Sense of Soul - One People One Planet

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast is Michael Glauser. He is an entrepreneur, business consultant, and university professor. He has built successful companies in the retail, wholesale, and educational industries and has worked with hundreds of businesses—from startups to multinational enterprises—in leadership development, communication, team building, and organizational strategy. Today, Michael serves as Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. He’s also the Director of the SEED poverty alleviation program, helping people around the world to improve their standard of living and benefit their communities through entrepreneurship. In this episode Michael joined us to tell us about his amazing new book One People One Planet, 6 Universal Truths for Being Happy Together, this book exemplifies how by overcoming fabricated egos, refraining from judging others, engaging in good deeds, etc., society can move into a space with more happiness and peace through real people and their real stories. https://www.onepeopleoneplanet.com @mjglauser Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon, our community of seekers and lightworkers. Also recieve 50% off of Shanna’s Soul Immersion experience as a Patreon member, monthly Sacred circles, Shanna and Mande’s personal mini series, Sense of Soul merch and more. https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Thank you to our Sponsor!   KACHAVA:  https:// kachava.com/senseofsoul Use this link for 10% off  

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Check out our Patreon. Today we have with us Michael Glauser. He is an entrepreneur, a business consultant, and university professor. He has built successful companies in retail, wholesale, and educational industries and has worked with hundreds of businesses from startups to multinational enterprises in leadership development, communication, team building, and organizational strategy. Michael serves as Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in the John M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. And today he's joining us to tell us about his new book, One People, One Planet. And with that title, I can't wait to hear more about it. So welcome, Michael, to Sons of Soul.

Hi there. Hey, how are, to Sins of Soul. Hi there. Hey, how are you? I'm Shanna. Hi, Shanna. Nice to meet you. I'm Mike, as you know. Thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, we finally connect. I'm excited to visit with you. I was reading your website and your Instagram and different things this morning, trying to get to know you before our meeting. You have so much good stuff to put out there to the world. We're trying.

Well, it's amazing. And you've done so many things. Gosh, you must be a busy man. Sometimes. Yes. So tell me, where are you located? Where do you live? I'm in Colorado.

In Colorado. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. In suburbs of Denver. I'm in Aurora. Very good. Yeah. We had our consulting firm. We had an office in Aurora at one time years ago. Love Colorado. It's a great place. Oh, wow. So where are you? Are you in Utah?

I'm in Salt Lake City right now. Yes. Okay. Awesome. Gosh, so concerning about Salt Lake. I was reading about some stuff about how it is drying up and gets lower and lower every year. Yeah, the Great Salt Lake might not be around much longer. Well, and I heard that the repercussions could be very catastrophic. We'll hope for the best. Yeah, kind of scary. You know, if we fix ourselves, then we'll fix, I believe, that that'll kind of spread out to the earth as well. That's my whole approach is that civility has to happen with each individual adopting and developing civil values. It can't be enforced or mandated or monitored. We have to internalize a set of values out of desire that we have to be better people. And that creates civil behaviors, which creates civil groups and civil organizations. So

doesn't that kind of just make sense? It seems like it to me. You know, after all of these billions of years, somebody would have figured it out. A lot of people have figured it out, but we just don't practice. We need to practice. Yeah. But you know what? Now that people can jump on and have podcasts like this and reach thousands of people, maybe it's technology, which is a curse and a blessing. The age of Aquarius, right? So tell us a little bit about yourself. You're also a very successful entrepreneur and businessman. So I was kind of a strange kid as a college student. I fell in love with the concept of building organizations, which we now call entrepreneurship. I thought it would be so cool to build these human organizations where we worked on important issues. We created great products and great services, but there were also really remarkable places to work where people wanted to

be. And so to create great organizations, kind of passion me through three degrees quickly, a bachelor's master's and PhD. And I started teaching at the university of North Carolina. I was 28 years old with a PhD and, and I walked into my first class. It was an MBA executive education class. And I was the youngest kid in the class by probably 15 years. And I thought, you know, I've been studying organizations and teaching organizations. And

if I want to ever be a thought leader, I need to go out and try to build some. So I stayed in academics for about four years and then left and spent some time building some companies. And I tried to practice what I'd been preaching and tried to build excellent companies. And then I sold some of those and went back to academics. When I went back to academics, I saw that what we were teaching about entrepreneurship had nothing to do with real life experiences of entrepreneurs, very academic and research based. And so I started what I call the oral history project. And I would interview hundreds of entrepreneurs and try to get their stories from A to Z beginning to up to today of how you really build organizations, which led me back into, you know,

academics and working with college age students, and then working as a consultant with new level managers and executives. So what I've noticed, the statistics are frightening, as you know, from the National Institute of Mental Health and the US Census Bureau, at the high school level, about 40% of the students say that they feel persistently hopeless. That's four out of 10. And 20% of them have thoughts of suicide. At the college level, it's not any better. 40% of college students today say they're so depressed at times they can't do schoolwork during the semester. And shockingly, 60% say they're lonely a lot of the time. And I think, you know, we're so connected through social media,

but these are superficial connections. We're not having the friendships that where we go to lunch and we talk and we balance each other's thoughts and we support each other. And we as human beings are social individuals. We need to have people around us. And so I thought it would be really helpful maybe if I could look at some proven principles of happiness. Do we know really what makes people happy? And do we have evidence that those concepts really work? And so that kind of started my journey of really researching a variety of sources on

happiness, mental health, civility, and communities. So that's kind of a quick background summary of what led to the research behind the book. Wow, I love that. Did you run into how important it was because of the oxytocin that we release in our brains, and we need that? Because that was one road that I went down. And when we are not together, we don't release oxytocin. And oxytocin is what makes us happy. It's like the happy hormone. Yeah, here's the challenge is there is now some new research that being online and gaming online and getting followers produces oxytocin and dopamine, the same response as we have from intimate warm relationships. And so it's becoming almost addictive. And the summary of my research is that, you know, the highest level of happiness comes

in the context of relationships with other people. We don't do well alone. And I find it interesting if you read some of the bestselling books on happiness and you look at the list of things they tell us to do, it's things like set goals personally for yourself, accomplish one big thing each day, get control of your morning, start working out and getting in good physical shape. And it's quite insular. It's kind of like me, me, me. But the research shows you're happiest if you develop positive relationships. If you quit judging other people, you quit putting people in categories, you don't hold anger, You forgive people. You do good deeds. You care for the needy. All those things that we now know produce a higher

level of happiness than being self-focused. You know, that also reminds me of in my journey, when I discovered that happiness really didn't come from outside of me. It was something that it was an inner journey because it was felt inside. So it's deeper than just those superficial, put a happy affirmation on your mirror to look at every morning. Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. We had sadly four children at the high school within this past two weeks die at the high school. Two of them were in a car accident and two of them were from suicide, all within a two-week period. And oh, I have goosebumps and everything right now just saying

it. But I mean, it's just, it's really sad. This is the pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. I say we have two epidemics in the country, an epidemic of despair. And I live in a really nice neighborhood with professional people. And we've had three suicides of teenagers in our neighborhood. And so this anxiety, depression, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts is just running rampant in our younger age demographics. And then the second epidemic is this epidemic of incivility, that's just real hatred for certain groups of people. And I think a lot of that at least some of it comes from you know this new news society of cable news where they channels have a narrative and they go look for stories to beat up other groups that are not like them and

we hear a lot of things that just cause contention and division and hatred. That's right. I saw on your Instagram, you had a quote that said, we don't solve the world's problems by being segregated. And that one really got my attention because, and I joke about it, but it's really not a joke. But sometimes I feel like we live in the divided states of America. Yeah. Yeah, it seems to be worse than it's been in my career. And so the book was an attempt to promote greater happiness, personal happiness, better relationships, and more civility in groups

and communities. That's what led to this long research project I've been working on for quite some time. Well, and I think that's a perfect time because with the elections coming up, we already know it's going to be brutal. I myself choose not to play. For me, it's my discernment, right? How do I feel? Literally, I have had my mother, who, God bless her, actually called me and said, which devil should I vote for is actually what she said the last time. And I was like, that's actually kind of good. But you know, for so long, I think that people have chose groups just because, right? There's no rhyme or reason. It was Mandy one time said, if everyone just voted on the

things that mean something to them, what would that look like? Attached no names, like maybe a Republican might be a Democrat, or maybe they would be neither. But it would be interesting. You know, it's that popularity thing or choosing sides, right? Is that primal in us though? Is that primal? Yeah. I think we're all searching for our identity in life. And in fact, this is the first concept in the book. There are six principles that help us to be happy together. That's important, happy together. And the first one has to do with our ego. And we think of ego as something that is a puffed up self-importance. I'm better than you.

But, you know, it's been defined throughout history. Ego is the composite set of self-perceptions we have about who we are. So all the literature says, you know, we have two selves. We have a true self, which is the potential of a human being. And we have tremendous potential to learn and to grow and to become decent people and to be happy. And then we have this egoic self, which is the, you know, composite of all the feedback we've been given about who we are, you know, from our parents and from our teachers, from our friends and from the media. And, you know, we grow up thinking that, you know, I'm

too tall, I'm too short, I'm too thick, I'm too thin, I'm athletic, I'm not athletic enough. I'm pretty, I'm not pretty, I'm smart. So we have these self-perceptions and the early spiritual writers from the Hindu faith and Buddhist faith call this a fabricated self. And so this fabricated self is not real, it's an illusion and it sets bounds and limitations on us. And the other problem is it causes us to be very self-centered. We get up every morning thinking about me, me, me, me, me. And do people like me? Do I look right?

Do they say the right things? It's like we're the actor in our own movie and we're on this self-centered treadmill. And so when we can finally shed that egoic self or those fabricated self-centered treadmill. And so when we can finally shed that ego itself or those fabricated self-perceptions say, hey, I'm a work in progress and I can do great things. I can learn and I can grow and I can develop and I'm going to go out in the world to see how I can add value. And that really frees us. It just frees our mind and leads to a higher level of happiness. And that leads to the second principle in the book is that we form perceptions of other people in the same way we form perceptions of ourself. It's through what

we hear about them. We look at superficial cues like color and race and ethnicity and political party and religion and sexual preferences. And because humans are complex, we take that one thing and say, because this person's like this, they're also like this. And we construct these complete artificial personalities of people. And then we end up putting them in groups and we decide who what groups will affiliate with and what groups we won't affiliate with. And so that limits the number of people we have human experiences with. So refraining from judging is the learning to get rid of our biases and refraining from judging and cutting other people's slack is the second great principle. So first, you realize that your self perceptions are fabrications, and there's more to you. And

then you realize that's the same with other people. And so I'm going to quit judging them and putting them into groups and categories and really try to get to know them. Oh, that's so good. That is so good. And I think that that was what broke me open was when I was being the witness of my thoughts in a mindfulness class, I had two voices going on in my head. One was saying, you should be home doing dishes. You shouldn't be here. This is a waste of time. You should be at home with your children. And my other voice was like, but this is for me. This is my health, right? And I was arguing with myself, right?

It's the little angel and the devil on the shoulder. This one girl in time on the podcast, she calls her ego, her drunk best friend. I find some of the therapists that I've interviewed say it helps to call that ego give it a name like my name is Jake and I can call it Mikey and so when I'm hearing those thoughts I can't do this I'm not good enough that's my fabricated illusionary self Mikey talking it's not Michael I have a little brother named Mikey and I still call him Mikey by the way I love it you know I also you don't have to kill the ego because some people say, you know, the goal is to not have one, but you have to have

one, but have a happy ego. Yeah. Happiest ego is the true self that, you know, I have potential. If someone can learn something, I can learn it too. If someone can gain this skill, I can probably gain it if I really want to. And that I do more things than what I've been fed about myself from early communication with parents and teachers and friends and colleagues and so on. And, you know, there's quite a bit evidence that the self, the self image or ego forms pretty early in life by eight, 10, 12 years old, we have a really good perception of who we are. And it's been fed to us by others. I have a kid who's 10 and you can tell us very much coming in when it's like, nobody wears that. Okay, ego. Yeah. And I teach at a university now, but I didn't want it to be academic. I want it to be a fun, friendly read

that would touch everybody. And so I teach these principles through the stories of remarkable people that have been living in despair and have figured a way out. And that's some of the happiest people I know. So their stories teach these principles of like giving up the ego or ref really judging people. I feel like I've been pretty good at that. I had to pause and consider that maybe someone's having a lot going on in their life. And this is why they're being a total dick. And I've taught my children that too, like be kind to people, especially the ones that are being rude and they're angry because you don't know what's going on. Something's going on with them very deeply. You know, don't excuse them for bad behavior, of course, towards you, but don't let it get to you either. Because what it does, you take that with you anyways. So, you know, one of the great stories I found is one of my heroes is R. Shea Cooper.

He's in the book and he grew up in the gang territories of Chicago. And he had to walk across three different gang territories to get to high school. And he stepped over bodies and blood in the street and was shot at and beat up. And he couldn't wear his hat a certain way. He couldn't wear certain colors. And one day a couple showed up and said, we want to form a rowing team here at Manly High School in Chicago. It was the most dangerous high school in the country at the time. And no one wanted to join this rowing team, but they finally convinced some rival gang members to get in this boat and learn how to row on this rowing team. And he tells this transformative story, how they realized that they had all experienced trauma and they had all joined gangs for belonging, that they needed a

family and they needed protection and that they were far more alike than they were different. And they realized that the attitude they had about each other came from things they had heard about each other, not from real world experiences with each other and they started really liking each other and becoming best friends then they thought boy if this works for rival gang members let's see if we can make friends with the Chicago Police Department and so they invited cops from you know white cops from the Chicago Police Department to row with them in this boat. And again, they realized they were more alike than they were different. And they developed really good friendships and relationships.

And so the message of the story is, we're all more alike than we are different. And it's easy to hate from a distance. It's really harder to hate up close when you get to know people. What I teach is that we can read a lot about biases. We can take the Harvard implicit association tests and learn what our biases are. And intellectually we know. So intellectual study changes our mind, but it's interaction with others who are different that changes our hearts. We have to be involved with others that are not like us. And we start realizing I have way more opportunities for friendships on this earth than I thought I did. That is so beautiful. My God, that is me.

I love that story. So this book is bringing all of these concepts and these universal truths together with people's true experiences. Yeah, it's taking truths that we've learned from spiritual leaders, philosophy, and mostly modern day science, and teaching those truths through the stories of people that have used them to change their lives. So the book, the chapter on ego, I have a former ex-convict that spent 20 years in prison in Los Angeles. And he was the meanest, baddest guy in the yard. He held the keys to the yard, which meant he was the leader of the white gang. And he is now the most incredible, marvelous, happy, peaceful, kind, serving individual. I know he's a role model to me. And he talks about his

journey to changing his self-perception of who he was. Wow. So what is the third universal truth? Okay. The third one is awesome. If you're feeling sad today, this will change you right now. You can go out and do it. And it's just doing good deeds. I say doing good deeds daily. And there's so much research to show that if we get up in the morning and instead of thinking me, me, me, me, me, we think of, is there anyone I can help today? Is there anyone I can call on the phone? Can I give up my seat on the bus? Can I pay for the toll of the car behind me? Can I call an old friend? Can I go see someone who I knew lost his or her job? Can I go shovel someone's snow? You get snow in Colorado. We get a lot of it. Can I take a meal to someone? And the research shows that, you know, doing good deeds for others produces that chemical response in our brains that produces greater emotional reactions and also physical reactions

were healthier. And so the saying that, you know, a lot of these rehab programs I've helped work with, the saying is when person A helps person B, person A gets better. And so it's that just saying, I'm going to go out and add value today. I'm not going to think about myself as much. I'm going to go out and try to add some value and see where I can make someone else's life better. Powerful, powerful medicine. Yeah. You know, and I've sat around and thought about this with my kids as well. Like, you know, what are the good things that we can do, you know, for others? And sometimes it's just something simple, like put the basket away, right? I walked right past the guy who was pushing 20 baskets yesterday, you know, and I put it away. And he just kind of looked at me like, thank you. And just so something simple too, you know, can also be a good act of service. And one of the fun stories I tell in the book, a friend of mine, Richard Paul Evans, is a

New York Times bestselling author. He started with his book, The Christmas Box, and has sold 20 million copies of his books. And he said when he was becoming, you know, quite well known and rather famous in the literary world, he was traveling a lot and his marriage started really just deteriorating. And it got so bad that he'd come home and they were constantly fighting and they both thought, you know, this isn't going to work. And that broke his heart. He didn't want to divorce his wife. And he said he was in a hotel in Atlanta one night, just sobbing, thinking, you know, it's over with. And what am I going to do now? And he had this thought, this epiphany that he knew he knew what he needed to do. And so he went home and in the morning,

he woke up and said, Harry, what can I do to make your life better today? And she said, what are you talking about? No, I just want to do some please bear with me here. What can I do today to make your life better? She said, Okay, go out and clean the garage. So he did it. And the next day, Carrie, what can I do to make your life better? Do the dishes. And, you know, after about a week, she goes, Richard, why are you doing this? And he said, because I love you. And I want to save this marriage if I can. And then they, she broke down and said, Hey, I've been contributing to the problems. It's more me than you. And they had the best talk they'd had in years. And then she started saying, Hey, Richard, how can I, how can I better help you in life? What can I do for you today? And they started just doing daily

good deeds for each other. And he claims today that that saved his marriage, that good deeds improved their relationship significantly. And they fell back in love with each other. Oh, my gosh, I'm crying. I mean, that is beautiful. I mean, just unbelievable. Like how have the students go out and try to do good deeds. And each week they try to implement some of these things and they come back and it's just amazing with almost tears in their eyes. I see one girl. So I devote Tuesday night to calling people

that I think might need to hear from me. And another guy goes out each day and looks for someone that he thinks and meditates and kind of prays and says, if there's someone I can help, I'd like to know who that is. And the universe speaks to us when we're trying to do good. And just it's, you know, the cool thing about these concepts in the book is they make a difference in real time. You know, you don't have to do them for three or four months before you start feeling better. I'll never forget one time I was at the doctor's office and I went into the bathroom and there was a sticky note on the mirror and it said something like you are beautiful or something. And I was like, I'll never forget it.

Right. It was that. I mean, it was just that act of kindness. It made my day, made me feel better. It definitely produced a lot of oxytocin for me in that moment and brought me lots of happiness. And it sticks out to me, right? It's those moments that when someone does something just sticks out to you. I have many moments like that.

And people should reflect on them because they'll notice that there's a lot of them. Yeah, I find that the more you practice these concepts, if you practice them today, you'll feel better today. And if you practice them over a longer period of time, you can really become pretty happy and pretty high. Sometimes you just sit on your couch or a chair and go, man, I feel really, really good. It's like a drug that doesn't do any harm to your body. It's a high that is available to all of us. And it's fun. I mean, my kids years ago, we made a Twitter and I think it was called something about

something rocks, like project rocks or something. We painted all these rocks and we would call it dropping rocks. And I mean, I had my teenagers involved all the way to like my three-year-old at the time. And we would just put positive affirmations, put them all over our city everywhere. And then on the back, we put like a Twitter account with like a hashtag that if you found it, you could tell us, you know, a story about it. Well, I was so excited. We got a Twitter. It was a 13 year old girl on her birthday had found it at a park. And she took a picture of the rock and put it on Twitter, but it just is amazing. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. It was so fun, but you know,

sometimes people do things for people with expectations. So it's like always checking your intention and, you know, I mean, had no one ever responded, that would have been fine too, you know? But it was nice to know that it did make someone's day better. And this is interesting. The research shows doing good deeds helps you feel better, but it works a lot better if you're not expecting anything in return. Otherwise, it's like a loan, you know? I'm going out and doing this because I want something personally. You have to really care about others and you have to want to be a contributor. You have to want to add value and, and you can't do it to get recognition or payback because you're always disappointed if that's why you're doing it. Right. I believe that's part of that law.

I think that that's part of that law of attraction, right? It's like your intentions have to be the most important thing behind it. Yeah. Yeah. see within families, a lot of my clients, you know, I've been a massage therapist for years and an energy worker. And it's the one thing that I see that blocks people, both emotionally and physically, like your health is in jeopardy when you carry around such, you know, sadness inside, really. Yeah, this has been researched almost more than all the others. There's a fact, a professor at the University of Wisconsin that's done over 100 studies on forgiveness. And the evidence is so clear. I mean, this was taught by the ancient Hindu sages and by Buddha and by Christ and by Muhammad.

Everyone is that you can't hold anger and grudges. You've got to let go or it'll destroy you. It's like drinking poison and hoping the other person over there dies. It affects our minds. It affects our emotions. It affects our physical body. One of the teachings of Buddha that I love, he said, there's three kind of people with regard to taking offense. He said, the first type is the person that's like a line etched in stone. It's rather permanent. The second group is like a line etched in the dirt or the sand, and it's still there, but it's less permanent. And the third group is like a line etched in water.

It immediately goes away. So his teaching was learn to become a line etched in water. Don't take offense in the first place. You know, we can work hard to try to teach other people not to offend us. And, you know, this whole movement towards safety and safe spaces. And, you know, at the university, there's been a lot of talk, but you can't say anything in this class that'll make me feel bad. And there's more or less support for that from administrations. And we can't really control what other people do, but we can control ourselves and we can learn not to take offense at what people say or do. And we can say, hey, they're growing just like I'm growing. I haven't made mistakes. They make mistakes.

I can be different tomorrow. They can be different tomorrow. And so let's let it go and cut people some slack. And we enjoy life better and we're healthier and happier. Probably the most powerful story in the book is a family whose teenage son was shot and killed randomly. He was 18 years old. He just graduated from high school. It was in the summer of his year before college. And he was up at a lake with one of his friends and someone walked up behind him and shot him and killed him. And the woman, her name is Cy Snart. She said she fell into a deep, deep hatred. The young man that shot her son was Hispanic, and she hated Hispanic people. She knew it was unreasonable, but she

just couldn't be around them. She hated them, and she hated the killer, and hated his family, and wanted the state to kill him and give him the death sentence. And she was so miserable, so unhappy, and suicidal for almost 20 years. And she knew it was just ruining her life. And she saw that it was hurting her other kids that she still had. And then a miracle happened is the man that shot her son wrote her a letter from prison after 20 years and just said, hey, I know I destroyed you and your family. I am so sorry. I was a stupid young kid. I acted on my own. My family was not like this. They taught me good values. This is all my fault. It's ruined my life as well. I continue to think about it every day. And I just want you to know

how sorry I am that this happened. And she said it started her healing process that she wrote him back and then they wrote each other. And then they signed their letters, you know, love Jorge, love Cy. And then they started talking on the phone during his weekly phone call. And she eventually went into the prison and they talked for two hours straight about their lives and about their families. And then now she invites his mother over for dinner and his brother's daughter lived in her duplex for a while. And she just talks about the difference between holding onto that hatred and what it did to her and now forgiving and moving on.

And she said, it's kind of ironic that I know this family and I love this family because of the death of my son, but she truly loves them and actually would like to see him get out of prison after 20 years. And we spend a lot of time interviewing her on camera and her stories in the book. And she actually read the letter to us. If you go to our website, one people, one planet.com in this lesson on forgiveness, there's about a 30 minute story of her telling the story and actually reading the letter that she got from the prison. She's a role. I've taken her to speak to ex-convicts and she's amazing. She's just happier than she's ever been. Yeah. Let that shit go. That's my favorite one. Wow. That is such a beautiful story. Mike, you're killing me. I usually don't cry an entire

episode. I'm sorry. I mean, it's just very heartfelt. These are the kinds of stories so that hit people's hearts, you know, and why, because this is soul work, right? This is actually the kind of stuff I think people need. They need to be affected, right? This is really deep stuff. It's been one of my great experiences in life to go out and meet all these people. We interviewed dozens of people for the book. We interviewed religious leaders. We interviewed social workers, people with training in positive psychology, ex-convicts, women rescued from the slave trade, which I get to work with all over the world in one of my organizations. And it's just so inspiring that, you know, I wanted to teach the concepts through the stories.

So the book would be non-academic and not boring. And so you get to read about all these people. And on our website, we have a training program where you actually get read about all these people and on our website we have a training program where you actually get to see all these people uh talking about these experiences so it's been a very fun project yeah i love that i did see that i saw that there was an actual like online course you could actually take as well in addition to the book so the next one is share our good fortune. And you also did a lot of research in this as well. And one of the things that stuck out just in the description was declutter your life. And today, actually, after we get off of our interview, I'm decluttering my closet.

So that was like just another validation that I really needed to get in my closet and clean it. This is one that started with the the great Hindu sages and Buddha and Christ and Muhammad, they talked about not being attached to material things that they don't bring us happiness. And the problem is material things tend to feed this fabricated self-esteem, this fabricated ego. We become what we own, and it reinforces this false sense of self. The car we have, the house we have, the clothes we wear. There's now new evidence that attachment to material things leads to frustration, fear of losing those things, fabricated, distorted sense of self and self-importance. And when we have enough for our needs, it's sufficient for our needs, but then we're willing to share what we have.

And it can be time and it can be our talents and it can be money and it can be material goods. But people that are less attached to things and more willing to share, no question, the research is clear. These are happier people. You know what? Our local Goodwill is going to be very happy with me. But, you know, I do want to ask you a very important question that people ask me, because impermanence is a huge part of my teaching and my journey. Yes.

I believe attachment is the root of all suffering. Yeah. How do you not be attached to people though? Children, you know, things like that. People ask me that all the time. Well, attachment to people is awesome. It's good. It's what produces those positive relationships and those good feelings.

And, you know, and it can get to an extreme where it's not healthy. It's a dependency. But to love people and have lots of friends and be committed to be part of groups and circles is positive. But the lust for things and the desire for things and having those things define who we are, it's just a problem. You know, Buddha introduced that concept of impermanence, that everything is changing. Nothing's ever the same. We need to just be less concerned about the things of the world, more concerned about being decent human beings. But when Gandhi was asked, he was asked by a journalist to summarize his teachings in 25 words or less. And Gandhi said, I can do it in three,

renounce and enjoy. And so we had an interesting experience. We remodeled our home this year. We had to move everything out of all the closets and the kitchen and the furniture. And so that, you know, the painters and the floor installers could come in. And when we were done I hadn't worn for 10 years and people that could use those and gave away most of what we had and brought minimal stuff back in the house. And we have a minimalist lifestyle with a little bit of furniture, not a lot of pictures on the walls. And we reduced our closets down to about a fourth of what we had. And it just is so enjoyable to come in here and feel uncluttered and free, kind of a process for decluttering our lives and decluttering our homes. You know, to give to people in need is one of those, another really, really important

happiness concepts that produces those positive chemicals in our minds and our bodies. And so sharing is sharing is awesome. Yeah. I mean, if you're not using it, why do you have it? You know, or if it doesn't really hold that much sentimental value, you know, I have a cedar chest that I put stuff like my daughter's first haircut and her hair, you know, but then I also have like tons of artwork from them. I'm like, why, you know, maybe I need to go through and just choose one piece of artwork instead of like a whole file of it. My dad was like this too, when he died and I had a hard time getting rid of all his stuff. And so I had, not only did I adopt the genetic trait of keeping everything from him, but then when he died, I got all of his stuff, too.

We've had that same experience with our parents passing. And I actually had a sister who was a police officer, 54 years of age, that died last year unexpectedly. And we had to kind of figure out what to do with her estate. You know, our commitment was then we want our lives to be so simple that if we die, our kids can come in and in one day have the house on the market and have our stuff taken somewhere and not have to spend weeks and weeks figuring out what to do with things that we don't use. And so kind of the rule I use in the book is with regard to clothing and appliances. And, you know, you haven't worn something for an entire year,

haven't used something, maybe you don't need it. Yeah, I gave away so much of my stuff. And this year, I've, I've gone to the closet, maybe twice and say, Oh, I want that jacket. And I go, Oh, yeah, I don't have that anymore. You know, it's only happened a couple times. I know, that's really crazy that we're talking about this. So this must be an edge from the universe that this has to be done. But how good you feel. You mentioned how great it felt. It feels free, right? When you're able to declutterize, because it really does affect your mental health. things look good on the outside, then we were good. No one would have to know what was happening in the inside. So when anybody would come over and like, yeah, don't open that closet. Don't, don't go in that drawer. Don't go in that drawer. I'll get it for you. Because I would shove everything in these closets and drawers, right? Just like I was doing inside. It's so interesting how that was. Yeah. It's a nice analogy there.

Yeah. You look around your surroundings and then you consider what's going on in your head. It's very similar. Yeah, exactly. So you have six. What's the last one? Yeah. So the last one is kind of an extension of doing good deeds daily, but it's a little

deeper than that. There are people that are suffering in all our communities. They've maybe gone through a divorce or they've lost a job or they have a life-threatening illness or they've lost a child or something. And these people need more than just a high and a good deed and you're beautiful. They need a mentor. They need someone to help them. And so I use the saying, each one teach one. If we could find a group in our community or an individual and just say, I'm going to be friend and help mentor this person in need. It's a little longer term than random good deeds. The whole community rises.

If we were all doing that, the whole community would improve. And again, what the research shows is that we can give people things to help them out of a crisis. But what they need more than anything is an ongoing mentoring. You know, we work all over the world in our poverty alleviation program, and we can give people loans and we can put them through training courses. But what helps the most is if we show up every week and we mentor them through this whole process, and it might take months or even a year.

So it's really finding the needy in our communities rather than casting them aside, saying we value them. They are important. And we are going to figure out a way to help them through their crises. And it's more teaching, mentoring, friendship that solves the problem in the long run. And that's the reason why we started our podcast is so that people didn't feel alone. Like we were going through the same things. I just got an email this morning that we hit 300 episodes and we consistently show up, you know, twice a week. I sat there and I was like, wow, that's a lot. Then I thought about the reach that we have. And really, I never thought we, Mandy and I were so like, wow,

we just hoped that it would land on one person's ear that maybe we could help originally. So it's just the storytelling, you know, like I've been there too, right? You share your story and then other people feel like they're not alone. I find that's the best way to teach. I've also been a teacher a lot of my career and stories are more powerful and act human connection. Yeah. Just recently, I heard something that reminds me of what we're talking about, that our journey is to find our gifts. But then when we find our gifts, the purpose is to give it away. Yeah. There's a great story in the book of a woman I met years ago. I was so impressed with her. I featured her organization in another book, but her name's Rita, Rita Schiavone. And she wanted to be active and busy and when you cook a meal, you go buy those TV dinner trays and each night you put, you know, one serving of that meal in that TV dinner tray and freeze it. And she went around Philadelphia and got all the churches and schools. She was speaking and asking

them to do this on radio and TV stations. And she set up some central warehouses with coolers and she's now fed, I think offered, I last checked, maybe 20 million meals to the homeless, mostly to the elderly needy. And she solved the problem of elderly people not having food to eat in that city. And it's such a simple concept because we waste 20, 25% of the food that we cook. So there's, there's a lot of cool stories about how people have made a huge difference by doing something small. All right. Now I got to declutter my refrigerator. Okay. Check. You know what, Mike, I'd like to share a story to our listeners have maybe heard me talk about this before, but I have a friend who, unfortunately, she lost both of her daughters, her only children, one to suicide and one in a tragic car accident. And her and other mothers

who had lost their children to suicide had gotten together and I helped them actually make a website called sibling to sibling for the siblings who have lost their sibling to suicide. And they put together a box of stuff. And it was really, it's really amazing because where it stemmed from was my friend's daughter who ended up dying in the car accident. She wanted to do this because she said, no one ever thinks about the siblings. And that was her idea. We should give the siblings something. And I just thought it was so beautiful that she was able to continue what her daughter who passed had wanted to do, but also to help spread that love, you know? So it's amazing. Yeah one of the uh people we interviewed said their philosophy is that our misery is our mission we've been through a tragic experience we're so much more prepared to

help others through that yeah yeah but i mean i just thought about her because she is an example of all this sounds like a hero and a role model. Sorry. Pain leads to purpose. Yeah. Oh my goodness, you got me a weepy. I haven't been weepy in so long. I'm so sorry.

That wasn't my intention. God, Mandy would have loved to have talked to you. She's a storyteller. She's all about being vulnerable and sharing her story. And first I was like, why are you telling people all of your dirt? And I started to, because, you know, we looked at vulnerability different. I saw it as a weakness, you know, because I grew up my family being like, you know, you don't tell people our business, you know, you don't, don't tell people your weaknesses, you know, stuff like that. And that was one of the biggest things in this journey for me that really, I felt that freedom to be able

to share my story. And then also I saw how there was that human connection that's so important. So I love that the basis of this is sharing the stories of real people and going through these. I mean, every single one of those universal truths are things that I all firmly believe that are very vital to every single human. Well, our hope is to, we're on a mission with my team to promote the book and our training programs and university courses and lectures and to try to help people find greater happiness. And these concepts, we call them universal truths because they really work and they've been taught for 5,000 years. It's really interesting when I did this research, I went back to all the original religious texts of the biggest world's religions,

not all the breakaway groups and the quarreling and the fighting and the bickering, which we see in Islam and Christianity and Hinduism and Buddhism, but what did the original founders actually teach? And those manuscripts are so beautiful. There's so much of value there that these truths have been known for thousands of years. So we want to spread the news and we try to make the book really fun and simple and easy to read. And we have applications at each chapter. How do you apply this and how do you do something with this now? That's awesome. So you also, you know, challenge them to take some action. Yeah, there's some challenges, some takeaways, and some strategies at the end of every chapter. I love this. So tell everybody, Mike,

where they could find your book and the website so they can also maybe take the course if they wanted to. So our website is onepeopleoneplanet.com. And the book is on all the sites, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, pretty much in all the retail book sites out there. There's an audio book. There's an e-book and paperback and hardback. All versions are available. In fact, the audio book is free. If you sign up for Audible for a 30-day trial, you can sign up, get the book for free.

And then if you don't like Audible, you can cancel it. I even have a credit. So while I'm decluttering my closet, I think I might be listening to your book today. My son's a sound engineer in San Francisco. So he records ebooks. He's worked for various publishers. And we were looking for a really good reader, a professional reader to read the book. And he said, you know, there's kind of a new trend to have authors read their own books. Your voice isn't really obnoxious or nasally. And he said, I think yours will do that. So he recorded the book and it's me speaking. And that was really a fun experience to work with my son on that project. I love that. Well, great. You better grab my tissues too. You're probably having crying.

And now it's time for break that shit down. You know, I would say that I am more convinced than I've ever been that we can all improve our lives and become happier. And it's not as hard as we think. And we've all been through crises. We've all been through hard trials. If we just learn some principles that make our lives better and happier and more civil, we can get through these things. And so my hope is that we'll all start practicing these concepts. I love that. We'll be happy together, right? Be together. Yeah. Thank you so much, Mike, for joining me. You're doing a lot of good it was really fun talking to you thank you happy holidays same to you thanks for being with us today we hope you will come back next week

if you like what you hear don't forget to rate like and subscribe thank you we rise to lift you up thanks for listening