Duryodhana yes he did hear me so you have Arjuna like an enlightened voice echoes in from somewhere dude you got to keep your teachers close man you gotta keep them so close um he really is uh just such a christian-esque guide in my life um and uh and so because I am totally the the Arjuna character that the foolish character that's trying to get out of battles left and right um but right right before it starts uh Krishna tells them um basically you shouldn't fight this war um like this is it's stupid um to do it um they're both like no we're doing this this has to go down this is right before Arjuna has his breakdown and tries to get out of

it but he's already committed to it at that point but before he's committed to it it's like you shouldn't have this war it is pointless and they're like no we have to have this war it's going down and and Krishna says all right fine and he goes and takes a nap and and they go find him afterwards to try to elicit his help uh solicit his help and and he wakes up from his nap and he looks at Arjuna first he just happens to look at Arjuna first and and Arjuna is kind of the good prince the bad prince so good and and evil yeah and he says uh they say will you help us uh we Arjuna says will you help me in um and he says look this is what I'll do um I can't fight in the war but I'll give my army to one of you and uh and I'll give my sage council to the other and I'll give

my advice to the other and Arjuna and this is an army of like 50 000 sorry I mean this is a god's army 50 000 soldiers and Arjuna is like I want you wow I don't want an extra 50 000 god's soldiers oh yeah so cool that's so cool just thinking he'd just woken up from a nap yeah yeah first of all just I never knew that story it's incredibly beautiful to acknowledge the fact that god takes naps makes me love Krishna that much more you know and also it's like the it is like the coolest thing to be around two people have decided to go into this incredible warm like all right well oh right we're gonna go take a nap pure detachment yeah that's beautiful I love that and obviously the wisdom behind it of course it's like who cares about all the other shit it doesn't matter like

you want the navigator you know that's the most important thing anyone can have a fucking boat yeah but that's right you know you you're telling me I don't get me in a boat like in a sailboat we're dead meat man a big battalion with no GPS yeah doomed right James I one of the one of the reasons that I know that we're going to be friends forever is because whenever I start talking to you time evaporates and I I leap forward in time I'm looking now at what time it is and we have spent just around two hours talking and I can't think of a better place to end than now even though there are many other bombs that you set off let's can we will you come back are we and I will be on if you want me on your yes not an entrepreneur no the podcast is for

creators of all kinds of all kinds I mean that okay and people need to hear the real story not just see oh Duncan just blows up on the scene and is this massive massively influential hilarious comedian they need to hear the long-form version and and the part of you that informs you day to day because that I love what it comes out and so much of you can't keep it from coming out in the conversations you have but I would love for you to come on the podcast and talk about it in James anytime I I'm so thank you and also thanks for all this off mic stuff and the emails you've been sending me like instant my life is and I'm not exaggerating when I say just like some of the data you've given me it's like really shifted the way I've been doing some stuff

that was all off balance so I'm so down to help you with that getting things in order I think it's you know it's there's there's the place in which you build your your rocket platform the platform itself then the rocket and then the destination want to go and I think if I think for myself the philosophical viewpoint is where you are going to station your your platform and launch the rocket the platform itself which I talked about with Vedanta the platform is mental wealth of people want to google it of just sleep diet exercise stress management and exogenous compounds in that order in that prioritization that's the solid platform that you've launched you know you if you have the most amazing rocket you launch it off of a shitty platform what is the point

and then the rocket is the tactics and things in your day-to-day which I think is very subjective not it would be hard for me to give any impossible for me to give any generic advice on that but but then on that destination piece that's that's where it all begins and ends of I love this in business and in the startup world I got this advice from a mentor one time that said start from success and work backwards don't start from today and work forwards so for people listening that that are interested in entrepreneurial path or anything that that is in the creative realm start from success where you want to be and then start working backwards from that and that gets you the right sequence god bless you james thank you so much all the links you need to find james

are going to be at dougatrustle.com but what are you what's your twitter what's the ad at james bechara and uh on twitter and then uh jjbechara.com or jamesbechara.com they lead the same thing awesome thank you so much all right Duncan thanks brother thank you that was james bechara everybody all the links you need to find james are going to be at dougatrustle.com big thank you to all of our sponsors and most importantly thank you for listening it's a two podcast week friends next we're going to be talking about transhumanism I love you all so much I'll see you soon Hare Krishna a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny family get-togethers to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed

up with brands like lis clayborne worthington stafford and jay furar oh and thereabouts for kids super cute man extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at jcp.com all dressed up everywhere to go jc penny