Good Life Project - Karan Bajaj: On Yearlong Sabbaticals and Real Jobs

Episode Date: June 16, 2016

This week, my special guest is Karan Bajaj. Karan is a #1 bestselling Indian novelist with a full-time corporate job and a rather unique approach to life, fulfillment, and personal happiness. His novels have sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide and both are being turned into major films.One thing that really jumped out at me about Karan and got me excited about having him on the show is his ability to write captivating novels with an underlying lesson while working a full-time job AND taking an entire year off every four years.Join us on this episode to hear about Karan’s childhood, growing up in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains in northern India, how his Indian upbringing and culture have influenced his decisions along the way, and the incredible story of his journey from small mountain town boy to bestselling author.In This Episode, You'll Learn:How the official divorce rate for arranged marriages is 1%, and why Karan says this can be misleading.What it’s like to be a child in India trying to become a doctor or an engineer (and the insane levels of competition to make a life for yourself).Karan’s 4-1-4 method of taking a year off for every four years of work, and what he’s learned in the processHow Karan builds his “intuitive” muscle and develops his ability to switch from intense working and focus to his “off” years.How you can actually make more progress (and money) in a year off as a byproduct than in a year of intensely focused workThe difference between gradual uncovering to drive change and dramatic movementsThe combination great pieces of art are able to master and how it will make you a better artistMentioned in This Episode:Karan's Website: KaranBajaj.comKaran's Books: The Yoga of Max's Discontent, The Seeker, Johnny Gone Down, Keep Off The GrassStefan Sagmeister Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die.

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from writing to meditation, pretty much everything in between. It's this beautiful way to fill your noggin with ideas to live and work better, and a really rare opportunity to create the type of friendships and stories you pretty much thought you'd left behind decades ago. It's all happening at the end of August, just about 90 minutes from New York City, and we're well on our way to selling out spots at this point. So be sure to grab your spot as soon as you can. If it's interesting to you, you can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or just go ahead and click the link in the show notes now. Because I do feel that when I write each time I'm answering the deepest question to myself or for

myself, like, you know, what's plaguing my life or like, or what's really the question that's important to me. Imagine actually working for four years, then taking a year off. Imagine actually living your life that way. Well, this week's guest, Karan Bajaj, does just that. He has his traditional corporate job. And then every four years, with intention, letting his employers know, he takes a year sabbatical and completely leaves everything behind. He's not trying to accomplish anything. He's not trying to learn anything. He's not striving for anything. He's just utterly letting go. And he immerses himself very often in completely different worlds in the depths of India or all sorts of foreign places and lands

where the process is really just rediscovering himself. That is a big part of the conversation in today's episode of Good Life Project. But we don't just stop there. There's also some really interesting big cultural conversations that we dive into. He grew up in India in a town in the Himalayas and then moved to Delhi. And I wanted to take this opportunity to really explore some things like arranged marriage and education and sort of how somebody's academic or career path are determined and how that really differs profoundly from the way that it happens in Western society. And the conversations were really revealing. And in the end, a lot of it really comes full circle when we bridge the gap between some

ancient thought and some modern science. At the same time, by the way, he's also an author. And during some of those one year down times, he has learned to not only write books, but write two number one bestselling books in India, and a new one that's out called The Yoga of Max's Discontent, which is getting rave reviews. And it's a really fascinating book because it's, as he describes, a thriller that's a page turner and it keeps you sort of flipping pages and flipping pages, but it utterly immerses you. His goal was for the author to be completely invisible in the pages of the book, yet for you to complete it, having somehow not vanished, but in some way been transformed. Maybe that's too strong a word, but

that is what just may happen when you dive into it. Anyway, really fascinating conversation, interesting author, completely different path than I've ever heard anybody take to becoming a huge author, and also simultaneously keeping a corporate job, of course, keeping that job for four-year stints. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Yeah, it's so interesting, right? That would be an interesting conversation, just the publishing experience. It's sort of like in different countries. But actually, I mean, can we go there a little bit? Anywhere you want.

Yeah, because I am fascinated. So we're hanging out and you've got this book coming out. Is this your first U.S.-based, like big? First worldwide release. Right. And you had two before that were number one bestsellers in India? Yeah, yeah. They've been, they were very successful in India.

And again, we were talking a little bit about longevity and they've like, they're still in the, they're still in the, the success for a book in India is that is it on the street corner. Because I think half of our books are pirated in a way. I'm not kidding. Almost like 30% of the industry officially is pirated. Really? And so if the book hits the street corners, that means that you are, it's selling well. And if it doesn't hit the street corners, it's not. So it's like the opposite

metric. So I think if 10 years later your book is in the street corners, that means it's seeped into some kind of culture and sometimes they don't. That's so interesting. And when it hits the street corner here, if it's not, quote, official, then everyone's all freaked out that it's being pirated.

But then it's, I think, just accepted as a part of the ecosystem of publishing. Yeah. They try to crack down on it ever so often, but then it's just so widespread that it. Yeah. But I mean, I guess it also, you know, to a certain extent, it's just sort of, you know, a manifestation of just a bigger acceptance of how, you know, products and services and, quote, intellectual property moves through society in the U.S. versus India. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

So as everybody can hear who's listening, you don't have a Brooklyn accent. Yes. Although maybe over time you might develop one. So you grew up in India. I grew up in India. Tell me, where was it? I grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas, actually, in a small or at that time a small town called Shimla and and yeah I was there for a majority of my schooling and then later moved to Delhi and

stuff yeah. Right what was tell me a little bit about what that town was like? As idyllic as you can imagine in in terms of like a lot of space and playing in the mountains and no structure so like almost all the stereotypes that you would think of a mountain town in india yeah and then on the other hand the flip side of that was that it was educationally very backward like you're you know there'd be one school in the whole town that and the teacher would like often forget to teach geometry for instance like i when i moved to delhi in the ninth or tenth grade i had never like I didn't know what a parallel line was because the teacher had never taught geometry it was very like it was just completely not focused on education and achievement at all yeah which is again sort of like the exact opposite of here where there's hyper standardization and all that saying it's yeah the other side of the spectrum

why did you end up moving to a Delhi did the whole family move no actually not I think it was uh just the nature of that if you had to to, I guess, accomplish something in life, you had to, you just knew that you had to move out of the town. Right. And so then I just went to Delhi for my high school years. So were you alone? For, I stayed with my grandparents for three, four years. Yeah.

Got it. How did you have your brothers and sisters? Yeah, I have a sister and she went to an arranged she had an arranged marriage quite early um when she was like 22 so yeah she was you know she she kind of like grew up in the town for the most part and then yeah i'm actually really fascinated by that can we can we dive into that a little bit okay um because i was actually just reading yeah i think this was on the bbc where i saw there was a piece about extraordinarily high suicide rates among women in India. There's something like 20, 22,000 women in India a year kill themselves.

And one of the things that they were looking at was the fact that arranged marriage is still pretty much the norm. And again, this is not my words, but what was being offered in the article was there's a very high degree of unhappiness and disempowerment within the personal relationships. And very often the mother-in-law, the bride's mother-in-law, the wife's mother-in-law, there's a huge amount of tension between them and lack of support and lack of desire to sort of disengage from the husband's family. And that's causing, you know, just so much, I mean, literally the level of unhappiness and depression, that was so many women are feeling that the only option is to take their own lives. I mean, when I saw that number, like 20,000 plus a year, I was, I mean, heartbroken. And all of it is true in the sense, like it's one dimension of the story,

but that dimension itself is true that there is a lot of parental pressures and all of that stuff. Like for instance, like my closest friend in India wants to adopt a kid, but his family is so religious that they would not accept it. And that's leading him to not adopt the kid.

Like this is almost unthinkable in this environment where people would have such a strong opinion on your life and you actually listen to that opinion. And so all of all those facets are actually very true in like in very modern environments as well. I think it's just very hard to explain because I like my wife is Irish Catholic and she's from New Jersey.

And even when we think, when we say, like when you think of is Irish Catholic and she's from New Jersey and even when we think when we say like when you think of an Irish Catholic community on paper it is very close-knit and like it's a very like close-knit culture but I think the respect for personal space in the US compared to what we grew up in India is like dramatically different like the the reality there was is it's a combination of physical space. There's like too many people in a, in small land masses, I guess, in India. There's just no respect for personal space at all.

So if I think of the last sabbatical that we took my wife and I, my family would be openly like, and they didn't even, they weren't being harsh. It was just the way they would openly say, what are you doing? You have like, you're totally irresponsible. You have no kids at this age.

They just say that. I mean, and I'm sure my wife's parents were thinking exactly the same thing, but they would never like the respect for personal space is so high that people would not express that opinion openly. But my family, despite being very modern is very like, like my wife would be shocked that they would just say things like this on, on, on. So it's like just people have no filter in terms of personal boundaries at all yeah so i think what

you're saying is is very right in terms of the complete lack of personal boundaries leads to a lot of issues i think but then there's also the upside of it that it's a very community-oriented culture and all that true is also true yeah and and i guess that's the side that that's a very community-oriented culture and all that true is also true. Yeah, and I guess that's the side that's not contrasted against that also. And also, I mean, from what I've seen, and it's sort of like flipping back to the idea of arranged marriages too, because again, it's kind of a fascination of mine. It seems like a lot of people actually have very long and enduring relationships where it started that way.

And then you look at the success rates of marriages and partnering in this country and we don't have the best record. Yeah, I think in somewhere in the middle is the truth perhaps somewhere because I think what happens there is that you enter the marriage with a little bit of a more of a spirit of selflessness.

Like you enter the marriage with this assumption that you're gonna make this union work rather than try to maximize the return as an individual from that relationship i think yeah like you just enter with that assumption going in and i think that just kind of makes you a little bit more selfless in the union right on the other hand i think the one percent divorce rate in india is ridiculous i think it should be 25 percent or like i don't know 50 in the u.s seems high but i think yeah like a quarter should be the norm.

Like, you know, you do make wrong decisions at least 25% of the time. Yeah, so the official divorce rate is 1%. It's 1%, wow. Which is very low. And that's, I think, the unhappiness because I think that 1% is artificially compressed because of social pressure.

Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. But 50% on the other hand seems like- Right, somewhere there's a number which yeah because you also have to figure it you know if you know the downside if it's societal societally expected that you're gonna stay together you know is that you know a lot of people will stay in relationships that are probably physically and emotionally destructive but but the flip side is maybe you know for relationships, it will create a container and a set of expectations that will keep you in it and make you sit down and have conversations and work harder to actually see if it can work in a way where maybe you give up easier if you don't actually have that constraint. Yeah, yeah.

Because you come with so many expectations of what you expect the other person to be while in arranged marriages, you're just coming in with just a hope, a little little bit more than a hope just a very basic knowledge of the other person yeah i'm so interested it's so easy to to sit you know on sort of like sit on the pedestal of one culture and look at another and judge it you know without actually understanding going deeper really like you know okay what's really going on here it's really it's fascinating when you know you said this was triggered by something i just saw on bbc the other i think it was yesterday, actually. And my knee jerk reaction was horror. And then I was like, well, I'm actually really happy I could sit down with you and just bounce this off you a little bit also. So you end up going to Delhi, basically for school for educational reasons. And from there, I'm curious, what kind of a kid were you also?

For a long time in India, you don't have a personality almost because what happens is that you're very linearly single-mindedly focused on getting settled in some way so it's almost like when we grow up we are almost told like at that time and we are talking 10 years ago because now the economy is rocketing right so things will change dramatically but 10 12 years ago when we we were growing up the whole idea was that you had to become either an engineer or a doctor those were your two career paths and you automatically knew that you would not be a doctor if you were squeamish about I guess medical stuff so your only career path was to become an engineer and you didn't think beyond those boundaries at all so for the most for almost I think for the first 25 years of my life I didn't think like I didn't think about my expression

as a person and so for instance we are all trying to clear one examination which has three million people applying for thousand places oh my god so it's a great but that's the like we have a institute called the Indian Institute of Technology and then an Indian Institute of Management they are it's like the Harvard Stanford MIT Princeton all combined into one college and that's the one college that you can be assured of getting a job after you are done with it so the competition is insane isn't saying like three four million people are applying for thousand places so it's like i don't know it's just the hardest examination so but you're so focused on that milestone that you don't like you don't actively just think about oh i like you you like philosophy or you like it but you never think about anything in terms of making that a career stream of any kind

like you're just very focused on clearing the examinations in order to get accomplished to a level that you feel that you can have a job and then you start thinking now it sounds horrendous when i say all this right but i don't know i know, I've seen the US and when I came, I thought it was horrendous compared to this freedom of expression that I see here. But now I'm kind of on the fence again, because what I see with my wife's friends, for instance, is that at too early in their life, when their mind hasn't been fully trained and developed, they've been allowed to make decisions. Like at 17, you shouldn't be figuring out that I want to study English. Like maybe it is it's too early for you to make up your mind and make expensive decisions about things like that.

Yeah. So I think in our model, we didn't have that luxury to think until our mind was fully formed. It's so interesting, right? Because I look at what's happening in this country also. And, you know, it's funny. Like I had two reactions as you're speaking. One was this knee-jerk reaction. Like, what do you mean?

We don't have, like, we can do what we want. But the other one was, you know, it's funny. It's sort of, I'm a dad and I have a high school daughter. And I'm thinking, you know, the cost of college right now is, you know, for private school, somebody is going to drop between probably 40 and 80 grand a year. And, you know, and the average kid graduates after six years these days, not four. So you're talking three to $500,000, but a kid through private school, like hopefully like mine goes to public school or something. So the idea of investing on that level, when you really have no clue which way is up or what you're genuinely interested in or who you are for that matter, I agree with.

To me, I would actually, I think it's really interesting. I think it's really healthy to maybe just take a few years off, travel the world, take some time actually figuring out who you are. Which is fair. And our hypothesis was almost the opposite when we were growing up. Yeah, it sounds like it. you are that which is fair and our hypothesis was almost the opposite when we were growing up that your your education is extended till age 21 in or 22 when you go to engineering college in business school right you're kind of like so that's what i did i went after high school i went to engineering college and then business school and got a good job after that and after that you can think all you want and you can philosophize and you can like find yourself but don't't find yourself when you have like no money, your family has no money, you have no

money, like don't get into the find myself space then, which I don't know if it's when we were going through it, we didn't like it to be very fair. But in retrospect, I feel I just had a lot of liberty after that, when I joined Procter & Gamble, and I started having a career, I just had so much more liberty to pursue a lot of interests without restriction and I think that's been a very important part of I think I've seen that over a period of time that's been a very important part of my writing as well that I've never left my career like some aspects of that have like seeped into how I am today yeah no that's really interesting is um is education in India do you pay privately

for it or is it all is it covered is it sort of like government the the colleges that i talked about they're completely subsidized right so you don't pay you pay like a fraction for the education that you get yeah and that's a big part of the whole process exactly yeah yeah um which also explains like the three million people applying for a thousand spots yeah i mean it's so interesting to just sort of like reverse that and say, okay, like there's a, there's this really linear, almost predetermined path until you get to your early twenties. Yes. And then you can actually start thinking about like who you are and what you want to do with

your life when you, and also the fact that it, you're not paying, you know, I think it's a huge difference also. Exactly. Exactly. So you don't graduate having no clue who you are and what you really want to do in a massive amount of debt that may take you a generation to try and work out.

Yeah, so in a way, it's almost like those years are tough. But then once you graduate, I graduated with a job with Procter & Gamble in Philippines. I was outside India for a while. Then I kept going out to different parts of the world with the job and I had no debt, a while. Then like I kept going out to different parts of the world with the job. And I had no debt, a lot more space to think, a lot more maturity because I'm not the worldly maturity, but I guess enough intellectual maturity because I'd read a lot of concepts and all of that stuff by then. And I think I'd had a, it's just a different model.

It's not comparable. I don't think one is right or the other. So what's the process of figuring out who you are for me right now it's become there there is this very interesting word in india called a sanskrit called dharma i really like that word maybe you've heard of yeah so dharma is really the innate tendency of any being like you know the dharma of the trees to grow and bear fruit it's not to become a river like it's just that every being has a certain tendency and similarly humans come with everybody

comes with a certain tendency and and i think i like the word dharma because really your goal is to purify yourself or like to reach a level of stillness in your mind that you can know what the tendency is if you will so So to answer your questions in a more direct way, right now, I've kind of created like what I call a 414 model in which I work for four years and then take a year off. And then I come again and work for four years and take a year off. And I really like that model because it's not that I work and write, that's not the point. It's more like four years that I'm working, I'm very goal driven. I work, I write with very with a lot of discipline. In the year that I'm off I'm very goal driven I work I write with very discipline with

a lot of discipline in the year that I'm off I'm consciously completely stripping myself of all goals I don't even read that much like you know like part of my thing is that I fill a lot of my space with reading and wanting to grow and become better and I in the year off I even let go of that burden completely and I just drift for a year and i think in though in that combination of like being tight and figuring things out and then completely slackening i just discover things about myself that i then express which i find like i think i like this kind of model in which you're tight and slack yeah um that's so interesting there's uh are you familiar with a designer named uh stefan sagmeister oh yeah he wrote he did a TED Talk on sabbaticals, right?

Yeah, exactly. So he has this, it's similar, but he does like every seven years, he takes a year. Yeah. You know, and he says that that one year off essentially gives him everything that he needs to go. His biggest ideas, his, you know, like the calmness, everything that he has, it gives him everything that he needs to power through the next seven years and make it really juicy. Yeah. that he needs to power through the next seven years and make it really juicy yeah and and i i've heard this a bit talk and it's very like very very interesting because he actually uses that to get inspiration for his creative endeavors yeah your purpose is different a little bit different

in the sense i almost use it to not fuel any like my goal in that year is to not become anything at all is to not fuel use that year to kind of fuel my deepen my writing or become better at my corporate job it's almost like the year of shedding everything off completely like so for instance I as I said till age 28 I hadn't written a single word and by age 29 I had written a book which did very like you know became did very well in India just because I didn't even know I could write until I took this year for the first time lived in Mongolia and Bhutan places that I always wanted to live in and then I had this kind of almost this tendon innate kind of idea to just express that in paper and in a form of a story and that ended up becoming a novel and then then

the latest sabbatical we didn't travel at. Like we traveled, but like we just did meditation in the Himalayas. Like it was just every year has the years that I've taken off have been very different from each other with almost a lot of goallessness in it. And things happen as a result. Like it's just, you're just kind of like simplifying your life,

stilling your mind to express whatever innate tendencies you have. So do you find that when you're going from the four years of intense work to, okay, it's, you know, the next day, okay, now my year off starts. Is it difficult for you to almost ramp down from that? Very much like it's very hard. And that's why I choose physical practices like, like going to Europe from Europe to India by road with no plan at all. Like, so like we almost like the year that we take off a day before we make the booking to the cheapest like destination in Europe, for instance, like Scotland from Scotland, we don't plan at all anything at all. And let like, I almost have to train myself to make even the most basic decisions intuitively. Like the basic decision of what happens when you go from the, where do you go next from the airport? I want to plan nothing.

I want to really make every smallest decisions completely intuitively. And I think you just have to kind of train, like I have to build that muscle. And I think that's how, that's what helps me to slowly get into that gear. Yeah. because i think most people would freak out at the thought of that and then you know i i don't freak out as much as it's just very uncomfortable yeah like for instance like you would be passing through like like if i think of the sub we went from europe to india by road over four months and with this kind of an idea we ended up spending like two days in italy but three weeks in bulgaria just because we met people who were going to bulgaria and we liked them so you just kind of are getting very comfortable with that kind of decisions which make no sense on paper yeah and i guess you know probably you

freak out in the beginning because you're used to so much structure and so much planning so much certainty but then i i it's all it sounds like it's actually really good it's a really good training in just living in the moment in letting go of the need to know what comes next and letting go of like the need to lock down the future which um which causes so much suffering exactly i think that's what i like about the practice so much and then what we have is like a little bit of signpost events so like you're up to india by road four months and then four months we have this idea that we want to learn yoga in depth and where we learn it, how we learn it, what does that mean? Like, it just kind of like we just figure it out as we go along.

And it's very exactly just teaches you to live in the moment. And then we also practice a couple of ideas like cutting this emotional materialism. I think what happens with someone like me is that I'm very, I replace, like, I just fill my life with a lot of noise. Like, I'm always constantly wanting to become better read a lot meet the right people who'll help me think more things and I think this year I'm stripping myself of that burden completely and I think that silence is amazing because it's very I just create with a lot of purity then yeah because sometimes I feel like

in the four years that I'm regurgitating ideas that I'm hearing, like I read 16 different blog posts and I think my ideas become a summary of them versus... Man, I feel that pain too. So I think this year is very beautiful

in terms of like I feel like I can spend hours just contemplating why was the world created? What is the nature of the creating energy? How did this all come about i couldn't spend like it's beautiful to spend days just thinking about that stuff and having the

space to do that while here i just i'm like not i'm not thinking those thoughts yeah and something powerful comes from those which i really appreciate yeah i mean it's it's i wonder if you feel because essentially it's like a year of of integration and just being but i wonder if you feel, because it's interesting, it's like a year of integration and just being. But I wonder if when you move out of that year, do you feel like after essentially letting go of the idea of I'm going to progress, I'm going to get better over the course of this year at anything. You know, I'm going to learn more, I'm going to improve. Just letting that go and saying like, this is the here and now. I wonder if you end that year, having made more progress towards some sort of internal path to becoming than you would have had you been pursuing it deliberately, almost as a byproduct.

Exactly. I think it's a byproduct. Exactly. That's what happens. Because if I set out the year wanting to become a better writer, I know what I'll do. I'll like read 18 books on writing and do my writing 10,000 words a day or whatever. Like, you know, I'll just set all these goals. I don't know if I'll become a better writer through that or I become a better writer by being present and observing and living. And so I agree. I think the byproduct of that is always reflected in some, and that's what I've seen this very funny trend because I've done this three times now over the last decade. Yeah. That I come back and that year always gets rewarded materially without me planning for it.

So I always I always expect to lose money because I'm like I'm working for four years. Yeah, I'm taking off and I'm going to bleed money because I'm like, you know, just spending it. And in the goal list, nobody's, you know, cutting me a check. So I, but I always come back and some like either this time it's the random house book deal is like, you know, low six figures and stuff. And it's like our sabbatical costs $25,000 in total, like it always is profitable without the intent for it to be profitable, because in some form or the other, the growth that's happening will reflect itself in some tangible outcome in the world, I guess, even if that's not your intent or expectation. Yeah. You know, what's so interesting, though, is that, man, there's so many questions I have around that, but this idea of letting go of

desire, of aspiration, of the need to go from point A to point B, being the thing that plants the seeds that actually manifests the actual outcome that you most want. And just the middle in there, and this is where i think so many people struggle including me is is it takes faith a big leap of faith yeah yeah um that's not easy for yeah for me or anyone else because i think you have to i think you have to just let go of even that seed within you which says that you want to become better at like even if you have this idea that you want to become better in the year in your like you like you secretly hoping to become better in writing or whatever your so i'm saying this is a girl yeah this is letting go but i'm kind of

hoping at the end of it i think what happens then again i think there is that that any act of becoming is good i think there is a role for that that's why i think the 414 works because i know that my innate tendency is not to be a hippie like i like it's just not like i am very focused towards like out like that's just my innate tendency to produce active stuff you know and uh and that's why i think it's good for me to know that i'll come back and have the space to create again produce again or like you know do do so. So I think, I think that balances itself out. If I was just taking a leap into the unknown, without this idea that I'll be coming back to that routine, then I think I would be, I guess, a little bit more apprehensive. But I

always know that I'm gonna, or at least till the time that doesn't happen on its own, I always have a kind of a know that I'll come back. Yeah. But I mean, it's also one interesting idea to to instead of say, I'm ready to leave this behind. And then I mean, that becomes the abyss of the rest of my life that you're stepping into, you know, to actually say, no, there's there's a fixed amount of time, there's a span that I'm agreeing to. And my intention is to go back to this other thing, which, you know, I'm fairly devoted to, I'm good at, you know, I can jump back into. And yeah, I mean, it's so interesting. I have to imagine that the shift in psychology of that makes it so much more tolerable. Absolutely. And I know, I wonder why not too many people do that, because they do make radical

decisions. And so it's not like people are not taking risk. But I feel like when you take the choice that today I'm a lawyer, tomorrow I'm going to become a life purpose coach. For me, that's much bigger than risk than being today I'm a lawyer, I'm going to take a leap into nothing and come back and be a lawyer. That seems to me much lower risk, if you will, almost, but yet has much more space in your life. Because when you go from lawyer to life purpose, you're going from one hustle to hustling for some other thing. And you're like always becoming, wanting,

becoming like that cycle doesn't break. So even though you're saying I'm living my life purpose, but you're just like replacing, maybe you are like living your life purpose in a better way, but then there's so much pressure to monetize that life purpose that some level of purity gets diluted. I, I've always feel I've always, that's the reason I've always kept my job because and there was they've been tempted like temptations is not not from myself. But there was this one moment in April when my second novel got a pretty major Hollywood deal movie deal, which is surprising because it was made in India.

But a German producer bought it. And the same month, I also got the deal for the third novel it all happened in the same month and there's just a tremendous amount of kind of pressure to follow my dreams and all that but it just takes a lot of discipline for me to know that my dream is not to to monetize my like to create an infrastructure around my creation like it's almost like I'm trying to figure myself out through my writing yeah Yeah. And I want to keep it completely pure with that intent only. Right. And I love that. And I actually want to explore a little bit more. But I think we probably skipped one thing here, which is that when you talk about you keep going back to your quote job, you're like, what is that?

Yeah, so I keep going back to a job in different. Yeah. So my job is I've always worked in corporate brand strategy, like brand marketing role. So I started with Procter & Gamble running brands like Thai Detergent and all that stuff. And then I've been in the same field from Procter. I moved to Kraft Foods and then I'm the chief marketing officer of a startup now in the consumer product space again. So I've been in consumer products marketing, if you will. So when you take a year off and then you go, you know, quote, back, it's not necessarily back to the same job or the same company, but you go back to the same industry where

you know you have credentials, you have a reputation, you'll be able to find employment. Exactly. Something like that. Sometimes like Kraft gave me a sabbatical so that I was a year off on the payroll without getting paid. So I kept my payroll and kept like my medical benefits for a couple of months and stuff. So and BCG, Bostonoston consulting group also does so two companies have actually given me a year on the payroll with the guarantee of a job right when i come back and and with png i just left so yes it's a combination of those two things but and what i've seen is that what happens is that

i always change a little so when i came back with craft uh it felt very discordant after doing yoga and meditation for one year to be marketing processed food and so i came back i like i did the honest thing which was because they had given me a sabbatical i worked for a year back with craft paid back what i thought was my dues for like for getting this opportunity and then i joined i became a chief marketing officer for an organic baby clothes company which felt more in line so i like i keep purifying like i think what's happening but i've never felt this very big dichotomy that now i have to become a meditation team like yeah it just is not my dharma in some right but it is interesting how when you come back it informs your decision about how you're going to come back differently correct so it's like you're still going back to

the thing that you know that can make you okay in private security, but you do it differently based on how you've shifted. Exactly, absolutely. And that's why I think for me, life is that gradual uncovering in some form versus dramatic movements, which I think is the very US. Yeah, I agree.

I think it's an American way to become, which is brilliant in its own way, but there is a becoming all, like I feel like if I were to go from lawyer to life purpose coach, it would probably take me 20 years of gradual unpeeling. And then when I become a life coach, it'll be completely innately. That's what it just happened because I've slowly unpeeled to become that versus today I'm a lawyer. Tomorrow I'm a life coach. Now I'm moving from law to hustling

for life purpose clients it's just not like it's just not uh the way I like slowly I think if I have to become a writer it's not gonna be because I've got a movie deal and a book deal it's gonna be because I just feel that that's my I've slowly unpeeled and uncovered and silenced myself to become like to truly feel like a writer like my dharma has changed to go from business to complete creativity right now i think i'm 70 business 30 creativity slowly more and more improved like it's just it just will unpeel itself and become on its own yeah you're right there i think it is is probably uniquely uh western or probably american ideal of you quit your day job,

you take this thing that you love, your art, your dharma, whatever that path would be. Not your dharma, but you take your art, you know, this thing which makes you feel like, I've got to be fully expressed and my heart has to be 100% satisfied. And you just, you pour yourself 100% into that. You blow up everything that came before it and hope and pray that you can figure out how to pay your rent doing that new thing. And probably doesn't cause a whole lot of pain when you're younger doing that. But the further you get into life, you know, there's a lot more to blow up. And it's not just you.

You know, you may have a partner. You may have kids. You may have family. And you're not just making decisions for you. You're making, you know, this is a group decision that's going to affect a lot of people now. And it's funny, if you had asked me five years ago, you know, should somebody, you know, follow their heart into that thing, which is, you know, just lights them up. I would have said, absolutely.

And increasingly, moving away from that, I think the further into life we get, the approach that you take, maybe not exactly the same way, but the idea of keeping what I would call a benign day job. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's not the most miraculous thing in the world, but it's okay. It's enjoyable. You feel like you're doing good work. You're making a nice amount of money. You're putting some money in the bank and it gives you the time to be with your family and take care of things. And then do that thing that nourishes you profoundly on the side or on the weekends or

slowly slowly by slowly to me that is a very viable and validated path and i think i think in the u.s we we poo-poo that we you know like yeah because it's a cult of celebrating the entrepreneur and like now it's becoming a little bit like that which is which in its own way is nice but i think you can create without having that infrastructure of creation like like if you're if you're trying to express yourself through your creation you can do that without having to create a full business infrastructure around it so i think in a way that's what i do is that like uh well i'm working my job in which i do express myself through my job as well i i nurture an idea like for instance this book, I was nurturing a little bit of an idea over the two, three years. I nurture that idea.

Then in the year that I take off, I get really immersed in the idea. Then I create a little bit around that. I come out. I'm able to take it out. Like, it's a slower and a much more gradual process of like slowly and slowly immersing deeper and deeper into your stream or your passion in a way yeah yeah and also if you if you create a scenario where you don't have to force that thing to pay your living expenses where you can just make that thing you know with your book when you're writing you're not thinking how do i write a book that's

actually going to give me the money i need to take care of everything you're you know it sounds like your lens was you know um how do i get quiet enough to listen to the book that needs to move through me exactly and without regard to whether it's ever going to be you know like get a huge advance or bestseller exactly exactly absolutely i think that's what happens exactly yeah um so it gives you it really gives you that freedom to not be tied to some sort of commercial and that may change the way that the whole thing. It may create a lot of constraints that aren't there when you're just doing it the way that you're doing it. Yeah, absolutely. Because I do feel that when I write each time I'm answering the deepest question to myself or for myself or the like you know what's plaguing my life or like or what's really the question that's important to me yeah uh and without any kind of almost thought

about me like like i think there's a beautiful thought that yogis yogis actions are neither white nor black they're colorless in a way so he's not trying to do good in the world or bad in the world he's just acting so i feel like sometimes with my writing i feel i'm like 90 percent of the time in my writing i feel i'm in that space where i'm not trying to write a book to make the world better or i have none of those intentions at all i'm just trying to be the vessel for the to your point to for the vessel for the work to flow and and I think that's what happens. And I think that kind of purity comes only

when I'm not thinking about monetization, my audience, my platform, the content that goes around the book and how to bundle it into what, like, you know, if you, like, with that pressure off, I think you truly become a vessel for your work in some way. Yeah, and then also, I mean, it's very aligned also with, you know, just classic yoga teachings

about Gita, you know, like be not attached to the fruits of your labor. Yeah. And that's where like the most beautiful fruit almost always comes from. Yeah. It's so interesting that that's not how we operate in the Western world. Yeah. And, but that's so many times, I'm curious whether you found this also just even outside of your, so many times I've had conversations with people who produce stunning work in the world.

And that's been their process in some way. It's always very personal and very different. Like you do the 414, other people somehow dissociating the need for what you produce to have to serve a specific, you know, like master or outcome or goal ends up producing work that very likely would have never been produced on the level that it was produced. And then having that very, you know, like impact that is probably never would have happened had it been pre, you know, strive for. Correct. I agree with that.

Yeah. Tell me a bit also, because, you know, during this year off, you know, you've mentioned some of the things that you do, but how much, I'm curious about more of what actually goes on during these, you know, quote, sabbatical years. It seems like, you know, a heavy, heavy emphasis on yoga practice, on meditation, on travel without intention. Take me a little bit deeper into maybe those different elements. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. And I kind of like the writing structure a little bit. Like for me, a great novel has cracks, a combination of entertainment and meaning in some form. Like

if you have just meaning, then it's a very pedantic, nonfiction-ish kind of book. And when it's entertainment alone, then it's like the serial killer novel. Like it's, there's no, like the reader is not going to get immersed and transformed as a result of the story. I think when the novel cracks or a great piece of art cracks,

this combination of entertainment and meaning in some form, I feel like in a sabbatical, a little bit of that is the construct in some form in which, like for instance in the last sabbatical there were three legs to the journey and with each leg so with europe to india by road the entertainment or whatever you call it was the idea that we would like just have no plans at all

in a sense and then the meaning of what or like or the other kind of the underlying kind of stream and this whole idea is that you are practicing making decisions out of intuition, completely making decisions out of intuition, and then also living in this willful poverty kind of a mindset where you're just trying to stripping your life of all comfort. So that when I return, I'm always operating with this idea that I can live on sleeping on the floor of an ashram and cold water. I like that feeling very much like so i i think part of me what like happens in these four years is that whether i like it or not i get very attached to certain identities like you know i'm a vegetarian i like organic juice like you know you get attached to even these basic identities and i like to be to have that time in which you're truly a monk if you, like where you just have to accept whatever comes your way. So I so so I think you so I go with a little bit of those constructs that

I'm going to be one living in willful poverty, like without any preferences and judgments of what I want. Stripping life of comfort emotionally, what I call reading myself of emotional materialism, like wanting to read a lot, grow a lot, think like I'm just going to be completely silent for the year and then kind of like creating physical environments around that so like you're up to India by road then living in an ashram in the Himalayas learning doing yoga teachers training which is pretty artists like it's a very artists like very tough endeavor you know from four o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock in the night you keep doing like you in the night, you keep doing like, you know, it's hardcore yoga and stuff up in the,

like living in an ashram and stuff. And then, so yeah, so it's some of those principles. Like, and I think those principles give a lot of anchor to the year and yet like, you know, transform you quite a bit. Yeah, sounds like the first time you did this, you were alone. First time I did it, I was alone.

Right. First two times I did it. First time. Yeah. So you've done it twice alone. And then first time you did this, you were alone. First time I did it, I was alone. Right. First two times I did it. First time. Yeah. So you've done it twice alone. And then last time you did it with the wife. Yeah. So when you're with your wife, how does that change this entire experience?

That's a great question. You end up developing a lot of respect for each other, I think. Which I think we found ourselves deepen a lot in terms of our appreciation for each other because there's a lot of physical endurance that you have to go through if you're like so i think that that happens a lot it's it's a it's a relationship kind of endurance test in many ways yeah like especially when you're living in an indian ashram for four months men and women are separated your contact with each other is very impersonal in some form you're meeting in a class where you're doing yoga together like it's a very you're probably taking one walk together but that's also is like you know roughly frowned upon and not in that much

like it's a little bit frowned upon yeah that act of like a desire for an individual like you're almost kind of in that ashram for four months you're in this idea of like dissolving the individual's need for anything in some form like not it's a focus on non-attachment not a complete and you're and you're doing it in every form you're just focusing on like this idea that you are just dissolving that self sense of self that wants anything even this act of wanting companionship in some form right is is like a slightly frowned upon. So did you and your wife both experience this similarly? I'm curious. It hardens things a little because she was worried for a long time that I would like,

because I was getting more and more serious and reading a lot of the yoga texts and stuff, she was very worried whether I'm going to like, you know, take on a brahmacharya. Ever come back. Yeah, exactly. In some way become the brahmacharya. and like even if i would tell her on the surface that no i'm like like i'm i'm not but she she was like you know like i think those kind of things when you're four months living with each other not living with each other in terms of like sharing a physical space you are almost strangers in some form to each other it's a tough thing

yeah no it sounds really tough because you were also i mean fairly newly married then at that point yeah we weren't even married then we came okay got it so boyfriend and girlfriend boyfriend and girlfriend and yeah so like i think it it a lot of insecurities about the relationship and stuff do come up and i think in some way it like was the whole experience at the end of it was very positive you know but yeah but i mean what an interesting way to to bring all those insecurities and questions to the surface when you're dating exactly you know sort of like okay let's bring this all to the table right now and

like see how we feel about it yeah um and it's a really interesting test too very yeah and then also in an ashram when you live for four you also, this is the hardest thing to explain, but you, you are on totally on someone else's clock, right? Like, so for five o'clock, the ashram bell will ring and you have to get up and do the satsang and like for two hours sing on someone else's like schedule and then drink tea, then do like, it's a very organized schedule. So some part of your decision-making ability just shuts off. And after three, four months of doing that, it's almost like once you come out, you can't, I remember being in a hotel and like not being able to make simple decisions,

like what to order for dinner. Like your decision-making has been subsumed for four months completely. And like, it's a weird thing dynamic event that happens in a relationship because you just surrender like all idea of where the relationship is going and uh it like all parts of you are just surrendering completely because you're so on someone else's clock i think or like on someone else's schedule yeah so then how do you i mean what's the prompt for you to step back in and start i don't know if taking control is the right word but start being intentional um start making the

decisions yourself and then i'm really curious too like when those four months resolve and you guys are finally now together on your own clock in your own time in your own space in that hotel room yeah yeah it's like hey stranger exactly you feel very awkward talking to each other like everything seems touching each other like you know the physical being an individual again is a very just a just a huge adjustment so it almost takes a like i think we've intended to stay in the hotel for only one or two days and then kind of continue on with the journey like we were planning to stop in portugal on the way back to the u.s but I think we just stayed in a hotel for seven days because we were almost reacquainting with each other's at an individual capacity and having some individual thoughts for

about each other like individually we just like very you know like that's the cult that's what happened truly when people say this is all a cult it like it's not that even if you're not in a cult kind of an environment with a guru or something but you do become a like a like you just become a sheep in a way like you don't think anymore on your own yeah so so yeah it's a it's a it's a strange experience because in the first month there's a lot of resistance living in an ashram and then it becomes a part of your life and then after after four months, you're almost strangers to each other. And then, you know, it takes. So I think, yeah, so I think this was very interesting to go through this whole experience together. So I think in the first four months, we developed a lot of respect for each other's resilience as we went through very tough living conditions in Europe to India, like by living in like train stations and like walking for miles and all that stuff.

And then the next four months, we almost were. So it was very tough in many ways. Yeah. And then at the end of it, when you come back together, you've got to, after literally having given up your identity to a large extent, it sounds like you've got to first come back together and figure out, okay, after this, who am I now? Because I'm a different person.

You've got to be a different person on some level than when you entered that year. And then if you both step into how you've evolved as individuals, I mean, it's got to be really interesting to then revisit the question. Sitting here, you know, like in this hotel room, you know, like as we step back into who we are and now, which is a different person than when we began this year, are we still compatible in the way that we began this are we now just yeah are we different are we you know are we moving on together are we moving on in the same way are we moving on differently that's had to have been really interesting a little bit yes exactly the only good part of all of this is that the the message in some form or the other with all the yoga buddhism that like you know is in a sense the idea that the individual self has to be dissolved in some form or the other so you i think you are you end up in the four three four months

it's rigid in some form but you also become compassionate with both yourself and other you just realize the the kind of the constantly fluctuating nature of the mind you know you kind of like you have a very visceral understanding of emotions like greed and anger and jealousy you just under like you know like for instance even now like it's been two years now since that whole ashram experience and i come back but even now when i'm talking to you and i'm leaning forward or or i'm walking on the road and i start to move faster those are physical signs that immediately make me realize that i'm not present like i'm rushing towards something so i think what happens is that a little bit of that there is a like a small delay in your action reaction cycle so so which i think is wonderful

because the moment like a negative emotion is arising you just kind of become very observant of it so i think that's the a little bit of the power of what happened that makes that makes so much sense actually i had a had a longstanding meditation practice, and I've noticed that that split-second window is one of the biggest benefits because it gives you the ability to just kind of like before you just react or before you do something automatically, which we do so much of, you just kind of, oh, I'm actually walking faster, or I'm about to say this thing or what's actually happening here?

But the idea of stripping down sort of the self, the ego to a certain extent, bringing you to a place where you're less about you and more about how can I serve, you know, taps you into empathy and compassion to a certain extent. So when you come back together, does it make you so when you're in that room and you're back together and you're back in a relationship it's less about what can i like how do i get my needs satisfied in this relationship and it's more about just like how do i serve how do we honor each other yes exactly i think that's that's what happens so like that's the that's the upside of what happens like of being four months in this very rigid environment and both intellectually through the text and then through the practices you're learning to kind of like lose the sense of myself and my wants you end up with a just just a little bit more compassion for each other and for yourself and

like everything so on the other hand like you know the extreme form of this text is also about like you know the the yogis were brahmacharyas who were like you know so so so it's just uh so i i think my wife and to an extent i was also a little worried on how deep would we end up in this whole thing yeah like this four months become but you know like again as i said there's some dharma in all this and i think my innate tendency is not to become a hermit in this life. I think my innate tendency is business. And which also I think is a very big difference in the West. Now that we're talking about it is that I think viscerally growing up where I grew up, it's just sunk into us this whole idea of karma, cause and effect, multiple lives,

that you're not trying to achieve everything in this life it sounds mystical and all that stuff but i can't help but that's my so i think that's why when you know you're like one life maximize it what are you doing you're a lawyer you should become a this like i think that is a little bit like we don't i guess i we didn't i didn't have that pressure as much i guess because i feel it's, for whatever reason that I could be wrong in this, like it's a completely illogical and non-explainable belief, but it is truly a part of my being that I believe in karma and cause and effect and it will continue and it's a gradual journey of more and more purification. So the pressure to become everything that you want to become in this span is not very high. And when you buy into that, it sounds like it's incredibly freeing on a lot of levels. Because, you know, on the one hand, it sounds like it's incredibly freeing. Because of exactly what you said, you're like, okay, I don't have to get this all done in this

past. You know, I'm going to have many more and more and more and more and slowly, you know, the process of, you know, like you said, purification and getting to sort of like the essence. The other side, and this has been maybe a struggle, I don't know if I would call it a struggle, but a questioning of mine around the notion of karma is that I wonder if it also sometimes the idea of karma, meanings that you will, you not only have the space moving forward to continue the process, but there is a cycle of lives that have happened before you that may have planted a seed, which may constrain or bring suffering into your current path through. And I wonder if that sometimes creates an experience of futility.

A little bit of both, because like, I think this science of karma is very, very logical in some way. It says, again, if you get in deep into the text, karma is of three types, which is agami, prarabdha and sanchita, which basically means that you come to life with a certain karma, the reservoir of like karma, which is you are creating new. Right. And then that has its own cause and effect. So in a sense, it's a combination of free will and destiny. Some portion of your life is going in a certain direction and you're experiencing what you're experiencing because of destiny. But then your free will is having a tremendous effect on what the future is going to be. So it's a combination of those. They've very scientifically called it the reservoir, what you're making currently.

Like the seed you're planting. Yeah, exactly. making currently and then like the seed you're planting yeah exactly the seed you're planting like so it's almost like there's a reservoir and then what in from that reservoir one part of it is coming for this life and then you're kind of constantly making new which is going to go into the reservoir and like an enlightened being is basically one who's like remove themselves from yeah what is like being exhausted in this life at all so that after that he's making no new like his actions have no reactions at all so that after that he's making no new, like his actions have no reactions at all

because they're completely purified from any act. So it's kind of like it's a combination of free will and destiny. You do know that you're creating more as you go along, but you also learn to accept

that what's happening is a consequence of the actions of the past or thoughts of the past. Yeah. And you know, when you really deconstruct it and if you hold it up

to a modern lens, is it really all that different from acknowledging genetics? It's the idea that you landed, you emerged from the womb with a certain amount of, with the genetic code predetermined. And now with the field of epigenetics, we know that a lot of what we do during life either turns on or turns off certain genes, but it doesn't deny the fact that you have them and that they will exert a certain amount of control. But there is a certain amount of volition that affects how those affect your life in this lifetime too. And actually, this is interesting too, because now it ties in with what you're also saying is that now we know

that actually both genetics and the epigenetic, the turned on or turned off state is heritable so you pass on not only the genes but whether they're turned on and turned off to a certain extent to your offspring yeah exactly because then like in in bhagavad-gita they say that the baby chooses the womb so like that's why like it chooses the womb which has which is going to be the best like reservoir for it to live its karma in a way yeah um it's so interesting when you start to drill down yeah a lot of this is very like it's not very different right it's not all i mean you look at them you're like karma and genetic you know or like you know or even when like when we like in the book a little bit about the yogi superpowers and stuff when on paper when you're like reading people's minds and walking on water,

and then you're like, like when I lived up in the Himalayas, when in this ashram, there were incidents that happened that when I talk right now here, it seems very fufu mystical, but it just made a lot of sense. I remember like sitting one afternoon with a yogi who had lived in a cave for 11 years and had come out and had started a school, but not with the intent of I'm going to help the whole world with the school, like the Western thing of like, I'm going to change the world with this new school system

or whatever. His idea was that he came out of the cave and then he just wanted to teach a little. So he kind of like got a bunch of kids in the village together and would just teach them in the afternoon in a very simple kind of a way, like not with the intent of becoming something different or whatever. So he, I remember sitting with him one afternoon and not speaking a word and he answering my questions. Like, it's just very hard to explain, but it's like almost like you and I are having a conversation right now and I don't say anything and you're like just speaking whatever is in my mind or my thoughts almost.

And I remember this whole three hours afternoon in which this whole conversation happened and janardhan yogi his name was and he at that point it didn't seem mystical now that i'm talking about it it seems more mystery but then when you realize that you're living in this very rarefied environment up in the mountains where you've learned to where like everything is like you can read the like the subtlest form of energy like uh for him as he would say words are just a grosser form of thought and thought is just a grosser form of feeling so like for if a feeling arises it's just like more and more subtle like the words are grosser forms of that a feeling is a subtle form of words and he can just like read subtler vibrations because he's very his life is simplified he's living in a very purified area so so it's very interesting that

things that seem like otherworldly are very regular in terms of experiences because so to going back to your point like it all seems after when you look at it it's not very unscientific yeah if you have a feeling and you're at it, it's not very unscientific. Yeah. If you have a feeling and you're expressing it in words, somebody can catch to realize that there is a whole lot that actually is going on that we just don't quite have the framework and, you know, the research to describe. But that doesn't mean it's not actually going on. Yeah. What was the, you know, like, so the latest book, what was the genesis for that? The genesis for that were two kind of independent thoughts.

One was I really wanted to write a very contemporary version of the Buddha story. The Buddha has been like a great, I guess, role model, if you can call it that, for like I've been very inspired by his setting out quest and what he kind of like learned as a result of that. And I wanted to write it very grounded in reality, not as a fable or as a, so I wanted to write like, so that was kind of a fable or as a so I wanted to write like so that was kind of one thought which was going on in my mind and the other the bigger thought was that I wanted to write a very page-turning thriller which was actually a spiritual

story so I because I think what I saw with spiritual literature was that it was either fables like the alchemist and which like the author has a message or like Celestine prophecies and then the art of motorcycle maintenance they're very thick books about the author has a message or like Celestine Prophecies and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. They're very thick books about the author communicating a great message to help humanity. And I wanted to write a thriller, which like you crackle the pages with and like turn the pages with and become a part of the story without knowing that there is some spiritual message here. So I was like trying to experiment with this yoga meditation book that was a page turn. So I'm actually very excited when people say, when the reviews are saying that that they couldn't that they were up all night because they couldn't put the pages that's much more exciting to me than people saying that they're that they like got a

lot of knowledge about meditation or yoga or their life is transient because it's i i like i think many books have done that but i wanted to write something which was a complete immersive story in which the reader melted into the story yeah i didn't even know that there was any message being communicated or the author had some agenda talking about meditation just wanted a story so i so i think that combination is what i yeah inspired the book and it kind of goes along with your idea of like you know the role of actually acknowledging that entertainment plays a large part of this that you know you can write the most profound thing in the world but if it you know if it's so cerebral that only a few people will actually force their way through it, or if it just bores people to tears, it's not going to touch the

people who need it most. Exactly. And that's the power of fiction is that in a good fiction, the reader dissolves completely. There's no sense of self left because he or she's entered a dream world, a new world which has been created in which there is no sense of your own world left at all. And anytime in that world, if the author is present, the fictive dream breaks completely. So that's very hard, right? So I wanted to write, I like I had a lot of knowledge, at least in my like, you know, research about yoga and meditation, and I didn't want to share any knowledge at all. Like it had to be a dream world in which the reader got their own knowledge slowly, gradually. Like it had to be a dream world in which the reader got their own knowledge slowly, gradually, if they had to. That must have been such an interesting challenge for

you, though, because I shared with you earlier, I literally just got the book. So I've just started and I haven't like, it's actually it's awesome. It does have that effect. I actually really do want to, you know, like, so I'm going to spend the next 24 hours probably not sleeping to go through. But you know, it does seem there is so much of you that informs it and there's so much that you through your personal experience you can teach through it it must have been a really interesting challenge for you to hold back and not go there while you were writing very very that was the like it was almost the hardest thing that there are some things that the character learns that are actually when i say wrong it's like wrong in the way in the way of like uh the knowledge but

right in the way of his experience what he learns through that experience and then he kind of his learning evolves so yeah it was very like that was hard and then also making sure that every spiritual learning had a physical component like like so that's why a lot of this book is a physical adventure through very hidden parts of India. So to make sure that at no point, that there's no page at all in which there is any spiritual knowledge in a way, in which nobody defines meditation.

It's almost like it unfolds as a byproduct. It unfolds as a byproduct of the physical adventure. So yeah, it was my hardest book to write in that way. i would imagine it's it's interesting as you're sort of explaining that um i've been working i actually just finished my my next one and um and similarly i had to teach myself to write a very different book than i've ever written before completely different style different structure different format and the whole time it was the same thing with me i was i'm like there's so much i kept wanting to revert back to so much of what I had done before and what I knew, and I wanted to share this and that. big challenges, like this is my this is my learning as an author is not just writing this book, but also learning, operating under a new structure and new

set of constraints. Was that something that was a part of what drove you? Very much. Absolutely. Because I think in my past novels, I've always the fictive dream has broken for the reader, because neither I've put in a coincidence in the writing or like, I made it a little convenient for the story to deliver the message I wanted to deliver. And this time I wanted no sense of authorship at all. Like I wanted the reader to not detect the author at all. Now people are saying it's informed by my life, but it's almost like if they saw no acknowledgements, knew nothing about me, the story was like organic organic created from this world like from the universe it just came about in a way without an author yeah i love that yeah so so powerful so irish

catholic wife from new jersey i can't leave the conversation without asking how like you guys met and uh well we met in new york like through friends okay yeah yeah yeah but my family was uh i know by then i think they were like you know like you know whatever all right how long have you lived in new york when or when did you come to the states originally i came to the states with procter and gamble in 2009 i think or something like that yeah so about a few years ago but i came to cincinnati first and minneapolis so i came to new york like three four years ago there and then i went on a sabbatical in the first year of being here. Yeah. When it was time for your one and you decided to go on the sabbatical, which are then, you know, like New Jersey, Irish American girlfriend

who decided to go along with you. What did her family think? See, that's the beauty of it. I think in their minds, they thought exactly what my family thought, but their words would never. I remember like having a dinner with my family before we were leaving yeah we went on a trip to india like this the december before we left and like it was very open when my sister my grandmother and my dad we were all on the table together and they just started off without i guess like my wife was or my girlfriend at that time was next to me and they just started off saying oh this is so irresponsible you're hitting 35 now like you're 34 like you're about to hit 35

and you're not married, you have no kids. They were just saying that in front of my wife. Like, you know, like they just had no filter at all. And I think my wife was thinking exactly the same thing.

Right. And just not expressing it. No, but they were thinking exactly the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which kind of brings us full circle also in this whole conversation. So the name is Good Life Project.

So if I offer that term out to you to live a good life, what comes up for you? Truly what comes out to me is the idea that you should just become a vessel for your work to express itself. Like just be a tree. In a way, I like the tree just grows and bears fruit because it's its nature. And I think there's a lot of beauty in that. So if your innate tendency is very well expressed in a, just don't take the messages of the world to become something that's not your innate tendency. If the whole world is saying become an entrepreneur, become this, become that, you don't need to if that's not your tendency,

because you can really reach a level of great purification by expressing yourself. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. That is a real pleasure. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast.

It really helps us get the word out. Thank you so much. while you're at it. And then you'll be sure to never miss out on any of our incredible guests or conversations or riffs. And for those of you, our awesome community who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. Apple Watch Series 10 making it even more comfortable on your wrist whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations iPhone XS or later required

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