Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Author Karan Bajaj on Mindfulness, Marketing, Sabbaticals

Episode Date: November 23, 2016

Karan Bajaj is a #1 bestselling Indian novelist with more than 200,000 copies of his novels in print, both optioned into major films. Karan has also worked in senior executive roles at companies like Procter & Gamble and the Boston Consulting Group and was named among Ad Age's "Top 40 Under 40 executives" in the US. This Episode: -Growing up in foothills of the Himalayas -Value of an individual vs. community in different cultures -The meaning of “Dharma” -The 4-1-4 model -Purpose behind taking a year long sabbatical-The misconception of space in the Western World-Why his employers have been ok with him taking a year long sabbatical -How to determine when the right time is for taking this journey -The tangible return of a sabbatical -Why he doesn’t feel a burden to be perfect -The difference between becoming better and revealing yourself_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn, is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to understand what they're searching for, to understand their strategies, the practices, the ways that they understand the world, their unique psychological framework, if you will, so that we can better understand maybe ways that we can incorporate some of those insights and practices in our own lives. And we certainly want to pay

attention to the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft. Now, this conversation will be different and the format is the same, but what's different is that this conversation is with a gentleman who is clearly right center at the home of the way I like to see the world. He's off access, meaning that he does it just a little bit differently and it does it his way. And he's found a path towards authenticity and insight. And so this conversation might strike you and it challenged me at the center. And I hope it does you as well. And it definitely, you know, got some juices rolling for creativity and just to really, to look within, to better

understand and to be honest to the truth of the way that we're generating our life efforts and what we're doing on a day-to-day basis. And I have so much more room to grow. And I have so much room to do better, to be a better man, to be a better performer at what I do, that this conversation was a gem. You might not have known his name. And that's all about what this conversation or these conversations on the Finding Mastery podcast are about. It is easy to pay attention to the Leonardo da Vinci's because they're phenomenal and the world knows their name. And also learning from those that are on the path that have similar insights, just maybe not as well refined or polished is a better word for the global performances that they gain recognition for. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment

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try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal for two full months for free. Terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars

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protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. So this conversation, let's jump right into it with Karen Bajaj. Now, Karen, one of the notable things that he's been able to accomplish, he was top 40 under 40 marketers in the US by ad ages. And so that's phenomenal. That was back in 2007. He's worked at Procter & Gamble. He's had executive roles for some of the big firms. But what's fascinating is he's also written a lot. And he's the number one bestselling Indian novelist with more than 200,000 copies sold. And both of his books or both of his novels that are in print have been optioned for major films. Okay, so he's on to something many people have found what he's on to, to be interesting.

And I'm not sure that the audience that we are amassing together will be new to his. I think that will be a new conversation for many people listening today. Okay, so let's hear here's the essence is that he's got this model where he works for four years and then takes a year off a complete year off. And that four years where he's grinding at work is not so he can just take a breath for a year, but he goes and searches and he searches within himself and he just travels to better understand insight and truth and wisdom and how we can apply it in his life. Okay.

I hope this scares you a little bit. I really hope this conversation scares you just a little bit. It did for me. With that, see if there's one thing that you can take from this conversation. Just one that you might apply or do better in your own life. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Hit us up on social media at Michael Gervais on Twitter. And then for Instagram, it's at Finding Mastery. If you're new to this conversation, these podcasts, punch over to findingmastery.net forward slash community and

see if you find those conversations on the community page of interest. I think you might. All right. All the best. Thank you for the support. If you haven't written a review in this conversation, maybe as the prompt to do so, please go over to iTunes and write us a quick little review. It's gratefully helpful. And I hope you have a fantastic day, evening, week, whatever it might be for you. All the best. Let's jump right into this conversation with Karen. All right, Karen, welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm excited to have this conversation with you. Yeah, same here, Michael. Thank you for having me. Yeah. All right. Beautiful. So you've obviously come to understand quite a bit about your journeys and through your writings. And I want to be able to celebrate the new book

and the previous books that you've written. And I want to be able to have a conversation with you about sabbaticals and how you have explored life and the structure that you've created to be able to do so. And so I'm hopefully that we'll be able to, you know, find a blend between both of those, but that, that idea that you figured out how to extricate yourself from the hustle and bustle and to be able to create space, to be able to get connected to the signal, I love it. And so before we get into the nuances of that, can you bring us into the fold of what it was like when you were growing up? Oh, yeah, sure. Absolutely. oh yeah sure absolutely so i grew up in uh the foothills of the himalayas in india in a small or at least at that time a small town called shimla um and uh and like it was very secluded little town for almost for the first 14 15 years of my life and then uh i got into high school in

delhi and then like you know uh just did my my schooling in India and got a chance to move out of the country and then took various corporate jobs in Philippines, Singapore, Europe, and then the US. And what was it like? So I've never been to the Himalayas. fascinating and majestic to think about or to view and then also, you know, amazing to think about the explorers of that range. So what was it like growing up there? It was a combination of two things. I think it was very idyllic in the way you would think of, like of a lot of space in your life with not too much pressure playing in the mountainside rivers and very strange things that didn't seem strange at that time but now in retrospect appear or not now also they don't appear strange but there was a period in time when I went out of

the Himalayas and I came to the real world and they appeared very strange like the yogis who lived in the caves near our village and they were like very conventional people like doctors lawyers engineers who had left their lives behind and stayed in caves and ashrams near our village so stuff like that was so there's a lot of interesting kind of things that you know that became kind of wallpaper when we were growing up but in retrospect were very interesting and uh so that was the good part i think and the the the flip side of the whole experience i think is that you're if you're naturally ambitious then it's a very hard place to escape from because uh

like for instance my school until 10th grade until i left for new delhi didn't do uh we didn't study geometry at all because like the teacher didn't forget, like I never taught the second mathematics book. So like I was very behind when I kind of came into the main world. So I think the, I guess the flip side of that was that it took a lot of effort to kind of like, you know, to spread my wings after growing up there. And is it because, yeah, people didn't uh the community didn't want you to spread your rings or it was just that you know why would you leave this majestic place it's something like that i think it was the latter more than anything else like i think people's

whole life revolved around that place and they're like you know in a sense on paper you have everything right like the the land is very rich so um you know so like you have like i guess sufficient not not rich but in the sense of you have sufficient money to live on and uh and and there is a very strong sense of community so it's it's in a sense like you don't have a like if if it's in the mass force hierarchy you have everything you have money you have socialist team you have um everything that you need to live a life of contemplation so there didn't seem any need to like break out of that so there was never any like thrust to you know to kind of break out

yeah okay and so what was the what is the family system like? Is it different than a Western approach or does it have more of a community feel to it? I guess, misused. But I like to give you a more practical example. Like my wife is American right now. So she grew up Irish Catholic in New Jersey. So I'm kind of seeing two different lives, if you will. So if you think of an Irish Catholic family, on the surface, that also has a very rich sense of community, right? Because she has 40 cousins, all of which are in the New Jersey area, New Connecticut area. They all live very near to us. But I think what happens in a place like India is that there is no demand on personal privacy of any kind. Like there is no concept of a person almost. So even if you have, when I compare it to the community that I see in the US, even when

people grow up in rich communities, there is a lot of demand for individual growth, individual ambition, privacy. And I think it comes from many factors. Some of it are very physical. In India, we are very densely packed. Even in my village or in my town, we were very densely packed. Six or eight people would live in the same space that one or two people would live here you know like uh like you know i grew up with two siblings one sibling in the same room like we we were living in a very small square foot house which is the kind of the

normal way of being for most people and as a result you have no concept of a personal boundary at all and uh and so so i think your life kind of completely merges into the community and and that is a tremendous amount of implications on so many levels like when i think of the fact that i never knew that i could be a writer until i came to the u.s that's a very like that you can just think that for the first 28 years of my life i didn't even know that i could write because i never had the space in my life to be a to kind of explore that dimension at all and I think when I came to the US you actually have a lot more space time to explore facets of yourself because I think this culture values individual achievement and individual

I guess like you know the individual thrust to fully explore their potential in a way that I don't think we ever valued in India, at least when I was growing up. So there's so many dimensions to that whole concept of personal boundaries, personal space, personal exploration, that even in a very high community environment in the US, you can never even conceptualize that in India, it means completely losing yourself to the community.

And is that because of a spiritual framework or is it more of a resource framework that there's, you know, a lack of resources so we fit as many people in to a bedroom as we can? Or is it more like, listen, we don't need to make a large footprint and this is about our family. And of course we love each other and we're going to, you know, we're going to spend time together. So we don't need four bedrooms for two kids. It's a little bit of both, obviously, like, obviously, in the metropolitans, like Delhi and stuff, it's very much about a physical constraint. And like, you know, like the fact that the space is very dense in places like up in the mountains, I think it's a little hard, like Like if I almost think of it, like in Indian scriptures,

there's this idea that kind of life is like the flight of an eagle in which you spread your wings high. In the beginning, like you kind of push the boundaries of experience to the extent you can. You have as many experiences as you can to truly grow and become a person in its fullest form and then you kind of bring the

wings down and become silent and contemplative and lose your sense of self almost like that idea of individual expression and I feel like a lot of like where I was growing up at least was very much like that there were people who had consciously chosen to live in that community because they had reached that point in which they were kind of bringing their wings down, if you will. And like losing this idea of, like it was a very deliberate choice to lose that idea of individual expression or individual potential, chasing individual potential. And so if they're not chasing individual potential, which seems to be such a mark for how we speak and how I speak about life efforts from a Western frame, and it's not meant to be – I want to get to the question, but first like a preamble – is that it's not meant almost be a requirement to not able to ever even get close to being able to help support challenge and authentically be there for others so that the pivot for me is like and this is only because of who i've studied from and the influences i've

had is first get yourself right and it's almost like a duty to do so to be able to give to others. And then, so the question is, if the pursuit is not personal and individualistic, what is the main pursuit for the small town in the Himalayas that you grew up in? There is this idea in Sanskrit, there's a word called dharma. I don't know if you've ever heard of this word, but it's a beautiful concept. The concept of dharma is that every being has an innate tendency. So the innate tendency or the innate dharma of a tree is to grow and bear fruit. It's not to dress up and go to office. Like that's the tree exists to grow and bear fruit. In the same way, water exists to quench thirst and the ice melts. Like that's just the dharma of these beings. And in the same way, like as you get into animal to

man, we each have a true, whether you believe it in lifetimes or whatever, you have a certain thrust, a certain innate tendency. And I think in this purest form, when I think of the people there, they were were living their whole goal was to purify themselves to an extent that their dharma showed so there was this idea of becoming wasn't that strong which i think is a very i guess um innate part of being in the u.s or like at least in this is this part of the world there is this idea that you're always becoming like you always want to become and grow and become better and move from a lawyer to become a life purpose coach or whatever like you know there's always this idea that you have to go through radical reinvention and become someone and i think in in a form i feel like the idea

there was that you pure it's rather than become you purify yourself so that your most innate tendency expresses itself and in this act of pur become you purify yourself so that your most innate tendency expresses itself and in this act of purification you'll keep growing so that the tendency keeps changing and and the whole idea of becoming is more organic than dramatic i guess if that makes sense yeah organic so it's a when you say organic do you mean that it's like a reveal it's a reveal exactly that's a very way to put it it's a reveal almost like a like you mean that it's like a reveal? It's a reveal. Exactly. That's a very good way to put it. It's a reveal almost like when you meet a priest in a temple there.

Sometimes you just feel that this person is just meant to be a priest. He loves the scripture. He loves to recite the scripture in Sanskrit or whatever. He loves the language of Sanskrit. And then what you see over a period of time is that as these guys tend to purify themselves more and more, their tendencies start to change. So then they become teachers and then they get a school and then the school expands.

So they're almost like, the same equivalent of that in the US would be a person being like, okay, now I'm a lawyer. Now I'm going to become a teacher who's going to teach hundreds of people. There's a very dramatic conscious act of becoming, which I think exposes a lot of insecurities and this and that and fear. I think all of those things come because you are making these very radical inventions, which I'm not against.

I think they have some role to do that. But I think they're the whole process. You don't have those many cultural conversations i guess about fear and like gratitude and feeling blessed and all the like people just are living i guess in its and then slowly their lives keeps changing because their life keeps getting more and more purified because they're acting in accordance with that dharma okay and did you did you say dharma dharma yeah d-h-a-r-m it's a beautiful concept because it's a very complex and interesting word on because i think the question to i ask is what like because

right now with the novel coming out and you know like uh like uh some success with my early novels in terms of movie deals and stuff there's a lot of like questions that come on or people ask me on why don't i quit my job and become a full-time writer since it's becoming financially lucrative and it's very hard to explain that it's just not my dharma like I'm good at business it's my dharma to be in the corporate world and uh and like I have other passions that I'm exploring and like and getting better and deep I think maybe one day it will happen on its own but right now I don't feel like making those big thrusts because my dharma has not changed yet. Yeah, dharma is a powerful phrase and to find the organic way of being so that they can bring fruit to that into the world and to others around them what are some

of the practices that you found to be valuable um the one so there are some everyday practices which are pretty common obviously meditation and all like which we which you have already talked at length but i think for me what's helped me tremendously is that uh this 414 kind of model that i talk a little bit about in which i work for you four years and then take a year off but it's not about working for four years and then taking a year off to write it's really about um four years of very conscious goal-driven activity in which I'm kind of operating in this very Western way, if I will, of like, I write with a lot of discipline after my job, I come back, I'm writing three days a week for one and a half hours on the weekends, I'm writing four hours, I'm extraordinarily disciplined in this four year period in both my job and my

writing and my, I guess, acquisition of knowledge in the world. But then in the year that I take off, I'm very consciously goalless, completely strip myself of all idea of becoming. So in that year, I make both physical and emotional decisions in line with that. So for instance, in the last sabbatical my wife went from europe to india by road with a very clear intention that we won't plan a single day at all like we'll really just make decisions which are completely intuitive and natural and like and and come from within if you will and but that's at a physical level but even at an emotional level i don't read at all or not at all but i don't take a kindle or whatever i'm like uh i'm consciously

kind of cutting off this emotional noise and emotional materialism almost that seeps in in which you really constantly want to become someone better by reading morning rituals and this and that and i'm just kind of consciously trying to just loosen and and and like truly be so there would be months uh when i was like learning yoga and meditation in the Himalayas that I didn't write even a word. And then I wrote in bursts in my time in Portugal. And so I kind of have done this a couple of times, three times now. And I felt that for me, this tightening in which I'm able to be productive and get things done and this complete loosening allows me the space to, I guess, like I've done enough to have explored different ideas,

because I've been reading a lot, but then I have this year in which I'm completely just like free. And in that freedom, I think things come to me. You know, and I think that's how I guess innate tendencies start to reveal themselves, if you will, you know. Golly. I mean, I hear you talk about it and I think to myself, you know, how wonderful that would be. And I know it's a choice, but at the same time,less part to be equally rewarding and balance each other out, it's fascinating. So what allowed you – I want to learn about how you explored this as an option before we get into how you made the decision to go for it. But what led you to explore this as an option? Were you into like how you made the decision to go for it but what led you to explore this as an option were you just flat out burnt out were you listening to inspired

texts and readings and listening to yourself and saying i need time away or time within what is it that you that led you to want to do this actually michael it started at a very basic level, which was I'd been working for five, six years with Procter & Gamble, five years or something. I was doing pretty well and stuff. And then I guess, like, I actually credit being in the US for the first time, I think.

So as I went from my village in India to Delhi, like, the whole idea was to become successful in the world, if you will. So I went to engineering college, business school, started my corporate career and was very linearly focused on doing well in my career. And I think coming to the US, suddenly having a lot more time and space in my life, also starting to see people living slightly divergent lives coming to the US, suddenly having a lot more time and space in my life, also

starting to see people living slightly divergent lives around me, I think, for the first time, rather than a mass of homogeneity, only because you have such a strong network of friends and family in India and stuff that you almost kind of like your whole world becomes restricted to them. And I think for the first time, being completely out of my life and living in a new world, just like, I guess, exposed me to new things. So I just decided to travel. I just quit my job, or I actually asked for a sabbatical and decided to travel. And like, my idea was to just live in places that I'd always had fantasies of living in, like Mongolia for three months, and, you know, like Bhutan for a month like places that I'd always like envisioned that I would live in one day and then what happened to me was that

I started to write at the end of this at the end of six months of like living in these places and I wrote like a book in when I was living in Brazil and stuff and I and I and I was just stunned at the end of it that it turned into a proper novel which got released it well I think I was just stunned at the end of it that it turned into a proper novel, which got released as well. I think I was surprised by the fact that I didn't even know that I had this ability in me to write a complete novel that could be read by people and impact people. And then I was like, okay, so I didn't even know I was capable of that. So what else am I capable of? So then I started to kind of systemize this idea that I have to take a year to not be, to not become,

like, so instance in the next sabbatical, I'm not going with the goal that I want to become a better writer. Like I'm going with this goal that I'm going to take a year to do some things with my children, like live in an orphanage in Cambodia with my children for four months

and live in Spain and learn Spanish with my kids for four years. So I'm just going with this idea. Then let's see what happens, you know, like nothing. So I just like this idea of like becoming or like finding out things about myself that I didn't even know existed, rather than being like, okay, I'm going to take a sabbatical to now write better after working better. Like it's not a sabbatical to become anyone better or different or whatever, you know, it's just to let be. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why

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our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Grey is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists, they've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest. When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones, slipping on my Felix Grays in the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great.

Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Grey is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to Felixixgray.com and use the code findingmastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code findingmastery20 at felixgray.com for 20% off. And how old were your kids during these phases? I've never done a sabbatical with them, so it'll be very interesting right now. They're like very young, two years and six months. So by the time we do our next sabbatical, they'll be four. And so I'm in my four-year cycle, right? So

in two more years, they'll be about, or 18 months more, they'll be about four and two. Jeez. Yeah. I've got some friends that have a very similar approach. One of my friends who's world class at what he does, he and his wife are not going to put their child in formal education, and they're not going to homeschool.

They're just going to go for a vagabond experience. They've got this logic around, know what we travel the world uh we do it for our sport we are we're going to teach them and we're going to teach them through smells and sounds and conversations and we're not going to do formal education because that's becoming archaic i'm like wow you know that's it's really bold and they're going for it i hear you doing something in a similar vein.

And I want to tell you a quick story. I think you'll appreciate it. I remember the first time it was surfing where I was out in the water and there was only like two or three other people in the water. And it felt like I was alone. And it felt like I was the most west a person could be. And remember, I'm like a kid. And I look West into the horizon on the West coast of California and there's, I can't see anyone. So I'm like, I'm the most West, the most West a person could be. And I remember that space that was created

from that thought and that experience. And similar to, I think how you came when you came to the States. And I remember thinking as a young kid, like, if I wanted to curse right now, I could, if I want, like, that was me breaking the rules, right? Saying a bad word. And that being said, so that's how I'm relating to what it felt like for you to come to the States. And I think that most people would say that, oh my gosh, I don't feel like the current Western way of living has any space. I'm bombarded by external noise. I'm bombarded by internal stress. And I feel like the only time I get space is in the bathroom. And I'm compelled to look at my cell phone while I'm in the bathroom as well. So can you talk a little bit more about how you see the Western or the States, the United States having space. Yeah, I think that's why I feel for the West, I really like this 414 kind of an approach because what I've seen here is that when people try to create space here,

they end up creating a, they think they're creating space, but they end up creating a different kind of problem or a different kind of busyness for themselves. So what happens is that they are a lawyer and then they want to become a life purpose coach right so so you're replacing one level of busyness with a completely another level of chaotic busyness while what they're really craving is is a little bit of like nothingness in between with no pressure to become someone different and create a reinvention another reinvention

so i think that's why when you go when you take a free fall knowing that it's not a complete free fall because you're gonna you're having a great net of coming back towards what you left behind i think you just become more that's when you truly create space so like because now like when i take a year off i'm not trying to monetize that year i'm not trying to write a blog about my experiences in spain which can lead to a movie deal like there's no pressure to do all of that right there's a true space that's created as a result uh because i know i'll like uh i'll come back to my career and and maybe i don't but at least that's my going in

assumption is that i'm taking a year of space and not a year of like changing to a different life again. Has your firm and your company and the stability of that job allowed you the footing to be able to take the year off? And it's not been an easy conversation everywhere. But having said that, I also think like I've done it with three different companies now procter and gamble boston consulting group and craft foods and and none of them are like the googles of the world which you would think of like you know where everybody's like taking sabbaticals and going like you know doing mindfulness retreats like these are as conventional midwestern companies as you can get like png and craft uh the surprising thing honestly is that a nobody's asking for them so

it's not like you're competing with the pool of people who are taking wanting to take year offs because i think what i've realized here is that uh that the corporate track and the hippie track are quite separate from each other it's almost like the corporate people are just very linear and working in their jobs forever and building and buying houses and And like, you know, it's a very conventional track. And then the hippies are totally off the corporate world. They're not too many people who are working in both spaces, but that's one. And I think the other thing is that I don't think people have those kind of governing passions that kind of propel them in this direction.

Like I really had this passion to write in my second sabbatical. I really wanted to learn yoga and meditation as a teacher, become very deeply ingrained in the practice in the next sabbatical. So I had these anchor things that I wanted to construct a year around, even if it didn't fill the whole year. And I think, once again, I've not seen people have that. So not too many people are asking for them. B, if you have these anchors, you have a lot of firmness and conviction when you ask.

So like, I remember when I first asked for a sabbatical in PNG, they said, can you take a month instead of a year? And then we went back and forth about it. And then like, I was very convinced that I would do it. And then like the organization kind of rallies behind you. And then also what happens is, if you're in like my kind of mindset right now, I know that I'm going to be a disruption to any organization because four years into the job, I'll be knocking at the door and saying the time to go, you'd have to either, I'm going to leave,

quit the job or take an unpaid sabbatical. And my role has to be filled by someone and it's a disruption. So I know that I have to be exceptional in the years that I'm working. So I think that kind of like mentality is very, like right now, I know 18 months later, I'm being very open about it also. I'm just like, I have it on my blog, like in 18 months, I am going to ask my job and say I'm going to leave or, but that makes me very conscientious in the years that I'm working to be that exceptional person who is allowed these exceptional changes, things.

And then, yeah, so I think those kind of things kind of like work well with each other. For me, what happens as a result also is that my act of creation is very pure. Like if you look at my blog or like my novels, they're truly exploring what I'm learning. And I'm not trying to monetize them or become something through them as a result I think I just feel like I'm very in a good groove in terms of that I can really explore myself through what I'm creating and really not have the burden to monetize it and what do you think the benefit is of if somebody was to take this course what would you imagine is the most apparent benefit and maybe that's not the right question, but I'm trying to, you know, run through like, I feel a calling and a

wanting to do this. And I've, like I've said this ever since my wife and I were really young is that I want to chase winter and chase summer. And I want to do that. You know, that's what I want to go ski in, in the, in the most, you know, intense places. And I want to do that. That's what I want to go ski in the most intense places. And I want to chase summer for the greatest surf. And so I have a lot of reasons why I'm not doing that. And if I'm not careful, I'll never do it. And one of the reasons right now is like the duty that I have to provide for my family. And I hear the trap in that, especially heightened when I'm having a conversation with you about it.

But I hear the trap and I also hear this fear that, well, I've come to understand some stuff and I should strike while the iron's hot. And if I don't strike, things might cool off and I might completely miss the right temperature to create a beautiful sword, a beautiful sword. Meaning from iron to sword. So, you know, how do you help? Those are all the options. And how can you help me?

I don't think I'm that different from many people. How can you help going through this decision-making process? And as I'm having this conversation with you, I'm feeling my heart rate stimulate. So I'm actually going to start, I'll give you, the first question you asked has a lot of intangibles to it. And intangibles are sometimes harder to create decisions around, but I'll give you those, but I'll start with the... You know what? I'm almost nervous. I'm like almost really, like I am nervous about what you're going to say to me is going to alter what what I'm going to do for the next, you know, maybe four years of my life. So I'm not even sure that I want you to go any further. Oh my God. Okay.

But I want to give you a tangible benefit first, because I think that just might push over the edge. So I'm going to give it to you. I've never tried to make money from my sabbaticals. I'll be like, i've always planned that in the four years that i'm working i'll accumulate money to some extent and then in the year off i'm gonna spend it like a like i have some principles that i we also live in willful poverty and all that kind of stuff like we don't like you know we'll try to go like europe india by road live in the ashram in the himalayas it's very conscious that not just to save money but to kind of strip our life of comfort is very important for a period of time so that I guess we

become closer to what matters and not construct a life around comfort again, all that kind of stuff. But the point being, I've always believed that in the year I'll end up spending money, and I do. And here is the truth about it. All three years that I've been off have been extraordinarily profitable and I'll tell you and it's not in a one-for-one way but in the last year that I took off I spent like the grand total of the two of us together spent about $26,000 $13,000 per person because honestly living in Portugal in a village is a beautiful experience, but it is $450 for like a kind of a villa, you know, and then living in Goa in India and like Himalayas, you're like, you can't spend money even if you like are committed to doing that.

So between the two of us, we spent $25,000. I wrote in Portugal and a little bit in the Himalayas in like some kind of a very transcendental way. And then when I came back, the like the book deal from Random House was a little lower low six figures you know and so if I think of the profitability of that sabbatical it is very high not that I intended it to be and that's happened three times to an extent that I've kind of a little bit attributed to luck but the other like a part of me is now kind of attributing it to this pattern that if you're growing dramatically as a person in in a intuitive emotional sense because that's what happens to me is that I'm growing

I become less rational and become more intuitive because my natural course of being is very left brain analytical rational and here I'm truly learning to become intuitive in my natural course of being is very left-brained analytical rational and here i'm truly learning to become intuitive in my decision making in my writing and everything if you're growing in that dimension emotionally and you will be in some form or the other that will manifest in better work in the world and that will have some kind of a material benefit to it so i can't like i can't just justify that three times in a row in some form or the other either i've gotten a bigger book deal or or like a faster promotion at my work than i expected i expect to lose my i guess position in the company but i come back and get promoted almost ahead of people who've actually been working that year that it almost makes me feel that there is a a material reward which accompanies it because of the

like the emotional growth that's happening in in your person but that's kind of the more truly the material part that i do tangible return of doing a sabbatical for me and and then there's so many intangibles that you know we like i i learned to be much more intuitive because i'm making decisions consciously making decisions out of intuition then i like learn this idea of like it like this whole silence is very good because uh the year of not reading too much and not like being bombarded by this email ritual is great for you and this magic morning is wonderful for you and you know this is how much you should meditate like there's so much noise of people wanting to tell me how to become better at who this is very good for me to just operate with this idea that i have everything i need to create within me and not outside me and

that leads to very pure good creations i think so i yeah oh geez um what what do you do i i want to understand one more layer deeper i think for me is i've had this idea that if you get to the mountaintop and you can find some spiritual reprise and you can be present and mindful and practice mindfulness even there with all the you know the lack of noise but more of a harmony that's wonderful and then when you come down the goat trail you know are are you nervous and rushing and anxious and frustrated or you know whatever and then you've missed the point of the mountaintop so to speak and then um at some part of the journey it becomes wildly apparent that the goal is to take the mountaintop into the city and then be that more often. And then it became, I guess I

should say, apparent that it's not just about being in the city, but it's about pushing capacity and being present in capacity building moments, which are hard to do. And so that's like an infusion for me. It's like taking the yin and the yang and the infusion between science and application and craft and progression as opposed to trust and being. And all of that being said, you've got a relatively different model. It's like four years head down, one year of almost replenishing. And it's the four years of becoming and goals and the one year of being and intuitive observation. And so there's somewhat different models. And I'm wondering if you could just speak to maybe what you see that I might be

missing, or I just wonder if you could just riff off of what I just said. No, it's great. I think there are two different thoughts. One, you're absolutely correct. My model is a little bit based on that you fill the gas tank, and then slowly the world depletes the gas tank, and then you fill it up again. So it's a little bit of a replenishment and exhaustion model because i do know that living in the city publishing my books marketing them working my job like the ecosystem that i'm surrounding surrounded with will have a depletion effect you know just because i'm in the world and i need to replenish it but the other the more subtle point is a little, it'll be a little funny to hear, but I do think it's important is that a little, in India, growing up in India and being very exposed to, in

some form or the other, Hinduism, Buddhism, you, sometimes it's very viscerally, this idea of karma, cause and effect and a life and a series of lifetime starts to sink into your being so i think what happens to me as a result is that i'm not trying to reach perfection in this life almost so i all so so i think your burden is very high your i guess your standards are very high right you you want to go to this mountaintop you want to become very silent and peaceful and you want to be completely silent and peaceful when you come back. While I have a feeling that I'm on this gradual road of purification, and I won't reach the end goal in this life.

And that's very comfortable for me in a way that it's hard to explain if you don't viscerally believe in this idea that there are many lifetimes for you to kind of like, you know, go through the cycle of cause and effect and further and further purification. So I think the burden for me to become perfect is not very immediate. So I feel with every sabbatical, I'm getting purified, I come back into the world, I get depleted again, but I'm still 10% or like a little bit more purified in my actions than I was before. And then the next time I'll little bit more purified in my actions than I was before. And then the next time I'll be even more purified in my actions.

And then I'll be even more purified. And maybe at the end of this life, I'll reach some level of purity that will be further propelled in the next life. I guess it's just a little more comfortable for me, this idea that I won't reach perfection. Yeah, it's good yeah very um you know uh dogmatic from a hindu perspective right it is dogmatic but it's also just like the fact is that it's not um it's not dogma in terms of a belief almost that um it's it's hard to say that but it's almost a

very rational kind of ecosystem in which your the cause and effect cycle keeps you you do see in a very real way that if your actions are pure the effects are purer that's a cause effect cycle that you see and uh and and like you you do understand that that cause effect cycle keeps continuing um so you i guess you don't see it as a you just see it as a steady stream of cause and effect rather than a very mystical like next birth i'll be like a vegetable or an animal like i don't think in those concepts i just see it as a continuous cause and effect stream of further and further purification okay beautiful of my action so so yeah but But it's so, like when you explain it,

it sounds either dogmatic or a belief system, but in my world, it's very viscerally sunk into my being. Okay, yeah. And I think that internalizing, right? You know, the swallowing, if you will, of ideas or thoughts and where they become really organic as the way that we put lenses back onto the world is really an important process. And how long did it take you

to be able to internalize and really create this where it's just a saturation of your psychological framework? This was a little easier because a um even though i didn't grow up religious at all my dad was in the army and like you know like in india it's actually in india it's surprising we um like i i think our like people like our generation like my parents generation uh rejected religion in the same way like our millennials or whatever are rejecting it today in the u.s because we grew up in such a dogmatic environment with so much casteism and rituals that the modern thinkers, my father who was in the army, my mom who was a school teacher, they made it a point to reject religion. So we actually grew up very absent of religion. But the thing though is that it's a very,

kind of, it truly is a spiritual country in that way that like you are constantly exposed to this karma dharma all these kind of concepts so i think these were very much a part of our life when we were growing up so we just accepted them but later later i think i was very pulled to reading these texts and and then like in buddhism i think there's a beautiful idea of sharana manana nididhyana as the three stages of learning sharana is learning through secondary sources whether it be book or gurus or whatever your next stage of learning is reflection and then your third stage of learning where the truth becomes real is nididhyana or experience so you have to go through learning reflection and experience so i think when we grew up, we learned a lot.

When I think I kind of like matured and started to read these texts on my own, I started to reflect a lot. And then I think over the last couple of years, I'm truly immersing myself in my practice of meditation. And I think it's become a more experiential reality. So I think I've gone through these three phases and I've been a little lucky

that the learning phase happened very organically because I was just growing up in that environment. There you go. Can you respond to the phrase spiritual materialism? Does that mean anything to you? Spiritual materialism in a way like which is this I guess constant hunger to become become like to become more spiritual become better become more pure become like like the I guess the physical manifestation of that is what you see in the yoga world today like when I go to New York yoga studios and stuff it seems so jarring

because like people are wearing these like kurtas and like have these like you know these beads and they're talking the spiritual language of vibrations and energy fields and and you can see that it's a very big disconnect to who they are and want to be like like they're putting on a garb like a physical appearance of some sort in the hope that they'll become better as a result, which I appreciate. This idea of becoming better, I appreciate. But I think in India, you just, I guess,

the whole process is not very A to B. Like you suddenly don't go and become a spiritual person with a kurta and a mala. You start to explore a little bit of text, start to purify a little, start to, like you start, you just accept spirituality where you are and not try to become.

I think this spiritual materialism for me is this idea of becoming. Yeah. And the way I think about spiritual materialism is that it's like trying to reinforce one's ego through material things and belief systems and religion and emotional states of mind where it's like you're trying to infuse a sense of ego based on either beliefs and or things. Yeah. Which is just a terrible trap and eventually leads to deeper and deeper suffering. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down.

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when I think of training the spirit a little bit, for me it's like the tree is the best metaphor in a way that the tree is not training to become better, right? The tree is just growing and bearing fruit. And I think when I think of training the spirit, I'm almost thinking of the yoga idea of Chittavritti Nirodha, of silencing the fluctuations of the thought waves of the mind, which is this beautiful phrase again in Sanskrit called Chitta Vritti Nirodha, which is what they say, what yoga is defined as in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, that yoga is this act of fluctuating, of stilling or subduing the fluctuations of consciousness or fluctuations of the mind. So in a sense, what you're, when you say training the spirit i think of it as basically silencing the mind for the innate natural tendency to express itself yeah so that's how i

think of it as well yeah yeah yeah exactly all right so um what what do you do how long how long have you been practicing yoga and or meditation and or mindfulness as you know a training practice about not too long actually but about i would say three four years has been um like i've like you know i've started to delve into the practices in about three for the last three four years yeah and then growing up um did you have meditation or mindfulness as part of uh you know a communal system no no it was actually as i said uh there was a lot of learning but not enough reflection and experience on the concepts like the first the foundation of learning was there in terms of people talked about this a lot okay like in some form or the other everybody

talked about karma it also made sense of the world around us right in a way like in the u.s uh when i live in new york i can go for days without seeing suffering right because uh like i'm not being exposed to the bronx every day in my life i live in brooklyn and i'm just like you know not being exposed to suffering in india you have to the most uncaring person has to answer why is why is like why are they why is there like every time you go to school why are there why is there a legless beggar in your path like even if you're like six years old you have to answer the question on why is this world so in unjust and cruel i think in the u.s like that

kind of contemplation is very is is not again not very visceral it does happen but it's not as immediate and urgent because you don't grow up in that extreme. Even in a pretty idyllic place like ours, you're surrounded by suffering in a very horrendous form. And so this idea of karma, cause and effect, why does it happen? These questions were dominant in our growing up. Beautiful. Okay, so what are you most hungry for in life? What is the thing that you're really setting out to understand? Or I don't know if I'm asking this right, but yeah, what are you most hungry for?

Right now, I'm not actually very hungry right now. Like in the sense I'm very... I knew you were going to say that. No, no. actually very hungry right now like in the sense i'm very i knew you were gonna say that no no in the sense like i'd be very honest if i was but i'm in a i guess i'm in a hunger of like uh kind of living in accordance with the purified principles of living i guess i guess if in its simplest form i just want to live up to my own standards of my practice if you will uh i guess i'm most hungry for living this idea of chitta vritti nidura, of chilling the thought waves of the mind. And I can see there are small things

that happen in my everyday moment, which are wonderful because they happen physically first. Like when I lean forward and talk or when I'm seeing my steps moving faster, I immediately know that I'm kind of falling from where I want to be. Because that means that I'm seeing my steps moving faster, I immediately know that I'm kind of falling from where I want to be because that means that I'm definitely not present. I'm already thinking of the next moment. I'm rushing towards something. So I guess the physical signs start to happen when I am not living in that life,

when I guess I become conscious of my hunger towards something and then I immediately correct myself a little. How do you get in your own way? How do you get in your own way? How do I get in my own way? How do I get in my own way? I don't know. I try not to, I guess.

You know, I think I have a tendency to be very left-brained and logical. I think that's my biggest underpinning. That's where I feel like I get in my own way if I'm becoming extremely rational, left-brained, logical, which happens to me very much.

And then I think that's why I think this 414. When it happens and I start to note that it's happening, I kind of look forward to those, that year in which I'm going to consciously not do that. Because it's my natural tendency to plan out everything in great detail.

So what do you think about competition? Competition? I think there's just no competition at all. In the sense, I think truly, and I'm not speaking from this elevated place, but I guess the tree is the tree and the river is the river. I keep going back to that same metaphor. I think the innate tendencies are very different among people so when in this artificial uh sport game or in life in other outside of sport when we're in business right like proctor and gamble is competing with said resources of consumers you know for their products maybe it's i think practically like gillette right you've got um what's the new kind of razor that um oh gosh i can't even think of

the company but i think there's a couple of them that are like the Dollar Shave. Dollar Shave Club, yeah. Yeah, right. And so that's competing with one of your products, Gillette. And so how do you think about competition? Because for me, competition is like it helps sharpen. It helps refine. It provides a context to work together with other people and honoring the ability to give and even honoring people across the net or the half court or whatever

it is that we're competing with. Honoring that they're working diligently as well to see how well they can refine their craft. And so I don't see it as a, I'm going to rip your throat out. I see it as an honor system to keep us sharp, to keep going deeper. And it's artificial in sport, but in life, there is a, a primitive life, there is a competition for resources. And, you know, so, yeah, I don't know. Can you keep going about that a little bit? Yeah, I can. So can I digress a little bit?

Because I think there's an interesting idea, which I think you might find interesting in this broader context, which is this whole idea of there being an, there was an axial age, which was 10 BC to 0 AD, right? In that 10 BC to 0 AD period, you had the Buddha, the yogis, Jesus Christ, Confucius. So you had all these kind of like Muhammad, all these mystical thinkers sprouted in different parts of the world at the same time, completely disconnected with each other. They didn't know that they were having the same mystical insights into the nature of reality. But there was this 10th century period, which a lot of the reason why that happened, or at least I hypothesize and what I've

like learned a little bit about why that happened was that you were at this perfect balance in which civilization had progressed to the extent that there was enough material prosperity that you didn't have to battle for resources all the time. And yet it hadn't progressed to the extent that there was so much distraction that you didn't have the space and time to contemplate it also. There was no technology, like there was not enough technology and light and electricity and all that stuff didn't exist. So you were in this perfect balance in which you had enough resources to be actually be able to contemplate without being distracted from this act of contemplation. And that led to a very pure mystical insight into the nature of reality in

some form, because if you look at their conclusions, they are so remarkably similar, right? Yeah, so I guess I- The eight path fold and the ten commandments. Yeah, they're all kind of like that. And then the yogis are talking about the same thing. When you look at the kind of the fountainheads of these religions they are so surprisingly similar right they're all talking about the same complete this act of complete selflessness and like you know that suddenly reaching that state where you lose all concept of the i the individual you become one with the universe they're all saying the same thing in different formats and some have laid out a more clearer path towards how to get that some people just had this mystical

insight without like experiencing it but so anyway like the reason i digress there is because there was something very magical that happened in that time that i wish happens in some other century in human existence where people don't think that uh where they have enough time to contemplate because they either believe or they have experienced a level of resources where they have enough time to contemplate because they either believe or they have experienced a level of resources where they think that they have enough resources that they don't have to keep battling for more and on the other hand they're not so distracted by wanting to become and all that stuff that they have enough time for a mystical contemplation so so i guess to kind of answer your question in a very long-winded way

i try to think of my life being a little bit trying to like make sure that i have this space in which i'm not constantly battling for resources and becoming better and and like have this space for contemplation because i think that's kind of the purpose almost of existence um and now to but to answer your question in a more practical way for me the most jarring component of my work is when we start to talk about what this competition is doing and why like we should beat them and like why what we should do like those those are actually jarring like those are my only disconnected moments with my work because i feel like it's an unnecessary kind of discussion which has no like maybe the only bearing is to learn to become

better but that you can do in a much more i guess non like you know in a more silent way in which you just kind of learn and like become better i guess yeah cool all right where does pressure yes so sorry it went to in a very mystical but i think it was that perspective was kind of important because a very important part of my life to think about why that happened. You have this blend between left logic and intuitive mystic. That's really interesting.

Where does pressure come from? Where does pressure come from? It completely comes from extrinsic motivations. Like, you know,

whenever I think your motivations get extrinsic, I think pressure starts to rise. How do you fill in this thought? Love. Selflessness.

Relationships. Selflessness, again, in some form yeah the best relationships have a complete disorder dissolution of your ego or your sense of self success is success is the express the dharma like success is living your dharma it all comes down to again living your dharma in some form or the other like to to purify your life to the extent that your purest natural tendencies express themselves and then my vision my vision is to live in the state of flow for as long as i can like you know to

um yeah to create from a place of flow or from a place of not like of complete becoming a medium for my work to express itself beautiful and how long do you um what does your mindfulness practice look like on a daily basis? Definitely in the night, no matter what time I sleep, I will meditate before I go to sleep for very rational reasons because I think I have a completely dreamless sleep, which is very, very restful and deep. So I always do that for 15, 20, 25 minutes, whatever happens. Morning has become very stolen moments now because of two toddlers,

you know, 18 months old, one month old, you're very, like it's very variable. The sleep is very variable. So I just steal moments in the morning when I can. So as an executive who understands marketing and influence of ideas amongst other people and being able to do that with a global footprint, what do you hope the next generation gets a little better now is uh i think there's just like too much of a pendulum shift to everybody's talking about entrepreneurship build your own dream or you'll build someone else's dream like there's a lot of messages in culture now about uh like it almost makes the like it almost makes the person feel that success means starting your own thing

and i think there is like uh i think it's completely like i don't think that's the right thought at all i think so i hope the next generation doesn't believe these messages of you know like i think the next generation should believe that there are many alternate paths like i think like in my path i would never want to become an entrepreneur and I feel it's a very, it's just still a path which is allowing me to express it. I don't think the only way to express

all dimensions of yourself is to create or to become an entrepreneur because I don't think people understand that. I think people don't understand the complexity of becoming an entrepreneur doesn't mean like you are just creating i think you're creating and creating an infrastructure around creation and if your joy is in pure creation there are many ways to accomplish that well said and my experience on entrepreneurship and founding is that there's a

lot of conversation about runway of money and you know do you have enough time and resources to be able to do the thing you want to do and so it's exactly sometimes opposite of creating enough space to be able to create exactly yeah and you see you have to know that like if you're if like if we all have a desire to create and let's not mistake the desire to become an entrepreneur i think they're two different things almost. Beautiful. So in your words, how do you articulate or define mastery? I was thinking about this question a lot. And I think some of my, for me, mastery is a little bit of infinite because in any stream, right, be it writing, like if I think of any stream that I'm doing work in, there is an infinite amount of knowledge and wisdom that I can get.

So truly, I think there is no set point of mastery, almost as I feel like my like mastery comes when I'm in a complete, I'm a vessel for my work, right, where I'm in a complete state of my, I become my work, like I can, my work my work becomes me and so this kind of state of selflessness is mastery or complete consumption in your work in which you become just a medium for the work to express itself is mastery Where can we find more about what you're up to?

My website is very, it's got a lot of content on publishing marketing media or meditation like it's very like i feel like i try to keep the content very high quality because again i'm not trying to become anything to the content like i'm not trying to become a meditation teacher or a writing expert i'm sharing my best journey of what has led me to like achieve some success in writing and like some success in my spiritual practice in that way. Okay. So, Karan Bajaj, K-A-R-A-N-B-A-J-A-J.com.

Correct. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And then tell us about the new book. The new book is called The Yoga of Max's Discontent. My first novel came out in 2008 the second one in 2010 this has taken five and six years to come out so it's been a very very monumental effort from my end like again not in an objective way because that's for people to judge but in a personal way it's taken uh i was trying to do a lot of, like I was trying to do something which was very personal to me with this book.

I was trying to write a journey of tremendous personal transformation, which was a crackling page turning thriller. And I wanted to kind of combine these two opposing forces because I think I had seen all journeys of transformation to become a little bit pedantic in which the author has a message that they're trying to communicate through the book. I wanted to have no sense of authorship at all. I wanted the reader to completely dissolve themselves in the character and just become completely immersed in the character's journey. So I was trying to write a very fast-paced, thrilling journey in which there was no author at all. And yet the reader kind of merges into the character and becomes completely transformed as a result.

So I think that that whole idea kind of took a while to come in shape. So in a short form, it's about a banker who becomes a yogi in the Himalayas. At its surface, it's a very page-turning adventure through very hidden parts of India, like surreal night ashrams and hidden caves and mountaintops that you like like a hikes through mountaintops and stuff so it's a very page turning adventure and at its most visceral level it's a complete dissolution of the self that happens to the character so yeah so i think you know i'm i'm kind of happy that i've been able to finally get to a level that I was happy with.

That's so good. Beautiful. It must feel wonderful to be able to have the thought from inception and to put your head down and be able to create from something that's meaningful. So congratulations. And congratulations on the great success you've had from your former books and selling over multiple hundred thousands copies is is a tremendous you know gift to the world so um i've just appreciated uh this conversation and appreciated the insight that you have and um you know you you ground us in um humility and uh dharma and you ground us in a

in a way to pursue the inner experience so thank you no thank you michael this is a pleasure thank you very much yeah beautiful and um so do you also have some social media we can find you on? Yes, I'm on authorkaranbajaj on Facebook and realkaranbajaj on Instagram and Twitter. That's really funny, the real. Yeah. Okay, perfect. I'll put that in the show notes so people can find you. And thank you for all of us for staying connected to the journeys that matter to us most. And thank you for listening to this conversation. You can find us at iTunes for Finding Mastery. And you can also find me at social media at Michael Gervais, and then facebook.com forward slash finding mastery. Okay. But really appreciate this conversation and I look forward to, I look forward to following what you're doing and hopefully you can come back soon. Yeah. Thank you so much,

Michael. Okay. All the best. Yeah. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.

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