Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dandapani on How to Harness the Incredible Power of Your Mind EP 189

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Dandapani joins me on Passion Struck with John R. Miles to discuss his new book, The Power of Unwavering Focus. We discuss how to harness the power of the mind and focus to overcome worry, anxiety, and fear to unlock a rewarding life. Dandapani is a Hindu priest, entrepreneur, and former monk of 10 years. A highly sought-after international speaker and leading expert on leveraging the human mind and the power of focus to create a life of purpose and joy. His TEDx talk has over 6.2 million views, and his GoalCast videos garnered over 75 million views in just five months. He is the author of the new book The Power of Unwavering Focus. -►Purchase The Power of Unwavering Focus: https://amzn.to/3xnLWai  (Amazon Link) -► Get the full show notes for all resources from today's episode: https://passionstruck.com/dandapani-how-to-harness-the-power-of-your-mind/  --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/a1yP2Vq7cJw  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles --► Subscribe to the Passion Struck Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/passion-struck-with-john-r-miles/id1553279283  Thank you, Dry Farm Wines and Indeed, For Your Support Dry Farm Wines have No Chemical Additives for Aroma, Color, Flavor, or Texture Enhancement. Dry Farm Wines - The Only Natural Wine Club That Goes Above and Beyond Industry Standards. For Passion Struck listeners: Dry Farm Wines offers an extra bottle in your first box for a penny (because it’s alcohol, it can’t be free). See all the details and collect your wine at https://www.dryfarmwines.com/passionstruck/. With Indeed, you can search for millions of jobs online to find the next step in your career. With tools for job search, resumes, company reviews, and more. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. In this episode, Dandapani Discusses His New Book, The Power of Unwavering Focus: Hindu priest and spiritual leader Dandapani understands what’s preventing so many people from living a rewarding life. Through inner reflection, awareness, and the power of unwavering focus, he’s connected the dots between creating healthy habits and living a purpose-focused life.  On this episode of Passion Struck with John R. Miles, Danapani explains why learning to harness the power of the mind is the only way to achieve the potential of fulfillment, joy, and self-actualization. Where to Find Dandapani Website: https://dandapani.org/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dandapanillc/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DandapaniLLC  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dandapanillc   -- John R. Miles is the CEO, and Founder of PASSION STRUCK®, the first of its kind company, focused on impacting real change by teaching people how to live Intentionally. He is on a mission to help people live a no-regrets life that exalts their victories and lets them know they matter in the world. For over two decades, he built his own career applying his research of passion-struck leadership, first becoming a Fortune 50 CIO and then a multi-industry CEO. He is the executive producer and host of the top-ranked Passion Struck Podcast, selected as one of the Top 50 most inspirational podcasts in 2022. Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  ===== FOLLOW JOHN ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m * Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles​ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesjohn/ * Blog: https://johnrmiles.com/blog/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_sruck_podcast

Coming up next on the Passion Struck podcast. Focus needs to go hand in hand with purpose. I talk about leading a purpose, focus life. People talk about being intentional with our lives, right? Lead an intentional life. Like, okay, how would you lead an intentional life if you don't even know what you worked? Welcome to Passion Struck.

Hi, I'm your host, John Armeils. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week

with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 189 of Passion Struct, one of the top alternative health podcasts. And thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly to listen and learn at a live better, be better and impact the world. And in case you're new to the show, when you haven't checked out our YouTube channel,

you can find it at John Armiles, where we have over 400 different videos, some which are long form content like this podcast, and others which we call mindset moments which are two to four minutes long. Please go there, check it out and subscribe. In case you missed it, earlier this week I head on Dr. Scott Berry Kaufman and Jordan Feingold where we discuss the release of their brand new book, Chew's Growth, how to use transcendence to face fear, self doubt, and so many other things. Last week, I interviewed Dr. Cassie Holmes, who's the foremost expert in the world on time

and happiness, and we've launched her brand new book, Happier Hour. I also had on Jeff Fyfer, who is the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, and we discuss his brand new book, Build for Tomorrow. And lastly, I had on a special guest, Seth Goden, and we discussed his brand new collaborative book, The Carbon Almanac, and why it is so important over the next 10 years that we put extreme focus on system change to deal with the climate issue that is facing all of us.

Please go and check them all out. And I wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. They mean so much to us when we get them and help them expand the reach of the show as well as improving our ratings on Spotify and Apple. Now, let's talk about today's guest. Donda Pani is a Hindu priest, entrepreneur, and was a monk for 10 years. He is a highly sought after international speaker and leading expert on leveraging the human

mind and the power of focus to create a life of purpose and joy. His TEDx talk has over 6.2 million views and his goal-coast videos garnered in total over 75 million views in just five months. He is the author of the powerful new book The Power of Unwavering Focus, a book that aligns to everything that we discuss here on the Passion Start podcast. An our interview, Dandapani shares his philosophy on why we are what we practice and how most people are practicing distraction in their lives. And thus, they become masters of distraction. Dandapani goes into his guidance or how you go from this world of distraction to a world

of concentration by learning the power of small, building concentration, will power, and the mastery of awareness into your days and into the microchoices that you make in the moments that make up those days. And we go into so much more really a fabulous interview that you don't want to miss. Thank you for choosing PassionStruct and choosing me to be your host and guide on creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. I am honored and absolutely thrilled to welcome Doddopani onto the Passion Strike podcast. Welcome, Doddopani. Thank you so much.

Such an honor and pleasure to be here as well. Thank you, happy to be on the show. When I heard about the opportunity to interview you, I just had to jump on it because your message coincides so much with what we're trying to teach people here on the podcast about focus, living life intentionally. And how do you go about creating this path to self-realization that I think so many people feel is out of reach, but

it's closer than they even realize if they apply some of the philosophies that we're going to talk about today. But before we unpack all that, I did want to say congratulations on your recently release book. I'll put a copy of it right up here so people can see it. And on the YouTube channel, we'll make sure that it stands out, But I know how much effort it goes into creating a book like this. So congratulations. And I hope the audience enjoys it as much as I did

and as well as people throughout the world. I thought a good place for having the audience to get to know you a little bit better is we all have moments that define us. What is a defining moment for who you are today? I would say the day I met my guru on the moment when I met my guru, he was the most influential person of my life. And yeah, the day I met him, that would be the defining moment, I would say, for sure. And what stood out for you on that day about him that drew you to him so much?

I felt that he was someone that spoke from experience as opposed to speaking from something he had read or intellectually understood rather he had experienced something so well that when he shared you could feel that it was coming from the place of internet experience as opposed to an intellectual learning or understanding. And there's a big difference between intellectually knowing something and realizing something, realisation transforms the way your life is intellectually understanding doesn't really change your life. And I give an example of that in the book as well. Well, did you want to touch on that a little bit more? Yeah, sure. I can. So in the book, I give an example of how I take a person named Julie, for example, in life. The death of her father impacts her. She understands that we die.

She carries on with her life. She's still sad about her death. There would be an intellectual understanding of, yes, we all die at some point. Another Julie could have the realization of death where her father dies. She realizes that life is finite, that we will all die. And that realization that there's a clock ticking away somewhere with your time on it causes her now to profoundly change the way she lives her life

and how she interacts with the world around her, the people and things around her. And I would say that would be the difference between understanding something and realizing something. Realizing something causes a profound change in our behavior, our lifestyle, our perspective, that all completely changes. Well, I liked how in the book you did mention that a lot of times people give this saying life is short and you like to put the twist on it that life is finite. Why does that small little twist make such a big difference in our outlook? Because I think people always say I think we as humans tend to repeat things that are

commonly said if everybody says our life is short So we go out life is a shock But it's anything much shorter if I get to live five more years That's a long time within the book. I give an example of here stuck in traffic for two hours I was like, oh, it's only two hours. That's not very long You go like two hours. Oh my god. I was stuck in traffic for two hours And that two hours felt like eternity So if you get to live for two hours,

isn't that a long time as well? So I call it finite because there's a clear definitive end to it, we just don't know where to this. I'm 48 years old. I hope I get to live to my 90s, but there's no guarantee. And if I do get to live to my 90s, it could be another 50 years potentially. That's a really long time. That's anything much short. Now, if I'm able to focus and be present

through my ability to focus in each of those moments, then those 50 years can feel like a thousand years because it's a deeply enjoying each moment or experiencing, I should say better than enjoying experiencing each moment and having a profound experience in that time. So, short is the correct moment. It's finite. My life is anything but short. Even when it is is the long time While you're in the year it seems like it's a long time when you finish the year and you look back It seems like it happened in an instant. I'm not sure if you ever have that feeling, but sometimes that's how it feels like for me

Yeah, no, I do as well look back and they go like holy smokes. It's August 22nd now. 2022. How do we get to 2022 so quickly? But my days are also very full because I feel intentional about how I live my life, what I'm doing, what I'm interacting with. So my days are quite filled and planned out with activities, engagements with people that I want to spend time with.

And I feel because you're always doing things that matter to you, then it feels like the day goes by quickly. But when I look back at the year, I go like, my gosh, I've done so many things. I met so many wonderful people. I've had so many wonderful conversations. It's not an experience where I haven't

had any of those. Is it an experience where I had wasteful moments? It was very all very thoughtful and intentional. Well that's great and I for the listener I am speaking to you and you're in Costa Rica and you're actually being very intentional about creating a sanctuary there. And I was hoping you might be able to tell the audience a little bit more about it. Isn't it called Shiva Ashram? Correct. Yes, it's called Shiva Ashram. It's a 33-acre spiritual sanctuary in a botanical garden. We've had the land for about nine years.

We've been clearing it. It's kind of an abandoned pasture with technical growth weeds and things. So we've been clearing it, keeping the native trees. We've planted about 4,000 to 5,000 trees in once in the last nine years. The gardens will be broken up into seven smaller gardens, each representing a different area of the mind. So as visitors one day went so open, walked through the gardens, they will learn about the mind, and as visitors, one day when it's opened, walked through the garden, they will learn about the mind and it's built for children and adults. So even children can walk through, learn about the mind, learn about subconscious, the superconscious here at the mind, learn how to focus, learn how to develop world power, skills we all should have been taught at school,

but we've never been. So, but how amazing would it be to empower a child of four or five years old when the skills and tools needed to concentrate, to discover oneself and once purpose in life early on so we could spend our life living our purpose as opposed to our whole life looking for our purpose. I think you're very right about what you were just saying. My daughter just graduated high school. We actually just took her to University of Florida where she's in the engineering school and I know you're an engineer yourself. Yeah. But I think about her education and her older brothers and looking back, I think we teach

people grammar, we teach people history, we teach science and STEM programs, but we don't really teach some of the most important life skills like you're bringing up. And I think you do a good job describing this in the book when you talk about ADHD and how today there's just this natural desire to put someone on drugs to deal with it instead of going after the underlying reason for why the person is experiencing the traits that they're experiencing.

And I think if we would concentrate more on teaching people some of the basics of habits that bring about success, it would make such a profound difference in how people are living their lives and doing it with intention. I just wanted to get your thoughts about that. Yeah, I know for sure. And the big point I make about the 80 HD in the book, do I give a story in the book where I share,

I mean, it comes up to me at an event I'm doing and my son's been diagnosed with ADD and now he's on drugs and I'm really unhappy about it. And I said, look, I'm not a medical expert, I'm not a doctor, I don't understand ADD really well. Can you explain to me what the essence of the issue is? He says, well, my son has a really hard time concentrating, he was taking focus, he's easily distracted at school at home and everywhere, said the doctor diagnosed him with attention deficit

to sort, I couldn't keep his attention on one thing for prolonged periods of time, and it had drug dimmer. So my question then to the final is if he has problem trouble concentrating of focusing and I use those words synonymously concentration focus has anyone actually ever taught him how to concentrate. That goes no. And I go well how can we drug someone for not being able to do something we haven't taught them to do. Yardon is going to engineering school. What type of engineering is she going to be doing? Her declared major is chemical. Okay, chemical engineering. So if she goes first year of chemical engineering and she hasn't had a class yet, they put in that they asked her to solve a complex problem which which has never been taught how to.

And if she can't solve it, they label her with some acronyms and drug offer it. Would that be fair? No, right? The first thing is to teach her how to solve this chemical engineering problems, and then help her to practice it so she can solve it. Same thing with everything else. And I give an example, what did I sit to the father? What if we took

your son, if your son wanted to learn the piano, to play the piano and he couldn't play the piano because no one taught him to, so we labeled him with PPD, piano playing disorder and drugged him for it. Would that be fair? And he goes, no. So I go it's the same thing. I'm not saying the diagnosis that he has intention deficit is bad. It's okay to diagnose someone with, oh, he has trouble concentrating. There's nothing wrong with that. All I'm pushing back again is should be drug them as the first step. All should we teach them to concentrate, help them to practice on those traits so they can actually be good at it. And after a few years of teaching them

and practicing it, they're still struggling, maybe medication can assist, but it shouldn't be our first, go to the first thing is to teach them how to focus, not drug them because they can't. We'll be right back to my interview with Don DePonny. What's better than finding quality candidates, finding them right now for a powerful hiring partner

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with Don DePonny. Well, you're speaking to the choir here because I'm a believer of limiting any medication I possibly can, unless it's absolutely essential and I can't find another way to naturally work through it. So I'm a little bit older than you, but I don't take a single

medication and have found ways to deal with different things that have come at me, whether it's been diet or lifestyle changes instead of having to use medication to cope with it. When I was growing up, I got teased all the time like I shouted the book for not being able to concentrate. And this was in the 70s and 80s in Asia where I don't think there was such a thing as ADDO ADHD to people who are like, ah, you can't focus. So it wasn't until I'm in my mid-20s, did my guru teach me how to concentrate. So almost 25 years had allowed me to to concentrate and can learn to concentrate. So, what does that show you?

It shows you that we can learn to concentrate at any age. And not being able to concentrate is not a disorder. It's not a permanent problem. That one can overcome that. All one needs to do is learn how to do it and practice doing it. Granted, there may be some people who might have a physiological condition that they really struggle to concentrate.

That's acceptable. But I think for the majority of the people, that would have been taught it. I'm not saying it's a blanket rule for everyone, but it's a thing for the majority of us. We've never been taught how to concentrate, and that's why we struggle with it. Well, I think it's the same thing as consider being an entrepreneur. I mean, people say,

you've born an entrepreneur, do you learn to be one? And I believe in the latter that even if you have some inherent abilities where you're more prone to take risk, there's still a learning curve in being a good entrepreneur versus being a bad one and I think it's the same thing when it comes to concentration or any other trait that we want to build inside of us. I did want to go into your experience at the monastery because I think it has played such a profound role in your life. But I understand that there are different types of monasteries. I think a lot of people think of the Buddhist monastery. You were in a Hindu monastery.

What is the difference between the two? First of all, Buddhism came out of Hinduism. Buddha was a Hindu prince that left his family's kingdom and went out and in search of enlightenment, became enlightened, started teaching and that became that known as Buddhism. I would say they share very common beliefs both religions, they believe in reincarnation, karma, but where they differ is Buddhism doesn't believe in God, whereas Hinduism does believe in God and the Hinduism is monotheistic and believes in one God

and many angels and great angels. So that's kind of the philosophy side of Buddhism and Hinduism. So in Hindu monasteries, and obviously there's many different types of Hindu monasteries. In the monastery I was in, the goal was self-realization of enlightenment, and that was the pursuit of monastics joining the monastery. So only monks on the vows were allowed to live within the monastery, and we followed a very strict routine and regiment every single day. And our guru was the head of the monastery that guided the monks in the journey of spiritual encolament. Well, I wanted to ask, what are three of the biggest learnings for you from being in the monastery for 10 years that have propelled your life forward?

I would say one of the things that's a monk is that is renunciation. So you literally give up everything and everyone in your life. The only is I only spoke twice to my parents and the phone, no emails, no letters. They've spoken to any of my friends or relatives again. My life as I knew it before being a monastic was completely gone. And I lived in a hut in the monastery that was 10 feet by 10 feet wide and 10 feet tall. So I had a futon mattress, a sheet, a little oil lamp, a pillow, a blanket, and that was it. And that was my home for a decade.

And I realized that one of the biggest realizations was that you really don't need much in life. We have stuff, man. We have so much stuff. We keep accumulating stuff in the world. And it was all makes it so easy to buy stuff. You just go on that, you buy and get a delivery tomorrow. You're probably membership next day delivery, same day delivery.

So you just buy stuff and we tell ourselves, oh, I need this. So I gotta buy it. They need that cable. I need that adapter. They need this. So that's good. I need that. You actually don't really need much at all. I need that. So that's good.

I need that. You actually don't really need much at all. I'm not saying that everyone should leave them, leave them a monastic life and sleep on a food-tongued mattress and have an oil lamp. But that was a big learning for me. You literally don't need much in life. Simplifying. That taught me the biggest learning of simplifying our life.

A lot of times, in today's world, during people say, like, we need such past-space life. We just need to slow down. And I believe the term slow down isn't correct. The better term to use is to simplify. It's not like we're driving fast every single day. We can't. If we were driving fast every day, we'd be driving a thousand miles an hour today. We're not eating faster every day. We're not talking faster every day, but what we're doing is we're doing too much. Too many people in our lives, too many things in our life,

too many engagements, too many of those too much, and we just need to simplify, not slow down, simplify our life, to the key people and things in our life that have been defined by our purpose. Purpose should define everything. So I would say that was one of the biggest learnings. Another one would be defining one's purpose in life, clarity of purpose. Purpose defines everything else in life. Purpose should be the spine.

If we took away our spine from our back, which is collapse. Our spine holds everything together, our head, our legs, our arms, our whole body, everything is aching to that spine. And your purpose and life is to spine. Define your purpose, have your purpose, define your priorities, then you know what to focus on. The byproduct of that is you live a rewarding life. Without purpose, there's no lack of clarity of making decisions of going forward, the wetting, less energy. And the third one I would say would be understanding how the mind works. We have the most powerful tool in the world sitting in our head. We don't need to complicate an understanding of it, but rather than just a basic understanding, and once we have a basic understanding, we'll have enough know how to harness it and navigate it. But without

the basic understanding, we'll always struggle. And this book gives you that basic understanding that you need, because as you've read, it's kept very simple. Yes. Well, I love what you just said, because my tagline for passion struck is unlock your purpose, create an intentional life. And I think there's so much to be said about that. And one of the ways I came up with this whole concept is I was reading Grit by Angela Duckworth, which is a great book. And I believe in her teachings and a lot of it really resonated.

But the more I thought about it, and she starts out the book by talking about West Point and that cadets are successful because they have passion and perseverance. And I went to the Naval Academy, and I started to think back about my time there. And yes, passion and perseverance were important, but I think what allowed someone to get through and to become the best officer they could

versus someone else had more to do with their intention and the choices that they make every single day to pursue that. And so that, to me, was eye-opening because you do have to have focus, but in addition to that, I think you need to have that Brit inside of you to carry on when you have hard moments. But if you don't have the focus to begin with or the intentionality, then you can have as much Brit in the world as you want, but it's gonna be focused in the wrong area. Exactly. I think people come up to me and say,

it's done the punny, can you teach me how to focus? And they go, yes, I can't. And then I ask them, once you learn to focus, what will you focus on? And they go, I don't know. So focus needs to go hand in hand with purpose. On the side of the book, I talk about leading the purpose focus life.

And people talk about living being intentional with our lives, right? Leading intentional life. Like, okay, how would you lead an intentional life if you don't even know what you want? But, and that's why I start to book off with that conversation I had with this German ultra-final in Munich, where he says to me, in Dunapunny, you always talk about how important purpose of life is, why don't you teach about finding your purpose? Why do you start with the mind and focus, and then go, well, if you can't focus and be self-reflective long enough, how would you then be in a state of self-reflection long enough to discover what it is you want in life or what your purpose is? Focus allows you to discover your purpose, and it also allows you to stay committed and devoted to leading a purpose-focused life.

Yes, and that's absolutely where you start is you even give the saying that it may appear that seeking one's life purpose is where we should start. In fact, it's not the case. And you really go into that the mind is the foundation for building a focused life. And what is the difference between the mind and awareness? Everything is in context of how I'm teaching, right? So with another educator speaking, it would be different. So I define the minus of vast space with many different areas, with it. Awareness is you. you are pure O'Anas.

You could look at it as a glowing ball of light, traveling to different eras in the mind. So if my O'Anas goes to the angry area of the mind, it lights up that area of the mind, and I become conscious of being in the angry area of the mind. My O'Anas goes to the happier of the mind, and lights up the happier of the mind, and become conscious of being the happier of the mind. And any given point in time, my awareness can go to any air of the mind and wants to go to.

Wherever my awareness goes, that's the air of the mind experience. From this, we can conclude two things. One is there's a clear, distinct separation between awareness and the mind. The mind doesn't move, but rather awareness moves within the mind. And once we understand that, the next thing to realize, so understand is that at any given point in time, I can move my awareness to a particular ear of the mind. And if I don't do that, my environment, which are the people and things around me,

can move my awareness to some ear of the mind I want to go to. So someone comes up to me and says, done a party a show, looks ugly, they can take my awareness to the area of the mind, upset area of the mind, should I choose them, allow them to do so. But if I had control of my awareness, I could stay where I am right now in my mind and say, I see you're trying to take me to an upset area of the mind, but I choose not to go that. And that's extremely empowering. So the goal ultimately is not to control the mind, but rather to control where randomness goes within the mind.

Yeah, I almost think of it as mind is the hardware and awareness as the software. You also describe it as your mind is a mansion in the book? Yes, one simple analogy is to look at the minus as a mansion where you have a thousand rooms and every room represents a different area of the mind. In the mansion, I can go to any room I want to go to, but if I go to the master bedroom, I'll experience the master bedroom. I go to the library, I experience being in the library. When I've been in the library, I don't experience being in the master bedroom.

So the same way, when you're in the area of the mind, you're experiencing that area of the mind. You are not anger, rather you are person. In that you are awareness, pure awareness in that area of the mind. All you have to do is shift awareness out of that area of the mind to a different area of the mind. And one thing I want to point out here that's important is that I think a lot of times people misunderstand this and they think that if I move my awareness from an area of the mind that I don't want to be into another area of the mind, all that I'm doing is ignoring the problem.

That's not the case. All I'm trying to say here is that you now have the choice to choose when it is you want to engage with the problem in your mind. You can say yes, in room 52 has an unresolved issue I have from my childhood. I'm not going to go there right now, but next week on Wednesday at 4pm, I have a session with my therapist. I'm going to go into that room that and deal with it. Until then, we're going to keep our awareness out of that. And it doesn't work for me. It doesn't make sense for me to repeatedly go into that room, upheave all these emotions and cause chaos in my life, repeatedly, every day. Yeah, I think you bring up a good point. And I've had a number of behavioral scientists on the show and

one thing that's been common amongst all of them whether they're in behavioral economics or they specialize in eating and helping you with fitness, it's that our microchoises that determine how our life ends up and I also have an upcoming book in one of my chapters I call it the conscious engageer. I remember when I used to live in Washington, D.C., they had a bar that had three levels and the bottom level was hell, the middle was purgatory and heaven was on top. But you use kind of the same layering

to describe the difference between the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the subconscious mind, and the super conscious mind, and it really resonated with me. So I thought that might be a core tenant that you could teach the audience about. If we talked about the mind of speaking of our space, if you were to look at it in three phases, or three states, the conscious mind, which is the instinctive mind, is one state of mind. The second state of mind is the intellectual mind, the subconscious, and then the third state of mind is the superconscious, are the intuitive air of the mind or the creative spiritual air of the mind.

At any given point in time, your awareness can be in one of these states of mind. So if you're in the instinctive area, which is the conscious mind, then you are in the animal age of the mind. You think you're eating, sleeping, procreating, that's the state of mind. If you're in the subconscious, you're in the intellectual air of the mind. You can be having intellectual conversations. You can be engaged with a memory from the past as well, reliving an experience you've had 20 years ago, that's the subconscious. And then if you're in the intuitive air of the mind, the superconscious air of the mind, you could be the creative, spiritual, intuitive air of the mind. Not one is better than the other.

Ultimately, it comes down to what it is you want to live, and your ability then to move awareness within the mind and choose which of these states of mind you want to function on a day-to-day basis. For the life that I want to live, being in the superconscious air of the mind serves me the best. If I wasn't the debate team, then I might want to be the intellectual air of the mind, because then I can have intellectual debates endlessly to help a team with the next debate competition. My chapter is a little bit different. I describe that I think most people today live their lives like a pinball and I use the game of pinball as an analogy

where instead of playing the game of pinball, they're letting the game play them and we have so many distractions in life. And I think pinball is just like that. You've got the bells and whistles and bumpers and all these distractions going on. And that's why most people with ball just goes down the gutter. But for those who can really master it,

it takes an immense amount of focus and being present as you're playing the game to understand how that game has its trickery and other things and the elements that you need to do to overcome them. And I think it's interesting because when we look at historical figures, I like to look at the life of Abraham Lincoln because we all see him as the greatest president, or one of the greatest presidents who ever lived. But if you look at his life in the first 15 to 20 years of his adult life,

he self describes himself as a driftless piece of wood floating along the water, letting it carry him wherever it wanted. He lacked purpose in his life, and he went from being a surveyor to a shopkeeper to a lawyer to a politician back to being an attorney etc. and it wasn't until as we talked about at the beginning of the podcast when he truly discovered that abolishing slavery was his main purpose, did everything kind of shift for him and everything came together.

And from that point forward, he lived with extreme focus on what was most important. But I think we look at a person's life like that and we don't see that even someone that we think is as great as Abraham Lincoln really suffered in this and he had to be taught to use this focus to control his mind. And I think one of the things you go into in the book is you start talking about at the end of it things such as being present, our worrying, our fear, and I wanted to go through each one of those, but I was gonna set up being present with you with a previous guest that I had on the podcast, which is a Naval Academy classmate of mine who ended up becoming the chief astronaut at NASA.

He was that an Navy SEAL, and he talks about that being present is the most important thing that he has found in his life. But he said he learned it first when he was at Buds because he said I had to concentrate so hard just to get through one moment to the other. So I wouldn't quit that I learned to be very present and what was it gonna take me to get through

the next five minutes, the next hour, getting to the next meal. And then when I was in battle, I kind of applied that same thing. And I had trained myself to have so much focus that when that battle was around me, I was able to take away all the distractions. And I knew what the mission was and what we had to do.

And then he gives another example that he was on a spacewalk. The spacewalk is something that he has practiced probably hundreds of times. But in that moment, he was out there with an Italian astronaut and that other astronauts suddenly got water in their helmet because there was a defect in the cooling system. And he said, I don't remember at all the actions I took. I just knew that I had to be there in that moment and I got them in the hall and he just said it was a culmination of years and years of just practicing having that

focus that allowed me to be in the present. But I think we often use this term being the present too much and I think that's something you agree with. So I was hoping you could use that story maybe to show the difference of just saying we're being present in the moment and then actually doing it. Yeah, I mean, look, you just go on social media and see how many quotes you can find that say be present, live in them, oh,

but people post these things where I actually teaching you how to be present. And if you go back to awareness in the mind, and the mind doesn't move, but it's awareness that moves within the mind, that we are pure awareness traveling through the mind, using that understanding, I would define being present as my ability to focus. If I can keep my awareness on you, without it shifting to something else, I'm being focused on you. So I define focus as my ability to keep my awareness on one thing or one person for a period of time until I choose to move it. Now, if I can focus on you, I can be present, but I can't be present if I could focus. Being present is a byproduct of being able to focus. I don't need to be in the moment.

I don't need to practice being in the moment. I don't need to be practicing being present. I just need to give who and what I am with my own divided attention. As soon as I'm doing that, I'm in the moment. When people say practice being in the moment, practice being present, that's incorrect. That's a byproduct of being able to focus. If I can keep my attention on you, my awareness on you, I'm already concentrating, and I'm

right in this moment with you. I don't need to practice being in the moment. I just need to give you my own divided attention. The byproduct of that is not being present. And you can't be present if you can't be focused. Have you ever had the conversation with someone where you're talking to them and they've looked at you and go, where are you? Yes, of course. So the technically correct question to ask is, where is your awareness? Because if someone asked you where are you, the correct answers are standing right in front of you. But based on the book, they could ask, okay, where is your awareness?

Then you go like, yeah, my head is here, not into what you're saying, but my awareness, my ball of light is drifted off to some other area of the mind and are no longer being present anymore, even though I'm physically present with you, mentally, of someone else. And that's why I'm understanding awareness and the mind is the key to learning how to focus, which is the key to living in the moment. And if we don't live in the moment, then all the experiences we work so hard to have in life in the moment to that children, the moment with us spouses, our friends, the holidays, the special experiences we choose for nothing. Get to that experience. They would hardly have an enjoyment because we couldn't be present.

A few are someone who that happens to, and I think for a lot of people, this is a common thing. They work throughout the day, tremendous amount of stress. They get home and their spouse partner could be roommate, could be a child, starts talking to them and as they're talking, their head is drifting away to the problems of the day that they were trying to solve the chaos, other things, which I think probably a lot of the listeners experience, is there one piece of advice you could give them if they find themselves stuck doing that? That is a trick that can help them bring their

mind back to the forefront and concentrating on that person in front of them? Yeah, one great trick by the book, read it, understand it, apply everything in that. And you'll know that there's no other shortcut. apply everything in that and you'll have best know other shortcut. I've been 25 years of learning into this book of practicing. It's not something I read 10 other books, summarize the contents of 10 other books and put it in this book. This is 25 years of my learning and personal experience and personal practice. Plus, everything my guru taught me in the monastery and learning how to focus has gone into this book. That's the only shortcut.

That's the quickest way to overcome this problem you just described. Read the book, understand it, and be in session with the application of it in your daily life. It's not complex, because everything I talk in the book is really, really simple.

It is easy to understand. They don't get into scientific definitions, they don't get into biology, none of that stuff. They talk about how the mind works, awareness in the mind, control how awareness goes into the mind, here are ways to integrate concentration into your daily life. So you can practice it, you can track it, make progress, and learn how to do it. The only thing that's required is your desire for wanting to lead the focus life. And if you don't desire it, you'll never live a focus life. Desire comes first. How badly do you want it? How badly did your classmate want to graduate from the SEAL program? He must have wanted it badly enough

because I don't believe that's an easy program to get through. I have a friend who was a form an 80 SEAL officer. He didn't describe to me that training process or something like, ah, that's a piece of cake. He must have desired to be a SEAL so badly that he got through that program when piece of cake. He must have desired to be a steal so badly that he got through that program when others gave up because I must tubing and I could be wrong that they try everything they can to make you give up. Now they certainly put you through as many hardships as they possibly can to get you

to want to quit. That's for sure. And I remember a story that he told me that there happened to be a high officer who was an exchange student who was going through buds with them. And he said this gentleman had next to zero body fat on him. And they're sitting there in this water and they're freezing. And he goes as cold as I was, I looked at him and he was just buckling because he was so cold he could barely even stand it. And he goes, but watching him, I just thought to myself, if he's not going to quit, then there's no way I'm going to quit. And he said that there were just tons of moments like that,

where sometimes you have a good day, sometimes you have a bad day, but he said there's truly this belief that he got that if things are going to suck, then it's better for them to suck at the front than in the rear. And so he always tried to go through it by showing leadership, by example, which I think there's so many things that you can learn from his experience and what you're talking about here. But ultimately it was his desire to graduate, right?

They got in the through that he wanted to graduate as a seal. He wanted to go through the whole program. In the same way, one must have a desire to lead a focus life. And if you don't desire it badly enough, this book is useless to you. You will never do everything I say in this book.

And why would you have a desire to lead a focus life? For me, that desire comes because you want to experience all the things in your life, all the people in your life that you work so hard to make time for or to create. People go to work, 9 to 5, 9 to 6, 9 to 7, work so hard so they can earn money to go have a great meal somewhere or to go on a five day vacation in Europe or someplace special. But yet when they get to that place or they get to that meal, they're so distracted taking photos of their food, texting, but they don't even enjoy the food or enjoy the location they go to. And then they go through life never experiencing anything fully because they can't be focused. I don't want that.

I want to get to the end of my life, be able to look back and go, I was dead every single moment. Good, bad ugly with all the people I love, with all the experiences I created for myself, I wasn't there fully 100% experiencing all of it. No, I can say I lived a rewarding life. And I get one shot of this life, I don't want to waste it. And by being able to focus, I know I can walk away going, that was a full life, that was a really full life. Yeah, so one of the things I did want to ask you about is, and you describe it a little

bit differently in the book, but I thank right now so many people are dealing with what I see is chronic hopelessness, helplessness, loneliness. And if someone is struggling with one of those things, how can understanding the inner workings of the mind help someone overcome those feelings? Because you do with the mechanics of how the mind works. You can't harness or control a steer, something if you don't understand how it works. A lot of people can drive an automatic car, give them a stick shift car,

and they will know what to do with it. All of a sudden you go, gears and a clutch, most people can drive a stick shift car. But if you talk them how to drive a stick shift car, now they can do things with it. You know, they can maneuver the car, they can steer the car, they can direct it, they can slow it down, they can use the gear, just slow the car down to go faster. Same with the mind. If you don't understand how the mind works, how would you then begin to harness the mind and steer it?

You have the mercy of the mind and your environment around you. I give the example in the book that one of my friends is a Photoshop expert. He took a picture of a midi Cooper, sent it to me on the email and says, he has a photo I took of a midi Cooper and I touched it up. I wrote back and said, so what? Wasn't anything special. This was back in the day and he wrote back to me and says they don't make Ford or Midecoupers. He'd take a picture of a $2 Midecouper, put stretch it out in Photoshop, added two more doors. I couldn't tell if he touched it up. And what that told me was that he had such a good understanding of Photoshop, that he could leverage that understanding to create what he wanted. The same with the mind. If you understood the mind really well enough, you could leverage that understanding to overcome

the challenges that you're having in your mind, whether it's loneliness, depression, sadness, hopelessness. But I think the other thing also with hopelessness is that so many people are just focused on me, myself, and I. And that's why you're feeling hopeless. Stop being selfish, stop thinking about other people, lead to self. When your world is just about you,

and what you want, and what you need, and how you can be happy, I can guarantee you, you will experience sadness, hopelessness, a sense of loss, a sense of without purpose. But when you take an approach of how can I serve, how can I make other people's lives better, how can I make the environment better? Your life will start to change. But for most people today, it's just all about me, how am I going to get, can I put another picture of my face or an Instagram, next to the thousand other pictures of me, me, myself, and I.

Well, we live in a very self-serving world today. Very much so. I mean, everything is about individualism, and that's why one of the core things I'm trying to teach with the guests who are on the show is to show people how they can be better, live better, but most importantly, impact the world by living it in a world-centric way. I think the whole core being of us having this life is to be in service of others. And if you're not doing that, I don't think you're ever going to feel fulfilled or joy or ultimate happiness or whatever emotion people want to say, because you're ever going to feel fulfilled or joy or ultimate happiness or whatever emotion people want to say because you're always going to feel empty inside. Take about serving others.

You know, very few people ask the question, what can I do for you? How can I serve you? How can I help you? It's about what can you do for me? Yeah, and I think that's a good segue into this question, which is, what is the difference between a focus life and a purpose-focused life? In the book I define a focus life as the ability to be a gate to with who and what you're with all the time. So if I was spending time with people or doing things I can be

completely present most things that would be defined as being able to live a focused life. A purpose focus life is the people and things that I choose to engage with or focus on in my day is defined by a purpose. Whereas a focus life, there's no overarching purpose that defines who and what I engage with or focus on during the day. Someone comes up to me or I'll just focus on whatever I need to that day, but it's not defined or driven by overarching purpose. Looks take companies, right? Companies, a lot of successful companies, have defined their purpose, their mission, their vision.

What their employees do throughout the day is driven by that vision and mission. Their focus is purpose-focused. Their focus is purpose-focused. But if a company didn't have a mission or vision statement, or clarity of what they were doing, they would just be focusing on whatever came their way. And using that same analogy, I think, almost all of us have made an excuse in their lives. I'm sure a lot of

employees have made excuses to their bosses, but I wanted to understand as their correlation between making excuses and focusing or leading that purpose-focused life when we're prone to make excuses for our behavior. Behavior of like inability to focus? Well, I'm just saying sometimes when we find ourselves not focusing, we'll make an excuse for our behavior. And I always think that excuses serve a short term purpose, but ultimately their form of betrayal because in the long term, most excuses don't end up having the end result that we hope for.

And I think some people are just prone to making excuse after excuse to cover up for their lack of focus in different elements of their life. Well, I also feel like excuses, a way of not taking ownership over your life. I feel like if you take complete ownership of your life, there's no need to make an excuse because you can say, yes, I made that mistake. I wasn't doing this, you're correct. When someone points out something to you, you don't try to give an excuse, you don't try to defend it, you go, you're right. I didn't do that. I need to work on that to improve that or to make a change. You can take ownership. I think people who struggle to take this will need to make excuses.

And along with ownership comes humility. You can't take ownership over your life if you don't have humility. You need to have lots of humility to be able to look at yourself and go, these are all the good parts and these are all the not-so-good parts. The collective sum total of these makes the party. And I can own it. I'm working on the not so good parts. Some of it I can change over the next few days or few months. Some are going to take a while, 10 years, 20 years. You have to be patient with me. It's a big project I'm undertaking.

But I can own it. While I'm working to change those things, I can guarantee you I'm going to screw up a bunch more times. I don't intend to, but I'm working with a defect here. So bad with me as I work to improve it, and I can own all of it. And because I can own it, I don't need to make an excuse. But that's very hard to do. You need to have a lot of self-compassion and self-emplity to do that. Or something we were taught in the monastery, at least I could say my Guru taught me to have a lot of compassion for myself, to look at myself as a product, as a building on the construction. So, not done yet. It's like rebund, concrete, nails lying around. Still a work in progress. So there's no use. You never walk into construction site and look at the the fallen says oh I was sorry about all

the nails lying around and the rebound and broken center block. They don't say that to construction site. What do you expect? That's a mess. So people go like down the poney or a mess like go yes on the construction site, I'm not finished yet, that I can owe that. So I don't need to make excuses. Okay. And one of my favorite sections of the book was chapter two. And I liked how you kind of started it out by talking about a conference that you were at that had the former secretary general, but one of the former chiefs of staff for the president happened to come up to you and made

a statement about making the case. So we've talked today a lot about focus, a lot about the need to focus more. Someone may be sitting here listening to this and saying, you know, I've heard you guys talk, I've heard about how this focus can help, but can you kind of really anchor it down by making the case of how in doing so, will it change their lives and help them

to become self-realized if that's what their end goal is to become? Yeah, I think at the end of the day, that's why I've spent the first two chapters of the book selling to people why you should live a focus life. Because unless people buy in and talk about three, because it's for leading a focus life, One of them, the greatest it is for leading a focus life, is that it's death. That we all die. And we have one life I might hinder,

I believe in reincarnation. So after I die, I'll reincarnate, but God knows who I'm going to be in my next life. But I do know I have one life as God the Pani. And I do know that this life is finite. It's not short. It's finite, meaning there's a clear definitive end to it. At some point, I'm going to die. Whatever time I have on this planet, I want to live a great life. And the only way I can do that

is if I have clarity of purpose, and I have the ability to stay focused on that purpose. And the fact that I have a finite life drives me every day to live a focused life. I had an entrepreneur asked me many years ago in Istanbul, he said, do the punny how often do you think about dying? And I said to him, to be honest with you, I hardly ever think about dying,

but what I do think about almost every single day is that my life is finally meeting that some point I will die. So how am I going to live the life, the hours that I have, the days that I have, the weeks that I have, the months that I have. If I can identify who and what's important and I can focus on that, the byproducts are going to be extremely rewarding. But to me, that's the only reason the greatest is for leading a focused life. Once you realize that you have a clock that's counting backwards, there's a time on it, you just don't know what that time is. But if you knew you lived a very different life.

The same way if I said to you, just say we're just starting this podcast and going for an hour, five minutes into the podcast, someone came up to you and said, Joe, and you have 30 minutes to live. Would you do the rest of this podcast? Yeah, you cover this in the book. Most people are going to say no, and they're going to want to be with their family or something else. In fact, I love that exercise. How you say, if you had 20 years to live, would you stay here listening to me? If you had five years to live, would you do it? If you had two years, if you had three hours, and it's interesting how people change their responses to that question.

And we all have a timer, right? We just don't know what the timer is. No one would argue, regardless if you're face, you're religion, no one can argue with the fact that we're going to die one day. Because there's no thousand you all may walking around or woman. So at some point we're going to die, we just don't know how much that time is. But once we realize, not understand, but realize the fact that our life is fine, then we see the need to focus. Let's get focused. So we can live a fulfilled life with whatever time we have left.

It's supposed to waste a precious thing called life. I think that's why that saying live like you're dying carries so much weight, but we don't think about it in our everyday lives like we should. We should remind ourselves every day, not that we're going to die, but rather I like to frame it slightly differently and say that our life is finite. I have a finite about a time. And that reminds me every morning that, okay, let's get focused. Well, the last area I wanted to cover with you

was the topic of fear in the book. And it's in the last chapter you talk about that fear is the portal to all lower emotions. And I was hoping you could discuss that a little bit. The heat of philosophy, if you look at the mind and how would I best describe this, you find out chakras or what chakras mean. They are sentient or consciousness and most people are aware of seven that go from the base of the spine to the top of the head in the Hindu philosophy.

Each of those sentient or consciousness are connected connected to certain era of the mind. There are seven more that go from the upper regions of the hip to the souls of the feet. The highest of those, the one around the hips, is fear and lust. And below that is raging again, retaliatory jealousy, and then it goes all the way to the souls of the feet where it's murder and malice. So that's all the lower states of mind. Fear is at the very top. It's the highest point, you should say, on the entry, the doorway to all lower states of mind. So as soon as someone gets to the fear of the mind,

they're the doorway to all lower emotions. After fear, they will experience raging anger. Keep going past that. They start to get into retaliatory jealousy when they start to attack, so we're back again. So fear is an error in the mind. We want to help get out of. The first step of uplifting humanity is to get people out of the fear of the mind into a more intellectual era of the mind where they can start to reason. We have things like use that keep you in the fear of the mind. And it behooves people to keep the majority in the fear of the mind because it's easier to control someone when they're in the fear of the mind. And elephant. How does a scrotty little bit control a giant elephant?

Make the elephant afraid of you. The elephant's afraid of you, this massive animal that can pull logs, push a wall down, will be afraid of you. Will do anything you say. Keep humanity in the fear of the mind and they'll buy whatever you sell them and do whatever you tell them to do. But that's not how we advance humanity. We've got to get humanity out of the fear of the mind to reasoning error of the mind. Hey, that's interesting. You bring up the elephant. When the elephant are young, they secure them more arduously, but then as that elephant gets older, it starts learning, learned helplessness, to the point where they can have a small stake in the ground with a detach to just one of its legs and it still won't move because

it has so much fear, because it's tried so many times to break free in the past. And I think our lives and the cells that we put around ourselves are very much the same. And it's learning to break through those, as you're saying, that I think can carry such an enormous positive impact on our lives if we can find ways to confront that and overcome it. and find ways to confront that and overcome it. Yeah, and in the book, I teach people how to use the understanding of awareness of mind to overcompere. And it's not difficult to do once you understand the inner working of a mind. Well, for the audience, I did want to also point them to the TED Talk that you gave that now has, I think, over six million views, because I think that that is a very good primer in addition to the book for them understanding your teaching.

But Data Potty, if someone wanted to learn more about you, what are some ways that they can do that besides buying the book, which I of course will put links to. Thank you. And the show notes. I would say in my website, dandapuddy.org, I have a weekly newsletter. It hasn't been quite weekly as I prepare finishing up the book and prepare to launch it. But I do send it weekly with some insights and tools. So if you want it to freeze subscription, I do have an app you can download the app store play store that has some courses in there. A lot of free audio and video as well that you can listen to some practices rituals that you can help you practice concentration on a daily basis. So those are things I would recommend to check out. Well, great. Well, thank you so much for joining us here today. It was truly an honor for me, and I know this is a core topic for our audience to really understand, and it can be life-changing.

If you implement the practices that you outline in the book, and as you said, the way you write it is simplistic in the way that you describe the different techniques that you have to do, but it's kind of building blocks that you provide in the book, and you the different techniques that you have to do, but it's kind of building blocks that you provide in the book and you've got to follow them if you want to be able to do this on a continual basis. Yeah, and exactly the book is just only a good read for you, but unless you understand and practice consistently what's in that, it's not going to help. But if you do, it's life changing.

The contents of that book has changed my life. And I know it will change yours too. You only just need to implement and practice what's in that. It's a teaching that thousands of years old. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And congratulations again on this amazing book launch. Thank you so much and thank you for having me greatly appreciate it.

What an inspirational interview that was with Don DePonny and I wanted to thank Don DePonny, Amanda Lang, Portfolio and Penguin Random House for giving us the honor of having him come on this podcast and us helping him launch his new book. Links to all things Don DePonny will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any book from the guests that's on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show and making it free for our listeners. If you're new to the show or you would just like to introduce this to a friend or family member, we now have episode starter packs both on the PassionStruck website and on Spotify, and they are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize

into topics to give any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything we do here on the show. Just go to PassionStruck.com slash starter packs to get started. Advertiser deals and discount codes are all in one convenient place at PassionStruck.com slash deals. I'm at Johnner Miles, both on Instagram and Twitter, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. And if you want to know how I book amazing guests like Don DePonny, it's because of my network. Go out there and leverage yours. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview I did with the one and only Rachel Hollis, who is a repeat number one New York Times best selling

author top ranked podcaster with over a hundred million downloads and one of the most sought after personal development speakers in the world. The last two years two and a half years really for me have been filled with those defining moments. It's been a really hard couple of years on personal levels, professional levels. I've experienced a lot of loss, a lot of grief. And in that process, as brutal as it's been, I am a completely different person. I'm a completely different mama. I'm a completely different writer. I'm a completely different everything. I wanted to remember that every great thing I have in my life came on the

other side of hardship, came on the other side of a difficult season, or a hard lesson to learn. The fee for this show is that you share it with family and friends when you find something that inspires or motivates you. If you know someone who's dealing with distraction and would love to learn a power of focus, please share this episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give us is when you share the show with those that you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, live life passion struck. you