Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 55: Soren Gordhamer, Being Mindful in Silicon Valley

Episode Date: January 11, 2017

Soren Gordhamer is the founder and host of the Wisdom 2.0 conference, which is lauded as one of the largest gatherings of meditators in the world, but it also has been the target of controversy. Raised in Lubbock, Texas, Gordhamer grew up as one of five kids in a Buddhist-friendly household and said he was drawn to meditation in high school as a way to deal with pain and suffering. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. The My Phone is World or the meditation world, whatever you want to call it, is a pretty small place. And I would say Soren Gordhammer occupies a pretty large position in this world because he started this thing called wisdom 2.0 which has become the largest and loudest Gathering of mindfulness and meditation types on earth. It's been featured on 60 minutes

It's been written about all over the place and you would think that a gathering like this would be a reasonably And you would think that a gathering like this would be a reasonably uncontroversial affair, but as it turns out, actually, there is plenty of controversy around it for lots of interesting reasons you will hear about soon in this conversation. In fact, there was actually a protest on stage one year. So Soren is interesting because of the place he occupies in this world. Also his backstory, as is the case with pretty much all of our guests we've been looking in this world. Also his backstory as is the case with pretty much all of our guests

we've been lucky in this way, thus far is really, really interesting. So here he is. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Thank you for doing this. You're welcome. It's nice to see you.

Yeah, likewise. I forgot how tall you are. How tall are you? Almost six four Wow like six three and three fourth. I'd be such a jerk if I was that My dad six six. Oh wow. Wow. So what small fish And I'm thin so I would crouch down a lot. Yeah, younger but yeah

I'm jealous. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just as a short guy. I've always wanted to be tall. Anyway, I'm sitting across from you. Usually we have to angle the microphones so that I can see that person's face, but your face is above the mic. It's great. It's great. There's always funny things like,

yeah, I don't appreciate being tall because they don't know what the, but would it be like, not be tall? High class problem. So just tell me a little bit about how you ended up getting into meditation in the first place. Sure. So I grew up in a town called Lubbock, Texas,

which is rural, west Texas, Bible Belt. There's a town called, well, in the town is a college called Texas Tech University and my father got a job there as a director of counseling center at Texas Tech University. So five of us kids were raised in Lubbock, Texas. My father was very Buddhist friendly and kind of a student of Ramdoth's. My mom... Now it's a Ramdoth's, Ramdoth who was Richard Alper, I think his name was,

Jewish kid from Boston who went to Harvard where he got fired for experimenting with drugs and then went off to India and became Ramdas. But he was more of the Hindu variety. Right, and Roby here now, which I think my father, my father had five kids and went and got his PhD. And I think he had this fantasy of living in India and going off and doing the spiritual class. But he couldn't because he had this fantasy of living in India and going off and doing the spiritual quest,

but he couldn't because he had five kids. So he, there was that kind of energy in the house, and so even though outside of our house, it was very kind of conservative Christian. Inside our house, we had all the greatest books on the Bhagavad Gita, Ramana Maharshi, Buddhist texts. He actually brought a lot of those books in. And I remember when I was a teenager, he would leave two books outside of my door, either books on sex anatomy, because he wanted me to learn about that.

And he would leave meditation books outside of my door, and I'd say that. And those are interesting things. Difficult things to talk to kids about. Yeah, well fair enough. But because our family didn't go to church and just about everybody did, I had a lot of confusion about what spirituality was and what religion was.

And I remember kids telling me I'm going to hell and why don't we go to church. And so the whole idea of what it means to be spiritual was kind of thrust on to me at a young age because I wanted to defend myself. I wanted to think highly of my family. And when I was about 14, my parents divorced. And it was very sudden, I didn't know they were having difficulty, I didn't really know

what was going on, but we were raised by my father from 14 on. And my mom was having something of a midlife crisis, mental breakdown. She just needed to be away. She'd raised five kids, She had reached her maximum. So all of a sudden, my mom had left and it was shocking. And I remember feeling this just deep grief and this deep pain in my heart, and not knowing what to do with it. And I remember just crying, you know, to sleep at night, and asking, like, how do I live in a life where such change can happen without me even knowing that it was going to happen?

Like, one day your mom's there one day, she's gone. Like how do you find happiness? You can have 10% happier. How do you find happiness in that world of change? And it was the first time I'd actually experienced that at that such a dramatic level. Like, wow, I can't really depend on anything. There's no grounding through feet. No.

And at first it was very depressing. So I just spent hours in my room. I just kind of, I stopped playing sports. I isolated from friends. I didn't know what to do. Like I played a lot of basketball. I still played some soccer, but like it no longer got me joy to score a point in a game because I'm like,

I have this pain in my heart and this like suffering. And so I found some Buddhist talks by people like, you know, people like Jack Hornfield and who else Ramdas was around then, Stephen Levine, a subpoetist teacher back then, and they actually spoke to pain and suffering. And I remember how relieving that was that there was actually a name for what I felt

that they talked about that. And they also talked about the ability to relate to pain and suffering with compassion, which is something I'd never heard growing up in Dexas. We didn't have compassion class. So compassion was not a word that was very popular. And so all of a sudden I was drawn to meditation because there was a sense of like there's a way to work with pain and suffering. But how did that go? Your high school kid in Lubbock, Texas, all of a sudden into meditation? How did that go down in your social set? Nobody knew.

Okay. So it was a small house, five kids, and so my dad, my parents' back bathroom was the only place that was generally quiet. So I used to go into my parents' back bathroom, And sometimes I'd light a candle, and often I just listen to a tape. I started meditating after a while, but I just felt something in the voice. I remember hearing these teachers voices,

and there's something soothing about their voices. I was like, oh, things are okay. Like, I don't have to fight this. Like, this is natural, and I can make it through. But there was something about even just the voice of these people. And I remember my dad would give me psychological types, which I know have great benefit. But they were speaking from a different place and I couldn't resonate. They didn't heal me in that way.

But there was something about the voices of these teachers that really started to change my system such that I could begin to open and not feel the level of pain and discomfort I was feeling. Or I mean, guess to feel it fully and so therefore not to be so driven blinding by it, right? That's the thing. Although at the time it was more like I was looking for some soothing. Yeah, I guess. And their voice had a soothingness.

Yeah. Later I was like, okay, I need to feel it more. But at the time, I'm just I think there was was a soothing element to their words like a Buddhist Mr. Rogers Yeah, so At a curiosity, did you ever reconcile with your mom? Yeah, yeah, okay Yeah, and I totally understand what was going on now even though at the time as a 14 year old kid you just I just knew my emotional reaction to that situation and I just knew my emotional reaction to that situation. And my mom later now came back into my life

and the rest of our kids' lives. So she's this very vivacious 77-78-year-old who was teaching yoga, like 10-15 classes a week of yoga until just very recently. Now she lives in Santa Cruz where I live. So you're very much in your life? She's very much in my life, yeah. I wouldn't say we're like the closest.

Like I don't see her all the time, but we're reconciled. We have family gatherings, so I have four brothers and sisters, and three of them live in Santa Cruz with my dad. And so once a month or once every few months we have a family circle where everybody comes together and shares what's going on in our life, shares struggles, joys, and so there's a we have a very tight-knit family that way. Nice. So how did you go from a kid who you know started getting into meditation for some pretty legit reasons to to you went on to become a real student and teacher of Buddhist meditation. Well, as I got older, I just I wanted to figure out what to do for a living. I saw very few options

in terms of what my friends were doing. They're going to business school and going to get jobs and the oil business or banking or whatever. Where did you go to college? I went one year at Texas Tech and then ended up graduating from UCSC and politics. But my approach to college was if there was nothing more exciting to do, go to college. Yeah, so I would go for a year and then like, I joined an environmental walk across the US for six months and so I left college.

I came back for like a year and then I joined the rest of the walk in Europe and Asia we walked for about. See how I walked across Japan with a group, I walked across Pakistan with the same group, and then I go back and go to college for a year, and then I do something else. And I was hitchhiking a lot and traveling a lot. So I eventually graduated from college,

but it was more just like, I would just get some student loans to live. And so college was a way to keep myself funded. So you graduated like at age 35 or so then? 28. No, wow, okay. All right, so really took you, you were on the extended plan.

Well, see, also because my father went to got his PhD and was so academia focused, I think we live out the fantasies and some ways of our parents. That was missing and he always longed to go to Asia and go to the Ashrams and redditator treats. A part of me felt that growing up and knew that that was part of my destiny. I spent a lot of time in Asia, about a year in Asia and going to all the different retreat centers in Thailand and other

places. This is before graduating. Yeah. So you were at this point getting pretty serious about your meditation practice. Yeah, I remember I was trying to get a permission to go into Burma, which at the time was very difficult to study with Upindita. And it took me like two months and I never got the quote, meditation beeta. Upindita just everyone, you know, these are famous meditation teacher, teacher of people

like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Sealsburg and Burmese master. At the time, yeah, it was like where you go if you want to get the full experience of meditation. So I journeyed in that way, but I also really loved walking. I loved the adventure of just being out on the road with nothing, or very little, and just surviving day to day with the elements. Like actually that was a big... That sounds horrible to me.

There's an excitement though in it. There's like a vibrancy. There's like an unknown, and there's something about just being out with nothing to, I mean, I had a backpack with like a change of clothes and a sleeping bag. That's the way I feel when I turn on the television. I don't know what's gonna be on the next channel. I think actually that's,

there is a part of our brain that just loves newness. Yes, of course, novelty for sure. Continues to do it. But when I was younger and raised in West Texas, where it's just all flatlands, like I just longed to do it. But when I was younger and raised in West Texas where it's just all flatlands, like I just longed to be out. And so when I was a kid I used to write a scribble this guy in my notebook and he was a guy walking down the street wearing his backpack and I would just scribble him like in history class. And I told him, I remember I told my father it's like 15 or 16 that I'm going to walk

to California. And he's like really concerned. And he he's like, no, no, no, no. He gave me all the reasons not to do it. But there was this archetype that I felt like I wanted to live out, which is like, and I remember when I was scribbling this guy on my notebook in high school, I wanted to write a book called The Cage People. And The Cage People, the people who drove in cars. So there was this archetype that

wanted to come through me to break out of just the traditional system around me, whether it's religion or how you get work or how you live. And so I feel like a lot of my early 20s was basically just like pushing edges and living how simply can we live. So when we were in Japan, we walked from Tokyo to Hiroshima and we were supposed to walk it with these Buddhist monks who do it every year. When it long story, we got kicked off the group with the monks. Would you do to pit it off the monks? They had a very traditional way of walking, so when you walk there, you beat drums and you pray and you chant.

Yeah. And we were like seven hippies from California. We don't do that. We just walk and talk and we make meander one way and we'll find each other in the next town. And our two groups just had very different ways of walking. It sounds ridiculous. Literally marching to the beat of different drums. Yeah.

But anyway, so we dumped her dive for, well, three months, yeah. Wow. It was a hard core. Yeah, but it's sound, the first two weeks was pretty hard because you just, like, we were like finding potatoes and having to find a way to cook potato. Like, we were just like, I remember dumps during McDonald's, and it's just like, it was awful. But then we figured it out.

And how you figured it out in case anybody's in Japan. And dumpstered out. Yeah, you can go behind the circle case and and the 7-Elevens and these convenience stores and they have prepared sushi and prepared meals. And then when the date expires, they put them all out back. And but they're already packaged and everything. And so you just have to go back in the morning and find the trash can with the heaviest, that feels the heaviest.

And if you open it, generally you can have sushi, and you can know exactly when it expired, usually just expired the day before. So, I mean, it sounds risky. That's fine. That was in my 20s. Okay. But that gives you a little bit of my mentality back then

was like, the world is screwed up going the wrong direction. We are gonna like, dude, the very opposite of what everybody else does. And we're gonna like, live counter to American mainstream culture. So my, if you add to my theme of my 20s, that was that. Well, to see, it could be interesting just to cast forward in your narrative. And I don't want to get just a foreshadow a little bit because, you know, you were like a validly huge weirdo in your 20s, right? That's my term, not yours. But, and I mean, I say it affectionately, huge weirdo in your 20s, right? That's my term, not yours, and I say it affectionately,

trying to be cutting against the grain as it were, but as we'll get to in this discussion, for some people in the Buddhist world, you are now the embodiment of the man, who they, who people protest against or whatever. So it's gonna be very, just a big, a full circle with that in a second. But let's just stay with your chronology now for a second. So after or because of or despite the

dumpster diving phase and the walking and all that stuff, you're looking around for at some point a job. And that's when you can't decide if the study is a teacher. I might get to do that right. So I did this. Well, first did this book called meetings with mentors. And I went around often hitchhiking to teachers that I knew and authors to talk to them about their lives. I interviewed Ram Doss and Jack Cornfield and different people like that because I was trying to find my way and I figured they looked like they had some kind of sense of their way.

Back in those times, you didn't do podcasts, you did books of interviews, people actually bought those and paid for those then. And so I traveled around and interviewed a lot of different people, which is really awesome because what I was looking for was just their theories, it was looking for their stories. Like how did you find your way? How did you navigate this terrain?

But yeah, one thing's kind of settled, I began to look at like what is it that I really want to do? And one of the things I wanted to do was to teach meditation to teenagers, because that's how it was introduced to me, and it just seems like a nonsensical thing to do. Spirit Rock at the time, Meditation Center on the West Coast, at Jack Cornfield, and other started, was just beginning their teen program. I got in there right in the beginning and so we'd start offering meditation program with their teenagers. I don't know what year that was

as many years ago. And so I did that for a while and then I just realized it wasn't the teenagers who were coming were somewhat interested, but I felt like I really wanted to reach kids who were suffering more than the kids who were coming. And I'm sure they were suffering too, but there was some way that I was drawn to meet with kids in a more challenging environment. So that's when I got this idea to go into juvenile halls and start programs with kids in juvenile facilities and youth prisons. And I remember I was talking to John Cavazant or somebody about it and somebody asked me,

it's like, well, what are they generally doing? Because I didn't know, I didn't have a lot of meditation. I wasn't trained as a teacher then or anything. And a friend said, what are they generally doing in the evening? So I'm like, well, they're generally watching movies and often violent movies. The kids are just kind of sitting around.

He's like, well, if your meditation instructions are slightly better than that, you're probably moving in the right direction. So it's like, okay, if your meditation instructions are slightly better than that, you're probably moving in the right direction. So, I was like, okay, I can probably create a setting that's slightly better than the movies that they're watching. And so, I started from that and not knowing really anything. It's been terrifying to go into that environment, try to introduce this, you know, practice to kids who probably have pretty good reason to have a chip on their shoulder.

Yeah. And who have a lot of reason to make fun of it and want to be cool and comfortable closing their eyes for fear of getting hit or something. How'd you soldier through that? I started at the very first class as I taught with this guy Noah Levine. Oh sure, Darva Punks.

Yeah, so Noah and I taught our very first classes at Jiven Hall together and he had been in Jive and a Hall. And there was this other guy who had been in Jive and a Hall and that helped because they had some of the language in and some of the wording. But just like walking across Pakistan, I love walking into areas that I know nothing about and you just have to figure it out.

It's like the social intellectual version of dumpster diving. Yeah, it was like, can you go go in and I always felt like if this works It should work to every population, right? That's right if whatever we're doing if it doesn't work for everybody And then it doesn't what we're doing is we're just diluting ourselves amen So the languageing has to change the approach has to change I remember not even calling it meditation. We just call it, let's just tune in. Or let's, I remember asking the kids one,

so I was like, well, what are you most interested in? I was trying to find a way to connect them. And the kids are like, power, we want power. I'm like, great, let's talk about power. How can, we're gonna do a power practice now. And how this helps you with power is you now get to choose how you act in any given moment versus getting played by other people who want you to act in a certain way.

That's good. If I'm not mindful and I want to get you upset and angry, I can say just the right words to play you like a guitar. So you can yell at me or scream me or try and get a fight with me. So who's in control in that situation? Because it'd be like you're in control. Like right, so do you want to be in control in this situation? It's cool. Here's a practice. So when you're aware of your thoughts? Because you're in control. Like, right, so do you want to be in control

in this situation? It's cool. Here's a practice. So when you're aware of your thoughts, when you're aware of your emotions, you get to choose how you respond. You might still punch the guy back. I'm not saying not to, but I'm just saying,

you get to choose your response, which is the greatest power you can ever have. That a really smart response, man. Seriously. But so that connects to them. If I'm talking about compassion and love and kind of like for that crowd, that's, they'll be interested in that,

but it has to go through their interests. Yeah, so I figured, you know, you just show up and the kids teach you. And I remember one time teacher with Will Kabat Zen and so John had sent me Will. Will was kind of doing retreats and stuff. So you just let me say, John Kabat Zen is the, you could argue the Godfather of modern mindfulness and eminent teacher

writer, Dude, and his son as well, who was also now a great teacher. And so you've worked with both of these gentlemen. Yeah, so John was very supportive of this because I think he really liked the idea that it was reaching different populations. So the fact that there was some young, strange tall guy from Texas wanting to go into juvenile halls, he's like, he's very supportive from the beginning. And so when Will would do a retreat and then he'd come back and live for three or four months, or so he would come and work with us at lineage project. That was the name of the organization.

And I remember sitting in a class with Will once and these are like 20 almost like in New York City, Joe, and the halls, which is where I taught most, it's 98.5% kids of color. So they're almost always kids of color. Occasionally it's a white kid, but it's really rare. And so we're all sitting around and I remember this guy talking about what was going on in his life and Will's just sitting there listening to him. And the guy gets uncomfortable. This kid on in his life and Will's just sitting there listening to him and the guy gets Uncomfortable this kid he's probably like 16. He's like why you look at me like that? Will's like what do you mean? He's like why you're looking at me like that?

Will's like dude, I'm just looking at you and the kid paused And he said I don't think anyone's ever looked at me before Actually listened to me before He was so uncomfortable for him. Wow. And then he realized, Will was offering him a presence and a quality of attention that was making him uncomfortable because he had never felt that. And I think there's a hunger in all of us for that level of attention. TechnoHont says the greatest gift we can give another person is our presence. And I feel like anybody working with kids who has kids or nose kids, there's a quality

of presence that I think beyond whatever meditation practice we do or don't do, but when they feel that, they, some part of them rises up and it's drawn to it. I remember this other time where I was leading this class in Brooklyn, Durban Hall, and it was, you could come or go, it wasn't a mandatory class. And there was this kid who had come every week, like right on. But when we would do the meditation, I'd look around and he would be just be like, not paying attention and not really doing the meditation, but he wasn't being disruptive. He just wasn't doing the practice. And during yoga too, he'd just be like barely going to the motions. But at the end of every class, he'd always come up and give me a hug.

But I was like, we're did by this kid. Because I'm like, why don't you, why do you come to this like voluntary class? And you like, don't do the meditation. You don't do the yoga, but you do the hug. And then I realized, I was like, what's your problem? And I realized he had no problem. I had the problem. My problem was that he should come to the class

to do meditation yoga. His, what he was really coming to the class was for that, I'm hung he got every week. And that's what he, that's what mattered to him. And so I was like, soaring, get over yourself. Just give him the greatest, most beautiful, like most grounded hug you can every week and just like love him up. And let him gradually do the other stuff as he can.

They realize like what I thought I was there teaching sometimes was very different than what they were getting out of it. And just like when I was a kid, it was the tone of the voice of the teacher that actually soften me, that sometimes the people we're working with are impacted in ways that we don't even know. And it's the real way to do it is sharing, it's also working in others will tell you, it's just the loving kindness that we bring in any given moment. I found working with kids is like, that's what they tune into. Like they want to know, like, are you here with an agenda?

Are you trying to fix me? Are you trying to control me? Do you think I'm bad? But if I do, you're shit. I'll be good. Right. Because if you are, we're gonna attack you and we're gonna come strong and furious and they did and they would. You know, they have to relax and just be like, all right, you're right. You know, that reminds me of, I mean, I think you're spot on just everything you said was just awesome. But we have this amazing magical nanny. My wife and I both work and so we have a nanny and Eleanor, as her name she's phenomenal. And parents are always coming up to us and saying, even people who live in our building don't want parents who just see her with our kids.

They're just like, your nanny is amazing. And all the other kids in my sons, little pre-school class are constantly hanging out with our nanny. And one night, Bianca, my wife, I was asking her about it, and she said the simple things, she said, kids know where they love us. That's it. That's beautiful. That says it.

That says it. She's just a deep reservoir of beneficence and little human animals get that. They do. And they're tuned to that level. One of the things I also learned from kids in Chip and Hall was the importance to just make fun of yourself. Yeah. And which was easy as a tall skinny white guy from Texas when they're all not that. But I remember this one time was trying to get a

group to focus and I said, all right, guys, as the first class at this unit, I said, all right, guys, listen, I need everybody's attention because this could be dangerous. And if you're when you say you were dangerous, like, yeah, yeah, of course, yes, like I need everybody right now to grab a hold of their chair. Can you take your right hand and just grab a hold of your chair? All right. Does everyone have a grab?

Is everyone grabbing their chair in this moment? I had to make sure like, all right. And they're like, yeah, we got our chair. I was like, cause we're going to do this meditation. It's this thing. And I need to make sure that you know how to grab your chair. Cause occasionally what happens when you do this meditation is people begin to levitate off their chairs and they go, so high, they hit their head on the

ceiling and they fall down, they can hurt themselves. And I'm looking around everyone doesn't know what like is this guy full of shit and I see what it's like so everybody's like looking at me like I'm serious because why would I be joking so it's like all right so they're like all right this I was like all right so let's do the meditation right but I just need to know if you start to lift up after this one kid says I am not doing this and then I could like I was man, I'm just teasing you. I'm playing with you. Nobody meditates. Oh, nobody levitates when I do this. But all of a sudden, it got us in the best space to meditate because it made fun of. It was loose.

And I definitely think in meditation circle, we can be a little too serious. And if we're trying to reach other populations, they need to know that we can make fun of ourselves as you have shown many times that it actually softens and makes you human, and then they can receive whatever medicine that you're giving across. That's my central, has been my central critique

of the mindfulness world, this earnestness, I think it is a barrier for a lot of folks. So the lineage project that you've been talking about it continues to exist and do phenomenal work. You however kind of went off in an interesting direction which will bring us to kind of the meat of this interview. Tell us what happened there. I went from working with the very poorest

most destitute population in the US to working with the most privileged population in the US. And it's kind of strange how that happens. So I was living in New Mexico, I got divorced, I'd lost my job, I just didn't know what to do. Lost your job as a lineage project? No, so I'd left a lineage project and moved to New Mexico.

Okay, my wife and I at the time. And what was your job there? I was working for Richard Gears Foundation. Oh, New York. Okay. We were working on a project and the project kind of ended. I got you, got you. But I was going backars Foundation in New York. We were working on a project and the project kind of ended. I got you. I was going back and forth to New York.

So you were, you lost your wife in your job and you were bummed. I was bummed. I was a little, I'm in love in a town of like 700 people. Back in kind of like a cousin of love, it kind of way. Yeah. And just like, what am I going to do? Yeah. I had no idea.

I had lost, like I had connections in California, but I hadn't lived there there for a while I had connections in New York, but I wasn't really there and I'm just in this like place So I my partner and I divorced and I'm living in this trailer this like two bedroom trailer and Northern New Mexico and all of a sudden like you know What am I doing with my life and my I want I needed to stay there because my son was four and his mom was there and so I couldn't really leave but had to just figure out what I would do. So I didn't have much money and so I was $500 a month rent. I remember for the place that I was renting and so I just was like I knew I had this interest in spirituality and mindfulness and meditation and that was super strong.

And then I started getting super interested in technology and the social networks and how you could communicate with anybody across the world. So what year was this just around us? Or roughly? Let's see, my son is now 14, so 10 years ago. Okay. All right, so he was four at the time. And so for about a year, I just lived off my credit card.

I figured I'll figure this out later. I don't have huge expenses living out here. So I grew a lot of my own food and I lived off my credit card for the most part. And I remember listening to a lot of Eckhart Tolle. One of the things Eckhart said, I can't say again, the best selling, self-help guru, I mock him a little bit in my book,

but also have to admit that he, even though I have my criticisms of him, kind of woke me up to the central fact that we all have a voice in our heads, and that is really his argument in his books, the power of now, and a new earth. He's a big favorite of Oprah, and anyway, that's, Eckhart Toly is what, without Eckhart Toly, wouldn't be sitting here, I wouldn't have written my book, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you, even though at I I don't know whether he's out of his mind or not Anyway, I would probably not be sitting here He's a he's like from a different planet. Yes, and

A friend who knows and well is described him as a whole in the universe like somehow he's come through and it's hard to always Know exactly to describe him as a whole in the universe, like somehow he's come through and it's hard to always know exactly how much I just, anyways, there's parts from me him I totally get in parts. I'm not getting, but the parts I get I love. And he had said something, he said, don't ask what you want to do in the world. Ask what the world wants to do through you. It's like a twist on JFK.

Yeah. You know, a Zen JFK. Yeah. And that be present, be fully present in this moment. I'm, I'm, these aren't his act words. That was the exact words. These aren't his act words. But this is my translation was, be fully present and okay with this moment.

And then let what life wants to do through you to do through it, you. So when Eckhart talks, he talks about you, you have your primary focus and your secondary focus. So, the primary focus is always just right here right now, because it's the only moment we have in every, the past is a fantasy and the future is a fantasy in the past that's just a memory, but while we have it this moment, so am I fully awake in this moment? It's always like your primary focus. But there's also like a secondary focus, which is what does the world want to do through me?

What's the action that's asking? But the action that asking isn't to make better the present moment, because you can never make better the present. The moment that the secondary is like, what wants to come through me as an action in the world to Express this presence into express what my kind of karmic unfolding is. And so for me at the time I was like, can I practice really being fully present and okay with the fact that this is my life right now. I'm isolated. I'm living in this little town. I'm living in this trailer, I don't have much money, like I can be fully present with that experience

and at the same time, listen to what wants to come through. And so I did that for about a year. Just going for walks, sitting a lot, listening and I was definitely frustrated at times, because I was like, I wanna know what it isn't supposed to do. And then I remember, I just got this hit, it was almost like walking, it's like, you know, when you get a breeze,

you're walking, obviously, and you feel breeze, kind of like moving over you. Of like, what if the mindfulness, wisdom, world, and the tech world came together? And I was like, yes, that's what I'm supposed to do. Like, because the technology community is definitely not gonna solve or world's problems on their own.

And I also don't think the mindfulness wisdom and compassion community is going to really solve things on their own either because there's an intelligence that the tech community has that these people don't, there's a need these people have it, these people don't. And so what if you actually brought those two together to harness the best of the external technologies and the best of the internal technologies and what might emerge through that coming together? So that was a vision and I didn't know really anybody in Silicon Valley.

I remember I had a friend of a friend who knew somebody, who knew somebody who worked at Google, and said there was like this little line of connection there. And that's how I started with them 2.0. I just realized like I wanted to facilitate this conversation in our culture, and I wanted to bring people together to look at like how do we live these

qualities in this day and age with social media and smartphones and everything knowing that the truth that the Buddha talked about or the truth that Lao Tzu talked about are just as relevant and accessible today. It's not as if those things left, you know, the nature is still here and the same life lessons are still here. So how do we do that and live that within a modern time of all these gadgets and all these things? And if we can't do that, then we're screwed. And that as the external technologies continue to develop and grow and we'll have VR and all kinds of crazy, even more crazy stuff coming, I think it's just begun.

How do we make sure that the internal technologies of love and compassion with them grow alongside that so that we have a community and a group of children who not only know how to code and how to post things on Instagram, but they also know how to sit across from one another and have a conversation. And if we lose that capacity as a culture, it's not the world that I want our kids to grow up in. I want our world to grow up in more compassion. It's just as valuable, if not more valuable, than the ability to code an app or understand how technology's used.

So how long has wisdom two point open around now? This will be our eighth year. Okay, so it's really grown into a juggernaut. I mean, it's a big, you have the sort of crown jewel gathering every February in San Francisco. You have a version in New York and you have lots of smaller events. I know one in a y. You do some, uh, rich invite-only retreats. Um, but it is, uh, and I can't remember the exact words I've heard used to describe it, but it is kind of like really the the Ted of mindfulness, the C.E.S. of mindfulness, the sort of the gathering for the mindfulness world.

So how would you describe it? That's the way I've heard it described. How would you describe it? So it's interesting when when I was starting with him to point out a friend of mine who's great marketer and he approached me and he said, okay, sorry, let's think this through. Now, you have this conference idea. Now, who's your target population?

Do you want to target entrepreneurs? Do you want to target HR executives? Do you want to target like mindfulness people? Like, who do you want to target? And I said, I want to target anybody interested in living with wisdom, mindfulness compassion in the current digital age. He's like, sorry, that makes no sense,

because where would you find them? He's like, we need a smaller target. But my target has always been like, if you're interested in living these qualities within a modern technological rich time, this is where you come. And where you come meet other people, where you come listen to what's happening,

what's the latest research, a how our spiritual teachings being integrated. So we get a lot of people from the tech community there who are working at Apple or Facebook or Google and they love their work, but they also feel like something's missing. Like I don't wanna just create gadgets. Like I want a heart in my work and I want connection.

And so we get a lot of those people. We got a lot of people from the mindfulness community. We got a lot of people from the mindfulness community, we got a lot of people from the health and wellness community. So I would say, so Ted is very interesting because what Ted does is they take like 18 minute talks, I think it's 18 minutes,

and everybody has to follow that same suit. And their vision is, if everything goes exactly as planned, we did a great job. My vision is that we did everything exactly as planned, we did a great job. My vision is that we did everything exactly as planned, we didn't do our job, because I'm interested in what shows up when we all come together. And like, what are the topics and the issues that we need to bring forth as this community gathers? So these definitely schedule talks and things, but there's also

interviews and other ways, what I feel like, when we all are live together in person, there's a quality of presence and there's a quality of connection and the things are said that you might not ever say. So I feel like this community needs an annual gathering and wisdom 2.0 tries to provide that space so that if you're interested in this and you want to learn more, there's a place for you. Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast,

even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newer series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Rue off course. In our series Rue Paul Bornnaked, we'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Just to give people a sense of how big a deal this thing is become, can you just list some of the most famous people who've spoken over the last eight years at your... It's very so like last year we had everyone from Russell Simmons to the head coach of the CLC Hawks, Pete Carroll, the CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner. We have had the founders of Facebook and Twitter and eBay and Mark Bertolini is a CEO of Atina, Bill Ford, who's a German Ford Motor Company. So it's like a lot of different business types along with our friend Eckhart Tolle and Jack Hornefield and John Cabazzin has come now. This will be his eighth year in a row. I think he's never missed.

And so it's just kind of odd combinations. If you ask me, how do these people connect? What's the founder, Facebook, and the founder, Twitter have to do with John Cabazzin or Baron Katie? And they actually seek the same world. They might have slightly different visions about how to get there, but that they seek the same world. And that have slightly different visions about how to get there, but that they seek the same world and that world has technology as a part of it,

but mindfulness is a huge part of it as well. And the tech leaders that I know of, they've had huge success on the external level and as we know, that only gets you so far. And then they start inquiring, like, why do I still have the sense of lack in my life? Even though our company just went public and my personal wealth just increased 100x, I still feel this lack in my life.

And also I see the way my technology that I created is being used and it's not how I envisioned it being used. And I want to support a world that has mindfulness as a component of it. And I also want to understand my own inner journey. Because if I don't understand that, yeah, I can get more planes and more houses and more whatever, but I'm still unsatisfied. And so there's a community of people there who are waking up to that fact and who are like, wow, where do we go have these conversations about our own feeling of lack and unworthiness and hollowness,

and also how we can create a world where the technologies we're creating are actually used for benefit, where Twitter is actually used to connect people, not just to like provide mind candy of distraction. Like, I want to support my use, the tools that I created, I want to support the wide use of those. So that's kind of how they end up.

As you look around the world today, do you think your stated goal of creating a world where wisdom can be amplified by these powerful tools of technology? Do you think you've moved the needle on that goal? I think we've moved the conversation on that goal. I definitely think there's a conversation now that all of us have participated in, whether it's in schools or businesses or politics or society, where mindfulness is a topic that will be more open to being in under discussion. I think that practice of mindfulness and our culture in some ways has gotten harder and harder and harder because we have these noise making devices that are with us all

the time, alerting us to something or in other words a text message or a Facebook post or an email. And that presents its own challenges. And I feel like we're in a time where we've joined this huge experiment on our brains and on our attention, not really knowing what the results will be. So I do feel like the whole topic of mindfulness with me in compassion has entered the world in a way. I didn't think, if five years ago, if you had asked me, would this be as welcomed, I would have said no, it's going to take much longer.

And so I do feel like something has happened. And at the same time, when I look around the subway, which I was on yesterday, or walk the streets of New York, the digital world is taking over in a really big way. And that's not bad. It just presents its own challenges. You said walking in here that you wanted to talk a little bit about the way you saw technology and mindfulness or lack thereof play out in the recent election and what

it might mean going forward as we head into or as we post this, we may now actually be in the first of four years of Donald Trump. Yeah. So one of the things that I was interested in, which I was very surprised by the election results when I got them And I think a lot of people were whether you voted for Trump or for Clinton There's definitely a surprise and at first of like something some somebody messed up or there's a computer glitch You know like kind of in denial And then I realized like wow the world that I thought I had I imagined living in Was so different than the world that I actually realized I do

live in. And so I voted for Clinton and I couldn't understand initially why all these people would vote for Trump. And I'm still learning and understanding. But I feel like there's a way in which the technology community has been like moving so fast forward towards providing like robotics in terms of manufacturing, self-driving cars that are coming. A lot of people have not benefited from the fact that technology has become so pervasive. No, in fact, it's scary. It's a challenge. Those jobs are going away.

Yeah, and the coal jobs are gone, and we talk about solar panels, we talk about all these other things, but it's like a lot of people are losers in this game, and I think the tech community has lacked a lot of awareness and compassion for those people. It's like we're just going to create all these cool technologies, and sorry if you're left behind. Especially as we get into artificial intelligence, and we can really see huge swaths of the economy. Yeah.

Or just imagine, I mean, self-driving cars will be here in two years or five years or ten years Eventually, they're gonna take out tons of jobs. Yeah, and so a lot of people are either have lost their job Or it just fear where this is going. They fear like I didn't you know I don't have computer skills. Where do I fit in this world? So when there becomes a candidate who appears who says I'm gonna make to make America great again, I'm going to go back to this greatness that we had. And I'll protect you and I'll fight for you. It becomes super compelling. And I guess at what I'm asking right now is I feel like there's a coming together that the United States needs to do that neither party can do. Neither party is good at whether they're Republicans win or the Democrats win. It's still this division that people feel

about where their true needs are and how they can actually have a genuine be like understood in their pain. And I don't know exactly the right way forward but I realize like I have a much better understanding of the kind of reasons why people would vote for Trump when I looked at him from the outside. I'm like, how does he, he has no experience. He doesn't seem to have the temperament. He says ridiculous things at times. He says demeaning things at times. And so why would people vote for him? And I realize that there is something that he's speaking to them about. And something that he's speaking to them about.

And I think he's speaking to them about their concerns. And they're like worries that this world is going to move ahead and that technology is a part of that. And you're going to be left behind. And so I'm going to make sure you're not left behind. And I think the Democrats have done a pretty poor job of really reaching middle America and saying, wow, we're really concerned with your needs.

And I think both, sadly, both parties have become disconnected, I think, from that. But Trump, even though he's probably the wealthiest, most elite presidential candidate, who's ever run one in part because he presented himself as the average guy, the average show. It's interesting to me speaking to you because you're speaking from your position on the left, but in your position as the impresario of wisdom 2.0, you've taken a lot of heat from your left flak. As an example, there was a protest on stage. It was two years ago, I think.

So you're in San Francisco and a bunch of protesters burst onto the stage and they're protesting the fact that the tech community, because of the tech community, rancor now really high and the cities being gentrified and stuff like so your conference, which is supposed to be a nice place for and stuff like so your conference which is supposed to be a nice place for you know thoughtful Buddhists and contemplatives to talk to tech folks about making a better world is actually a flashpoint for some people. Not to mention that there's this whole group of people on the sort of orthodox Buddhists, Buddhist side of things who worry about what they call mic mindfulness. The

popularization of this practice that they slash we, both of us, hold dear. So I wonder how you deal being the, what your response is to these critiques and how you deal with it personally. Great questions. So as most protesters go, I had no idea they were going to come and protest protest. So they hadn't reached out to me for a voice or reached out to me. But the irony, you were a guy in your 20s was dumpster diving and trying to live against the grain and you know counter-culture and all this stuff. And now, as I said before, you're the dude. You're the guy. What I call Jack Cornfield after it happened, or it was another very negative article I think is in Tri-Sagall.

I remember calling Jack and Jack's like, well, congratulations, so you've arrived. You've made it. When people can pro, when people organize a protest against you, you've made it. And he was partly joking, but there is some sense of like, wow, we're big enough now that you can actually organize a protest to and get

publicity based on the event. So the fact that they would choose with them 2.0 to protest is somewhat a sign that it has a larger mouthpiece than I thought it did. I still wonder how big an impact it has, but it has some impact. And so, yes, the rents are going up and people want to find a focus for that anger and that frustration. And the tech community is the great focus of that because their job, their pain, people, if you were, it's almost like there's this bifurcation happening in our culture, where if you work in tech, you get one salary, if you don't work in tech, there's a whole other

salary for you, unless you're a doctor or a lawyer or certain things, but like the difference between incomes is vast. And it isn't changing. I understand people's anger and upsetness. I wish they had reached out, in terms of the protest, I wish they had reached out to me and then like how do we facilitate a conversation on this at the conference versus just running up on stage with microphones and screaming and yelling. So I didn't appreciate their approach, but I definitely have the same concerns they have in terms of what's going to happen to San Francisco as the rents go up. We're not going to see the same people that people love to have there. And I think that's a real issue. It's not just tech, it's just as wealth gets more and more, and I don't think our next

presence going to do much about it, but as wealth gets more and more concentrated and fewer and fewer hands, what do we do as a culture? And where does wisdom and compassion come from? A lot of those people in the 1%, that the top 0.001% are in the pews that wisdom do well. They are. They are, they're either speaking or they're often they come in a tent. Some people of that elk, they just love to be

at the conference. And they would love to use their billions in a meaningful way too, but they don't know how to do it. And I think in a capitalist culture, people are very hesitant to just give away their money back into the pot. They want to find a meaningful way to do it, but I definitely think the way that money is gathered in such huge amounts these days, I would love to

see much higher taxes on it personally, but there has to be some way of equalizing the playing field because there's a lot of people who are losing out and those people have voted, I think, a candidate that they feel like will stand for them and protect them, whether that actually happens or not, we'll see. But yeah, and then the other side is the people who are more Buddhist oriented and feel like these practices should really not be offered in corporations and if they do, they should come from a Buddhist standpoint. And I often, my response to that often is like, well, I'm not teaching Buddhism, we're teaching awareness, which existed long before Buddhism existed.

You know, we're teaching that thing that existed before the Buddha. And I feel like that's true that there's an awareness. There's definitely huge learning we can take from the Buddhist perspective and Buddha's teachings, but there was an inherent capacity enough human being to be awake. And that wasn't something that the Buddha just came about in the Buddhist time. This actually existed throughout humanity. And it's that capacity to be awake that we're exploring, that I feel like we're exploring at Wisdom 2.

No, because we realize that wakefulness is essential for a healthy human being, for a healthy family, for a healthy society. And so sometimes I don't even use word mindfulness just because I feel like it's being used so much. I'll just say awareness and nobody owns awareness. Yeah, but do people even know awareness means? I don't know. I don't really care about it. We think of like drug awareness. So we think of, you know, there's a lot of awareness presence.

Eckhart doesn't like the word mindfulness. Eckhart totally doesn't like the word mindfulness. He says it's a bad translation and that it makes people think your mind is full. So he uses the word presence, which I also love. But I do feel like there is a part of the Buddhist community who feels like this whole movement happening there left out, and I understand that.

I don't know if this is the tricycle article that you were referencing uh... because of the what i'm about to read to you isn't particularly mean uh... uh... but it was written by my uh... friend uh... j michael's and has been a guest on on this uh... podcast before he's just just looking at uh... i just pulled this article up was one of many he wrote bit after attending your conference back in 2013 he said uh... i just pulled this article up was one of many he wrote it after ten year conference back in 2013 he said uh... wisdom two point o is the conference many Buddhists

including one reviewer from this magazine last year love to hate uh... as i type these words on my netbook desperately trying not to be a buzzkill i'm sitting with contradictions serenaded by an uber california social artist telling us to open our hearts while awaiting a program of millionaires and celebrities half-enviying and half-loathing the sense that some of the people here are filthy rich. Or maybe my cynicism is just cultural, as my friend Barra Sopir, I don't know who that is, whispered in my ear during the opening serenade, you can take the girl

out of New York, but you can't take the New York out of the girl. So it's just an interesting paragraph I thought I'd get you to riff on if you don't mind. Well, it's an interesting one because I definitely think you can use, how do you celebrity and status in a beneficial way? So, you know, it used to be that the town elders were the people that everybody listened to. I not so much anymore.

Who do people listen to? Who do people respect? In some ways, it's the tech leaders that they respect because they could see the way the world was going to move before the rest of us could see. And so for better or worse, people really respect business leaders and technology leaders. And so for me, it's like, all right, if that's who people are listening to, let's get them to talk about mindfulness of wisdom and compassion because that will then have the greatest impact. If I say it, not many people listen to me. John Kibizen says it, that's great, but that only reaches a certain crowd. But you can get the top business

leaders, the top entertainers, whoever also talking about this, potentially that infiltrates the society in a way that is really beneficial. Now, the challenge of doing that is when you get people who have kind of the success of the society behind them, it's easy to feel like they're disconnected, they don't live normal lives like the rest of us. And I think just as we admire people, we resent them. So just as much as we admire the founder of Facebook, however, there's another part of us that resents them.

And when they fall, we love it. You know what? We love it when they fall. We're like, see, they are human and they do, they aren't. And because we want to feel better about ourselves, so I definitely think there's an underlying resentment to success in general, worldly success. And that there's a way that you can use it

and just propagate the sense that there's people who are better than others and smarter than others and these people are like need to be bowed to and and cuddle, and but I also feel like there's a way to use popularity and success to remind us of the illusion of success and to remind us that the present moment is all we have. And even if you make billion dollars, you still have a mind and a body and a heart. And in some ways, your problems just increase. And that there's a way that we need to come together that doesn't identify ourselves as solely as the conditions of our life.

And if part of the people who are willing to get across that message happen to be from that community, for me, that's just all the more powerful. And if we were looking to have impact bringing the founders of different tech companies in, they're the people who can help us support, help us have that impact. And so it is somewhat risky and it can become like, oh, look at these billionaires with their problems,

getting to sleep at night or look at these billionaires with these problems not knowing what to do with their life, whatever. I also feel like there's a power there that can be harnessed. And so I've committed to trying to navigate that terrain. And so notwithstanding, I mean, a lot of people love wisdom to what, I don't mean to just focus on the critics.

I mean, you've got, it's sold out every year. So I mean, I'm only asking it just because it's good, it's fun to talk to you about, but notwithstanding the criticism to the extent that there is criticism of wisdom, you don't seem in any way to be thrown off the scent. You're still excited about doing this. Yeah, we all make our bets.

Yeah, you know, you're at the table, you make your bet. I'm making a bet that we need each of these subgroups in order to create something that actually has impact on the culture. And I'm making a bet that we need the business these subgroups in order to create something that actually has impact on the culture. And I'm making a bet that we need the business leaders, we need the tech-nid leaders, we need the wisdom teachers, we need the social activists, like we need a space where their voices are all heard and where mindfulness isn't owned by any of them. And what do you envision it leading to? That's a great question. So the question that guides my life is like how do you create a wisdom-based culture? That's the question that guides my life is like, how do you create a wisdom-based culture?

That's a question that guides my life. And If somebody asks me like, I don't know exactly what the answer is, I know what it doesn't look like. You know, I know what it doesn't look like. But how do we create that? There would be social-emotional learning in every school. There would be compassion training in every kid's school. Corporations would focus not on quarterly profits but on the quality of connections and the impact they're having on the world. Old people would be taking care of. There would be an income. Everyone would get a basic income so that there would be a sense of like listen if they're hurting we're also hurting and how do we create a tax system that benefits not

only the top but but the bottom? So there's all these different answers, but it has to come from an internal sense of like wanting to help. It can't come from... It just... So there's an inner process that we each have to go through to understand our own suffering, our own pain. And I think that then opens us up to feel another's suffering and another's pain.

It's not just going to come because we try and convince somebody of our position. So, I don't know Dan to really answer the question well. I just know that like that's what inspires me and draws me. It's like, what is it to create a wisdom based culture where these things are not coming because they're a democratic republican, but we're actually seeing our humanity and we're developing policies and practices based on a sense of connectedness and humanity. I think if you look at the culture, it's really hard to argue that we're anywhere close to there yet. So, if you want to learn more about wisdom 2.0 and what you're up to and where can they

go? Wisdom2Summit.com or wisdom the number two conference.com or just Google wisdom 2.0 you can see who's there And it's not all I just should say it's not like this year we actually have less tech leaders some years We have a lot and some years we don't But there's a lot of different voices of people who come like Monica Lewinsky's coming this year talking about shame and healing and her process of what it means to go through Like a public humiliation unlike we had ever seen. And what is it like to heal from that and how technology can be used

to either shame or support. So it's both inclusive of tech, but it's not solely tech. And you're speaking this year, John speaking, Jack Karrantville speaking. So it's also a place that if you've never heard John speak, you get to actually hear John Jack share a lot of these people all in one place together And they also get to learn from each other and participate And it's really for anybody who cares about how we create a culture where compassion is just as prevalent as Computers and where our iPhones still use but they're used in a way that soft-fall and mindful. And I do feel really strongly that we're entering an age

where it used to be like there was contemplative time built into a day. So when when I was a kid growing up and my dad came home at 5 5 30 he never there was no email. There was no self. He was pretty present with us. You know there wasn't much. It was a contemplative based time. We'd watch TV together or something, but it had a contemplative feel to it. Today, you get no contemplative time unless you really thoughtfully managed to, or most people I should say, create a container for that contemplative time. So we're like the first generation where contemplation, contemplation is like not built into the system.

And so going forward, if we don't find a way to build contemplation, to find a way to build mindfulness and thoughtfulness, and at the same time our power increases because we have more technology that can do more things, that's a very dangerous combination. Well said. Thank you very much for doing this.

Thanks Dan, always great to see you. You likewise. Okay, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please make sure to subscribe, rate us, and if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at DanBHarris. I also want to thank Hardly to people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work.

Lauren, Efron, Josh Kohan, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calp, Steve Jones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dan Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

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