Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 86: Gary Vaynerchuk, Media Industry Leader

Episode Date: June 28, 2017

VanyerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk got his start as "the wine guy" when he launched one of the first wine e-commerce websites in the U.S. He began making a wine video blog as YouTube was coming up and went on to build an entire social media-focused empire. Vaynerchuk was skeptical of trying meditation, so Dan brought in mindfulness teacher Cory Muscara (Ep. #82) to help. 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.

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I said Mr. Mollnar, you're underestimating the brain. Mm-hmm. So, I've been thinking about this for quite a while. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. Dan Harris. Gary V. His full name is Gary Vaynerchuk is an unusual guest for us at a number of levels. is an unusual guest for us at a number of levels. As you're about to hear, he is a high octane, 7,300 miles a minute type dude.

He got to start as the wine guy. He launched one of the first wine e-commerce websites in America and he made all these YouTube videos of himself talking about wine and he just took off as a social media star and is now got a whole empire and He's he's a businessman. He invests in all sorts of stuff He has a social media consultancy

All sorts of stuff unusual and not only because he's he's quite a character But unusual because while he invests in at least one meditation company and believes in the power of meditation, he does not actually meditate. So we've decided to do this thing. We did this once before with Josh Groben where the singer where we bring somebody on and we teach him how to meditate live. So that's what we do with Gary. You can be the judge as to how well it worked. Here we go.

Gary V, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Happy to be here. Do you prefer Gary V or Gary Vaynerchuk? I prefer anything as long as they're thinking of me. Well said, always hustling. So just for people who have been living under a Iraq and don't know much about you, you started, you kind of burst into the consciousness through wine.

Yes. Just walk me through some of the backstory here. So I'm going to assume, given the subject matter, a lot of people don't know who I am. I'm an entrepreneur, an immigrant born in Belarus, the former Soviet Union, and to Dan's point, I was building a very large e-commerce wine business in the mid-90s early 2000. I was a pioneer in e-commerce, email marketing, Google AdWords, the day it launched. And I did this for my family liquor business in Springfield, New Jersey called Wine Library.

But you also just, and you want to amplify that point a little bit because you might not be comfortable saying this, but you also used your personality through web video, talking about wine in a way that nobody else was talking about it, you would compare certain flavors of wine to Skittles, and we did a story on you on Nightline. I mean, you really made a cultural impact through the way you were talking about wine.

To your point, I built this business as an entrepreneur, and then YouTube came, and YouTube looked a lot like e-commerce and the internet, looked a lot like email marketing, looked a lot like Google search ads. It was this new place that I assumed intuitively that it was going to be a place that people paid attention to. There, you couldn't run ads yet. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to talk about wine. I've been learning about it since I was 15, I'm 30 now. This is 10 years ago. Or so, I'm just gonna review wine on video and it completely took off to your point.

I mean, when you guys did that story, you know, we're an immigrant family. Like this was a family gathering, sitting like it was the biggest thing that ever happened in my life. Then Conan and Ellen and it got crazy, which led me to knowing about Twitter. I invested in Twitter,

then I really started becoming a voice for social media. And that's probably where my brand to everybody was listening, switched from being the wine guy to the businessman. But the reason I started with the story is I was the business man the whole time. I wasn't a wine critic. I was a wine retail store owner who realized that if you didn't both people and actually gave them good wine reviews, it didn't matter if you were a critic for the times or a store owner, the proof was in the pudding, right? And so by the way, I'm sitting here right now with you in the chaos of my life because I believe that mental meditation, that whole genre, is the next enormous trend and much

more exciting for me because I think it's gonna help a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's fun when the trend you believe in has a lot of good behind it. You know, I think if you're in the trend of like, I believe that, you know, for coats are gonna be hot. That's fine and I'm an entrepreneur and I believe in that

and like good, but if you're like, hey, I believe the trend is healthier food. If you can win and it's something that's good for society, I don't think I've been more excited about any trend of human behavior than my belief that every single person in the world will meditate not too distant future in some shape or form and the consumerization of it, the capitalistic nature of it.

Listen, I'm not mother Teresa. I'm intrigued by this because I think this is the fitness industry and the health food industry a decade ago. I think that compounds it. I do see the good in capitalism as somebody was born in the communist country. I think I'm gonna bring more awareness to it

because my intrigue of it, which then helps people. So this is interesting for me. I'm glad I'm here, thanks for having me. It's just about absolute pleasure. And I should say we've met each other socially many, many times. The, okay, I have a million questions asked here. And I'm trying to pick where to start.

But I wasn't planning to ask this, but since you talked about the commercialization of the meditation, there are a lot of people getting nervous about that. They hear a guy like you will talk to you. And they should. Yeah, okay, so. But that's because they're romantic.

They should, the same way that some of the people in the Web 2.0 movement were worried that I was at South by Southwest 2006. They're like, you're a businessman. You're not a hippie that wants to change the world through mobile phones. And I said yes, but I'm one of the reasons you're gonna change the world. If you're a complete 100% purest and romantic and ideological about things, then you're

never gonna hit scale. The reason all these great things hit scale is because the human spirit of amplification comes from self-interest, some people love finding a new band and being an indie band and their self-interest is they're the cool person that finds the indie band. Other people like to find an indie band, sign them and make lots of money because their interest is to make money and blow up that band. Punchline is they both actually win. The indie band who discovers it gets to say I was on that trend early, then they sign,

they say they sell out, they hate them, right? But they go mainstream and all these amazing people get to hear their amazing music. I'm very empathetic to somebody who's grown up in being a person that meditates when it was seen when when 20 years ago people would make fun of them or be silly. And I I really associate with that feeling because I've always been a pioneer in my things. New Zealand wines, French wines, Spanish wines becoming big in the US. I was right. Social media. I was there. I was right. It changes, but they should understand that if they truly love the impact, wouldn't you much rather have 85% of humans doing this, even though some of them think it's cool,

or it's like just do it or soul cycle, or would you rather have 4% of people doing it, and it's this little thing. I think if you actually care about it, you do want it to scale, but I'm empathetic to the purest of any genre and including meditation. I agree with you. I would just say with a small asterisk, asterisk, which I think you probably will agree with,

it should scale in the right way. It should be scaled by people who know what they're doing. The problem is that's not how it works. Huh, okay. Like, yes, I agree with that. Show me when that's happened. It never happens. When it starts to scale, the right people with the right intent

aren't always the full percentage of everybody. It's just, it's never happened. It's not how humans work. I'm just a really pragmatic, practical dude, which is, it's all about alternatives. If a hype man comes along and screws up meditation, like is headspace and calm and in shape are these the right way to some people yes to people that have been doing it longer, no.

But they're going to be a lot better than what you see in four years. Wait till you see the characters that come across in four years. They're going to be the biggest corporations in the world and they're going to ruin it. And then what's going to happen is they'll be a pushback to the ruining it, and new micro people that do it the pure way will find their way. So we're gonna let the hype cycle play out. You need the hype cycle to get it into everybody's mindset.

I'd rather that happen. I know that there's a lot of people who have anxiety, stress, all these things that don't know this is happening, are gonna see it from somebody that really knows how to reach people, a Vince McMahon, a Barnum and Bailey, right? You know, and they're gonna become aware of it.

They're gonna download an app, they're gonna go to a studio, they're gonna benefit. And a lot of people will not like that, that was the first person because their meditation wasn't as strong, it was watered down, it's intent was commercial, but it's the gateway for that person to then graduate, right? There's a lot of people that are doing way better

exercising today, the gateway was a gold gym or Richard Simmons or at least, you know, Equinox, whatever you want to critique, coming from the wine business and hanging out with fancy friends like you, there's always somebody who's gonna snob it up more, right? You gotta upgrade your friends. Clearly, but very honestly, I saw this in the wine business,

right? You know, the yellow tail and a Santa Margarita and a Kendall Jackson are made fun of by every sommelier and hardcore wine fan that I know. The problem is that's the gateway to the next thing. So I'm not going to be upset if the reason somebody gets into meditation is somebody cookie them and got them to download their app. I'm excited because that may be the stepping stone for them to really find that mental paradise

that they're looking for that I think really needs to happen. That's a really interesting way of looking at it. And an optimistic way, right? Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Before we get more into you and meditation, I just want to talk a little bit more about you. The personnel, yeah. The business man.

Yeah, and you've written a bunch of books. I have. Sure. Some of the titles out. Crush it. Thank you, economy, job to job right hook. I've written four business books. Some of them are psychology based.

Some of them are very practical. They've all been around social media to one way or another. And what would you say is the core message? Because I would, I would whittle it down and you'll probably correct me to hustle. I do think work ethic is the most controllable of things. I do think that if you're listening to this right now

and you're not 100% happy, that you're in control. Now, you're not in control to your hard wiring. You may be a pessimist. I set up to miss, right? Just a few minutes ago. I look at everything optimistically. I think that's my advantage. I think cynicism and pessimism is defense,

and it doesn't allow people to achieve their things. But I do think that if you're trying to achieve something, the one thing I know that you have way more control over than your talent or how pretty you are or what family you're born into or where you grew up is if you decide to spend three more hours doing that thing versus watching house of cards or playing madden football or being on three softball teams or going and playing darts and drinking you know beer at five o'clock every Friday in the spring and summer that funny things happen. Now do I think if you play basketball every day, 18 hours a day that you become LeBron, I do not. But I do think you become a much better pick-up

basketball player against your friends. And so I just think that hustle, aka hard work, feels like the piece of advice that I can inspire into people that actually manifests into something other than dream it and it will come. Or draw, you know, like, I just don't think people are practical about things. What's your day like?

I wake up at 6 a.m. when I'm in New York, which is 60% of the year, 40% I'm traveling. I wake up at 6 a.m. I work out from 6 to 7. I have a full-time health employee, which means I have a nutritionist slash trainer who travels with me and lives and shows up every day with me. And I should say, because means I have a nutritionist slash trainer who travels with me and lives and shows up every day with me.

And I should say, because when I first met you, you were not as light as you are now. Now you're like, cut. Yeah, I mean, we ran into each other like at a street or somewhere of some conference and you made a note, you made a note now, it's getting better and better. No, we saw each other wedding and I was like, I didn't even recognize you for a minute. Yeah, it's really cool. Like, I'm very happy. We were saying, right, before we started, this stuff is binary, right?

You can't be half pregnant. I mean, I know it's fancy, schmancy. All my friends make fun of me for having somebody I pay a lot of money to to travel with me. Then I make fun of them for buying fancy cars and art because I think this is a much better investment. Yeah, but you've taken a 1% or option. You're not, most of us don't have. Correct.

And I don't take that lightly and I don't try to be fancy. What I say is hack your reality. I got to a place financially where I could afford it. And then that became the way I figured out that I could really get better at health. And so not everybody's going to be able to afford going to Asia and India and meditate. But maybe it's an app, maybe it's a studio, maybe it's something you find free on the internet and you're doing your living room, you deal within your reality,

but yeah, I mean, so I wake up at six, six to seven, and then by, you know, spend a little time with the kids and get them to school kind of thing, and then by eight o'clock I'm in my first meeting, and usually I get home around 10, 11 p.m. Wow, that's a long day. It's a very long day. And if you really understood that I don't waste one minute,

my big thing is not how much I sleep because I try to sleep six, seven hours because I think it's important. It's that I am so programmed that I think I'm accomplishing a week's worth of work for many in an actual day. Because I think when you window down lunchtime, when you window down drinks, when you window down watching YouTube videos that your high

school friends sent you, that people are not working as much as they think in that 40, 45, 50 hour week. And I think I've been able to accomplish a lot of things professionally because I'm getting a lot done. What about chilling? What about just hanging with your wife? Weekends all in seven weeks vacation, which is aggressive, because it's binary, right? I have to be completely out, right? And I'm very blessed, like I love what I do so much.

It's almost, I almost feel a weird guilt. I think a lot of reasons why I put out a lot of content besides the narcissistic I like the attention. That's just very real. I'm not naive to that. On the flip side, getting 100 emails a week that you changed my life is fun. It's impact. People don't come to your funeral because you made a billion dollars. People come because you meant something to them. And so I think my work is my chilling. Like I'm far less comfortable when I'm chilling than when I'm grinding 18 hours a day.

It's my happy zone. I'm a workaholic no question, but I will tell you, it is my balance, it's my place. I'm very happy there. That's really interesting. I share a lot of that. Although I will say, and it'll be interesting since I have you sitting here

and maybe I just get some free advice out of you I will say that in the last couple of months I feel like I can feel myself burning out a little bit like I've just won too many things on my plate and I'm starting to like be unpleasant. My intuition knowing you from afar is that's awesome because you're gonna do something about it and it's not about being burnt out. It's about recognizing it early enough that you can adjust to that reality. I realized I needed to take seven weeks vacation,

six weeks vacation, two years ago when I was at two weeks. Because I'm like, look, I'm just not spending enough time with my family and I want to and so I just adjusted. I am checked out on the weekends, I'm coming home earlier on Fridays now. I'm like just hacking and here's my point. When people complain they don't have enough money, I tell them they should work more or work smarter. When my rich or successful friends and you know because I grew up in the social media world and a lot of them went public and a lot of crazy things happened, when

they complain that they don't spend enough time with their family and they have the resources I tell them the reverse which is spend time with your family. Don't, like you made your bed. The one thing I won't do is complain. There is no woe is me. I'm making choices. But the other thing is I'm not interested in conforming to the current politically correct point of view on issues. Like if you look at what's politically correct and accepted and easy to say over dinner to look good, it changes all the time. You know, like, so I'm not also, I'm not going to pander to my friends who say, Gary, you should spend more time with your kids. I'll say, Rick, I know you, you come home and you drink eight Budwizers. You go into your man cave, you play Madden,

you watch Sports Center, and you're physically there, but you're not mentally there. So who's right? I think, you know, for me, just being a good either two year old and I balance a lot of this stuff too, is really about when you're there. You gotta be there. Yes.

And by the way, that's hard. It's very hard. And you're a newsman, you know, so like, you're like almost built to be ready to spring into action at any moment, which has got its own kind of very similarity to being a CEO and entrepreneur, which is everything is my fault, everything is my responsibility.

It's super lonely, and all my life is about, is headaches. I mean, I don't know what to say. We've glamorized, by the way, one of the reasons I'm passionate about this, and I'm going to make a very big statement here. My world of startup culture and entrepreneurship is not talking about suicide enough. We've painted a very fake narrative that entrepreneurship is cool. All of a sudden, I'm taking selfies every day because entrepreneurs have been put on this

pedestal over the last five years. Everybody thinks they're cool. They're following all of us on Instagram. I've got 1.6 million followers. It's ludicrous. It became the cool thing, and we're not talking about how lonely and hard it is. So kids are getting tricked into thinking it's easy,

that it's all about private planes and models and bottles and all this stuff. They start a business, and then it fails. And now their identity of being a startup founder because they put it in their Instagram profile has been shattered, and they don't know how to handle it. And so I wanna have way more honest conversations around entrepreneurship and that was one of the gateways

that brought me to meditation a little bit because I wanted people to have other things that could balance out what they're dealing with because this stuff is intense. That's a really interesting point. I'm glad you raised it. And you also got us to meditation. You wrote an article.

I don't know what your current stance on this, but you wrote an article in which you said, I think meditation is the next big wave. It's going to be a huge cultural force, but I don't meditate and I don't want to meditate. I am scared to bullf***** even though everybody, you know, when they first meet me, I'm full f*****er because I'm a good. I'm a charismatic character and I'm salesman. So I thought it was important. I really wanted to talk about it

because I like being historically correct and I wanted to get it on paper. It was about two years after, I've been thinking about this for quite a while. And so I put it out there, I'm glad I did because you saw it and that got us conversating and I'm here. But I had to put that in there

because I would have felt that I was a hypocrite and I would in you when dode. I could have left it out. But I had to put that in there because I would have felt that I was a hypocrite and I would have in you when dode. I could have left it out, but I had to put it in there because I didn't want to in you when dode that I did it. And I know that I don't do it for something I make fun of, which is being romantic about a point of view.

I am so thankful for the serenity and peace that I have in my body. I've literally taken a comical point of view. This is true, a comical point of view that I shouldn't meditate because what if I, I'm in so a good place, what if it might do, I believe in it so much that I'm like, wait a minute, could I be the reverse?

Could I actually uncover something that could be trip me up? I've, you know, I have a venture fund. I invested in a company called InScape, which as a studio here and an app, I went, I did meditate for the first time for real. It was hard. It was hard for me. And not like hard. I've all my friends, so many of my friends are meditating and they told me do this to, you know, it's binary. I wanted to be in shape when I first met you, but I wasn't all the way there yet, and so I was half pregnant. Clearly three years ago, I made a decision on my health. I'm sure somewhere along the line that may or may not happen with this, but just because I don't right now,

or having for 15 years or didn't grow up in a family of it, it is black and white obvious to me that this is going to be a massive consumer and cultural trend, and I'm so pumped you're doing this, Dan, because you're just gonna be right and it's gonna open up opportunities for you and your family because, and I know you're passionate about it, because I know how you roll, and so it's cool. Like, the whole thing is amazing. It feels like social media 2005 for me all over again.

Everybody's gonna do it. I can't wait to see the t-shirt that everybody wears in four summers that's gonna piss off the purists and everybody's gonna have it. There's going to be a fashion brand that owns this space. It's going to make a lot of you that are listening puke, but it's going to happen. And I hope you take the optimistic point of view that it means that people are doing it. So, okay, in our remaining time here, you've, I want to say two things. One is, any meditation

person who's going to be honest with you should say that actually there is the chance that you will face some ugly stuff in meditation and who, you know, it could change you. So, I mean, I don't think that's what's going to happen, but it's not unprecedented. So I just want to say that. The second thing I want to say is I have a rule

and I'm not going to break it now, which is I never, ever tell somebody they should meditate because there's nothing more annoying than doing that. However, after the break, what we're going to do here, you might notice. You're going to leave moments of my life is about to happen. One of my favorite meditation teachers, Corey Muscara, is going to join us in the studio and he's going to offer Gary a brief primer. Here what happens when we come back.

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 newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Rue 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 Born Naked, 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. Cory, thank you for doing this, man. Appreciate it.

Thanks, pleasure. I love both of you guys. Thank you, man. Yeah. So, before we get started, do either of you have anything you want to say? Do you have a question for Corey? Corey, do anything you want to say based on what you just heard from Gary Vee? No, I mean, I've been listening the whole time and I love everything you're saying.

And, you know, Dan's thing is his role is he doesn't impose meditation on anyone. So he brings me in and I also have the same role. So it's funny what brings us all here together. You know, one thing I will say is just, I totally get where you're coming from. Just this idea like, I'm thriving right now. Everything is running well. Am I a well-oiled machine? And-

Before you finish your next sentence, which is gonna be very interesting. Yeah. My whole life, even when I wasn't. I've such a, you know, this is my opportunity to just give a huge shout out to my parents. Things are always like, if I told you that I wake up every morning and make pretend that my mother, wife, or children died, like if I told you what it felt like, if you opened me up and can put math against my chemicals and feelings, it would stun you. I, not only am thriving, I'm always thriving because I'm completely driven by gratitude.

100%. Like, my perspective is so wired in guys. Like, tomorrow VaynerMedia goes out of business. I say, awesome, because now I can rise like a Phoenix and everybody who's going to make fun of me and say, I knew he was bad. bad. Like, I am so mentally prepared for everything always because I'm just empathetic to the reality of the like the empathy that runs, it's why I'm a good salesman by the way. It's the empathy, right? Because I know, you know, and so, yeah, man, it's so into like, you know, I'm actually, this is me, making a statement in a form of a question to be honest with you It's just this very good place. It's not as it's not this kind of like alpha guy saying things are good now like like

My for the first 18 years of my life. I was told I was a loser because I was a DNF student But in my brain. I knew I wasn't I knew what was gonna happen. I knew where I was I knew where my emotional intelligence at I knew that this peer. I knew what was gonna happen. I knew where I was. I knew where my emotional intelligence sat. I knew that peer pressure had no shot on me because I knew who I was for myself. So it's interesting, right? Like people know me now, but they didn't know me when I was making $34,000 a year,

and I was this guy. And when things were tough for me, I would still be there for every, but like I'm in this, I was self-aware at a very young age that something was going on inside of me. That was a very good thing in the long term. Yeah. And when I say, when I said like you're thriving, because I follow yourself and it comes with that understanding of, it's in a very pure way with an appreciation for where you're at and it's coming.

What I love about you Gary is like you're you embody so much of what people are looking to get out of a meditation practice in the first place. So a natural conclusion in this conversation would be well, why do I have to do that? Don't I have everything? Not that you're saying that, but I have a lot of what someone would be looking for in the first place. And so for there, I think we could shake hands and say, keep doing what you're doing. Now, but I'm too smart. I know that you've got commas after that sentence, right? Like there's these other things.

And I think, look, you always try to get better, right? You know, and look, and I was happy know, I was happy with the word I used. I took a comical, I genuinely believe, I know when I'm a character, sure of myself, I know when I start veering into stick mode, like, because I became so passionate about the space commercially, and like, and just, again, like I framed up early on. Wow, this is great. This is going to be huge and millions, tens of millions,

hundreds of millions of human beings are gonna be in a much better place. Ooh, I'm really excited to be on this wave, right? I feel like I manifested that, you know what's so funny? Time is the thing that probably scares me the most, right? And then again, you know, I say that to friends and truth and they're like three minutes, five minutes. So I'm then again, I say that to friends and truth and they're like, three minutes, five minutes.

So I'm not naive, I'm short as tons of benefits and I almost can't wait to maybe, you know, I thought it would be that investment. I kind of weirdly subconsciously invest in that company to maybe force myself to do it. Maybe it's, maybe I said yes probably right now because maybe this is the moment. I genuinely believe it's an inevitable outcome

that something's going to trigger and I'm going to go into it. Yeah, I love it. So it's so important. I mean, you know what I was saying, you're smiling, just because you're not hearing major, it would be clear I'm sitting here smiling because the two of you are hilarious. So I'm just going to step back. So you know, when I work with executives leaders the EOS and stuff

Many of them are already functioning at a very high level They wouldn't be where they are in the first place and so as you already know this stuff is in Anytime why you exercise it's refinement right you could you could download P90 X and do that why hire someone because it's gonna give you that extra edge And so I was talking to Dan before we even started this. A lot of what I've been talking about lately is like the idea that happiness is in the margins, right? Happiness is not going to be the big 100% thing that I'm looking for and then I get there and like, oh, my life is good. It's usually like the 3% extra of like, oh, I had a conversation with my kid and I was really there. And the accumulation of that over time, it's like, wow, reflection of a life what lived. I would also argue that success is in the margins, growth is in the margins, the competitive

edges in the margins. And mindful as meditation often gets reduced to relaxation, gets reduced to being settled to tranquility. And I actually hate that. And you'll never hear me really use the term, all right, let's just relax right now. It's a byproduct in many ways, right? Why would anxious people be doing this in the first place? So there is that element to it, but it is this cultivation of self-awareness. Now when you start entering into that realm of like tuning into what's here, holy crap, like we're going well beyond just, oh, I'm doing this for peace.

Like we're bringing, often to the surface, all of our different trigger points, all of the things that maybe are going to get us back in the biggest ways, how to be with fear, how to be with discomfort. So... Could I ask you a question? Sure. Could that be happening in real time at all times? So one of the weirdest, like, now I'm in like real, like I knew this was gonna, I knew this was gonna be fun

Because listen, I just have a really interesting question and like I'm kind of you know I don't like to say this out loud because I'm just laughing at how everybody's gonna respond to this I'm literally living two lives at the same time always Even right now, like even as I'm talking right now like I've the reason I'm asking you is what you were just describing I'm like, oh, that's what I do every minute. I'm living my life and in real time almost like a program that's running on the back of your computer I'm evaluating and feeling myself In real time. Yeah, like I feel I

I don't even know if this exists. This is where I do know homework is why I was an F student, everybody who's listening. I'm gonna probably gonna ask a question, you're like, yes, it's called the blah. I weirdly think intuitively, and I could be completely out of my mind, that I think I feel like I'm meditating at all times. Yeah.

I think in many ways you are. And if you want my definition of wisdom, it's experience times attention. Meaning whatever we're going through in life, how we're attending to it. That informs us that we're understanding of it, how we grow from it. What about old soul and like, like, like, wise beyond your ears, ears, or intuition, right? Like one of the things that always freaked me out as a 20-year-old kid, I'm building, you know, I built my family business.

I first year around my business, it goes from my family business, it goes from a three to a $10 million liquor store. It like stunned everybody, but to me, it just, I just knew what to do. Like what about those things? Yeah. Because I agree with you,

experience is huge, like I'm way more powerful now because I've been through it, right? But so sometimes you're Yoda. Sure. But sometimes you're like, you know, Luke Skywalker. Like, I don't know, like, sometimes you just have a lot of it right from the get. Totally.

Yeah, I agree. What are you doing, funny? I don't know, I'm like, I'm like, yeah, I'm just laughing at you. You like, I think it's true. There are, I am not one of these people, I want to be clear, but there are people who are natural in certain areas.

And the, I don't know how to exactly evaluate what you described this kind of action and monitoring functions in parallel. And it's vivid to me, right? Like it's not just like, it's not like post game. Like wait a minute, like I can feel it happening as it's happening. Yeah, so that is very close to,

I'm not in your mind, so I'm being a little cagey here, but it's very close to what happens in mindfulness, which is in meditation, which is just the ability to see what's happening in your head without getting carried away by it. Where would that be valuable in a life like Gary Vs? It would be like, and again, I don't know you well enough to be doing everything right.

It's that moment when maybe you say the thing that you kind of wish you didn't say, you might be able to see that storm brewing before it hits the end of. Well, let's talk about that. I do a lot of public speaking. And because I have this, the reason I do all improv and do Q&A and do Q&A with all 800 people from my office is I'm never scared to say anything because when I say something that may not have worked, cursing in the deep south or telling every TV executive that they're going to be out of business because OTT's

coming and commercials are like saying things that don't play. I react to that in real time and then hedge or just to make sure people get a little bit more comfortable so we can continue because it wasn't a death blow. Yeah, yeah, I think what I found is that with meditation, I'm less likely, especially in interpersonal relationships, to say the thing that I would then have to hedge, I still do it all the time. If my wife were here, she would tell you, this dude says stupid stuff all the time. But it is not just about what you say,

it's about what you eat or what you find yourself ruminating about whatever, it really is just a way to kind of in the margins cut down on our sufferer. How often do you meditate? Me every day. Every day. For how long?

Two hours. Really. Yes, but I hesitate to tell you that because I think five to 10 minutes is enough. And the reason why I'm doing two hours is because I'm really interested in it. And if I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna write more books about it

and I need some stuff to write about. And two hours is, you know, like a good gambit. Two hours. Yes. What time? Whenever I can, wherever I can. The normally. No, there is no normal.

My schedule is crazy. I anchor a morning show on the weekends. I anchor a nightline during the week. I have a startup company. I write, I'm writing, I got three more books coming. I got a podcast. I got a kid. I do it whenever I can.

I'm Gary V. style hustling mindfully. That's really cool. So like literally three to five p.m. that could happen. No, and it's free. But I break it up. I break it up. I can do it. So I literally three to five p.m. That could happen. No, and it's but I break it up I break it up I can do so I did an hour before I came here and then I'll probably do an hour afterwards before I go to dinner And you my man. Yeah, I so I go in and out my commitment to myself is one minute a day because it's very low barrier to entry

Yes, very hard to argue yourself out of one minute very if you start saying I don't have one minute We really got to evaluate some things going on That's real yeah, so for me when I things going on in that. No, that's real. Yeah, so for me, when I travel, I love that because that's interesting. I mean, that's, that's just, you're so passionate about the space, like, you want, did you back into that to try to figure out if this is working for you so that you could then be passionate about saying it

and thus could be very consumable to everybody? Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I did the 20 hours a day of meditation and my heart is very intense. Like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I did the 20 hours a day of meditation. And my heart is very intense. Like I love that. I'd much more do like six hours on a Monday and then not meditate the rest of the way. You know, you told me that you went six months. Yeah, yes. In Burma. So like, it's so crazy how extreme I am. I go from not doing it. He tells me that I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go do it for a year. I look, you know, I'm like, I'm going to do that.'m it sounds him. You know, it's funny. My favorite places on earth are the bathroom the shower and the airplane

Why? Because it's where I can do some version of this. Yeah. All right. I'm gonna say jumping for a second because You know what it's because Gary you are into time management and I Guaranteed we would keep to time so we've got about six minutes left. Can we do a two to three minute meditation? You want to do that? Yes, sir. Are you going to see cool with that gear? Hell yeah, I'm excited to see what it does.

I don't want to give you the generic. Don't do whatever you want. Yeah, so I just want to preface it by saying, there's a form meditation called open presence, choiceless awareness. And if you look at the science, this is the form meditation most associated with creativity. The idea of it is instead of redirecting your attention

like back to the breath or back to the body, you're actually just sitting and observing your thoughts, whatever's going through your mind. So for someone like you that I see as thriving and everything that's already going well there, like we're not trying to mess with this, I think this is a way kind of just to enhance what's there without kind of interjecting too much. So, let's do that do that. All right. By the way before we do this just to like mix up because I'm sure a lot of your content

Is going to take one direction. I just want to add a different spice. It's why I fell in love with social media I only like to observe for a guy that talks all the time people have completely confused what I'm actually up to I'm in full-time listening and What social did was allowed me to listen at scale. You know, early on, I would search every word on Twitter. It was called semis.com. And I would search how people talked about wine, tones, adjectives.

So like, it's really interesting that you went there because that seemed very intuitive to me. I'm like, that's what I do. Like, when I'm at the airport, I'm watching what every single person does, and that's when I'm in the zone. Yeah. Yeah.

Meditation could be described as active listening. Totally. Yeah. I think what we're going to do here, you might notice. You're going to be moments of my life is about to happen. Yes. Let's do it. Let's make this happen.

All right. So, if you want to close your eyes, you can. Well, I'll do the same. I always like to start any beginning meditation, just settling in for a moment. Going through life is like going through one of those conveyor belts in the airport. So it's extra fast. And so we're just taking a moment to settle into being off of that on stable ground. Maybe feeling the feet on the floor, the button to chair, the back against

your backrest. And just acknowledging in this moment, there's no place else you need to be, nothing else you need to do, and nothing you need to achieve. And what we're going to take this opportunity to do is really just tune in on a deeper level to what's already here. And so typically we might anchor our attention at the breath we might anchor our attention at the breath or feel the feet on the floor. Instead, what I'd like for us to do is just simply become aware of the mind and notice if it's thinking right now. And whatever it may be thinking about, such as like I'm going to go away for a year,

this is awesome, this is weird. And all I want you to do is just watch these thoughts moving through your mind, just like clouds passing through the sky. Letting the mind think about whatever it wants to. But not holding on to thoughts so tightly. So tightly, and not trying to bring them up, just watching this activity of the mind. And we can do so with the understanding that we're here right now. The body is grounded, we're settled. And yet watch the mind's potential for creativity, ideas, the future of the past. We're not trying to change any of this.

We're just observing the opportunity to appreciate that. The brain, the mind's potential for thinking about the future, reflecting on the past, coming up with new ideas, energizing us. When you're ready, can gently allow the eyes to open again. So I thought about Phil Toronto's birthday party tonight. A couple of things I have to do in the office. It's so interesting. I'm, you know, I'm saying this because I want to be honest with the audience. It's, you know, it takes real, you know, in a world where my mind is just, now I fall asleep immediately. Yeah. And sleep like a baby every night. So, you know, it's funny. I never lay down and think about stuff and can't fall asleep.

But the couple of times I've flirted with meditation this the other day at the studio. It's not easy from, it was interesting to me like I'm trying to like communicate here to make this interesting, right? It's interesting how I heard you, but I didn't fully hear you. Which I think is interesting. That's a revelation right there. How so? Because it is proof of the way the mind works.

We think we're paying attention. We're not. I could see it. I thought about a wine-ice-sold... It was just recapping themes that were going on here. I thought about the wine store because we brought it up. I thought about the thing I was doing tonight and like how thankful I was because Phil's such a good guy and I'm in town. I'm so happy. I, you know, it's really interesting. And then like I would go in and out, right?

Like I could hear you for a second, but there was plenty of things that like I was like, oh, he's got a nice voice, but what did he actually say? And like just like, it's, it's, it's fast. And listen, one thing I say, and I think it's a fun thing to wrap up with is we do not know a lot about the brain. Or, yeah, or the mind and what the connection is between the two of them. There's a lot there. And when you think about like what we didn't know

about the heart or about the lungs or about our muscles, like years and years ago, things we figured out. People always forget that everything is historical. Like we think because we're in this time, like remember when like, so we make fun of like, how didn't they know cigarettes were going to lead to cancer? You mean like the same way people are going to make fun of us for putting phones to our brains? Like I don't want to get all weird here, but like, but like, that knowledge that that's true

around this subject matter is the thing that gives me unbelievable optimism for the human race. Well, let me just say, quickly in wrapping up, that I think you had the first, both at the studio in Escape and here, you had the first big insight of meditation, which is the mind is crazy. That is really the first thing you have to see because you can't get a toehold, you can't start to manage it

in any way if you don't see the insane torrent of our internal lives. Martin Luther King Middle School 1985 Edison, Jersey, Mr. Molnar, science class, I, Mr. Molnar, you're underestimating the brain. So I've been thinking about this for quite a while. Close with that, Corey. Yeah, I'll give anything for Mr. Molnar. Yeah. I got one from Victor Frankl. So this guy wrote the book, Mansearch for Meaning.

He says, between stimulus and response, there's a space in that space is our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom. I think so much of what you are helping people do and you're already doing for yourself is just starting to see that space that you have a choice in every single moment. Start taking some control. You have the autonomy and there's infinite possibility in each moment in most cases.

So you thrive in man. You're doing great. Gary, thank you. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% happier podcast. So you're doing great. Gary, thank you. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also, if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris.

Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Tohan, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who help make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. 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,

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