Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 589: The “Performance Whisperer” George Mumford Has Deep Strategies for Flow and Success

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Perhaps nobody is better at helping people unlock themselves than the Buddhist meditation teacher George Mumford who taught meditation to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. He's also worked with inmates, police officers, and corporate executives. There’s a reason why they call him the “Performance Whisperer.”George has an incredible story: he began teaching mindfulness and meditation after kicking a serious drug habit, leaving a career as a financial analyst, and then earning a master's in counseling psychology. He's got a new book, it's called Unlock: Embrace Your Greatness. Find the Flow. Discover Success. His first book was called The Mindful Athlete: The Secret to Pure Performance. If you want to hear him talk about that book, we've put links in the show notes to his prior appearances on this podcast. In this episode we talk about:What it means to be in flow and why many of us may be achieving that state more than we thinkHow to challenge negative self-talkThe importance of gratitudeThe importance of serviceThe importance of making mistakes (as George says, “no struggle, no swag”)How to recognize what he calls your hideouts Why he identifies as an empath and why he believes this may have played a role in his addictionAnd George’s take on often misunderstood terms such as love, hope, and faithFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/george-mumford-589 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. I don't know about you, but there are plenty of areas in my life where I can at times, still, even though I'm, you know, allegedly Mr. Happiness or whatever, still be a little tight and locked up where my head is up my ass and I cannot function at my best. I'm talking about areas such as work or public speaking or writing or social situations.

Perhaps nobody is better at helping people unlock themselves than the Buddhist meditation teacher George Mumford. This is a guy who taught meditation to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. He's also worked with inmates, police officers, and corporate executives. There is a reason why they call him the performance whisperer. George, who is a friend, has an incredible story. He began teaching

mindfulness and meditation after kicking a serious drug habit, leaving a career as a financial analyst and then earning a master's in counseling psychology. He's got a new book. It's called Unlock, Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success. His first book was called the Mindful Athletes Secrets to Peer Performance. If you want to hear him talk about that book, we've put links in the show notes to his prior appearances on this podcast. But in this conversation, we talked about what he means by unlocking what it means to be in flow and why many of us may be achieving that state more than we think, how to challenge negative self-talk,

the importance of gratitude, the importance of service, the importance of making mistakes. As George says, no struggle, no swag. How to recognize what he calls your hideouts? Why he identifies as an empath and why he believes this may have played a role in his addiction and his take on often misunderstood terms such as love, hope, and faith. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do

and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the great meditation teacher Alexis Santos to access the course just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm all one word spelled out okay on with the show

hey y'all it's your girl Kiki Palmer I'm an actress singer and entrepreneur on my 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 the memes come from and where's time for my space listen to baby this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcast before we jump in George any questions or concerns for me no I don't have any concerns. Are you happy? Are you enjoying life? That's my own concern. You know, talking to you makes me happy. All right, okay, that works. Are you happy? Yes, I am, actually. What's the content of your happiness? I'm just

excited. Just talk to you about anything but about the book. And it's spring. And I'm heading to LA tomorrow morning. And I'm doing what I love to do. And I'm being who I love to be. So what's not the like? I mean, nothing. That sounds perfect. It does. Yes. Well, you mentioned the book. So maybe let's start there. Okay. It's called unlocked. What do you mean by unlocked? So if you think about what was it like during COVID to be locked locked down? Yeah. You can't go anywhere. If you go out, you got to take the crosses and whatever. And then once you're able to go back out, you're actually not locked down or you're unlocked. So what I mean by unlock is being able to express your true self, the beat in the moment, the beat present in the moment without being pulled by desire or fear, but just being able to be, just being able to express

yourself. So it's, I guess the to be a lot would be to be spontaneous It's one way of looking at it and spontaneity is you know one free will It's like you're just going with the flow. It's like you have a vehicle that's let's just say car eight cylinders And you're only operating on two or three But when you unlock you're operating on all eight cylinders, everything your mind, body, heart, and soul are aligned. And it's what Seagman Freud talked about. The whole essence of psychoanalysis was to get people to the love, work, and play at their highest capacity. So when you're unlocked, it's like having that little dimmish switch on your wall turned all the way up so that you're getting the full potential of the life. And it's not something that you're unlocking, you're

always unlocking. You know, there's moments of being unlocked, there's moments of not, but to be unlocked means to be able to be real, to be yourself that's sharp in the moment, fully deployed and fully engaged and enjoy just doing the thing you're doing or just being. So the title of the book is unlocked and brace your greatness, find the flow, discover success. So you might say that when we embrace our greatness, when we say yes, whatever comes out and we just roll with it, it's like this is not a problem, it's like being in flow. And you find your flow, it's like, you're just going, and you're not there, but you're fully engaged.

And the only thing that matters is this moment and fully expressing yourself. I think it's important and helpful that you said. It's not like for mortals that we're going to live in a perpetual state of unlock. Because life is hard. And so there are going to be times when we have our head inserted up our ass and we're stuck in habitual storylines or ancient resentments or whatever and what you're providing us with is

tools to continuously and consistently unlock. Am I right as I say this? Yeah, it's actually saying, we got this masterpiece of we have this divinity, just the mind spark or whatever it is. And so I would say a caterpillar is unlocked when it comes to butterfly. And it doesn't become a butterfly without struggle. You can see it in an athletic competition. You can see it when you're in flow or when you're, if you're driving,

I say you're in Manhattan and you're in flow or when you're, you know, if you're, if you're driving, I say you're in Manhattan and you're driving a down block to block it as you are moving from block to block, there's a green light and you're just flowing. You're not stopping. You're able to just flow. And what I'm talking about is not linear. So it's hard to describe, but at the same time we all have this ability. So you ever have an experience when you felt like what you were intending to do and what you did, you felt like you were fully engaged and feel happy with what happened

and just turned out well, even though you might have some hiccups or whatever, but you got to do what you did and after what you realized, man, that was pretty cool. You know, I start to feel guilty every time I talk about flow, either with you, mostly it's with you or some other guests bring it up because I don't know how often I'm actually in flow and I'm Mr. like meditation guy.

Yes. So, you're a communicator and so when you communicate and I've had this experience with you as we talk, we'll be talking and then there's a subject that pulls your attention and you go right there. It's an intuition, it's a knowing. You get what I'm saying? I think I do. This isn't your language is more mine, but I really do think of it like pulling your head

out of your ass. Like if you're stuck in your own stories and self-consciousness and doubt that you can't be spontaneous, you're not actually awake and aware right now, but if you can drop all of that and really listen, I guess I am in flow in these interviews in that I'm listening, hopefully, and following along with what's happening right now. Yes, and I would say a lot of us are in flow, but we don't know we're in flow, and the one thing about mindfulness of paying attention is when you notice when you're in flow, you're going to find that you're in flow more than you know because now you know what it looks like, what it feels like, what the experience

of it is. And so when you train yourself and then it becomes automatic, becomes spontaneous. And so we have these moments, but we don't know how to sustain it or how to have mortals moments. And what it requires really is being in the moment and getting immediate feedback and making adjustments on the fly. And then at some point, you find a rhythm where you find a flow. And it's just happening. It's just happening and it just goes. I would say flow is the expression of the creative energy is inside of us, a creativity. There's a wisdom, there's a creativity inside of us

that expresses itself when we get out of the way, when we get our head out of our ass, as you say. I just want to pick up on something you said, we're in flow more often than we may think, but we're not really aware of it. And I think implied in that, and I think there's some research into this, is that if we can be mindfully aware of when we're in positive states, it can be flow, it can be gratitude, it can be helpfulness, it can be friendliness, it can be calm. If we can have

a meta awareness of it, if we can be aware that this is happening and appreciate that it's happening, as it's happening, that we can get better at coming back to it. I think I've heard that that's maybe in one of the nearly 600 episodes we've done, somebody has said that to me. Am I making this up? No, you're right. Noticing iticing it grows in your consciousness and your awareness and you become more tuned into it. So if we just talk about a practice, like gratitude practice and Shana Kut talks about this and this happiness of anage and one of the research habits is every 24 hours right down three new things to be grateful for. So what happens when we do that,

we actually create the automaticity of noticing what to be grateful for. You're actually programming yourself so it happens automatically. And so I would say that when we train and we do something and it's through the error correction and through the struggle that our consciousness can pick up patterns unconsciously.

And then all of a sudden, you get access to that intuition or that knowing this inside of us, when we can just be still and know like I said in a Bible, there's something about having this attitude of being alert and relax and just allowing things to happen instead of making things happen. But it takes a certain amount of faith and confidence to do that because what we're really talking about is each unknown unfolding moment happening and that's not knowing what the hell is going to happen next. Not knowing, but if we can train ourselves to embrace it, say yes to it, generate the hope, and then we start discovering things.

We start to see things. And in certain meditation, we talk about the five hindrances. Let's just talk about ill will or greed. Why are they hinders hindrances? Because they hinder our ability to be present and to see clearly. And so when we're unlocked, you see clearly that your action is going to be present and to see clearly. And so when we're unlocked, you see clearly that your action is going to be clear and it's coming from a place inside of you or what I call the masterpiece or this divine spark. There's an wisdom inside that when we can get out

of the way and just allow it to express itself that creativity comes up. We just know things. And I know you've had experiences of creativity where you're struggling with something and then you see, oh, here's a way out. And then you realized, oh, that's better than it would have been if I didn't have that struggle. And so I talk about the caterpillar. There's something about being a caterpillar and being in that chrysalis and breaking out, chipping our way out of it. And as we chip our way out of it, even though it was a struggle, we developed a strength to fly.

So I would say when we're being on lock, it's our ability to embrace whatever comes up and say yes to it, generate the hope and make decisions where we're able to express our uniqueness or let that creative energy flow out of us. And that's how we discovered things and we live in that creativity, the joy of discovery,

because we're just present. And there's no hindrance. You know, central desire. I want this really badly or it will. I'm just averse to everything. I'm pulling back. I mean, if I'm approaching or avoiding or spacing out. But some of that is programmed on how we train ourselves, so we know certain things like we know if we're in a conversation

or we can listen more than speak, we can listen with an open mind without judging it, without pushing things away upon towards us, but to let the things speak in this own language, there's a stitching together of understanding. We develop wisdom by seeing clearly and then understanding how things work. So you like a simple one, we're, you know, gravity, you know, if you jump up, you're going to come down, you don't have to believe in gravity. But if you know that and then if you align yourself with how gravity works, then you can use it to your advantage. And so I say when we're on lock, we're able to see clearly, we're able to be present,

and we're able to figure stuff out, even though we're struggling, we make mistakes, but we're not judging ourselves. We're just noticing it. And then learning and practicing what we need to learn and practice so that we have the execution that we want, or we're able to do what we need to learn and practice so that we have the execution that we want, or we able to do what we intend to do, but the struggle is really important. I find that reassuring that the struggle is important

because I do a lot of struggling, and it makes me feel better. Like I can feel with writing, for example, we all have our own different struggles in our lives for me writing is one of the big ones. I can sometimes get down on myself for the fact that writing sucks and I'm not in some blissful state of flow

all the time, rarely actually, but the struggle is what allows for these moments of breakthrough if I'm understanding you correctly. I need to go through the struggle and then I get a moment of clarity and that's a beautiful paragraph. That's the result of seven days of hell.

Yes. And you might notice that how did you get there? At some point you were able to let go, the girl or you were able to just say, okay, this is what it is. And by saying yes to it, then you're able to do something about it. I think I might have talked to you about the four A's and one of our conversations, but I talk about the four A's disability to let things speak to us, the awareness. So you have to be aware of this. That mirror mind, it just reflects what's in front of us. And the second is the acceptance. And that's the challenging one. To accept, yes, you know, I don't like this.

To accept it, say, or you know, or you accept it. Yes, to admit that this is what's happening. I got embraced to say yes, this is what's happening. I don't want it to happen. I hate it because this aversion, this anger, this frustration, but if we can just say yes, accept it. Of course, some of us, the acceptance could be like a grief and process where, you know, you go through all of those five stages, you know, bargaining and denial, the anger, the depression, the acceptance, you go through that. But if once we say yes to it and brace it, then we can work with it. And then by accepting it, then we can do the compassionate action. And then there's the assessment.

So me growing up the way I did in whatever, I would say, I don't get stressed out. I'm too cool to get stressed out. So there's awareness that there's something going on, but then the acceptance of, okay, maybe I don't think I'm stressed out, but there's something inside of me that says, yeah, this stress in here dude,

because your shoulders are up around your ears. So once I said, okay, well, one on I assume that's right. Once I embrace it, yeah, maybe I'm stressed even though I don't get stressed. Now I can work with it. Now I can do compassionate. I can, how do I relate to my stress so that I can get ease or I can work through it?

And that's what I mean. So it could be substance abuse or some kind of addiction. There's awareness of it, but because we don't accept it, we're not seeing it, but once we say, yes, I have a problem, and you embrace it, even you accept it, even though it's painful, then you can do something about it. And then once you can do something about it, it's about the choices we make,

creating space between stimulus and response, so that within that choice, we can choose wisely based on our values based on our goal Based on whatever it is we say we want to do and we say we want to be and by making that choice Then we get there. Yeah, okay, so that that paragraph sucks it. I don't like it I don't like the way it feels yeah, but you want to get through with it. You want to get done with it So unless you embrace it and say yes, this is why I'm suffering because I know it's not what I want I'm not expressing myself the way I want to it doesn't feel right but by saying yes to that by accepting that Then you can keep changing what you're doing or how you're writing until you get to a place where it feels right

So it might take a four-night. It might take, I don't know, but we wouldn't put the effort in so that we're going to do it until we can do it. So then you can assess, okay, so how did I do that? I was in flow for like 30 seconds or whatever. So the assessment part is, so how do I replicate that? And you start understanding what you did and what the essential aspects of it is.

And that's a big part of mindfulness and wisdom working together to collect data or to get collect intelligence to actually understand what the essence is and how, how did that happen? I asked the how questions. And then we start to understand to understand oh this is how this works. When the hinders are in a bands and I'm just fully present

and you know I'm seeing clearly and I'm in the moment. That's beautiful. How did I do that? How do I sustain that? And and that's what is about. But can you sustain it 24, 7 probably not? Because things are changing when you can have more moments where the fear is not controlling us, controlling what we see, how we feel. And our performance, what we're able to do. And so once we understand that, then we can do something about it. So it's really coming from this space of starting off with the embracing the greatness that we have this capacity to access wisdom

and creativity that will allow us to overcome these obstacles. We can look at things as stepping stones rather than a roadblock. And then by stepping over that, do we get to another level and getting to that level now we're having more of an ability to be unlocked around that situation. And then as we start to do that, we start to see that there's this masterpiece, we just have to like the crystallists, the caterpillar,

we have to chip away, we have to give it of these high-dose that prevent us from being unlocked. Once we get out of high doubt, then we're able to express more of that creativity, that masterpiece. Correct me if I'm wrong, you get more personal in this book than you've ever gotten before and you talk about your own hideouts. Would you be willing to describe what a hideout is and how that phenomenon has played out in your life? So a hideout would be not embracing what is and saying yes to it and being able to do

things about it. So we hide out by denial and I say for me, like I don't know about you, but things are changing so fast. It's like, okay, so if you have an iPhone and all of a sudden they do an upgrade, you know, the configuration is totally different. You're used to the other configuration, and then you don't like this one. So a high-dalt would be, well, I'm not gonna use that phone, or I'm gonna just not learn the new system. And so instead of bringing more energy, more intelligence,

to understand what is just, and how do I adapt to this new thing, we play the blame game, or we might rationalize, that's not that important. Maybe I'll just use my computer instead of using my iPhone. And so I hide out when I'm not able to say yes to whatever comes up. That life is about learning. So if I'm in survival mode, you know, I'm in fight flight of freeze, then I'm locked up.

But when I can get in to the love mode or rest in a digest, then even though I'm making mistakes, even though things are not happening the way, I want them to happen, but because I'm in growth mode, I'm looking at, okay, what's the lesson here? And what do I need to learn? I feel like I want the most exciting adventure I could be on is the adventure of getting to know myself better

and getting to know how I tend to hide out, how I tend to withdraw energy instead of bringing energy in, how I shut down rather than stay in open to see the way forward to actually say, okay, what's the lesson here? How do I learn how to do this? Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm curious how it's played out in your life beyond the iPhone. Yeah, so okay, for this book, I always said,

oh yeah, I want to do my own audio book on it. And then when I got a little resistance, like somebody was saying, well, it's so challenging, whatever. And so I said, okay, so it doesn't matter. I made peace, I won't do the audio book. And then my agent was very persistent and he wanted me to do it. And so I said, okay, I'll do it. And when I got it in that studio, you probably know what this is like. It was a struggle. Like,

I couldn't even breathe. I was resisting. So I was hiding out by just going along or not asking for what I really wanted. I really wanted to do the audio book, but when I got a little resistance, I just backed off. And so when I went in there and it was a struggle, but at the same time, it's like, okay, I haven't really been challenged like to get some a long time,

but then the second day was better and then I had to practice what I preached. I had to just brace what was going on, making mistakes, whatever it was. But once I accepted it, and then just kept error correcting and not quitting, and even though it was a primary looking at my clock, when we gonna be done, there was this idea of having people around me

that would kind of nudge me. It took me 20 years to write a book. Or that was high enough for 20 years. So in this other areas of my life that I hide out, I'm not ready for it. Or I'm just hiding out because it's comfortable where I am. I know that one side of the coin is freedom. The other side is uncertainty and anxiety. It could be in work, love and play, but it's really this idea that, yeah,

it's not easy to embrace your greatness because it's painful and we see how much we have a versatility. So writing this book about unlocking helps me to unlock when I'm doing an awkward book. That make any sense? Yeah, it does. You said something there about how it's hard to embrace your greatness.

I mean, at least superficially it would seem like be awesome to embrace your greatness. It does, but here's the thing, I work with a lot of lead athletes and I can't tell you how many times people get to that level of getting over the hump and they would scrub because there's a certain level of anxiety exposure that you're going to have vulnerability. That happens when you embrace it because it's going to be some people who are going to be upset because you're in a canoe

with other people and when you move everybody else has to move, when you change the relationship changes. And so there's a part of us that knows even you can see it when you make decisions. Sometimes I make a decision not to do something because I want to do something else. And then somebody just upset about that. The things that I shouldn't have done that because it's uncomfortable. So now I got to deal with that blowback. So people think that when you reach your goal that there's no downside to that or the downside to that is maybe you can't hang out with the people used to hang out with or maybe you know better and they feel abandoned because you're doing things and and they're not going to go with you as you move to the next thing that your life is calling

you to go to when you go on your hero's journey. There's going to be somebody that's going to be upset with that and that that's if you're sensitive like me, then you know, you're trying not to make people feel bad or you take responsibility for people. That was how I hit out, take responsibility for people by trying to control how they feel. Yeah, you describe yourself as an empath. Yes. Yes. And so what do I do with that? It's a little boy, saw that. I see the wine on the street. Hey, Everybody walks by him. I'm devastated somebody moves from the block. I'm devastated and They only moved away, you know, and you know, the walk and just go visit up

But there was just feeling a loss Because I didn't know what to do with that sensitivity So I shut it down. That's how I get out. Does it make sense? Do you think that played into your later struggles with addiction? Oh, no question. No question about it. That was another way for me to hide out and to be somebody else, but not to deal with that pain of just seeing it and not knowing that, yeah, this suffering, but how can I look at it in a way where it allows me to embrace my greatness? In other words, I can use that same ability to feel somebody's feelings and that help

and instead of feeling aversion to it, the embrace it and say, okay, so how can I be a service? How can I help them? And so I can take that same empathy and the use of to help people and help myself. So I had a just use of the help people, I help myself. So I had just instead of focusing on them, I had to focus on me first. And then once I focus on me then I can help them. Coming up, George Mufford talks about bringing out your inner masterpiece

and the role of service, faith, and love in his life. role of service, faith, and love in his life. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Disantel, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us?

The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany.

Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Another thing you're saying in the book is the only way to keep what you've got is to share it. Yes, yes, and it's powerful because what I discover is the more I share it, the more it gets ingrained in my awareness, my consciousness, so that it grows. In other words, the more I share it, the more it gets ingrained in my awareness, my consciousness. So that it grows. In other words, the more I share it, the more I have. Because all that I give is given to myself, it comes back to me. So if I give love, I get love, I give grief, I get grief. And so when I share my experience, strength, and hope, it comes back to me. And then somebody else takes that and then they do that. And then that comes back to me as then somebody else takes that and then they do that and then that comes back to me as well.

It's like they call the laws of reciprocity. They have many names for it, but it's like once again, I think about this way, Dan, there's a practice you know, Moudita, a appreciative joy. And so you appreciate someone when they do something and it's an antidote from jealousy and envy. What I learned from my own experience of Moudita is it's easy to be enjoyed for somebody you like but it's challenging to be enjoyed when your team just got beat by another team. But what I recognize was by being enjoyed with others even though they're not

somebody we like or they might not even be part of our tribe. What that happens in that is by being in joy, I have more experiences of joy. And so this thing about it anytime somebody has a good term or has some experience and happiness, may you have more moments to happen is may you have more joy, may you meet with more success because through your effort, you are able to get that result. And so I'm getting these little ways of unlocking even more by noticing that it's easy for

me to, oh my team won, I'm happy, my team lost, I'm depressed. Well I could be sad that my team lost, but I could focus on the other team. And instead of being depressed, I could have some bicarious joy. Or I'm actually minimizing my negative emotions as well as my envy and my jealousy. Because the envy and jealousy keep us locked up just like COVID keeps us locked out. But if we have those positive emotions, then we have what they call the broadened build theory is that our cognitive function is enhancing, we're able to be enjoy or to be at ease or to be in a positive mindset, which in Buddhism, we would talk about having right view.

Man, I know you're often slotted in the public consciousness into the category of performance, and you know, you've been called the performance whisper, worked with all these incredible people. But when I hear you talk, you just mentioned the Dharma or Buddhism, but that's what I hear when I hear you talk, that the how, the practicality, as I understand it, when you talk about getting unlocked and success and greatness, and success and greatness. The how of that is training your mind through meditation and bringing the Dharma into your life so that you're creating as many positive mind states as possible and these become mental muscles you can build over time. And that's how you bring out what you call the intermastropies. Do I have that right? Yes, you do have that right. It's interesting because when we talk about mindfulness and

psych meditation, the way the teachings of the Buddha, so there's threefold training is really wisdom, integrity, and mental discipline. And so a lot of people talk about mindfulness and and meditation is just a mental discipline. You know, that would be like right effort, right concentration, and right mindfulness. But it has to be grounded in wisdom, which sometimes we talk about it as right view and right intention, right thinking. And that the integrity piece, the non-harming, the right speech, right, ashram, right,

lilyhood, that cultivates our ability to be more present. And so when I talk about performance, to perform, you want to be present, you want to express yourself in a way where you feel like you were being yourself, you're being sincere, you're being authentic. And so it's developing this wisdom, moment to moment, really just being able to select intel or

to see how things work and realize that if I align myself with how things work then I'm probably going to have a good experience. But at the same time my integrity, my relationship to myself and others instead of ill-will, goodwill, you know, using like I talk about joy, compassion, love and kindness, equanimity, or so another way of saying just just being present without judging and just being fully engaged in what you're doing or who you're with, that you're right. All of those things it's all about how I manage this moment, how I cultivate disability to say yes to whatever comes up and generate the hope and see that that's where the opportunity to learn and to evolve and to express myself in a way that is alleviating suffering. So I say service is a big part of that, not just for myself, but for

for all beings or for the greatest good, for the highest good. And so that's how I see it. So we had to develop those things. So yes, that's what I'm doing. But I'm doing it with real language and day-to-day, making it accessible practical, because that's how you get access to that divinity, that beauty consciousness, that Christ consciousness, the vine spark, the masterpiece, being unlocked. Because that's there, so how do we unlock it? Like the crystalis. And that's what the book is about, how to unlock

and how to be yourself. Because the only person you could be is yourself or I'll talk for myself. The only person I could be is myself and the only time I have is now. And all I really need is love. That's an interesting phrase. All I really need is love. It reminds me of the Beatles. Is it possible for that phrase to be rendered into an empty cliche? And what do you mean by it? Yes, of course, words without actions mean anything. There's no or not to do is not to know what it means for me.

When I talk about love, that means openness, getting beyond the illusion of separateness. When you love something, you help it grow. And so Eric from Talk About, in his book, The Olive Loving, he talked about four aspects of that. He talked about self-love responding to my needs, caring, you know, care for myself and respect,

respecting who I am as I am, not trying to be Dan, but allowing myself to be authentically myself, to be sincere about how I feel and what my deepest desires are. And the last thing is to know myself. I have to know how to care for myself, and to know when I'm not respecting who I myself. I have to know when I'm not respected who I am. I need to know when I'm not responding to my needs. It's not a feeling. It's more like activity. So when you love something, you make a grow. You work to make a grow. So you label for what you love and you love what you label for. So when I talk about love, I'm talking about for the greatest good, you know, getting beyond that illusion of separateness and realizing that we all

suffer and how to help people embrace that or alleviate the suffering and the things that are impermanent, they're always changing. So that energy of love, or being in love mode, I'm able to learn the lessons and to not withdraw energy, but to bring more energy into it or to be willing to investigate, to explore, and let the wisdom, that's the ultimate stress-reducer, is wisdom knowing how things work in the line and ourselves with that so that we are based on what is, not on what we want to be or what was. But everything I'm saying could be empty unless you're hot, mine and soul and body are engaged in acting as if it's true

or choosing to say yes to everything and to bring your best mind and your best ability to make wise choices or choices that are conducive to peace, understanding, love, compassion, kindness. In the book you talk about working with prisoners, including double lifers, basically, they got two life sentences, is what I understand. How do they react when you start saying things like, all I need is love or kindness and compassion? How does it go down with them? Well, they get it because they're beyond the mouth. They're getting in there for a while and they know the quality of their life is going to be predicated on the quality of their mind. And so what else did they have? They could

have, they could do time or have the time do them. And so they would think we'd just for coming in there. And I could talk to them, it didn't matter if I mentioned the Buddha or Christ or anything. They were open to it because there was an acceptance that they can lose their liberty, but their freedom is dependent on how they developed their mind and how they related experience. But here's a thing, a challenge for me to go back what I did 25 years ago, because how I talked to them was predicated on being aware of what was there, meeting them where they were, and being guided by mindfulness and the wisdom of just letting things speak to me, and then out of that creativity, out of that potential inside of me. So most of this is like, I'm figuring this out, I said, pull along, especially back then, because I didn't know what

to expect. So my job was to just be aware and then accept what was there and then do the compassionate action of adding I can create space between the stimulus and response. So now, you know, it's being spontaneous or just letting the wisdom and the mindfulness dictate what I do, but it's grounded in my caring, my responding to the needs spoken, aren't spoken, respecting who they are and not trying to make them somebody else, but the knowledge, the knowing, the being able to see clearly, to be able to be in the present and to be able to experience them as a word or as anyone is. So I learned early on I was going to work in another prison and it was one of my first classes and so I had these copious notes on how I was going to deliver this

tharmatoc or this sermon to them. And I go into the prison and I think there's like, I don't know exactly the numbers, but let's say there's 30 inmates. And 28 of them were Spanish speaking only. So and I had an interpreter. So okay, so those notes. Okay, so I just had to be here and how do I communicate with them and how do I keep this simple? And that's what I'm talking about,

that creative energy or that embracing it. And so I just say, and I can't do this and sit there and be quiet, but just say, no, okay. So I just need to talk to them and give them the basic fundamentals. So I can't be so esoteric in my interpretations, but just down the earth meeting them where they are and just talking about this simple thing of being present and being in your body. So that's what I mean.

I can reflect back and say, well, yeah, because we learn from reflecting on our experience, but in the moment, my best thing was to be present and see what happened and to see what wisdom can come out of that silence that not knowing. I noticed this when I was a morning television anchor. You know, first I was just awful at it. Just so stuck in my own head and planning out my little quips from moment to moment, which always landed flat if I had planned them. quips from moment to moment, which always landed flat if I had planned them. And over time, I had this, I guess confidence, maybe even faith is a better word that if I just drop all my plans and am right there spontaneously reacting in the moment to whatever my co-anchors were saying in these live, no net situations that I would have access to the right quip or the right segue or

the right question for people. And that came to mind as you were talking about being in front of 30 inmates, 28 of whom didn't even speak the only language you know how to speak. Yes, but that's being inflow then. That's what I was saying. You've been in flow a lot of times, you didn't even know it, but how did that happen? And that's the question you asked yourself. And I think I said do with knowing what works,

what doesn't work, and then realizing that, you know, I just have to be myself and I have to allow things to happen instead of trying to make things happen. Now it's interesting, I talked to people that started to talk to a young man today, he was cutting my hair. And what I discovered is, what young folks tell me is I give what their experience and language. And when I talk to them in a way of unfolding, or these principles we're talking about,

then they realize, oh, I already had that. Oh, yeah, I've been in flow. But that's telling you something that how you related to a situation where you were trying to order or you will come in from the self-centered fear to have an disability to let go and what did the confidence come from the confidence comes from not quitting and making the right effort and figuring stuff out. figuring stuff out. I did a one of my six week study groups on faith. Faith is the the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things unseen. And so when you have faith, it's not holding on anything. It's like a complete acceptance of your greatness and that things are going to turn out well. I don't know how they're going to turn up but it's going to be okay, maybe better and okay because I'm in a positive mind state. I'm not letting one of those hindrances hinder my ability to be present and to see clearly. So when even if you're in the don't know mind or begin his mind, I don't know how this is going

to turn out but I'm just going to see what happens and then then let all my training express itself at the time it's supposed to express itself because I'm not trying to make things happen. I'm allowing things to happen. Does that make any sense? Yes, it's just it's a leap of faith to allow things to happen. Yes, and when you allow things to happen and they turn out well, then that faith grows. And that's part of the process I talk about is my other book, the Mind for Athlete, a sequence of pure performance.

One of the superpowers is faith. And it grows when we have confidence and we do things and we learn from our mistakes, you know, without failure, there would be no success. So this ability to embrace our errors and to learn from them is huge. The struggle, I say no struggle, no swag. I got swag, but I earned it. And you have to keep earning it because, I mean, I'm 51. I've had some successes in my life, but if I want to have any more, I'm going to have to continue to climb back into the chrysalis.

Yes, that's true, but here's a way to unlock actually, the nervous system doesn't know the difference between what we experience and what we think about. And I usually talk about this image of me being in front of an old fashioned blackboard. And I take my fingers and I use my fingernails, you know, I scratch the blackboard and people shatter it. It's like there's no blackboard there, but the imagery of it creates the experience of it. And so when we make a mistake and we keep reflecting on a mistake and how awful it was and how we're bad person, we're not recreating that. A nervous system is going through that. So now if you switch that around and you focus on your past successes,

and you reflect on it and you keep playing them over in your mind, then that grows. Now in your creating this mindset that allows you to have better cognitive functioning and you actually have more face. more face. Let me go back to love for a second. This whole notion of love being all you need. How scalable is that notion? Could you have that attitude if you were president of the United States in a dangerous world with other superpowers trying to potentially topple your government or whatever? That would be the challenge and the most important question we have to ask is whether the universe is friendly or unfriendly. If it's unfriendly, then we use all our resources to deny, destroy, that's war, or to remove the threat. But if we see the universe is neither friendly or unfriendly, that doesn't matter what we do. But if we see the world

as friendly, then I'd task is to align ourselves with how things work. So you got to have an open mind or open heart, the BA would do solve issues and the BA would see things and to learn from them. And I go back to the Cherokee grandfather, talking to his grandson, saying that he had this ferocious battle between two wolves inside of him. One would call fear the other one would call love. And the grandson became concerned to say grandfather which wolf will win. And the grandfather said the one that I feed. So let's learn from it and how do we relate.

And I'm not polyanderous because I'm not going to let somebody smack me and turn my cheek. I'm either going to put my hand up the block it or move out of the way. But what I'm saying is if you have an open mind and open heart, you'll be able to respond to what happens rather than react. So your response will be measured and it will be an alignment of who you say you are and what you say you want to do. That's why when I say all you need is love, what I'm talking about is saying yes to life, but also understand we're all connected, but you got to see clearly and with love. How can you be so confident that the universe is friendly? I mean, given the reality of inequality, violence, bigotry, competition, etc et cetera. I mean, there seems to be plenty of countermanding evidence.

Yeah, I mean, I was on the other side of railroad tracks. It seemed a lot of nasty fossilized, being a drug addict and whatnot. And all I know is that I was able to transform in spite of all of the adversity, in spite of being an African-American man who could be driving a Scott and get a DWB You know what a DWB is driving well black. Yes. There you go And all of that stuff all this stuff that's happening now That's been happening even way worse when I was growing up. So It's all you can do is do you as the Bible says live in the world not of the world

So it's like seeing yeah, I'm seeing clearly. I'm not naive, but If I'm feeding the love wolf I have a better chance of Being able to respond in ways that's gonna create less suffering Doesn't mean it won't be suffering because suffering is the first noble truth It's gonna be suffering. It's gonna be people who are out of their mind and in their violent and doing nasty bad things or hiding out through drugs or any of the addictions or just being in hate. All I know is when you're in the negative state, at least the more suffering, even though short term, you might feel like you're doing something.

But what you give comes back to you. Let me say if I can restate some of this. I'm ad-libbing here, so I might mess this up. But I think what I'm hearing you say is, yes, the universe can be, or at least the world, can be pretty hostile. That is because people have had lots of adverse stuff happen in their lives prior to this moment. And that has put them into a situation with their fear, wolf, or their capacity for hatred. It has the steering wheel. And you don't have to judge them per se. You don't have to hate them back. That's not going to help you can defend yourself, protect your interests, protect people you love, do your best to compete, but you don't have to dehumanize them, otherwise them, hate them in the process because that

actually just weakens your abilities. Yes, what I'm saying is there's a lawfulness to the universe. So if you align yourself with how things work, like I said, gravity. If you know gravity works a certain way, then you behave according to how it is. And so when you align yourself with love with divinity, you're gonna have a divine experience or you're gonna suffer less than you would otherwise.

So it's like the nervous system is programmed to if it's pleasant approach, if it's unpleasant avoid and if it's neither pleasant or unpleasant and not economists, then it's pleasant approach, if it's unpleasant avoid and if it's neither pleasant unpleasant and not equanimous, then it's facing out. It's not personal. It's just the way it is. And so how to train ourselves to stay in the center, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant and not to space out, but to be present and to be equanimous being hired to to hurricane as I would say, that's huge. Is it possible that all of this stuff, this equanimity you're talking about, this capacity for compassion could be to many people simply academic if they don't actually practice

on the cushion as a meditator? Yes, so the cushion is one part of it, but all day long, you know, how they're thinking, how they're relating to love, work and play because you can meditate and do all that stuff, but then you have to be it, you know, total qualities of the heart. You have to be compassionate, be loving, be kind. And so a three-fold is not just action or just training the mind, but also in behavior. You know, goodwill instead of illwill, cultivating states of, you know, the heart to the heart is open and loving, or at least tolerant. And then the wisdom, the see what's working and what's not working, the see if I have on the love glasses, then I see things a certain way if I have have one that's fair glasses, I'm probably going to be in Fight Fight of Freeze.

Coming up, George talks about the connection between generating hope, having optimism and achieving our goals, what the negative committee is, and using uncertainty and anxiety as opportunities to challenge or habit, the habit many of us have, of negative self-talk. There's a phrase you've used repeatedly in this conversation. You keep using it, and I'm only now asking you about it, but I'm curious. Generate the hope. You've said that over and over and over again. What does that mean specifically? So when you're in the optimistic, when you're in the right view or you're in a

whole-sum mind state, then your cognitive functioning is going to be enhanced. In other words, you'll be able to see like when you're in fear, have panel vision. So let's say you're stuck on channel five or seven and it's like 400 channels or thousand channels. So when you generate the whole. There's a willingness to do not get stuck on one channel and to be open to seeing. Outside of the box what the solution is or what it is you want to achieve. So when you generate the hope. what it is you want to achieve. So when you generate the hope, then you're more apt to stick with it and to be able to see clearly to be present. And so I talk about this,

I call it the HOF Hall of Fame. Hope, optimism and faith. That's how you get to the Hall of Fame. But you got to do the work and you got to have some talent. But without hope, optimism and faith, when soon as adversity comes, soon as you hit a roadblock, you're going to quit. So I was speaking from my experience, not from the book or what people say on theory. This is my experience. We're working with elite performers as well as myself, is that you got to do that. You got to say,

yes, the life, and you got to generate the hope. Because otherwise, you're not going to learn the lesson. You're not going to bring the energy you need to achieve what you need to achieve. Yeah, but without hope, without actually believing that it is possibly you could achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve, why would you try to achieve anything? That's the whole point. Why make that? You won't make the effort unless you have faith. If you don't make the effort, you're not going to get the result. And so this is exactly what they're talking about. Faith without works is dead. So you got to have the hope. But then you got it. Some people say they use hope like, okay, you hope, but you don't do the effort. I'm talking about having the hope, having the optimism, having the faith. Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, it's actually right on time for me because one of the most difficult psycho dynamics in my life is my relationship to writing,

of which I've talked about before in year five on writing this book. And, you know, I kept having to drag my aspect to the computer to do this thing. And then involves no shortage of hope. I guess I wouldn't have used that word, but I see now that is apropos. And even today, I was in this depressed mode, because there's lots of valleys, you know, as an author, but there are lots of valleys in this process. And this latest valley I was in was because the publisher of my first book, 10% happier, asked me recently to write

a preface for the upcoming 10th anniversary. I can't believe we're almost 10 years into this thing of the book. And so I was going back and rereading the book. I haven't read the book. I don't know, nine years. I haven't read my own book since probably since it came out. And I'm reading it. I was like, it's actually pretty good.

And then I went into a mode of like, oh, well, this new book I'm writing, it's not gonna be as good as this. And I started to get really depressed, but actually the right lens would have been to see it as a challenge. Oh, okay, I'm being reminded that I worked five years on this previous book and it worked out okay.

And yes, the current state of the next book is not as good, but that doesn't mean it'll never get there. I should just view this as a challenge. Yeah, to view it as a challenge. And to see it as, you know, what you said is an opinion about it's not gonna be as good, but the last time I checked, you don't have a 1-800 psychic hotline.

And even if let's just say you, if it isn't, but you can look and say, I did the best I could with where I am and what I have now. That's a winner. Not trying to replicate what happened in the past or what might happen in future, but showing up and doing your best in the moment, moment by moment and trusting that this is going to be an awesome book or awesome process and you're going to be able to express yourself more clearly and more passionately. I'm just saying. So if that's your dialogue, what do you think is going to happen? It'll be a terrible book. Okay, so which Dan is saying that?

I'm just messing with you. I know you're messing with me. And I'm also saying, yes, I'm saying, but you get my dress. It's the cell talk that is actually having the impact on our ability to have confidence or not. But I can't tell you. I mean, I just went to writing a book and doing the audio book and the negative committee was live. And I had to just say, man, I'm not trying to hear that. Here's what I'm focusing on.

And it's helpful when I read my book, if my book is all about unlocking, and how do you unlock when you're feeling insecure or you're feeling anxious, or there's an uncertainty involved here where you don't know how this is going to go but right now it looks like it's not going to be as good as it was before and those are opportunities to actually challenge that voice in the change in so that you can get access to that masterpiece within. When we get really challenged,

that's when our late nobility's express themselves, no struggle, no swag. This has been awesome. It's always awesome to talk to you whether we're in person or to a remote podcast interview. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your new book and any other resources you've put out into the world that you want people to know about. Yes, thank you for that. I'm sort of name of my book is unlocked.

I'm Bracia Greatness, find the flow, discover success, and it's produced by Hopper Wins. And you can pre-order it actually now, and you can also go to my website, GeorgeMonfit.com, now and you can also go to my website, GeorgeMonthet.com and have access to all of the teachings in our French we have. I also have a YouTube channel that I do what I call being at home with George and I usually do that once a week. But the website is a great place to go to check all that stuff out and yeah I just really appreciate being with my buddy Dan. You know, I think I'm a really good buddy and a friend and he challenges me because he asks questions that actually brings the best out of me. So I want to say thank you Dan for this opportunity and 10% happier.

Thank you. I think of you as a buddy and a friend and I feel lucky to have you as one. Thanks again to George, Mumford. Always great to talk to my friend George. Thank you as a buddy and a friend and I feel lucky to have you as one. Thanks again to George Mumford, always great to talk to my friend George. Thank you as well to everybody who listens to this show. Very grateful for your ears. If you've got a second, go give us a rating or a review that really helps. And thanks most of all to everybody who works so hard on the show. 10% happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justin Davy, Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson. Our supervising producer is Marissa Schneiderman and Kimmy Regler is our

managing producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultraviolet Audio and Nick Thorburn of the Great Band Islands, Road Arthene. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add 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 at 1dory.com slash survey.