Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #195 How To Find Inspiration Everywhere You Look with Light Watkins

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

CAUTION: This episode contains mild swearing. My guest today is internationally acclaimed meditation teacher, speaker and author, Light Watkins. I first spoke to him back on episode 23 of the podcast, when I know he inspired many of you to start a practice of meditation by breaking down common misconceptions and stripping away some of the rules and rigidity around meditation. So we begin this episode by talking about how our own approaches to meditation have evolved. We discuss the importance of consistency and how meditation is a catalyst for change even when you’re not meditating. Light explains how he committed to sending out a Daily Dose of Inspiration – a positive story, anecdote, or learning - to his email list back in 2016. Now, some of these emails have come together in Light’s latest book, Knowing Where To Look: 108 Daily Doses Of Inspiration. We talk about how he managed this huge undertaking – by approaching writing in the same way he meditates: consistently. The process quickly showed him that it’s possible to find inspiration everywhere you look. It trained him to look at life through a different lens and find life’s silver linings. In this conversation, Light shares how we can all find the inspiration that is all around us by training ourselves to look for it. We talk about how you can learn to trust your inner guide by starting small - Light calls it his ‘divine GPS’, a power greater than himself that’s showing him the way to go. Whether you believe in a higher power or not, just being open to the idea that there’s a different way to view every situation is a powerful skill to cultivate. Think, ‘Why is this happening for me’ not ‘Why is it happening to me’, he advises. This conversation is full of inspiring anecdotes and advice that I hope will give you a new perspective.  Thanks to our sponsors: http://www.vivobarefoot.com/uk/livemore http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/195 Follow me on https://www.instagram.com/drchatterjee   Follow me on https://www.facebook.com/DrChatterjee   Follow me on https://twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

All the magic is happening outside of the comfort zone. But as you get to the edge of your comfort zone, that's where the fear becomes the loudest. And if you can just get more courage than you have fear, then you can take the leap. Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Hey guys, how's it going? My guest today is the internationally acclaimed meditation teacher and the best-selling author, Light Watkins. Now, I first spoke to Light back on episode 23 of this podcast, and I know that episode inspired many of you to start a practice of meditation because Light broke down common misconceptions and he stripped away some of those rules and that

rigidity that often exists around meditation. Now, I really enjoyed that initial conversation with Light and was delighted to invite him back onto the show to talk about the ideas behind his latest book, Knowing Where to Look, 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration. Now, this conversation is pretty diverse and wide ranging. We start off revisiting some of the light, wisdom and ideas around meditation and discuss how our own individual practices have evolved over the years. We also talk about the importance of consistency and how meditation can be a catalyst for change, even when you're not meditating.

We also talk about the big commitments that Light made to himself a few years back in 2016. He decided to send out a daily dose of inspiration, so that could be a positive story, an anecdote, or a learning to his email list. Now, if you really think about it, sending out a daily email is quite a big undertaking and Light explained some of the backstory behind this decision and what he learned by doing so. Incredibly, some of those emails made their way into Light's new book. We discuss how he actually managed to fulfill this huge undertaking. What did he do? He approached writing in the same way that he meditates, with consistency. That process quickly showed him that it's possible to find inspiration everywhere you look.

It trained him to look at life through a different lens and find life's silver linings in the most unusual of places. Light goes on to share how all of us can find inspiration in our daily lives by training ourselves to look for it. I think for me, that's probably one of the most powerful take-homes from this conversation, that with regular practice, we can start to see inspiration and positivity everywhere we look. At its core, this is a conversation about trusting our inner guide, or what Light calls his divine GPS. And whether you believe in a higher power or not, his divine GPS. And whether you believe in a higher power or not, just being open to the idea that there's a different way to view every situation is a really powerful skill to cultivate. This conversation is full of inspiring anecdotes and advice that I hope will give you a brand new

perspective on life. And now my conversation with the incredible, the inspirational Light Watkins. I wanted to start the conversation today around meditation because in our first conversation, episode 23 of the show, there's still something that you said, which stands out in my mind. And that's that you don't necessarily need to sit cross-legged in order to meditate or to have a rigidly straight back. Has your view changed on that since then and if not why not uh i've actually doubled down on it no man it's it's you know i think what's happened is more people have adopted that approach i think you're seeing that more and more um where people feeling, you know, when I say people, different meditation, teachers, facilitators, coaches, and even practitioners are, I mean, meditation's

gotten huge since we had that first conversation. Maybe a lot of it's because of that conversation. I don't know. But I think a lot of people are seeing the value of approaching meditation kind of as a lifestyle, as opposed to this rigid thing that you do periodically when you have time. And really, the only way to integrate it into your lifestyle is to find some sense of comfort within that and and it's just a great way to to kind of get into it i don't um i don't i don't know of any uh extra value that comes from sitting with your back straight in a practical sense i mean i mean maybe in some monastery, they talk about some inherent energetic changes that can occur from sitting with your back straight related to your chakras and things like that.

But most people who are just trying to get through the day and take care of their family and do all the things that they need to do in order to show up for life, They don't need to be worried about that kind of stuff. That piece of advice and the conversation that we had, I know has inspired lots of my listeners, but also one of my team members to take up meditation. So I want to thank you for that. And I'm interested as to why you think that may be because yes, meditation is getting bigger. It's getting more popular. New science seems to be coming out monthly, weekly on the incredible benefits of a regular meditation practice. Yet there are still

many people who struggle. They hear it. They go, yeah, I know that's going to help me, but they can't take that next step. I think you remove some of those obstacles by saying, who struggle, they hear it. They go, yeah, I know that's going to help me. But they can't take that next step. I think you remove some of those obstacles by saying, don't worry about cross leg, don't worry about back straight, sit comfortably. And I think that does make it more accessible. But how do we make it even more accessible? How do we help those people who sort of at the back of their mind want to meditate, but just don't know how and when to get started? Ultimately, the way you sit is really just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest change that we want to adopt with meditation is we want to change our relationship with the mind. I find that that's one of the major reasons why people will disqualify themselves from

thinking that they could even meditate with any sort of success is because we have this sort of combative relationship, this antagonistic relationship with our mind. And one of the things that I have talked about in my previous book when I was on the podcast before, which is Bliss More, How to Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying, is that your mind is not the enemy of your meditation. It's not like the terrorist organization waiting to attack you as soon as you sit and close your eyes. waiting to attack you as soon as you sit and close your eyes. And if you start to treat it more as the companion,

as the friend of your experience, just that one little shift of having a friendly attitude with your mind will allow it to settle a lot easier. And I think that actually shocks a lot of people when they first experience it. So I wrote that book for people who don't know anything about anything and who want to take the leap and who have already sort of counted themselves out. And it's giving them, it's really just a blueprint of how to engage with your mind in a way that allows your mind to actually work for you instead of you feeling like you're working against it. Yeah, I mean, that reminds me of the conversation I had earlier today with a good friend of mine who shared with me that actually he sort of wants to meditate. He'll naturally go more towards sort of wim hof breath work which is

super active and you know at the end of it you feel like you've done something right so i i really feel that suits a lot of the western mindset that you're you know credible benefits for many people for sure but i i think for some of us it feels easier to do that stuff rather than I guess just be you know it's it's it's human doing as opposed to human being really isn't it so I think that's one thing I I want to discuss with you but the other thing is that he said to me is hey mate I'm also scared you know if I just sit there with my thoughts like won't just my stresses and anxieties just start to come up? I mean, kind of how's that going to be helpful? And I think what you just said really speaks to that second point in particular. Yeah. And you took the words right out of my mouth. I mean, we're

very used to doing things. And so if we have something else to do as a meditation, that's why you get a lot of people saying my journaling is my meditation or my mountain climbing is my meditation or biking is my, you know, these doings allow us to get into what I consider to be a meditative state, right? I can focus on this activity with such intensity that I'm not thinking about what I did before or what I'm going to do next. And that present moment awareness or that flow state is great. But the problem is it does not elicit the same biochemical responses of sitting with your eyes closed in a comfortable seat. And if you want to have that experience, you want to benefit from those physiological changes in the mind and the body, you can't get around just sitting.

And so, you know, having those initial sort of surface level thoughts, that's a part of the experience in the same way that going to the gym straight off the couch, you never really worked out before, but then you decide, okay, I know I feel better when I move my body, when I exercise. Those first, those initial weeks, you know, those first few weeks where you go in the gym and you try to like lift something, or you try to like engage your cardio in that way, it's very taxing and it's not very comfortable and you're sore. But you know that when you maintain consistency, for those of you who have gone through that process, you've gone through the initial stages and you start to build a little strength, you actually start to look forward to going to the gym. And so the meditation is kind of like the gym for the mind. Initially, there's some rustiness,

there's some soreness, there's some chaos and turbulence. But that's just the beginning stages. And then you get beyond that. And then you start to have the more settled mind experience. But that's sort of the rite of passage. Everybody has to go through that. And the great thing about it is once you go through it and you develop the skill and the habit of it, then you can benefit from it for the rest of your life. Yeah. What's your practice like these days? You know, I'm trying to think what it was like back in, I'm going to guess June, 2018, I think when I was in LA and we were in a hotel room having a conversation with two mics on my hotel bed, I think from recollection. You know, over the last year, there's been a significant change. So I have, I guess I've

wrestled with meditation for many years. And I guess even that use of the term wrestle is quite interesting, isn't it? It's quite evocative in terms of my previous relationship with meditation. I was, you know, I knew with my rational brain, the benefits of doing it. I'd experienced at moments in my life, I remember, you know, my son's 11 now. When he was a young baby, I remember I went through a period of maybe one, two or three months of meditating every day and I felt myself less reactive, calmer, just in general. Yeah, I would still fall off the wagon and then I'd go six months without doing anything. And then I'd go into phases with, you know, the Calm app, which I, you know, I think can be really, really helpful for many people. I found that helpful for

a while, but I tell you what, what happened, I'm going to guess around a year ago, I started to crave meditation. I started to, I really felt I got, I got through a block. So a couple of things have happened. I don't meditate usually with an app anymore. I will just sit there and I'm very accepting now of what happens, you know, whether a thought comes in or whether I have a really calm, serene practice or whether I'm going through my to-do list. I kind of accept it and I don't judge it either way. And I've got to this point where, A, I really crave it now in those days where I haven't done it. I'm like, you know, I really want to meditate. That never used to happen. It always used to be something I thought I should do and I knew I wouldn't get benefit from. So that's been a big shift. And the other thing is, is I no longer necessarily crave or want silence to meditate. So I think I shared this a few months ago, but sometimes I'll meditate in the morning in

my sitting room, just on the floor against the sofa, leaning against the sofa. And sometimes my kids will pop down or they'll be getting ready for school or having a little argument in the room next door. And I sort of embrace it and go, oh, this is cool. I now get to, that's on in the background. Can I still meditate and be accepting and not beat myself up that, oh man, you know, I want my silence. You know, I thought they wouldn't be awake now. You know, am I never going to have any time to meditate? You know, that kind of negative self-talk. And so I feel in a really good place, mate, if I'm honest. I kind of, I really enjoy it now. And I also don't beat myself up if I have a few days where I don't do it for whatever reason. I'm like, okay, cool. I didn't do it. Now I'm going to get back into it. So fundamentally, I think we're coming at a three years since we spoke. I feel it's like night and

day compared to back then. That's beautiful. And you just articulated wonderfully the progression of it. Like in the initial stages, you need some guidance, or at least you feel like you need someone telling you what to do or what to think about or prompting you. But then you graduate from that and you go into your silent practice. But you need perfect silence in order to feel like you can do it and then the next stage of evolution is you can start meditating with noises

and things around and then ultimately you get to a point where you've embodied that meditative state so much that you can have it while you're out in the world and you may not need to meditate every single day you know feel like you need to you can you feel like you have that spaciousness within you so that's that's exactly the progression that you just described how long have you been meditating for now um probably let's see i started dabbling in the mid 90s so uh we're talking like 25 years ago. And then like clockwork, I started meditating about 20 years ago. Still meditate every day. Like clockwork. Yeah. I just love, I mean, it's like a, it's, you know, trying, it's like how some people relate to coffee. You know, you get up in the morning and you just, the first thing

you do is you start thinking of, okay, you you start thinking of the it's not even about the taste anymore it's about the ritual of it you know and um savoring every single sip and just every aroma so I feel like that about meditation I will admit actually on that that actually the first thing I do when I wake up is I I do have my ritual around coffee first I'll have one coffee and then I'll meditate. And again, what I'd love you to expand upon, and I think this is a theme of your work, and I'd probably credit our initial conversation in some way of sending me down this path, because I really feel you helped to break it down and make it accessible for people and not, you know, the set of rules that you have to diligently and religiously follow every day. Of course, there can be value in that for some people,

but it's like, you know, some people say, oh, you shouldn't have coffee before meditation. Now, I don't know what you would say to that, but you know what? I've found something that works for me. And I feel, and this will come out throughout our conversation, because I feel in your new book, Knowing Where to Look, there is a real wisdom that you seem to have acquired through your years of living, through inquiring about yourself, I'm guessing in a huge part due to meditation and the sort of insight it gives you. I'm just more trusting these days of myself of not needing other people to validate what I'm doing. It's like, I know I can have a coffee and then go meditate and I feel great. That's enough for me. Do you know what I mean? I really feel that's enough these days.

Yeah. I think, look, when I first started teaching meditation, I would have said, absolutely do not drink coffee before you meditate. Because I was, you know, it's like with you as a physician, I'm sure when you first graduated medical school, you were more of a fundamentalist and the rules and make sure you don't do this. But then after a while you see, well, the patient's not going to do all these protocols on their own if I don't make it easy for them. And if I don't allow them to have a little bit of flexibility and leeway and just, let's just focus on the principle, right? And the principle is do something every day, even if you can just do 10 minutes or 15 minutes every day. I don't care if it's before you do

coffee or drinks, whatever you do, just fit it in. And then over time, yeah, whatever's most sustainable for you, for your body to move into balance and to keep moving in that direction of homeostasis will start to become more attractive. It'll start to become more appealing. And that for some people may be, I don't need to drink as much wine anymore as I used to, because I've been doing this meditation thing, or I don't, I don't know if this relationship that was really an abusive relationship, but I was sort of masking it and painting the red flags green, that's no longer really suitable for me.

So I'm going to change the way I relate to this person, or maybe I'm going to graduate myself from this relationship, or maybe this job that I've been doing that has been sucking my soul in a way that I wasn't quite honest about before is no longer working for me. So those things start to change. And I think that's really where we want to keep our attention. And we want meditation just to be the catalyst. We don't really want to focus too much on what's happening in meditation or around meditation. We want the real gauge of progress to be how am I showing up every day in the world? And if it's just 1% better than yesterday, then I'm doing something right.

I think that's a good place to move into your new book and your new content and where you have sort of evolved, which is very, very consistent, I think, with Bliss More, for sure. Yeah, it's not about meditation, this book. It's more about, I guess, inspiration. But one of the key themes I get from it, I don't really feel this fits into meditation and the perspective that that can give us, the distance it can start to afford us from the hub drum of everyday life and stresses. It's the inspiration is there all around us. It just depends on which lens we look at it through, right? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's all around us, if we know where to look for.

And a lot of times, just again, as a principle, it's about looking within our own heart, within our own spirit. And if we can kind of focus on gratitude and be more present, then it's just, it's like, it's like, turns our life into technicolor. It just pops up everywhere. It's like, whoa. So I'm feeling called to do these things that aren't on the surface. They're not big things. I'm not going to receive a lot of validation or accolades from doing these things like stopping and just meditating or going into this store that I'm passing by.

I have no reason to walk in this store, but something is sort of urging me or compelling me to go and just have a look or compliment this person in the elevator. Like little things, you start off with those little things of what I consider to be leaps of faith or following your heart. And then those will culminate into bigger things. of faith or following your heart. And then those will culminate into bigger things. And I opened the book with, you know, story of me going nomadic and when I was in my early twenties and going to Europe and from Chicago and how that whole thing unfolded in me having all my needs met within a couple of hours. And, and, and, you know, that was sort of, I liked that story because I didn't have a background of meditation. So I was very much having to trust something that was greater than me.

But then later on with life experience and a practice as a foundation, I started to trust it more and more and more. And so that's what led to that book. Well, why don't you tell that story? So I think it is really powerful, but, but before you do, let's, you know, paint a picture for us before you went on that plane, before you took that plane ride to France, right? What, what was going on in your life? What kind of person were you? You know, we know you now as a meditation teacher, you are calm, serene, you know, you speak

with real attentiveness, which is super nice to be on the receiving end of that, actually, and have a conversation with someone who is that attentive to the conversation. But paint a picture of the light Watkins then, and then tell us that story about what happened. Thank you. Thanks. I want to just acknowledge that compliment. Thank you. Yeah, you know, I just graduated from college. And so I was in my early 20s. And, you know, I was curious, wanted to taste a lot of the different colors of life. I had this job in advertising.

I was an advertising major. So, you know, I grew up from a very traditional background that, you know, you have a job and you may want to even own the business. And it was all about ownership and making money and all of that. And so I had this, this wonderful job as in the creative department of an ad agency. And, and it was going to be the start of this, this career that I had had fantasized about since I was in my teenager.

And while I was there, I kind of looked around the agency and the industry. And you see people who accelerate it to the highest levels of something. And I didn't have language for it back then, but I just didn't feel like once I got there, I didn't feel like that was my path. There was something that told me that wasn't my path. I didn't know what my path was. I just knew that that wasn't it. I now look back and I just feel like I would have been anchored in sort of a false sense of security from staying there. And I wanted to play on the edge a little bit more of my comfort zone. So I figured, look, this is always going to be there. And I'm going to try something a little bit more unconventional.

a little bit more unconventional. So I decided to resign myself from my one and only nine to five job. I never didn't realize at the time that would be the only time I would ever work in an office. But after three months, I told him I was going to be taking some time away. And I didn't know what I was going to do. Now I'd done a couple of little rinky-dink fashion shows in college. And I just kind of thought, well, maybe I'm tall. Maybe I'll try this modeling thing out. And I had this idea to go to Paris and it just kept percolating. And so my half-baked plan was to quit the agency, get a plane ticket to Paris, and they're going to love me. I just had it in my mind that they were going to love me in Paris, and I should go there and I'll become this fashion model. And so I quit the job. I told my family that I was being sent for in Paris because I didn't want them to worry. I knew that

taking this kind of leap of faith was going to cause my mom, especially, to be concerned because I didn't have any money. I didn't have any savings. My family wasn't a wealthy family or anything like that. But I just felt like this is what I was supposed to do. And so I got a one-way ticket to Paris. I didn't speak French. I didn't know anybody there. No one was calling. No one knew I was coming, right? And this is before the internet. This is before smartphones. So I went to the bookstore. I bought a book called Paris on a budget. And I had probably, I don't know, 300, 400 bucks on me or something like that. probably, I don't know, 300, 400 bucks on me or something like that. And I got this ticket and the ticket had a connecting flight in Newark. And so I got to the Newark airport

and I went to the gate and the gate was packed with French natives. And there was only one flight leaving. It was like an overnight flight. And at that point, all of my courage just kind of truncated and I got very anxious. And I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm actually doing this. Like, this is the point of no return. experience to understand that, you know, it's probably going to be okay. It's probably going to work out. But as the flight started boarding, they said, look, we need volunteers to give up their seats. We've oversold the flight. And I didn't have anyone expecting me. So I thought, you know, I could do that. And then they started offering a voucher for, because no one was going up to the, to the, to volunteer their seat. And the price got up to, I think, $400. And I jumped up and went up and, and said, I'll give up my seat, you know, and I got a $400 voucher, which was awesome because now I had enough money. If I needed to come back, I had enough money to come back. And so again, there was only

one flight. So they put me up overnight in the hotel, come back the next night. And it's the same song, second verse, packed flight, oversold, we need volunteers. So I jumped up, volunteered my seat again. Now I have $800 in money to come back or do whatever I want with it. So I go to the hotel, come back the next night, same thing. I'm thinking, oh my God, I could do this for a living. This is great. I've just stumbled upon this new income stream. But I was literally the last person sitting as the flight had boarded. And they came to me and said, we have one seat left so you can get on the flight. So now I'm on the flight and I'm super nervous. Right. But I'm feeling a lot better about having enough money to return.

And I'm sitting next to this jewelry designer. And he says, you know, what are you doing in Paris? I said, oh, you know, I'm being sent for. I kind of had this this sort of tale in my head that I knew wasn't true. But it's almost like I had to convince myself that what I was doing, I knew it would sound crazy if I just said, I'm just going just to see what happens. And, you know, I'm this kid from Alabama. So anyway, he knew this agency that I was going to try first and he knew the agent. And, and so he kind of called my bluff and he said, hey, you want to

share a ride in town to go to this place? And I said, yeah, sure, that's fine. I had no idea what that meant, where it was, how far, how much it would cost or anything like that. So next thing I know, it's nine o'clock in the morning. It's drizzling in Paris. I have my duffel bag with all of my life's belongings in it. I take it to this hostel that I found in my Paris on a budget book. They said, you can't check in this early. Like again, I didn't, now I know you can never check in anywhere before three o'clock. This is nine o'clock in the morning. So I said, okay, I just, so I took my stuff to this agency and I, I handed them some photos and they looked looked at it and within like

30 seconds i said no you're not this no and and and i'm sitting in the lobby just kind of collecting my stuff and deciding what i'm going to do next right still first thing in the morning haven't really slept and this guy is in the lobby of that agency. And he's talking, this big black guy, he's talking to these two French models. They're all speaking French. I have no idea what they're saying. And he's like looking at me. And again, I was just in Chicago working in advertising just before this, right? He's looking at me. And I'm like, why is this guy looking at me? And then he just walks over to me and he goes, you're from Chicago. And I was like, yeah, how did you know that? He speaks in perfect American English. Well, he's from Chicago and he was just in Chicago that past summer when I was there. He apparently saw me somewhere and he said, I never forget a face. And he kind of knew what was going on. Like I come there to potentially get representation. And he said, I never forget a face. And he kind of knew what was going on. Like I come there to potentially get representation. And he said, what happened? And I said, they, they rejected me,

told me to come back in a few months. He goes, okay, well come with me. And and so I, I followed him out of that office. And then we're on like the third floor of this building and we go down the hallway to the next office. There's another agency right next door to it. And we walk in and I get the sense he wants to introduce me to someone. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now.

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She's in that next office. She's working with that agency. She sees me and she goes, oh my God, what are you doing here? And I said, what are you doing here? And she happens to be with this other guy who's French American, and he's got connections to this beautiful flat. And it just so happens to be available for a few months for free. And so anyway, long story short, I end up with a place to stay. I end up with representation. I end up with a group of friends. I end up with money to go end up with a group of friends. I end up with money to go back all within, you know,

a few hours of, of taking that, that leap of faith. And that was, that was one of the first times that, that really showed me that if you listen to that inner guidance, again, I didn't have language for it at the time. I hadn't read any of my spiritual books. I hadn't taken any meditation trainings. I hadn't read any of my spiritual books. I hadn't taken any meditation trainings. I hadn't done any of that stuff. I just, I just had graduated from college and, uh, and that was my first time. And I was like, Oh my God, this, this exists,

right? If you listen to that guidance and you, and you follow it, it's going to work out. And we have to remember it worked out after intentionally missing two flights and then having one rejection. Any of those things could have potentially thrown me off and made me feel like, oh my God, this is not going the way it's supposed to go or whatever. And I was being divinely timed. And so I tell multiple stories like that because I don't want people thinking it's just a fluke that happened to me. This is happening all the time if we are able to notice it and pay attention to it and listen to it and follow it.

Yeah, it's an incredible story. I was struck by this being in the pre-Google, the pre-smartphone era. So, you know, it's actually going to be very hard for anyone to really experience that anymore, because if you rock up in a different city these days, you can find everything you want on that smartphone, whereas you had to go in a bookshop and buy. It's a nice way of thinking about the past a little bit. There's definitely a romantic notion to that. But what can people really learn from that? Because what about someone who's listening and goes, hey, listen, great story, man. I'm glad it worked out for you. You just got lucky, right? I could have got on that plane and I could have rocked up there. I wouldn't have got two sets

of vouchers. I would be on the first plane out there. I would have got, what if I got rejected from my job application? What if I didn't meet anyone? And after a week, I'm on a return plane home. You know, I think that's a very legitimate interpretation is that it's at its luck. But at the end of the day, einstein said something really interesting related to this he says you can look you can believe everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle but you can't really believe both you know it's like it's got to be one or if you think about it in our sort of western logical mindset like it's got to be kind of one or the other because if if certain things are miracles and certain things are not miracles, and that kind of says that everything is miracle, but you just can't see those things that are

miracles sometimes. And I feel like the same thing is true when it comes to, um, divine timing or feeling like you're being guided. It's like either you're always being guided or it's all just kind of random. And I think when we really do the inventory on our lives, we can all, we can all find one or two moments where maybe you thought about someone and they called you or maybe, um, you know, some other sort of coincidental thing or serendipitous thing happened. And here's the thing, like I've been writing, this book is a culmination of inspirational emails I've been sending out every day since June of 2016. So we're on five years now. I just sent out email number 1,830 something today.

And after doing that on a daily basis, it really causes you to start to see those kinds of inspirational moments almost everywhere and in everything. Right. And again, if you just keep it simple, if you go out and you buy a green car, you're going to see green cars all over the place. Right. If you don't own a green car, you're never going to see a green car. So whatever you're training yourself to look for is what you're going to see. And if you don't see inspiration, you probably aren't training yourself to look for it. Yeah, I think that's a great perspective. Because, you know, in many ways, it's kind of what you choose to believe, right? Do you want to believe in something greater than yourself? Do you want to believe that, you know, the world

and the universe is always working for you? Or do you want to believe that actually you always get dealt a bad hand and that you're a victim and nothing good ever goes right for you? Because a lot of the time it comes down to perspective, doesn't it? How we look at these things. And look, I want to acknowledge that I understand some people, you know, have got all kinds of rough things going on in their life, all kinds of pressures, financial pressures, job pressures, relationship pressures. So I don't think either one of us want to be insensitive to that. But it's more that, as you say, we can train ourselves to look at life a certain way. And I bet, and I have seen this, and I've felt this myself, is that when you choose

these kind of perspectives, when you choose to look on the bright side, when you choose to look at, oh, this happened for a reason, actually, I can't quite figure it out yet, but it will become clear. I just think we're calmer, we're less reactive, we're more peaceful, we're sort of happier people if we choose to live like that. Yeah. I mean, look, so I think that there's value in feeling like life is hard. You know, that's like the opening chapter of the book and you have that point of reference. I think that's the value of a practice like meditation because it allows you to feel that deeper sense of connectivity that can go beyond your intellectual understanding of how this could possibly be the case that I'm

feeling a connection to this person or to this situation or why I'm feeling drawn to this experience. Because if you have to stop and intellectualize everything all the time, then it kind of takes you out of that flow state. It sort of reminds me of that wonderful Aesop's fable about the frog and the centipede, where the frog is out observing the centipede on its morning walk. And it's just fascinated by how the centipede can coordinate all 100 of its legs as it's walking. And meanwhile, the frog can barely, you know, walk with two legs. And so he goes up to the centipede and says, you know, how do you do it? How do you make that happen? Because I just can't understand the mechanics behind it and the centipede thinks about it for a second and then says well let me let me see and he starts trying to walk with the

hundred legs and he starts stumbling over its own legs and then falling into a ditch and getting a bit upset because when he wasn't thinking about it it just happened by grace it just happened by you know some sort of inherent divine intelligence. But once you start overthinking it, then it starts to feel a little bit more clumsy. So I feel like, you know, these are good questions to ask. But when we look at our lives, we can see how experiences have dovetailed into one another and little urges and hunches and callings that we've all experienced inside, they've in some way come to fruition. And, you know, if it's a bad thing, and this is the other thing, we give so much attention to sort of negativity. And we know, like,

if you were going to board a flight and I said, your flight's probably going to crash, Dr. Chatterjee, everyone, why did you say that? I can't believe you would say that, right? Because we know inherently that there's power behind what we put our attention on. But if we say, oh, this is going to work out so well, then everyone's thinking, oh, this guy's naive. He's, you know, why are you putting your attention on that? Be more realistic. So it's like, we've almost been conditioned to overthink everything, but to err on the side of negativity as opposed to positivity. And you're right. I think this is an invitation. Look, we know what it feels like to be negative. Everybody knows what that feels like. But what if we experiment

with what it's like to just have a little bit more optimism and just to have a little bit more trust in our internal guidance, in the same way that we may trust the GPS on our phone or in our car, when we set a destination and it tells us to go right, and we're not sure where going right is going to take us, but hey, it's telling us to go right. And, you know, we're not sure where going right is going to take us, but hey, it's telling us to go right. So let me just go right. Let me not question it too much. And then ultimately we arrive at the destination. And so I operate from the belief that there is an internal divine destination and that the word divine may throw some people off. So we just, you know, look, I, I'm not apologizing anymore for believing that there's some sort of bigger intelligence than just my individuality,

but yeah, there's a divine, there's an internal GPS. And if you follow that things tend to work out. And if you don't follow it, things tend to be a little bit more, um, dramatic. It's interesting that when you were talking about your early 20s and your decision to go to Paris, you were in a decent job, right? It's the job you had sort of dreamt about or certainly thought a lot about. A lot of people in that situation would not have listened to that inner voice. I think many of us are so conditioned by society. You sort of touched on that in the last thing you said. You also touched on that earlier on in the book where I think you mentioned that fear has enjoyed a huge genetic and societal advantage throughout human history,

right? And how we're sort of surrounded by that from the day that we're born. So we have this sort of this competition that in a GPS, as you so beautifully have just described then and in the book. But then the kind of fear and the anxiety is about, no, no, I should be doing things this way. Talk a little bit about what role fear plays in, because you could have got scared in your twenties and not taken that leap, but I think you were scared, but still decided to take that leap nonetheless. So how would you sort of frame that for people so i say that inspiration has two there's two hallmarks the way you know you're being inspired is that you have excitement there's an the possibilities are exciting to you and there is fear right fear is a part of it like

in other words and it's not there's bad fear like oh i'm gonna die i'm gonna this person's gonna harm me and then there's good fear like like when you again you go to the gym and you're gonna do some exercise you've never done i'm gonna do 100 burpees oh i know i can probably do it if someone were gonna pay me a million pounds to do 100 burpees i know i can do it but I don't necessarily want to do it because it's going to be hard. It's going to stretch me. It's going to cause me to feel like I can't do it for most of the time. And so when you have those two elements, the fear and the excitement, those are your hallmarks for inspiration, right? And so I say, move in that direction, lean in that direction.

And don't expect to not be afraid. You know, there's a piece in the book where I talk about how courage is more about loyalty than it is about getting rid of fear. And it's about being loyal to that feeling inside, that heartfelt inner calling. And if you can just get more courage than you have fear, then you can take the leap. And the reason the fear is coming is, again, because we live in the society, as you pointed out, where fear has dominated most of our decisions and we're being conditioned to be risk averse and to play it safe. But all the magic is happening outside of the comfort zone. But as you get to the edge of your comfort zone, that's where the fear

and all of that becomes the loudest. And this is, again, this is the rite of passage, because as Stephen King has said before, the scariest part is always just before you start. And so once you get beyond that starting place where you're now in the action, you're in the motion of doing whatever it is that you're being called to do, the fear actually dissipates pretty quickly and you end up getting more into strategic mode and let me just kind of figure out the best way to navigate this situation. And then you become the inspiration for other people to do the same thing. Some people won't know the difference between that inner GPS, that inner voice that's trying to guide them. And I guess the fear voice that's, I guess, trying to protect them, really. Exactly. Yeah. You have to split test it. Just like the Facebook ad guys, they split test this ad against that ad. They change this word, they change the orientation,

and they find out which one is the most effective. And so we have all these voices inside, the pain voice, the trauma voice, the social conditioning voice, the voice of our caretakers. And we have the still small voice of inner guidance. And so you have to you're not going to get it right in the beginning. Every single time you have to figure out which one is which. And you follow the one you think is your voice of inner guidance. And here's a really simple way to distinguish between the two. Your inner guidance is never going to tell you what not to do. It's not going to say, don't get into this

situation. Don't do this. Don't do that. Your inner guidance is going to tell you what to do. Go to the right. Take this chance. Leave your job, that kind of thing. So it's not going to say, you know, whatever you do, don't work in oil again, or don't, you know, it's just going to tell you, it's going to always direct you in a different way. And so as long as it's affirming something, as long as it's keeping you moving forward, and you feel like you're progressing, then that's generally the voice of your intuition. Now, here's the other thing, you know, people talk about, oh, I want to follow my heart, I want to live a life of purpose and all of that. But I think we have this sort of

cartoonish idea of what that really means. Like, like the people who are doing that are, are, you know, we see them being admired and we may think that, you know, that leads to success, but it actually is the opposite. It actually challenges you, challenges all of your conventional ideas about conventional life and what it takes to be successful. And because a lot of times it's, it's not leading you to more money. It may even be leading you to less money, quitting the high paying job to do something a little bit more meaningful or a little bit more aligned with your heart.

And it causes you to move out of your comfort zone. So it's actually a pretty challenging road to take. And it can be a bit of a lonesome road as well. But the good news is that you become more comfortable with that. That's necessary for you to be able to hear that inner guidance. You can't have a bunch of distractions and a bunch of noise and there's going to be resistance and you got to move through the resistance and the resistance may be coming from your family and your close friends telling you, what are you doing? You crazy? You've lost your mind. You can't do that. You're risking too much and all of that. You're irresponsible. You know, they're going to throw it all at you.

And, but if the, if you're used to, if you've cultivated your relationship with your inner guidance, then it's kind of like, you know, again, you're driving around and the GPS is saying, go right. And somebody who doesn't know where you're going says, no, you should go left. It looks like you should go left here. It's like, well, the GPS probably knows better than you know. So you can listen to it a lot easier and you can have more confidence in listening to it. And I think, again, it's all a progression. It's all a progression. And then the last point is, I'm not saying that people need to go and give up all their life's possessions and go nomadic, right? That's not the takeaway here.

That is the measure of whether or not you're following your heart. What I'm saying is find your version of that, right? So I came from a very stable environment growing up. And so for me, experimenting with instability was interesting. Right. But if someone came from an environment where there was a lot of instability for them, they may be tracking towards more of that. But being in a more stable, a more a more conventional environment may be their version of going nomadic. conventional environment may be their version of going nomadic. So you can have the opposite of what I'm experiencing and that can still be something that is challenging your comfort zone and allowing you to really trust in that inner guidance.

It's a bit like the conversation we were having around meditation at the start where there's a progression. You're not going to just suddenly start to meditate and then find it simple and crave it and be able to meditate with noise around you. It's going to take work and practice and falling off and getting back on again. And what I sort of hear very loudly from you and when reading your books is that this is also one of those things where as you practice more, you will start to tune in more to when is it the fear voice or the pain voice or the trauma voice and when is it that inner voice that's there to help you. And I guess you can't really make a wrong choice either, can you? Because let's say you think it's your inner voice and it wasn't. Let's play out that scenario for people because people might say, yeah, I get that, but I'm still not sure if it's my inner voice. Like, how do I know for certain? And I guess there's no real way to know for absolute certain, is there? You just got to roll the dice and see what happens.

Yeah. And you're getting a point of reference, which is very valuable because you're going to find ultimately it's not really that difficult. It's not that complicated. Once you have enough reps in listening to these different voices, you're going to be able to categorize, okay, that's definitely not my intuition. It's something else, right? We tend to under appreciate the awareness factor when it comes to these things, but that's

really the gift and the experience is the awareness that we accumulate as a result of the experience. So we may have to go through the whole thing 10 or 12 or 100 times, but each time we're gaining more and more wisdom and more and more awareness that we can now relate to other areas of our life. We say, oh, I felt this when I was navigating that relationship in my 30s. And it's the same feeling I have with this relationship with my work. And then you start to realize, oh my God, it's all relationships. My relationship with my habits is the same thing that I've been doing with my relationships with my parents. And that's why therapists are so amazing because they take you back to childhood and they show you that, hey, the way you're showing up now with your current marriage or

with your job or with your habits or with your yourself is the way you relate it to your initial caregivers. And so we need to go back and unpack that in order to be able to now understand what we need to do to move forward. So it's connecting those dots, but that awareness gets cultivated within. And again, we can't discount the meditative component. Like the meditation practice has been a huge factor in establishing those connections and being able to discern between those voices. And so I admit the first time going to Paris and all that, that was luck. that point of reference with my decades-long practice, now I can see, oh, it actually was beginner's luck, but now I can actually invoke this. I can actually create the experiences I want to have by following this specific quality of voice. And I'm not special in this way. Other people can do this too,

if they know what to look for. I think what you just said, there was some really powerful things there. And one in particular got my attention was that sometimes you're going to have to go through this process 10 times or whatever, 15 or multiple times before you really get it. And it's not failure. I mean, this is something I talk to my patients a lot about when they fall off, let's say, a plan they're trying to follow or a way of eating or some sort of movement regime they're trying to implement. And I say, that's not, and they come and say they fail. I say, that's not failure. It's education. You're learning. You're learning more about yourself each time you fall off. Don't put it down to failure

and then start the negative self-talk. So I think that's a very powerful message because I think that applies to multiple things in our life, including following that inner voice. And I think these stories, these 108 stories, which are gorgeous. I think the Herbie Hancock and the Miles Davis one really grabbed my attention. And I think it sort of speaks to this whereby, yeah, if I want to tell that story, I think it's really quite apt here in terms of what we've just been talking about. Sure. Yeah. So I told a story and this was not, this is a story I heard about, right? From Herbie Hancock on some random YouTube video. But he talked about how Herbie Hancock is a pianist and he was one of Miles Davis's, the jazz musicians, protégés. And back when he first

started playing with Miles, they were in some jazz concert somewhere. I think it was just the two of them. And they were playing off of each other. They were improvising, which is something that jazz musicians obviously do a lot of. musician he's huge in the scene and part of that sort of um of his uh neophyte nerves kind of caused him to do what that centipede did he overthought it and he ended up playing what he considered to be the wrong chord in the middle of their of their improvisation and he was mortified he was like we had built this beautiful house of cards. And I just like, I played this chord that was so wrong. I just destroyed the whole thing. And he said, what happened next was fascinating. He said, Miles somehow played this chord that made my wrong note right. wrong, no, right. And the whole thing just kept going seamlessly. And he didn't know how Miles was able to do that. He didn't have the experience or the wisdom to understand how that happens. But then later on, he realized that Miles never judged his court as wrong. He judged it as wrong. And then later on, Miles said in a separate interview, he said, it's not the court that you play that's wrong. It's the one you play afterward that makes

it right or wrong. And, and so I think that's what you're alluding to. And that even if you screw things up, and this is what makes life, this is what can make life so amazing, right? up. And this is what makes life, this is what can make life so amazing, right? Literally every moment of every day, because we all going into our day, we have experiences, we have interactions where things don't go the way we imagine them going. And that's an opportunity for us to play the right chord after that, and that can make that situation right. after that and that can make that situation right. I guess a lot of what we're talking about here is perspective, isn't it? It's choosing your perspective, choose the perspective that's going to work for you, choose the perspective that's going to make you calmer, happier. I've been deep in book writing

mode for a few months and this is an idea that i've been writing a lot about which is you know we always get to choose why not choose the perspective that makes you happier and calmer you know why not you know if you do have that choice choose the happier perspective yeah yeah i i think that if we are open to the idea that there could be a different way to read this situation, and that's it, just being open to the idea that there could be, it invites a different interpretation into our experience. A lot of times we're not open to it. So I talk about, I don't know if you came across this one. It's called, I call it the phantom delay in the book. It's about back in the days when I used to teach yoga. And, uh, I have

this thing where I've always been punctual. And I think maybe it's because my mom, when I was growing up, she, she was always late. And so every clock in the house was fast. She moved it ahead of the time. So you never knew what time it was. And she was always late, even though she would move the clocks ahead. And again, this is before cell phones and smartphones. So you didn't have a clock in your pocket. You only had the clocks that were on the wall growing up in the 1970s. And it was something that really always frustrated me that she was always late, but then she was always telling us to hurry up and get ready. And so I've always been very punctual. And I remember one morning going to teach my yoga

class, I had everything timed out perfectly because I could be a little obsessive compulsive sometimes about that. And my commute to teach my class was only about 10 minutes long. So I would leave 15 minutes ahead of time. And this is like on a heavy traffic day. It'd only take me 10 minutes. And for some reason this day, it was just jam-packed traffic inching along. I didn't know what had gone, what had happened. And it started to frustrate me because I realized right away, I'm going to be late. And I don't want to send the message to my students that it's okay to show up late. Like I started telling that story in myself, which is an old story. And in LA, you can't really use the excuse that there was traffic because there's always traffic somewhere in LA. So it just makes you sound kind of lame.

So I'm kind of zigzagging around trying to find a shortcut and every street I get on is just packed with traffic. And so finally I get up to the main intersection where if anything was going down, it would have been happening here that was blocking this traffic. And I'm looking around, I'm looking for like an accident. I'm looking for construction. I'm looking for a presidential motorcade, anything that's showing me why there's all this traffic. I see nothing. And now I'm even more upset because now I have nothing to blame it on. And I'm just late. And I ended up showing up. I think I was like 10 minutes late and I'm like running up the stairs, going to the class. And I stop and I walk very calmly because I'm the yoga teacher. I'm not supposed to be, you know, in a hurry and anxious and all of that, but that's how

I'm feeling inside. And I get to the room and I see the most bizarre thing. There are some custodians in the front of the room and there's like millions of shards of glass all over the front of the front of the room and there's like millions of shards of glass all over the front of the front of the room and i look up in the middle of the front wall and the front wall is all mirrors and it's there's a space with no mirror it's like this glue on the wall and apparently what had happened right at the top of the hour one of the wall mirrors right behind where I would have been sitting to start the class, it dislodged and it just came crashing down. Some freak thing happened.

And I mean, this thing was like nine feet or three meters tall. And it came crashing down right at the top of the hour when the class was supposed to start. So now I'm like, holy crap, this traffic jam that I was cursing, this phantom traffic jam, I had no idea where it started, what happened. But I was cursing it every step of the way was actually saving me from having a very, very bad start to my day. And then once that happened, and again, we can chalk it up to coincidence and all that. But when you have enough of those experiences, you start to see, oh, my God, there's something bigger than me potentially happening. I'm being timed here. bigger than me potentially happening. I'm being timed here. And after that, I have no problems with any kind of unexpected delays. And I'm not saying, you know, don't try to do, I will absolutely do everything I can to make a flight or to, you know, make sure that Uber takes me where I need to be. But if there's something that is beyond my control, now my default is, okay, well, this is probably timing me perfectly, even though I don't understand how or why or where, but I'm just going to trust that this is happening for me, as opposed to

why is this happening to me? Kind of like that sort of victim mindset, like how, how is this happening for me? What are some of the biggest takeaways that I can get? And, you know, I tell another story in the book just related to this, this is just popped in my head, but it's called light as a fraud. And it was when I wrote my first book called the inner gym, it was a book about happiness. And I got my first negative review after putting my first public work out. And you know what this feels like. I know the drill, man. And you're like mortified because it's like, oh my God, this person completely misinterpreted

everything that I was saying. But this was someone who was clearly trolling me, saying that I was a part of some big money making scam and all this kind of stuff. And something compelled me to just look at other books that I admire and see what kind of reviews they were getting. And so I went to go look at The Power of Now, and I went to Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, and I went to Paramahansa Yogananda's book, Autobiography of a Yogi, and they were all just riddled with negative reviews where people just went into great detail going point by point why this beautiful work of art was so horrible and wretched and why you should never even consider getting it. And then you just realize, oh,

this is just what people do. This is just a perspective that people have. Some people just feel the need to voice themselves in this way. And in a way, it kind of gives the work credibility because you're putting yourself out there. like that, and you're exposing yourself in that way, it kind of steals you to that sort of internal guidance in a way that you wouldn't be able to own your contribution if you didn't expose yourself to the market in that way. And so it allows you, it kind of frees you up to be able to just stay focused on what you can do and let people interpret it in whatever way they want to interpret it. But again, that informs all of your relationships. It's not just your works of art, but it's in your conversations that you're having.

It's in the way you are interpreting the so-called negative things that happen to you. And you just start to see, oh, it's all just perspective. That's all it is. And you could take something bad that happened to you. And a lot of the stories in this book are things that I could have interpreted it as a bad thing. And you find the silver lining in it. And that's a practice.

You have to practice that. It doesn't come naturally because, again, we're not conditioned to think that way by society. But once you start to do that over and over and over, then it becomes easier and easier to kind of review the moments in your life in a more positive way, as opposed to just going straight to the ax job. It is a practice. And I definitely very much relate to that example because you know having a public profile creating

and producing work that you spend hours and hours pouring over and then putting it out to the world yeah four or five years ago negative review man I found it difficult. You know, really, really difficult. Whereas now, genuinely, it rarely fazes me. Because I've learned, it's been a practice of looking at that and going, okay, what can I learn from this? And first of all, can you control whether people are going to do that? Well, no, I can't. Okay, fine. What can I control? I can control my response. Okay, right. So is there any truth in this? Yeah, actually, you know what? That person's got a point here. Maybe I could have. Okay, great. I can learn from that. If I don't consider there to be any truth in it, it's like,

what is the tone of the language? Okay. This guy or this lady has clearly been triggered when she's writing that. That's okay. You know, I have compassion for that. We all get triggered at times. But then for me, it's always a case of, well, why is this bothering you? What is it mirroring in myself? What is it bringing up for me? Because that's what I've got control over. I can control, oh, I'm insecure about wanting to be liked because when I was a kid, I used to feel I got love when I achieved something really great or came top of the class. Oh, that pattern's playing out, right? Okay, great. Now I can work on that. So I think there's all kinds of learnings in all of these things. Your story of writing daily emails for five years, talk us through that. Talk us through

why you made that decision and what was that process along the way of fear, anxiety, and then trust. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health, and together we're going to learn the skill of

happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are, of course, many different ways to journal.

And as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how

much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal, or click on the link in your podcast app. So I've been following Seth Godin. Many of you may know as the marketer, marketing genius, and he's been writing a daily email for years. I don't know when he started, maybe in 2000 or something like that. But

I always admired that level of commitment. And back in 2016, I just got my book deal for writing Bliss More. And again, this is after having self-published my first book, which took me about four years to write. My first book took me about four years to write. And so I only had six months to write Bliss More. And I was super insecure about my ability to write a 60,000 word book, which was three times longer than my first book in just a fraction of the time. So I was like, oh my God, I should get a ghostwriter or get somebody to help me write this book. And my literary agent at the time, she persuaded me. She said, look, no, you can do it. I've read some of your stuff before. You can do it. And I just, I wasn't convinced. And I thought to myself, well,

you know, having been a meditation teacher for many years and understanding the mechanics and principles of progression and iteration and knowing that things evolve over time, but they get better with consistency. I thought to myself, well, let me put myself in writing gym. And a great way to do that would be to put myself in a position where I had to write on a regular basis. So I had been kicking around this idea, really, it was more of a fantasy of writing this daily email for a long time. And I thought, okay, this is the opportunity to do this because A, you're giving yourself a daily deadline, which means you have to do it. And B, you're making it public, which means it has to be good enough to send out because you know you're going to get feedback from people and then some of it is probably not going to be nice and so you have to really you can't just put out anything and the rebuttal

my intellect was making was you're going to run out of stories man in like three weeks four weeks max you don't know that many stories to tell so you can do this but you're just going to end up frustrating yourself and painting yourself into this really, really tight corner. And so I eventually, after many months, overcame my own resistance and decided I'm just going to start something. It didn't go away. And that's one of the other hallmarks of inspiration is it doesn't go away until you act upon it. So I decided, okay, I'm going to finally just do it, screw it. Although I didn't use language that nice. I just said, F it, I'm going to do it. And I sent out this one email to my list.

It was like, I let people know, hey, I'm doing this daily email. Who wants to sign up? I think 19 people signed up initially. So I was actually happy about that because I didn't want a thousand people signing up to hear what I had to say until I kind of worked it out. And the first one was a story about the origin of green tea, right? Which is just something I'm just personally interested in backstories. I've always been interested in backstories, but it didn't really have a point. It was just, yeah, green tea was made accidentally by this

Chinese emperor, blah, blah, blah. Next day, I told some story that my brother had told me that I thought was funny from his college days and tried to make it have some sort of spiritual point, but it didn't really land the way that I wanted it to. And I just kept doing this day after day. And then sure enough, three weeks in, my worst fears came to be. I ran out of content. I literally had no more stories to tell. My mind was completely right. And I'm like, now I'm really screwed. And I find myself sitting on the couch and it's like midnight, 1230 in the morning. I got to be up at six o'clock. I had to send this email. I'm losing sleep now. This is a really bad idea. And I just closed my eyes and I kind of slip into this meditative

state because again, I've been meditating for years now, like clockwork. So anytime I close my eyes, I just kind of go into this state and I find that this idea just kind of comes through me and I transcribe it. And I'm like, that's the email for tomorrow. And then the next day, same thing. These ideas start coming through me. And Maya Angelou said this thing. She said, you can't run out of creativity because creativity generates creativity. And I stories that ended up making the book five years later, 95% of them were stories that were sort of channeled through me instead of stories that I initially thought about when I had the original idea to start writing these daily emails. And so again, that was another powerful experiment for me in entrusting the muse to feed me content if I did my part by showing up. And that's really what it comes down to is just showing up. I mean, I love that story. I was panicking as you said it that you're going to run out of content.

You know, as a content creator myself, I very well know that feeling. I've certainly not committed to a daily email. I started a brand new weekly email called Friday Five a few months ago. And even that was stressing me out slightly. You kind of said you're going to put this out every friday you know what happens if you don't have five ideas one week or five things to put in it but i don't know yeah but six months in it hasn't happened yet and i love that quote you know creativity what was it creativity sort of feeds more creativity yeah you can't run out of

creativity because creativity generates creativity. Yeah. Oh, another thing I hear when you tell that story is, you know, you wrote a beautiful piece on commitment. There's another story around commitment. There's so many great stories in the book, actually. But I think there was this line where it was like commitment, true commitment doesn't even start until the original plan goes out of the window that's one of the the ones I underlines how I like that I like that what exactly do you mean by that yeah because I think commitments that we I think people we I put myself in the category we commit to doing things under very favorable circumstances, and we plan for the best case scenario. But when it goes off the rails, sometimes we may

interpret that as, oh, it wasn't meant to be, but that's not what's happening. What's meant to be is now we have an opportunity to figure out how am I going to do this in spite of this thing that's happening? Because this is just the beginning of your resiliency. That's the real commitment. The real commitment is resilience. How resilient can I be with what I say that I'm going to do? Right. Because that's the principle that can apply to future commitments and future habit building. principle that can apply to future commitments and future habit building. And if you can match, if you can master that with any commitment, whether it's, I'm going to change, I'm going to stop eating sugar, processed sugar, or I'm going to start moving, I'm going to walk 5,000 steps a

day, or I'm going to always think about three things I'm grateful for when I wake up in the morning, like these little things, the way you relate to them, the way you engage with them, the way you find a way to do them, in spite of the fact that you have to travel or you're sick or you have a headache or the kids need something. When you can find that resiliency, you can apply that to the larger commitment of creating commitments, right? The habit of building habits. And that's where it becomes more and more seamless. I personally find that to be the most fun about it because you see from having done these sorts of commitments over and over and over that that's the real commitment. It's just you're committing to committing. And I have this piece

called outstanding, where I say, it's really easy to be outstanding. You don't need money. You don't need recognition, accolades, just do what you say you're going to do. That's such a rare thing for people just to do what they say they're going to do that, that in and of itself will make you outstanding in your circle of influence. People will be impressed. They'll be super impressed because this guy or this woman always does what they say they're going to do. And that's just, it's unfortunately, we live in a society where that's just not the case most of the time.

Yeah. Can commitment ever be a noose around our neck? And, you know, self-love um you know slaving over something we've said we're gonna do even if what we really need is looking after ourselves a bit more sleep time to relax because we've been hitting it too hard you know where i see these sometimes as being sort of competing things whereas let's take the example of you writing a daily email, for example. Could there be a scenario where you've done it every day for a few years, and then one day, for whatever reason, actually, there's a lot of stuff going

on in your life, and actually, you need to attend to that stuff. And actually, you're not feeding the muse that day, you don't have the content. And actually, you know, you're not feeling the muse that day. You don't have the content and actually, you know, I just want to be careful we don't fall into the trap where it's like, well, you know, you said you're going to do it. So it doesn't matter if you only get two hours night sleep, you're going to stay up until you've done it because you said you were going to do it. You were true to your word, but at what cost? So I think that's an interesting sort of conundrum there sometimes. i agree with the underlying principle you know i'm not trying to disagree with that yeah i'm just trying to paint

an alternative scenario that could sometimes i think rear its head for people so when i was writing my um my book bliss more i uh would it be okay if I just read a really short piece? Of course. It's called FOMO. And I think it really encapsulates what we're talking about right now. It's called FOMO, which obviously stands for fear of missing out. It says, when I was writing my book, Bliss More, I didn't have a social life. Nearly every Friday and Saturday night for six months, I was

writing. While everyone else was enjoying Sunday fun days, I was holed up somewhere writing. Just before midnight on New Year's Eve, I fell asleep on my daybed writing with the sound of firecrackers going off in the distance. Sure, I had to overcome a lot of FOMO, fear of missing out, during that time. But instead of wishing I didn't have to write or giving in to the FOMO, fear of missing out, during that time. But instead of wishing I didn't have to write or giving in to the FOMO, I chose to see it as an opportunity to challenge the false notion that my happiness was located elsewhere. In that sense, I found my FOMO to be useful because I got to consciously choose again and again what my real priorities were and how committed I wanted to be to them. And I, is that the end of the piece? I think that, you know, obviously if your spouse is in the hospital or if your kids are undergoing surgery,

If your spouse is in the hospital or if your kids are undergoing surgery, those are really exceptional situations. But I don't think that's what we're talking about. I think most times when we're talking about whether we're going to follow through or not, it's not as serious as that. It's like, well, I want to watch this Netflix show. You know, everyone else is watching it. And it's like, look, when it's serious, you'll know when it's serious. But when you're just telling yourself a story because you have a little bit of FOMO,

that's 90% of the reasons why we don't follow through on what we say we want to do. But if we can do that, you may surprise yourself because even when it's serious, you've done it so many times that you're able to follow through on whatever you needed to do and deal with whatever else is going on around you, right? So I think that's the ultimate practice. And you show yourself repeatedly. You show yourself through action that you're the kind of person who can show up every day and commit to something. And it's very powerful that because you can't hide from yourself. You can tell yourself

a story, but actually you kind of know, maybe not with your conscious mind, but your unconscious knows when you're telling yourself a story and you're just sort of creating an excuse in your head to not follow through on something. And I can't, well, let's ask you, what is the number one benefit you have experienced in your life from writing a daily email for the past five years? So, you know, having to, well, a couple of things. Number one is the email is focused on inspirational, so inspirational stories. And I've become very clear about that. So sometimes I have an idea that I want to write about because I think it's clever or I think it's cute or, you know, I've got this line in my head that I want to kind of fit this line in. But it doesn't satisfy the mission of leaving the reader feeling more inspired than they felt when they started reading the email. when they started reading the email. And so it has to meet that criteria, which being very clear about that is a great editor because it allows me to be able to kind of hone in on what the point is of this story that I'm telling. But then it also opens me up to notice things that I would not be

noticing otherwise. And I've gotten stories out of conversations, just like the most random conversations from watching movies, reading books, airplane magazines. I mean, you name it. I can take almost any situation and I can find the silver lining in that situation. And that's become very much habitual for me because I had to do it. very much habitual for me because I had to do it. Love it. I don't, I literally, when you get into the, you know, thousands of emails, you don't care where the source comes from. You just, you are happy that you have something to offer. And then also making it bigger than me helps a lot, you know,

because I see it as a community service. I see it as a service project. I didn't start it to write a book about this later on. I started it really to practice, but also just to share and help people who are struggling or who are, you know, just having a difficult time finding that silver lining for themselves and just offering them a little bit of my own perspective. And so I think the combination of those two things, it really does, it informs a lot of my interactions, my day-to-day interactions in that I'm now actively looking for,

you know, what good is coming out of this right now? And it's a very, it's a small, it may sound like a small thing, but it actually is a very powerful thing because it just keeps you more present and more anchored. And the irony is you see more of the connections because you're actively looking for it. Yeah, I can just see what an incredible practice it is.

You know, you're training yourself to look for inspiration everywhere. And, you know, five years, that is a long time to be doing this. Even, I guess, six months of doing this would train you to see inspiration everywhere. But after five years, it's that progression of that practice. It's a beautiful example of process over outcome, isn't it? Just focus on the process, the commitment to that daily email. You had no plans to write a book with 108 of these best stories, let's say, or 95% of the new book came from those emails, but you end up getting a book out of it. You weren't even trying

to write a book. The book sort of happened as a side effect of doing these emails. And I think that is a beautiful metaphor that we can apply in many different aspects of our life. I mean, I had so many different stories circled that we were going to go through. We don't have time, unfortunately, to go through them all. And of course, people can just jump into this very, very readable and beautiful book to actually look at them. That's one of the things I really like about it. You don't have to read it all in one go. It could just be on your kitchen table or your coffee table. And you could just randomly open it on a couple of pages each day. But one of the pages that I really, really liked that I felt was

quite different from a lot of the book was the bit on teachable moments. So a lot of the book was about how we teachable moments. So a lot of the book was about how we can change our perspective and, you know, through these stories, get some sort of inspiration and reframe aspects of our own life, which I love. But this page, I really, really loved, you know, the idea being we're always teaching others how to treat us by the way that we act. And, you know, there's quite a few points there, but, you know, if we're easily reactive, we... Do you mind if I read from your book a little bit? Just two or three lines? Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love it. I love it.

If we are easily reactive, we teach others to sugarcoat their truth. If we routinely gossip about our friends, we teach others to question our loyalty. If we refuse to spread rumors, we teach people to trust that we will stand up for them too. And this one I really liked. If we consistently overgive, we teach others to take us for granted. I think this is one of the most powerful pages in the entire book. Maybe that's because it speaks to me in a particular way. But so much of the time, we feel that other people are acting in a certain way. And if they change the way they act, my life would be better. But what this is beautifully showing is that actually, the way they act, my life would be better. But what this is beautifully showing is actually we're kind of training the world around us all the time. Where did this come from? And is there

a bit of personal kind of experience in this as well? You don't write something like that without having gone through it yourself, of being an overgiver and gossiping and being around gossip. And, you know, as you were alluding to earlier, you know, just being in a so-called negative situation or reading a bad review that someone left for you, you're learning, okay, well, this is what it feels like to express in this way and to be the recipient of this sort of expression. And so you're learning, you know, okay, well, maybe, maybe it doesn't, it doesn't feel great to read. It probably doesn't, when I've left bad reviews before, it doesn't feel great to give them.

And so you're that's, that's, those are sort of the beginning stages just being aware of how things make you feel as you're going through them. And, and so that was my experience. You know, I just, that was one of the ones that was channeled when I was, I was out of completely out of things to say and write about that just started coming through. I think the first line just came through me and then I could relate it to other things in my life. And, uh, and yeah, it ended up being this this uh this whole thing about teachable moments but yeah of course i've been through all of that before and

i think that's one of the reasons why i could speak to it uh simply is because of the extent of experience i've had on all sides of that yeah, thank you for writing that page. I loved it. And I think it's one I'll be reading over and over again at various times. I'd like to sort of close off this conversation. A couple of things I wanted to just touch on. I know we started off talking about meditation and I know meditation is something that comes up a lot with my listeners to the podcast, people who watch it on YouTube. Have you got any sort of short bits of wisdom for people who they want to take the leap, but they don't know how?

You know, you've been teaching for many, many years now. How would you simplify the process of starting a practice of meditation for those people who feel inspired to do so? A couple couple things. First of all, I think any meditation is great, right? So even if it's an app that you can download and just get started and just start building up a daily habit, even if it's just five minutes, 10 minutes. And then again, look at it in terms of progression, right? So you get that going and then eventually you graduate yourself from that into maybe doing a more of a silent practice. And in order to prepare you for that, there are all kinds of resources. You can grab a copy of

Bliss More, my book, that'll give you the basic mechanics, which are essentially, you know, make friends with your mind and be comfortable in your positioning. And those two things alone are going to increase the quality of your experiences dramatically. And I actually just started a community, which I'm calling the Happiness Insiders, which people can access at lightwwalkins.com. And it addresses this pain point that a lot of people have, which is I want to do this. I want to do my inner work, but I just don't know how I don't have any accountability. I don't have any support. I'm kind of a lone wolf when it comes to this and my circle of friends and family. And so it's really hard to get traction and consistency when you're the lone wolf.

really hard to get traction and consistency when you're the lone wolf. And I wanted to create a community where people can learn these sorts of practices. So day one, I have a seven-day meditation kickstart just to get your practice up and running. And more so than that, to give you accountability, to give you quality support from me, and to give you a community to draw upon so that if you don't have that in your local environment, you have it online. And then eventually you can seek out people who live around you and you guys can meet up and do things together. And I think that could be very valuable. So I'm literally just starting that. I'm nervous and I'm excited about taking on this new responsibility, but it's something that I feel like it can help a lot of people

because what you're describing is so common right now. And I just want to help as many people as possible to get their practice so they can start to enjoy more of those leaps of faith and following your heart moments that everybody has been talking about in these kinds of books, like knowing where to look. So. Yeah, I love that. You know, sitting comfortably and making friends with your mind, I think two great bits of advice for people. And just to close off now, for someone who's listening to this right now, light, who feels now light who feel stuck in their life maybe it's a relationship maybe it's their job that's not really singing to their hearts and they don't know how to change things they don't know what to do

yet they're feeling inspired hopefully by the conversation that we've had, what advice would you give them? I think one of the reasons why we can feel stuck is because we discount the value of little things. So if there's just a little tiny, small, little leap or little change that you can make today based off of whatever you feel inspired to do, then I would say to try that out, even though you don't know how it's going to turn out. And if that seems like too much, take out a pen and a sheet of paper or pull out your notes app in your phone and just start writing down as many things as you can think of that you're grateful for. Because the value of gratitude is that it gets you anchored into the present moment.

And the present moment is where you're going to hear that still small voice as clearly as it's being transmitted. And then that's going to give you your next step, your next instructions. So don't worry about trying to see the whole staircase, which is, I think, what causes us to get paralyzed and just focus on whatever the next step is. And if you can't see the next step, start your gratitude list and that'll allow you to be able to see that next step a lot easier.

Great advice, Light. Thank you so much for making time to come on the show today. It's inspirational what you've done. Love the new book and talk to you again soon, I hope, buddy. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate you. and talk to you again soon, I hope, buddy. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate you. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do think about one thing that you might be able to take away and start applying into your own life.

Of course, don't forget to check out Light's new book, Knowing Where to Look, 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration. And of course, do show Light some love on social media and let him and myself know what you thought of this week's show. Before we finish, I want to let you know about Friday Five. It's my weekly newsletter that contains five short doses of positivity to get you ready for the weekend. There's usually a practical tip for your health

within it. I'll sometimes write about a book that I've been reading or an article or video that I found inspiring. Sometimes I share a quote that's caused me to stop and reflect. You know, anything really that I feel would be helpful to share. Now I get such wonderful feedback from my Friday 5 readers. Many of you tell me that it is one of the only weekly emails that you absolutely look forward to receiving. And it is so wonderful to see how many of you share the newsletter with your friends on Twitter, on social media, as soon as you get it. If that sounds like something you would like to receive each Friday, you can sign up for free at drchastity.com forward slash Friday five. And if you enjoyed listening to the podcast and found the content useful and inspiring,

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