The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 490: Dandapani - Becoming More Self-Reflective, Having A Purpose, & Creating Unwavering Focus

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. Receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12      https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Dandapani is a Hindu priest and a former monk of 10 years. He originally got a degree in Electrical Engineering, then left it all behind and spent a decade studying under the guidance of one of Hinduism's foremost spiritual leaders. He gave a TEDx talk that has been viewed over 5.6 million times and his GoalCast videos have been watched more than 75 million times. He's also written a book called, The Power of Unwavering Focus Notes: We need a core purpose in life. Your purpose defines your priorities. It's worth it to do the work to understand this. Self-reflection needs to become part of your routine. Excellence = Clarity of purpose, a burning desire, and understanding WHO is aligned with your purpose and developing those relationships fully. Remember, life is finite. It will end. Let's make the most of it. You'll often hear parents say to their kids, "we just want you to be happy." Happiness should never be pursued. Rather, one should pursue a lifestyle where the byproduct of living that lifestyle is happiness. We generally think of concentration as a skill we're born with, rather than a skill we need to be taught and then cultivate by practicing over time. Would you expect to be an expert piano player naturally? Of course not - you would seek instruction, and then practice for years in order to grow your skill. Concentration, in short, is the ability to keep awareness on one thing until you consciously choose to move it to something else. Distraction, on the other hand, is awareness being controlled by your environment (the people and things around you) without conscious choice. We are what we practice. The reality is that most people are not conscious of the fact that they are practicing distraction all day every day and hence why they are masters at distraction.  The idea is to build concentration, willpower, and mastery of awareness into your days little by little, growing your skill over weeks, months, and years. Dandapani's guru has the biggest influence on his life. The role of a mentor is to empower people with tools and help them gain perspective. Book: Think and Grow Rich. Once you experience something, you can't un-experience it. A guru takes deep responsibility for someone's life. "You can only say no if you know what to say yes to." Learn to focus: Dedicate time in the morning. Find a quiet space. With self-reflection, there can be no mask. Excellence = Clarity of purpose Who are you aligned with?

Jim Collins told me on episode number 216 that the single greatest determining factor in my long-term success or failure would be my who, who I chose to surround myself with. And that conversation has had a huge impact on how I've designed my business. And one of the most important elements or services that I provide is my learning leader circle. and I open up applications one time per year, and that time is now at learning leader circle.com is where you can apply. Now, this is the most inefficient element of my business because I personally read every application and I personally choose who will go on to the next round and then who will ultimately be one of the 12 people to be in my next Learning Leader Circle.

And I only do it one time per year, and that time is now. If you are intentional about surrounding yourself with others who will push you, challenge you, make you think differently, if you're willing to self-reflect and do some work, this could be for you. And you can apply at learningleaders circle.com. We meet once per month on Zoom and then we meet one time per year in person for our leadership retreat for members of my learning leader circle. So if you'd like to apply, go to learning leader circle. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 6-6-866 to become part of Mindful Monday.

You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk, to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leader, Don DePani, a Hindu priest, and former monk of 10 years. He originally got a degree in electrical engineering, then left it all behind and spent a decade studying, under the guidance of one of Hinduism's foremost spiritual leaders. He also gave a TEDx talk that has been viewed over 5.6 million times,

and his goalcast videos have been watched more than 75 million times. He's written a book called The Power of Unwavering Focus. During this conversation, we discuss how and why we must make self-reflecting, part of our daily routine. Then why happiness is not something to be pursued, rather it is a byproduct of our lifestyle. And then he shares the daily routine of a monk and how that could help you plan your days. This one is wide-ranging and very interesting. It's Don DePonnie.

Don DePonni. Don DePonny, so great to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you so much for having me. I was rereading your book this morning on the elliptical, and this passage in the book stuck out to me as both a son and a parent. And that is, you'll often hear parents say to their kids, quote, we just want you to be happy. And you write, happiness should never be pursued.

Rather, one should pursue a lifestyle where the byproduct of living that lifestyle is happiness. Can you share more about that lifestyle and the pursuit where some have this goal of happiness and that may be misguided? I think like you, I've heard it from my parents. I've heard my mom say to me countless time, mom and dad only want you to be happy. It's a very common phrase. But happiness is a byproduct of an experience. So if I spend time with my family, I feel happy.

I play with my daughter on the beach. I feel happy. If I spend time with my best friends doing something I love, I feel happy. So how do we craft a lifestyle where the majority of the byproduct of the lifestyle results in the feeling of being happy? And for that, we need clarity of purpose. what is my purpose in life? And everyone should have a solitary purpose, what I define is a core purpose in life.

The same way that a company might have a purpose, it defines its vision and mission, we should have a core purpose in life. Your purpose then defines your priorities. And when we can focus on the priorities, the byproduct of that is we feel happy. So my daughter is a priority, my wife's a priority.

Our project here in Costa Rica, where I'm right, now that we're working on as a priority. When I focus on those three things, for example, I feel happy. That doesn't mean there's no stress or challenges involved

like my wife and I don't argue or there's no stress challenges at the project we're having in Costa Rica. We do. But generally, those things bring me a lot of contentment and happiness. So I think

you're the, and 490 plus of these, you're the first Hindu priest and former monk of 10 years I've spoken to. Can you share a little bit more about your background and quite frankly, even defining what it means to be a former monk of 10 years, where you study, what that was like as well as being a Hindu priest?

Yeah, for sure. So I'm Sri Lankan of DNA. That's the brown you see on me. I was born in Malaysia. I grew up in Australia. I studied electrical engineering in university. And when I graduated from university, I moved to Hawaii where I lived with my guru in his cloistered traditional Hindu monastery.

And what that means is that only monks under vows can live in there. So I spoke to my parents twice a year on the phone and never emailed or wrote to them. I never talked to any of my friends, relatives again. So monks live on there, we lived a strict discipline life. I lived there for 10 years and my vows came up for renewal. I decided not to renew it, so I left the monastery. I'm no longer a monk anymore. I'm a Hindu priest.

Just to explain the difference between priests and monks, so people have clarity around that. Hindu monks are very similar to Catholic monks, for example, or Christian monks, where they lead celibate lives, they live with other monks in cloisters in monasteries or sometimes by themselves. Hindu priests are householders.

They can actually get married, have a family, work at McDonald's, be an entrepreneur. So I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur, I work as an advisor to other entrepreneurs and athletes, and I live with my wife and daughter here in Costa Rica. And that's what I do. And what I'm wearing right now is a traditional outfit or garb of a Hindu priest. Wow. Okay.

And you have three white lines across your forehead with and also a dot below them. What does that symbolize? So in Hindus and the Hindu religion, they are four primary sects, the same way that, for example, and other religions you may have Buddhism has three Catholicisms in Christianity of Catholicism Protestants and Methodists and born again so in our four sects in Hinduism I belong to one particular sect our symbol is the three white lines to cross the forehead they're made out of ash the first line represents your ego and quite often you know Ryan in spiritual whether you hear people say that

people often refer to ego as a bad thing it has a negative connotation and we should rid of our ego. Our philosophy is that everyone has an ego. The very fact that you have a personality that you have preferences, you prefer thin crust pizza pizza, you like this, you don't like that, means you have a personality. You have an ego. The goal is to not get rid of the ego, but rather to cultivate a positive ego, someone who's kind, who has empathy, compassion, who's industrious, who's generous, who's loving. That's the goal, to come to cultivate a positive ego. Someone who's kind, who has empathy, compassion, who's industrious, who's loving, that's the goal to cultivate a positive ego because you can't live without an ego. The second line represents karma.

Every thought, word, and deed has a reaction. Now, if I can be very intentional about what I think, what I say, and what I do, I can control a lot of what happens in my life. The other part of it, that's only 50% of karma. The other 50% of karma that people don't talk about, Ryan, is the reaction. If someone comes up to me and says, hey, Dandapani, the shawl you're wearing is quite ugly. I have a choice to hit it or say, what a great opportunity to go shopping. And how I react determines so much of my outcome in life.

So karma has two sides. We can control our actions and reactions. We can control so much of what happens in our life. And then the third line is delusion, meaning that quite often in life we get caught up with people and things that don't really matter, and we forget the people and things that do matter in our life. So it encourages us, the third line, to define our purpose, have our purpose in life, define our priorities in life, then cultivate unwavering focus so that we can focus on our priorities. The byproduct of that is we lead a happy life or a joyous life, a purposeful life, a content life.

so that on our deathbed, we can look back on our life and go, that was an amazing life, I led. But there needs to be a structured, systematic approach to it. And if there's no structure in a process, then quite often we don't get to where we want to go. Yeah. What is a day in the life like of a monk? So you did this for 10 years.

It sounds like you're, in a way, blocked off from the rest of the world, your friends, your family for the most part. And you spent a decade, that's a long time. You spent a decade doing that. So what's a typical day like when you were doing that? The general schedule for monks, at least in our monastery, was we had to gather in the temple at 5.30 in the morning. So I typically woke up between 4 a.m. and 4.10 a.m., depending on how tired I was.

I would shower. I would do my own morning routines. and then at 5.30, I would gather with the monks in the temple. We'd do a traditional Hindu ritual, worship ritual, for half an hour. And then we only meditated from six to seven. So contrary to what most people think that monks meditated all day, we meditated for an hour in the morning. My guru believed in quality as opposed to quantity.

And we'll dive into some of that maybe in a little bit. And then after that, you know, we exercised for half an hour. That was a very important part of our routine, all the monks had to exercise. Then we had breakfast, and then the months were divided into five groups, five departments. One department looked after the grounds and the organic farm we had and the livestock, cows. Another department managed the digital publishing and print publishing we had. So all the monks had max, we flat screen monitors, we had podcasts, we had blogs, published, we had podcasts, we had blogs, published books.

We had probably the largest website in the state of Hawaii for a long time, probably still does. And then another group of monks took care of finances. So we would do that. And then 1 o'clock, we'd break for lunch for half an hour. Then we took a 90-minute siesta, a little nap since we woke up early. Went back to work from about 3 to 6. Then we'd take another break, watch a little TV at 7 p.m. All the monks would watch in a little room.

We'd hang out and watch some TV and then go to bed at night. Wow. All right. And you did that for 10 years. 10 years, yes. Wow. Okay. What made you want to... My routine was a little bit different in the last six and a half years. The monastery had a temple, where we have a vigil system. So every three hours, one monk had to be in the temple doing practices and rituals and things like that.

So for about six and a half years, me and another monk alternated doing the midnight routine. So I was awake from midnight to 3 a.m. during my ritual. So I would go to bed around 8.30, wake up at 11.30 at night, come into the main building, shower change, get into temple. And from midnight at 3 a.m., I would do my practices, and then go to bed at 3.20, and then wake up again at 7.30 and carry on with my day. Wow. What made you not want to continue? My guru died three years after I joined the monastery, and that was a very difficult timefall amongst a lot of things changed.

I felt after that we were not completely aligned. I stayed for seven more years, and I felt our paths were different. And when my vows came up for renewal, I decided not to renew it. What are the vows? It sounds like something, like a marriage in a way. Like you, that's what we do. Is it like that?

Or what's it like? Yeah, we take formal vows where we read out loud the vows we're taking. There's a few page of description for each of the vows. We sign in a monastic book acknowledging we're taking those vows as a formal ceremony. There's a vow of humility, for example, a vow of obedience, you know, not something people like to do in the outside world obedience, a vow of confidence and things like. So we take a few vows.

Celibacy is one of them. And so that's part. It comes. And then those vows get renewed every two years. And then you reinstate your vows again. Same way that people would reinstate their marriage vows sometimes, for example. In a lot of the people I speak with here, Don Nipani's talk about the importance and

power of mentors in their life and how influential, whether it's a coach, a teacher, a parent, a friend. And in your book, you write numerous points, the dedication, and the acknowledgments, it's all over the place, and you quote him. I'm not going to try to say his name because I'll butcher the pronunciation, so I'll let you do that. But can you share the importance in the power? You called him your guru of your mentor slash guru in your life. Yeah, no, I think it's highly important. We don't know what we don't know, right? So it's easier to have someone guide us and train us. And my guru, Super Munya-Swami, is his name of Guru Deva, as we call him as I referred to him in my book, is my teacher who trained me. You know, before I joined the monastery while I was there, he ordained me as a monk. And he trained me. I mean, he is, and I think will always. be the biggest influence in my life. He has completely changed my life. But the importance of having a mentor is having someone who's walked down the path, who knows the path really well,

and can guide you along the way. His role is not there to solve my problems. His role is there to empower me with tools, to help me gain a better perspective, to support me and using the tools correctly answering my questions, but then the burden of responsibility should always be on me. And I think that's an important part quite often in spirituality. But so many gurus around nowadays, like they're all over the place. A student can put the responsibility on the guru. The guru takes all the responsibility. He's the all-knowing, enlightened being that can wave his hand and solve all your problems.

my guru never took that approach. He placed 100% of that responsibility on me. And I'll give you an example, Ryan. He would share tools with us, some of the tools I mentioned in the book. Teach us how to practice the tools. I go away to do it. I come back a month later. I'd be in the monastery.

I have a problem. I come to see him. I sit down with him and I say, Gurdava, I'm having this problems, blah, blah, blah. I spend five minutes explaining to him my problems. He'll look at me and he goes, are you practicing what I taught you? And 99% of the time my answer is no, I would say no, and then I would get up and leave.

And what is that to talk about? Right? Yeah. He gave me a tool. I didn't practice it. So why am I coming back to him? And that's when I knew he was a great teacher for me. Because he empowered me with the responsibility to take charge of my life

and create the changes I want and not leave on him. It was merely a guide. Yeah. The guide, I feel like the best mentors don't give you the answers. They pose questions to you that then help you find the answer on your own because you're much more apt to follow the advice if it's your own advice. Or you figured it out. Like you got it yourself.

That's what I feel like the best of the best. And the mentors that I've had, that's what they're good at. They don't just say, hey, do this. they'll start posing questions and they make me think. And in that regard, then when I'm able to find out or figure it out on my own with obviously their prompts and their questions, that's so much more powerful than just telling me what to do. For sure. One of my favorite books of all time is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

I don't know if you've ever read that book. But I think it was written like almost 100 years or so ago. but he in that book doesn't give away his secret. He numerous times says, and I'm not going to tell you, the answer is in these pages. You have to figure it out yourself. And if you figure it out yourself,

through that experience of figuring it out, it will change you. But he doesn't outline and tell you in bold is what I'm trying to tell you. He wants you to figure it out. But he guides you. He creates all the framework for you to figure out. And if you can pay attention and read it

and understand it. And I think that's, you know, my teacher, I took a lot of that approach of helping me to experience it within myself. And he had a beautiful saying. He said, once you experience something, you can't unexperience it. And I really like that. So once you have a realization of something, you can't unrealize it.

And that's when true learning happens, right? When you have a realization of something, it transforms you. Your lifestyle becomes different, the way you live, the way you think changes. but merely learning doesn't always change your life so yeah well it's funny in the uh the the FAQ section of your website the last question is are you are you a guru and and the and it's a one word answer no uh do you do you but do you play that guru role for i mean that's kind of your work isn't it you're an advisor you're like so do you think others that hire you that work with you, they view at least as an advisor slash mentor, maybe a guru?

I never portray or convey myself as a guru because, you know, I think maybe in Western society, it's not so clear what the definition of a guru is. In the Eastern faith in Hinduism, a guru takes deep responsibility over a person's life. There's almost a form contract signed where, you know, we're in a guru, disciple relationship now. And that was, when I got to know my guru, we spent a process of two years, almost three years of getting to know each other

before he would accept me as a student and he would allow me to accept him as a guru. And then we signed a formal contract of working with each other in a very deep, meaningful way. Wow. So with my clients, I'm advisor. I look at myself as a school teacher. You come to my class. I teach you math. One plus one equals two. Two plus two equals four. And then after class, you go home.

I don't take responsibility of your life, what happens at home, what you're doing with your wife, with your husband, with your kids. That's not my role. My role is to share with you insights on the mind, tools that can help you, help you clarify the path, the purpose, the ability to focus, help you practice focus, then it's your responsibility now to go and do the homework. I think a lot of people take on the role of the guru where

you become almost like a Messiah figure, right? Of like, I'm going to solve your problems for you. I'm going to give you a mantra, Ryan, and you can use now to solve your problems. It doesn't work that way, but there's a lot of money to be made that way. Yeah.

Yeah, certainly a lot of that out there. Your focus is on the power of unwavering focus, the book that's publishing now. And one, I first, in the way the book structured, I think it's helpful because you're sharing kind of the importance of why that you should view this as being important. And then some more stories as well as then tools. And I love to dig into that right now, to start in sequential order for one, Why is this something that's so important for people to learn right now? Because ultimately, I think most humans want to live a happy life.

What I'm about to say is not based on any research or data, but I'm assuming, and I emphasize assuming, most people don't get up saying, I want to have a miserable day today. I'm assuming most people don't say that. Most people wake up one and a half a day, a decent day, you know. So how do we have a good day? We need clarity of who and what's important in our life, and we need the ability, like I said, to be able to focus on that. Because the byproduct of that is we feel we're living a rewarding life. We can't discover our purpose in life, our priorities in life, if we can't focus.

If I wanted to get to know you, Ryan, I could Google stalk you online for a little while, But if I really wanted to get to know you, if every week you and I got together, we hung out, had a cup of coffee, glass of wine for an hour or two hours, for a whole year, after a year, you and I would know each other really well because we spent a lot of intimate time together in good conversation. If you don't spend time with yourself in self-reflection, how would you get to know yourself? And if you did spend time with yourself every day in self-reflection, but you couldn't focus long enough to keep your attention. mentioning yourself, how would you get to know you? So I take 10 minutes out a day or half an hour a day to reflect on myself. But I can't focus, Ryan, and because I can't focus, I can't even pause for a second to look inside my head to see what it is I want.

Because after two seconds, I'm going, what's the noise out there? Maybe I should be doing this. Why am I sitting here? Should I have pizza for lunch today? Should I have pasta? I don't know. I had pasta yesterday. Maybe I have something different today.

have a Chinese food? I don't know. What do you think I should have? And that's happened all the way. So that's why I start with focus in the book, even though I emphasize so much of the importance of discovering one's purpose in life, defining one's priorities. The ability to focus allows you to discover that, which then allows you to live a purpose-focused life, the by-product you live a happy, a rewarding, a content life, which ultimately I feel a lot of people want. There's this amazing

Johnny Ive video. I don't know if you've seen this. He was on stage. It was a Q&A portion of a talk. Johnny Ive was like the lead designer at Apple for many years. He worked very close with Steve Jobs for a long time.

And they asked him about what made Steve so good. And Steve would always pose these questions to him about Johnny, how many amazingly awesome ideas is and things you were excited about have you said no to recently because that's how I know you're focused and and Johnny said I've never seen anybody be as focused as him on on narrowing down

and saying no to the really good stuff in order to say yes to the amazingly awesome stuff and I couldn't help but think of that video when I was reading your book on focus and just I love to hear kind of your high level feelings and philosophy on focus and how we can get better at it. And just to, before we dive into that, just to add to what you're saying, you can only say yes to something, you can only say no to something, sorry, if you knew what you were saying yes to. And how do you know what to say yes to? You need to know your purpose. You need to know your priorities. You need to define that first.

because how can I know what to say no to if I don't even know what I'm saying yes to? How do I know what I don't want in life if I don't even know what I want in life? If you take a teenager in Austin, what do you want to do in school? What do you want to study in college? What do you want to be?

I don't know. No idea. And society encourages that, right? It encourages us that by saying, you're so young, you don't need to have it all figured out. take your time, discover, travel, explore, do all these things. I'm not aligned with that because I am more of the belief that if I can discover sooner in life what it is I'm truly passionate about that drives me, that wakes me up in the morning,

it's better for me to spend most of my life living that life than to spend a majority of my life looking for something that I'm passionate about and I give a very simple analogy. If a girl wants to buy a beautiful dress to wear a beautiful dress, is it better for the girl to spend five and a half months looking for that dress and then two weeks wearing it or spend two days looking for the dress and then spend five and a half months wearing the dress? I think people would rather find the dress and enjoy have the experience of wearing it. Same with life. We are here for a finite time, Ryan, on this planet. We don't have infinite amount of time. If we had infinite amount of life, we wouldn't have this discussion.

Our life is finite. So get clear right away as early as possible. What drives you, what wakes you up in the morning, what do you love? What are you passionate about? And then spend your life living that life. The byproduct of that is like you live an amazing life. So I think there are skeptics to this that say, good for you, Don DePonnie, and even for me, because I feel like I'm I'm doing this. I left corporate America in 2017 to do this full time, and it's created a lot of happiness. The day-to-day action has created a lot of happiness, kind of what you're talking about. But for the person that has a mortgage and two car payments and there's four, five, 29 accounts for their kids and all the other stuff that goes along with that, and they have a job as a VP of sales at a big company, and they're making pretty good money, and they're, they feel very good about the fact that they're providing.

for their family and they're setting setting their kids up to hopefully you know so support them they like their job they don't love it they like their company they don't love it but they don't also hate it so that's the person who's living like i had colin o'bredi on we talked about living life of with ones and tens meaning like ones are the worst things and tens are the best and a lot of people are living like fives every day just fives five five five so for that person who's doing fine or even doing well, but not necessarily like, you know, not saying like, you know, I don't need to find my purpose, dude. I'm fine.

Like, I'm good. I'm taking care of things. But they also have this little thing in their mind and their heart thinking, there's got to be something more or else other than just this. What do you say to that person? I'm going to make an assumption that the people that have that little thing in their mind saying they need to find their purpose are the only people listening to a podcast. If they're zero interested in interest in learning about discovering their purpose,

they wouldn't be on this show or listening to this show. If they go like, this is a waste of time. Your show is about learning and growing, about discovering. So I think if you have a job, you're working for a company, your senior VP of sales, you're making good money, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if there's an inclination inside of you that there's more that I could be doing in life, there's something different I could be doing in life,

then start making it. plan, you know, making an exit plan where you say, okay, first step, let's take its system in. The step, how well can I focus? If I can't focus, I'm not trying to sell my book, you can learn from somebody else, buy my unwavering focus book, learn how to focus. Why? Because when you can learn to focus, you can reflect long enough on yourself to figure out what

it is you're passionate about. Because that's what ultimately we want to get to, right? What drives you every day? So spend, commit, dedicate time over the next six months, year, year and a half, two years. Every day, spend 15, 20 minutes reflecting on your life of what it is you think drives you. If you need, get a mentor, find someone who can help you discover your purpose. And then build an exit plan if that's what you want to do. You said you worked in corporate America until 2000.

2017, but you found out that you wanted to do something different. So you, I'm assumed, came up with an exit plan, came up with a strategy, and shifted your focus to doing this. And now you love for doing this. It brings you joy. I'm not saying other people can't do that as well. And I'm not saying that everybody should leave the corporate America world and start the podcast to do something. But you need to ask yourself what drives you in the morning, what wakes you up. And if you feel that, yes, you're happy doing this job.

it provides your family and all of that is good. I'm not saying it's bad. But if that's like you're saying, Ryan, an inclination inside of you that says, there's something more that I want to be doing, then pursue that. Define that, articulate that really, really clearly and begin the process of shifting your focus to that. But make sure that whatever it is you're going to do can sustain everything you've created, which is a home, your kids, your family, your spouse, provide for the job. them as well. That's critical. I had a good friend of mine, sorry, Ryan, one last thought.

A good friend of mine said to me, who was very successful at what he did. He said, it's important to do in life what you're passionate about, but what you're passionate about should also be able to make you money. That was a big part of my decision to leave was listening to what the market told me. I was maximizing every PTO paid time off, every vacation day to go. give speeches and to work with other with people that were not eventually became clients and at that point you're kind of like hey the market is actually giving me these very positive signals it wasn't like oh i'm going to cross my fingers and hope for the best the market had told me for a while now if i went all in i felt like there was a chance so that's it wasn't just a hope and a prayer it was there was

there was real evidence there that i think was helpful yes and you know sometimes when i say this people go like, oh, you don't understand. We're busy. We have so many things going on. And I think what a lot of people do is, it's complicated. We complicate our lives. We are doing too much. You know, there's a common phrase, Ryan, that people say, oh, we just need to slow down. I don't think that's the right words, choice of words. It's not like we're eating faster, we're peeing faster. We're just doing too many things. I had a lady come up to me and said at an event, Auntana Pony, you don't understand. You know, I take my kids to school and I pick them up. And then after school, I take them to basketball class and after basketball, they have piano and after piano. He has extra math

class. Then the next day after after he has kayaking. I paused and I said, are you training your son to be James Bond? She goes, what do you mean? I said, well, Jean Swan is the only person I know who can do everything, right? He's good at archery. He can fly a plane. You can shoot a gun. he can dance, he's an animal in bed. Why is your son doing five million things? Right? Pick one or two things and train to be good at that. We create such complicated lives.

So for the VP of sales in the company who has three kids, a spouse, simplify your life. If you need time for reflection and you say you don't have time, that means you have too many things going on in your life. Simplify the number of people in your life. simplify the number of things you're doing, make choices. I hardly watch TV, not because I feel out of some moral, you know, righteousness. I love TV.

It's just it's not a priority for me. I watch a movie on the weekend with my wife, and that's pretty much about it. Because I have other things that are bigger priorities in my life, and I simplify my life to the most important things. Because I know I have a finite amount of time and finite amount of energy each day, and I need to proportionately invest them into those things. And I emphasize the word proportionately. So if pursuing a purpose is important,

discovering purpose is important, then you need to dedicate a portion of that time and energy towards self-reflection. And saying yes to that means saying no to someone or something else. Okay, let's get practical. somebody who has not done a ton of self-reflection and doesn't fully understand their purpose.

What's the first few things they should do? I'll repeat things and I'll always repeat things. First step, learn to focus, right? Because you can't focus, you can't self-reflect. You can't stay on something long enough to actually understand it, which is you, is what you're trying to understand. The second step is, I would say, dedicate some time in the morning.

And my recommendation is the first thing in the morning. So as soon as you wake up, answer the call of nature, find a quiet space in your house, spend 10 minutes or five minutes even and in self-reflection. So a few things here, Ryan, don't listen to music because music will guide your awareness to different areas of the mind. Don't read any books. This is a time for you to get to know you. How do you spend time in self-reflection? The same way, if I was going to get to know you and we were hanging out for coffee every week, week, I would ask you questions.

Ryan, you said you're a dad. How many kids do you have? How long have you been married? Do you like your kids? You know, what do you enjoy doing with your kids? And initially, the questions are going to be a very surface level of like, you know, what you like eating, where you like traveling. As we get to know each other more and more every week, we might start getting into much

deeper, profound questions of like, you know, you have been life, what does life really mean to you? What do you want out of life? same thing if I never spent time with myself how would I get to know myself most people won't commit that time in having

a conversation this is not a meditation Ryan this is a simple conversation the same conversation I would have with you to get to know you I'm having with me and now people will say oh you don't understand I have kids

well if you have a spouse have your spouse ductate your kids together for like five minutes so you can go sit down by yourself I have a daughter, but you know what, if I ask to my wife, hey, can you and my daughter, can you guys hang out just for 10 minutes? I just need 10 minutes by myself in the morning or five minutes. She's going to say yes.

She's not going to say no. So it's not hard. We just have to make the priority. We have to make it something we want to do. And most people fail, Ryan, because they don't have the patience, the perseverance to stick with it until they find the answer. So they do it for a week or two weeks, and they go, like, I'm not getting any way with this. I've got more important things to do, and then they wonder off. But unless you have clarity or purpose, everything else in life becomes very blurry.

What are some of the prompts, the questions you should ask yourself if you're going to start this practice tomorrow morning, let's say. And like, wait, Don DePonni, what am I supposed to do? Like, what do I say? What do I answer? Like, what are we actually do during that alone time? Okay, so ask yourself questions, simple question, am I happy? Do I love what I'm doing? What drives me?

And you may not have answers right away, and you can ask yourself the same question every single day. And maybe sometimes you need to prompt your mind over and over again with the same question before it gives an answer. You've all seen Hollywood movies in an interrogation room. The guy keeps asking the same question. And what does the person say? I already told you, I don't know what you're talking about. And then, you know, an hour into the movie, they break and they go like, okay, I'll tell you everything. Right.

The mind works the same way by asking yourself the same question over and over again, what's important to me? What do I really love? What brings me joy when I do it? What brings me joy or happiness when I spend time with it? Who brings me that happiness? Who lights me up? Who invigorates me? What integrates me?

And if you don't have any answers, that's okay. ask yourself the same question the next day and the next day and the next day and if you do it month after month you will start to find an answer all the answers are inside of you you just haven't spent enough time digging to discover it

and to be able to focus long enough to actually see if I picked a thousand page book Ryan and I just flip through fan through the pages I would get no information whatsoever if I picked a thousand page book I randomly opened it focused on one page and Reddit, I would actually see get some value from it.

And your mind is like a thousand page book. You're just fanning through it all day long because that's what you've been trained to do. Let's not make Instagram reels longer than 90 seconds. You know, because that's how long people can pay attention. Everything needs to be quick tidbits, quick little bites. So now we're trained to think that way. So when we look at our mind, we just see little pieces of things. We don't stay in one place long enough.

one place long enough to actually go in, narrow and deep, and discover something. And this is what this whole process itself, for reflection, and having a conversation is going narrow deep inside of yourself to discover who you are. It's the greatest gift you can give yourself. And then what's the next step? Let's say you get a good habit. You're starting to find some answers. You're getting somewhere.

You're doing something you've never done before. And it's been a few months, let's say. You're like, all right, I think I love that. this or that, I mean, that doesn't mean you quit your job or you'd start something else. Like, what's the next step then after, let's say, you start to get good at focusing on self-reflection and you're actually doing it. What's next? So, for example, you say, you know, something that really I'm passionate about and I love

doing is coppentry, right? So then just do what Ryan did. Test the market. Make furniture. Try selling it. You know, put it on eBay. maybe create a little business on the side. Yes, you have a 95 job. You have kids. You work hard. But you know, start making stuff. Try and see what the market says. If they like, how they respond to it.

How did you do it, Ryan? You tested it, right? You tested and tested it and see how people responded. And actually with me. I left the monastery. Yeah. I had to test as well. Yeah. What did you do? Like, how did you find the market? Because there's no guarantee just because of your history that people are going to want to start paying you. So you had to figure that. Like, what did you do? Yeah, I tested first with, you know, I mean, look, I had gone from the university to a monastery. So I had no real world experience. I never worked in a business before.

I never worked for anybody a 95 jobs in my life. I mean, I worked as a dishwasher, things like that, doing money. But so I went to the first natural place. I thought people would listen. It would probably be a yoga studio, you know. So I would do weekend workshops at Hugo Studios teaching about the mind and focus and saw how people responded and reacted and adjusted my content to help people. Because my training was different. So I needed to adjust what I learned to how people in the world needed them.

And, you know, after a few years, I, you know, then I started speaking to entrepreneurs. And then I realized that they were my audience. They were my clients. They were most aligned. I found great attraction with entrepreneurs. I found I was reacting better, responding better. They brought more out of me. And then I just kept refining and refining.

But this is over a period of years. It didn't happen overnight. This took, you know, eight, nine years to crystallize, you know, to get that niche. And I'm willing to take time. And that's where I feel people are not willing to take time. They're not willing to dedicate time. They expect to find their purpose and life. right away, you know, give me a cheat sheet on how to find it.

I'll should find it by this weekend and then I can start living my purpose. It doesn't work that way. And you have to want it, right? Ryan, and that's the other thing. Most people don't desire something badly enough and that's why they never get it. How badly do you want it? That's the question in the ask. How badly do you want to find your purpose?

Yeah. What is your purpose? My purpose in life is self-realization. or enlightenment and in the Hindu philosophy a simplified version of it would be we believe that God, one aspect

of God is pure intelligent energy that permeates everything so the energy inside of me, you, the trees, the stones, through deep meditation, I go within me and experience that divinity inside of me to realize that divinity is inside

of me as well as being in everything else. That would be one aspect of that enlightened or self-realization. So that would be my core purpose in life. And I always tell people that everyone needs a core purpose in life. And then everyone should have subpurposes in life. And core purpose should never be dependent on anyone or anything. Because if you make your core purpose dependent on someone or something and if that someone

or something goes away, then you have no purpose. When you think about the people in your life that have have, I mean, you're surrounded by people who have, who have, are quite accomplished. You have been for, for many years. The ones who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. What are the, what are a few qualities slash behaviors that they all seem to have in common? Clarity of purpose. Being crystal clear what it is you want.

Unquenchable desire. An absolute burning desire for it. and without desire for it, you're never going to get it. Then I would say discrimination. And discrimination, meaning the ability to wisely discriminate what and who isn't aligned with what you're pursuing and what and who are not aligned with what you're pursuing. So my goal in life is enlightenment or self-realization.

That is my core purpose in life. It helps me make very clear decisions every day. What is supportive towards that and what is not? Who are the people that they should surround with that help me get there? Now, there are people that love going to the bar to a pub, you know, five days a week, getting smashed, you know, and going home. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying don't do that.

Is it aligned and supportive where I want to go? Not really. There are music that support me where I want to go, and their music that don't support me where I want to go. There are TV shows that support me where I want to go, and some that don't. Books, food, drinks, ways of living. So my purpose now helps me,

structure my lifestyle to go in the direction. Now go back to the 95 VP of sales. He can't change a lot of his environment because he's working for a company. He has to work with people that are uplifting and not uplifting. But he can certainly construct a lot of his life outside of work to help him support where he's going to go. Who are the people that are aligned? what shows do we watch? What music do we listen to? What books do we read? What foods do I eat? Is this food helping me to get to where I want to go? Are these drinks helping me to get to where I want to go? Where do I live? Being very intentional about everything, but we can only be intentional if we know what we want. Now, you hear people posting on Instagram all the time. Be present. Be intentional.

How the hell are you going to be intentional if you don't even have to be intentional if you don't even? know what the hell you want you can't got to start at the stop which is learn out of the focus to help you figure out what you want then you can be intentional and be present in those things can't be intentional if you don't know what you want that's why we have to start that and Ryan you you you've worked with people you have we've worked with entrepreneurs you have listeners clients or entrepreneurs tell me one company that's successful had that has no clarity of what they want in their in their in their company good point yeah every company tries so hard to figure out

what is my product how can i better my product what are my services who are my clients what's my niche client right and the more they can figure that out the more successful they become is that a fair statement so why don't we take that approach with our life somehow when it comes to entrepreneurship, everyone's willing to do the work to figure all those things out. Get advisors, get consultants, let's figure this out, let's get it clear, let's write it down a vision statement, our mission statement, our core values. We all have to be aligned with this, this direction we're going, we define goals, steps towards getting there. When it comes to personal life, spiritual and fall, whatever the hell works. Life's a journey. It's all about discovery. It's not about the destination.

who cares where you're going, enjoy your journey getting there. And is it Lewis Carroll that said, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there? And that's how people lead their life. It's a good point you think about it. Like there's a lot of time, energy, money spent on all of that stuff, right? The core values on the wall, the mission, vision. There's tons. Why do you think it is that way that there's so much of so many resources spent on that?

yet it's does you're right it seems like so little if any time money resources are spent on yourself not only on yourself on your family and your kids if your kids the 18 and they're lost and they have no idea what they want in life it's not their fault it's because in the first 18 years of their life nobody trained them get them the re spent the resources the money the time to help them figure out what they want in life your company would have no idea what it wants if you didn't spend the time, the energy, the resources, and the collective group of minds that sat together repeatedly over and over again to hash out what it is

you want. You don't do it as a family. You don't have a collective group of people getting together every day, the time, the resources, the energy dedicated to helping you figure out what you want in life, all your kids figuring out what you want in life. So your kids get to 18. They have no idea what the hell they want. So then all of a sudden you cop out and give an AC excuse and say, you don't have to have everything figured out at 18. That's just ridiculous, you know? Enjoy life, discover, explore, figure things out. Why don't we say the same thing with business? I talk to entrepreneurs all the time in person. I do workshops, events with them. I've asked this question. This is an informal survey, Ryan. I'll say to a group of 100 entrepreneurs

having successful companies sitting in with me in a room and I'll say to them, I want all of you to go back to your companies today. Some have small companies, 50, 70 people, 100 people. some have thousands of employees. I want you to gather everyone together and say, okay, for the next one year, I want you to go and do whatever you want to do. Our company is about the journey. It's about discovering and having different experiences. Tomorrow you want to sell lawnmowers? Go ahead. Try that out. See how it works for you. We don't have to sell 3D printers. You want to sell lawnmowers, go for it. You want to sell washing machines tomorrow. Try that experience. Let me know how it goes. Why don't we do that?

No one's ever put up their hand and says, okay, I'm going to go back today. I'm going to tell all my employees you can do whatever the hell you want to do. We don't have a direction to experience life, experience our company. No one does that. So why don't we take the same approach with life? Because we don't want to dedicate time. We don't want to do the hard work. We don't want to sit down.

We don't get taught this in school. A school system isn't built. Instead of teaching the freaking periodic table, which I wasted so. So many years having freaking learned that dumb thing, they should have been teaching me how to focus, how my mind works, how to figure out what I'm passionate about. How do I look at Dundapani and go, what wakes him up in the morning? It's all there. If I'm focused, I can be observant. If I'm observant, I can see my child what lights them up.

Then I can start to nurture that. Instead of throwing 50 different things of the child saying, hey, try this, learn that, do that, do this. I can say every time, like I look at my daughter, every time she hears music, she wants to dance. She loves having dance body at home, three and a half years old. So we send her to dance classes. She loves dance class. Right.

So now I start to nurture that. Then I see what else is interesting. But I need to be observing, right? I need to stand back and observe in her what drives. And then I start nurturing. So instead of sending her to another class doing playing piano or doing something totally random like tennis, why don't I invest time in sending her to dance because that's what lights up her eyes, her life. And we don't spend any time, Ryan, doing us for our kids, for ourselves, and then we'll wonder why we're lost.

But somehow when it comes to our companies, we're willing to spend a crap load of money to do this in time and energy and resource. That's a great point. I also think part of my motivation, Don Nipani, was in doing this type of work, was in my house, my wife and children, you can feel the excitement and the love and the passion for what I do. They can feel that energy versus the kind of trudging out, oh, God, I got to go to work. And to me, that's another big motivation. That's a big part of my purpose, I think, to let them know that that is possible. It doesn't have to be the other way where it's like, well, I just got to go get a job.

Like, no, you can build something. You can do something that you're genuinely juiced about every day. I want them to know that, like, it's right there. There's a living, breathing example right next to them doing that. That's a huge motivator too. And so if for those people who are thinking like, oh, I just need to do whatever because maybe they feel unselfish and they're they're putting others in front of themselves just know that that feeling, that energy you give off to those around you, they can sense that. They're smart. Your spouse, your kids, they can feel if you have this love of the craft or of the work.

And I think that gives them, I could be wrong, but I feel like that gives them a, a lot of inspiration and motivation to figure that out for themselves. And so it kind of starts with us as leaders in our households before anywhere else. It does. And the other thing is giving them the training, right? The resources, the guidance. When I'm a business owner, when I don't understand something, I hire someone to teach me, or I have a mentor or a guide to help me understand how to run my business better.

All companies do that. No companies are expected to know every single thing. They hire people to help them in different areas. So why don't we have guides? Why don't we take time out and say like, okay, who can help me figure out my purpose? Who can help my children figure out their purpose and gain clarity around these things? We don't take that approach. How are we supposed to know something we don't know?

So true. Thank you for your work, man. I really appreciate it. Like obviously I'm trying to bring up all points of views and even some of the skepticism because I think it's good to cover those questions when we talk. So too. Yeah. But I appreciate the manner and the style and what you've written your book.

It's called the power of unwavering focus. I encourage people to read it because it's got, again, that good combo of the stories, some of the biographical parts, as well as some of the science. And then certainly there are tools. There are practical application for you. to implement right away, which we tried to hit on right now. So thanks so much for doing this, Don DePonni. It certainly was, I wasn't really sure what I was going to get, but I'm so glad I got

to meet you. And I would love to continue, if you're good with it, I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. For sure. That would be wonderful. That would be really great. Thank you so much. Is there anywhere else you'd send a viewer's listeners to learn more about you online?

Probably my website's the best place, which is dandapani.org. That's d-a-n-d-a-p-n-a-n-a-n-n-i-n-9.org. From there, you can connect to my different social channels and everything that I have on my app or book and things like that. Awesome. But more than anything else, you know, I would say just to your listeners as one parting final thing is, there needs to be an impetus for leading a focused life. And in the book, I talk about the three great impetus. One of them is the fact that our life is finite.

That you have one life and you only have X amount of time. I don't say life is short. I say life is finite. There's a clear definitive end to it. So we don't know how long that is, but we know it's going to end. That should drive us to have clarity of purpose, clarity of focus, so that we're so blessed to be on this planet to be able to have a life. And that time that we have this life can be the most amazing one.

and everyone can have that. They just need to dedicate some time and commit time and energy to discovering that. And then living it, don't spend your whole life searching for it. Spend a minimum of time searching for it. Discover it and then spend the rest of the time living it.

Because that's what you're here to do. You're here to live an amazing life. Perfect. Thanks so much again, man. The power of unwavering focus. Look forward to talking with you more in the future. You're most welcome. Thank you, Ryan.

It's not every day you get to speak with a Hindu priest and a former monk. Yet another reason why I love this podcast. I love the opportunity it creates for me to speak with someone with wildly different life experiences than my own. I think that's where so much learning can happen for all of us. If we put ourselves in situations to speak with people who simply have, have a different view of the world. It's not better or worse. It's just different and that's good.

That's where growth happens. It truly helps with perspective. And Don DePani certainly has done that for me and many people. I hope you like this one as much as I did. A few takeaways from my notes. We need a core purpose in life. Your purpose defines your priorities. It's worth it to do the work to understand this.

Self-reflection needs to become part of your routine. Then excellence equals clarity of purpose, a burning desire, and an understanding of who is aligned with your purpose and developing those relationships fully or who is so important with that. And then remember, life is finite. It will end. Let's make the most of it. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Don DePonnie. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader.

And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcasts, you give me the opportunity to understand my purpose, live that out, and do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.