The One You Feed - Unlocking the Power of Reflection and Action in a Distracted World with James Beshara

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

In this episode, James Beshara explores how to unlock the power of reflection and action in a distracted world. He delves into Vedanta philosophy and explains how Vedanta’s framework of body, mind, and intellect mirrors the battle between immediate desires and long-term wisdom. He shares practical daily habits, including questioning assumptions, reflection, and community discussion, that strengthen the intellect. James also explores dharma, the importance of aligned action, and how spiritual growth means fully engaging with life rather than escaping it. Struggling to stick to your goals? In sign up to receive the Free 6 Saboteurs of Self-Control Workshop replay. You’ll learn the six hidden obstacles that sabotage your progress and how to overcome them. From breaking free of autopilot habits to tackling self-doubt and emotional escapism, this workshop offers practical tools and strategies to help you make better choices and stay aligned with your values.  Exciting News!!! How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life is out NOW! Order today! Key Takeaways: The relationship between the parable and Vedanta philosophy. The distinction between the body, mind, and intellect in navigating life. The importance of strengthening the intellect to guide the mind and body. The tension between immediate desires and long-term well-being. Daily practices for developing the intellect, including questioning, reflection, and community discussion. The concept of dharma and aligning actions with one’s true nature. The significance of action in spiritual growth, as emphasized in the Bhagavad Gita. The integration of wisdom into everyday life and responsibilities. The lifelong process of reflection, action, and reorientation toward personal growth and fulfillment. For full show notes:⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you enjoyed this conversation with James Beshara, check out these other episodes: Yes, Thank You: Practicing Non-Resistance with Pete Holmes A Soul Boom Discussion on Mental Health, Spirituality, and Connection with Rainn Wilson By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed, and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! This episode is sponsored by: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aura Frames⁠: Named #1 by Wirecutter, you can save on the gifts moms love by visiting AuraFrames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get 25 dollars off their best-selling Carver Mat frame with code FEED. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout! ⁠Rocket Money⁠ Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at ⁠rocketmoney.com/feed⁠. ⁠Taskrabbit:⁠ When life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get fifteen dollars off your first task at ⁠Taskrabbit.com⁠ or on the Taskrabbit app using promo code FEED. Taskers book up fast, especially for same-day tasks, so book trusted home help today. ⁠Hello Fresh⁠ – Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. ⁠Alma⁠ has a directory of 20,000 therapists with different specialities, life experiences, and identities, and 99% of them take insurance. Visit ⁠helloalma.com⁠ to learn more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the thing that you would do where the only reward is that you got to do more of it? No financial reward, no validation, no fame status. Your only reward is that you got to do more of it. What is that thing? Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or, quote.

empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. In this episode, Eric and James Bashara explore a fundamental intertension that shapes nearly every decision we make, the pull between what we want right now and what we want most. Drawing from the ancient philosophy of Vedanta, James shares a powerful framework for understanding this inner battle,

describing how we each have a body, a mind, and intellect, and how real growth comes from strengthening the part of us that can see beyond immediate desire. and short-term rewards. Eric and James discuss how this tension shows up in everyday life, from habits and work to purpose and identity, and why so much of lasting change comes down to learning how to pause, reflect, and choose differently in those moments. They also explore the role of daily practices,

like reflection and repetition, the importance of aligning with your natural tendencies, and why meaningful growth doesn't have to come from escaping life's challenges but from engaging with them more fully. fully. If you've ever felt caught between competing impulses or struggled to follow through on what matters most, this conversation offers both timeless wisdom and practical insight you can begin applying right away. This is the one you feed. Hi, James. Welcome to the show. Eric, thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk with you about a bunch of things. You're a philosopher,

really into Vedanta. We're going to talk a lot about that. You're a very successful investor, businessman, you own a company called Magic Mind. So we're going to get into all of that, but we will start first like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?

And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, Eric, it's such a beautiful parable. And I've heard you say it in episodes before. And obviously, it's the theme of your podcast. So when our friend Pete Holmes put us in touch, I was delighted to have the chance to chat with you because I knew the topics and the surface area that you and I could cover. It's going to be different than most podcasts that I do. And as we noted just before hitting record, it really is the subject matter I think about most, much more than business.

But the parable, as I'm hearing it almost with fresh ears for the first time today, it reminds me. me distinctly of within Advita Vedanta, which goes back to the four oldest philosophical textbooks on the planet, the Vedas. And Vedanta is the end of the Vedas. Vodanta means end of the Vedas. So it's the Upanishads. And if there was a branding agency back then, they'd say, hey, you guys have so many names for the same thing. The Vedas. Sanata Nadarma, which means eternal principles. But perhaps the most, I'd say the most practical, the central practical contribution of this philosophy is that we have three equipments to navigate the world. And I had never heard this explicitly before, but the two wolves is such a beautiful metaphor for this. And that you have these three equipments,

you have the body, which everybody, it's not going to, that's not going to blow anybody away. They're going to be like, yeah, I've got a body. I understand that. Then you have a mind. Also not groundbreaking. People are like, yes, that sounds familiar, mind and a body. body. But Vedanta introduces this unique concept of an equipment that's even more subtle than the mind, which is the intellect. So you have these three equipments, the intellect, the mind, and the body. The mind is the emotions, our seat of our feelings. It's the ego. It's the seat of what I feel, what I desire, what I prefer. It's my thoughts. And the intellect is this subtle equipment right above it. In the same way, the mind is right above and guides the body, the intellect can guide the mind.

And what is the right decision in the midst of all of these preferences? You might prefer to lays on the couch, but is that the right decision or the capacity to discern is another way of describing the intellect? That might feel great for a few minutes, maybe a few hours, but it's not the right decision perhaps to feel great this week or feel great tomorrow. So I'm going to get up and I'm going to go walk around or get up and do that project I've been putting off. And the way it's talked about in Vedanta is it's like a muscle, and you either develop it or atrophies. Same way that you develop the body or atrophies or you develop the mind or atrophies.

And so I think about the mind and the intellect and the constant dialogue that they have within us that now modern psychology is kind of scratching out of, oh, it's not just one linear line of thoughts. There seems to be a dialogue within us. They call it system one, system two things. And so I think about that which one do you feed? Do you feed the preferences for the here and now? Or do you, my favorite definition of wisdom comes from Vedantov,

the capacity to see the end in the beginning. And do we feed that capacity to see the end in the beginning? Do we look beyond these preferences or feelings that we might be feeling right now? And do we feed that side of ourselves, the intellect? I've never made that connection until you're talking today. I was like, oh, yeah, feeding the intellect is feeding the wolf that you want to win. There's so many directions we could go off of what you just said. I had a conversation with someone yesterday. She wrote a book called Little Addictions, and it's about the ideas that, you know, everybody's wrestling with something, mainly this thing, you know, our phone. But she talks about that in essence, what you're talking about is a bat, this is an oversimplification and a battle between sort of the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. When you're trying to decide what the way I like to say it is decide what you want most versus what you want. want now. But one of the things we were talking about is how in addicts, it's very clear you see that

that physical equipment in the brain, the prefrontal cortex, is not as synaptically dense in people who have addiction issues. Literally, the very equipment that allows, maybe it is the intellect to a certain degree, isn't there as much. And I think that's what makes addiction such a challenging thing. I also love that see the end in the beginning. That's a great. That's a good. You know, great, great phrase. I want to dig a little deeper on this idea, though, which is there is a way of being in which we do see the end in the beginning, or to use your words, the intellect is kind of guiding where we go. I call it my wiser, truer self, right? My wiser, true herself is much better than the self that shows up at 9 a.m. of the bad night's sleep and hungry. And for the wisest of us,

we discover this equipment and we have so many different names for it. I mean, our modern society talks about things like mindset or frame of mind. And we think about it in terms of a high or we say things like higher self, lower self. And what I love about this Vedantic, this philosophical contribution is giving an explicit name and says like, well, what is setting the mind? If you're thinking about mindset, what are you doing? What are you using to set the mind? And that is the intellect or and your phrase that that wiser self and it's there for all of us but it is it is as undeveloped as any muscle that we don't give attention to so for for really all of us it's quite undeveloped until we extremely explicitly and deliberately say you know what i'm going to

develop this capacity to see the end of the beginning or this capacity to discern or this higher self. I love your articulation of that that does what I really want versus what I want right now. Yeah. So what does Vedanta tell us about how to train that capacity, how to make that muscle stronger? Great. Follow the question. And it's so simple. In the oldest Veda, it's called the Rig Veda, there is this famous quote of truth is one sage is called by many names. And we touched on that as just before we hit record when you're talking about Zen and so many parallels. Vedantans are often called crypto Buddhists and Buddhists are often called Cryptovedantins because they're so similar.

So I think a lot of this will resonate with you. But the three daily practices within Vedanta are really, really simple. One is question everything. Two is don't take anything for granted. Three is study and reflect daily. And if you allow me 30 seconds, I'll say why it's in this order. question everything is a bit self-evidence. The unexamined life is not worth living.

We have these concepts in the West. But it calls it out as the number one, the first daily practice, because all of the things that we think are good for us. Bhagavagita, a canonical text within Vedanta in the 18th chapter has a great principle where it says that that which is like nectar in the beginning is like poison in the end. That which is like poison in the beginning is like nectar in the end. And I see you kind of nodding. An addict knows that really, really well.

I mean, that is basically a very ancient description of the process of addiction. And all of us have addictions. It might not be a substance that you can put in a bag or in a bottle. But I know my addiction was six to seven cups of coffee a day stimulants. And luckily, when I would take Adderall in my 20s, it would give me such bad headaches. but had that not giving me headaches, I would have gone off the deep end with that stimulant. I was prescribed it.

I had all of like the validation that I could. And it was, I'm thankful that it, my body just didn't agree with it. But the other addiction that I had was workaholism and it's a really sad one in that our culture, there are very few addictions that we collectively endorse and encourage, but it seems to be caffeine in ambition. society is like, go for it. You get into some of the other substances, society's like, uh-uh.

But you get into caffeine, and it's like, let's go get coffee. You get into ambition, personal, egoistic engineering. And your own father might be like, yeah, keep going, seven days a week, 12 hours a day. And for me, it was compulsion.

It was not discipline. Even though people thought I was working hard, it was compulsion. And Vedanta is a, I think these three daily practices, question everything, really helped me say, are these, am I doing this for the right reasons? Why am I doing this? When did I get started on this entrepreneurial path that I'm like talking publicly about

being a mission for other people? But really, it's, why am I doing this? And it was a self-discovery of, dude, this is good old-fashioned, ego engineering, financial engineering. This is just savvy selfishness. And then the second daily practice is to not take anything for granted. I had three failures in my 20s. It was at my 20s just filled with failure.

Failure after failure after failure. Luckily, I was failing forward. I was gaining some education. But I had a big blow up with my last company where two years in, it was worth $400 million and deserves $385 million. And then four years later, we'd sell it in a fire sale to the skin of our teeth to Airbnb. I couldn't spin it into like, look what we did. We did something great.

It was we didn't get anywhere close to all of the dreams, hopes, expectations that people around us, that we ourselves had. And I'm so thankful that I couldn't spin it into some, hey, look, we sold a company. It was like cover of every tech website. Like, what happened? Wheels fell off. And with the company, it was called Tilt. And I'm so thankful that there was no hiding or reframing. It was, man, we had everything in the palm of our hands and I really let it slip.

I had to take full responsibility. I'm so, so thankful. Eric, maybe this maps to your experience, but when you see folks that can't hide behind, well, we got screwed by some investor or something bad happened in my life or my, my parent did this to us when we were young and as a recovering addict, you probably, and as a recovering addict myself with my own addictions, I see those stories and I and I kind of wince of like, ah, that's like nectar to hide behind kind of this is someone else's fault. But then the last one is study reflect daily because the virus of attachment, if you go two

or three days, you need a ground, we need a grounding wire. There's no cure for it. And Vedantas, So I've got a daily podcast on this five, ten minute episodes called The Daily Vodontic. I did an episode, a handful of episodes on this, but recently did an episode on the fact that the virus of attachment, if we do not enoculate it daily, you'll just catch it with a coffee with a friend or lunch with a friend. And the friend's got some of the epic going on in their life. And you're like, oh, shit, I want that. So we need a daily grounding wire to these timeless truths. Let's recap those three. Question everything.

What's number two? Don't take anything for granted, even if it's a cancer diagnosis. Yeah, and three. Study and reflect daily. You teed me up for a thousand different directions to go in there. I know, that was long-winded. Yeah, no, no, no, no, it's great. So study and reflect, what does that look like for you in your life, right?

In Zen, the practice is sitting meditation. Yeah, you can study, that's all good, but the heart of it, the thing that they say, is Zazen, sit down, sit down and do that. How do you structure your daily practice and reflection? What does that look like? Yeah, the secret key for Vedantic setting reflection that's talked about over and over again within the philosophy. And now, if you're familiar with Arthur Brooks, the Harvard, scientists around happiness, he talks a lot about this as well. Brahma Mahortem is what's called Time of God. And it's this time before the sun comes up, this quiet stillness. and I know this is revered in the Zazin and the Zen tradition as well of this time before the world

pulls you out of yourself. When the sun rises, we naturally just feel like, okay, the day's getting away from me. I got to start moving. I got to get going. But that time before the sun comes up, it is a beautiful stillness where you don't have to be anywhere. No one expects you to do anything. No one expects you to reply to any texts or emails. You got no media. So I get up at 4.30 and spend about 90 minutes, 60 minutes of listening to a lecture within the Vedantic philosophy. There's three classical yogas. Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga, Niana yoga, which just means service for others, karma yoga. Is it, you know, fancy Sanskrit words, but it's really simple. Bhaktis devotion, devotion to a practice, devotion to your family, devotion to

your work. It's devotional yoga. Yoga just means reunion. And the West, we think yoga is Hatha yoga, which that's a very valuable part of a day of the postures and standing on your head, downward dog. It's a valuable maintenance of the body. But classically, in India, that's, you know, 10% of what people think of in terms of yoga. Yoga is reunion with the divine. And that is primarily through these three classical yoga. Service, karma yoga, Bhakti, devotion. And then Niana yoga is Words of the Masters. Niana's knowledge. It's where we get ignosis, ignorance, is lack of knowledge, so we have this same shared root in Latin and in the West. But Niana Yoga is studying the words of the masters. So for 60 minutes, it's typically a lecture

from my teacher who's now 98, and I can tune in every day to the lectures in the ashram in India that I study with that people can find on my Instagram. You can find these resources. But I tune into a 60-minute lecture. Then from there, I've got about 30 minutes of stillness. So sit in stillness and reflect on what was said, which, what notes hit me. And in this philosophy, there's a phrase that reflection is 100,000 times more powerful than listening, meaning that if something hits us, and you probably knows really well, if something hits you, but you don't reflect on it, you don't journal on it, you don't discuss it with, you know, a songa, a community that's also pursuing these timeless truths.

if you don't reflect on it, then it's like it never happened. It stops in your tracks on a Tuesday and then two days later. It's like it never happened. So then it's 30 minutes of reflection, quiet stillness and reflection and meditation on those words of the master. Recently, I had a sudden and unexpected need to move studios. It was really stressful because it landed in the middle of a family health issue and book events and I just didn't have much time to do it. So having task rabbit available really reduced my stress.

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today. That's $15 off your first task using promo code feed with the TaskRabbit app or at taskrabbit.com. I'll admit I'm a little spoiled. Ginny does a lot of the cooking and she's great at it. However, she has been traveling a lot lately and I am really busy launching a book which has made me really glad that I have Hello Fresh. It saves me going to the grocery store and they have so many different options. I'm kind of particular about what I eat and yet I still find tons of things that I'll eat on Hello Fresh. I'm able to order delicious, healthy, high-protees, meals that are enjoyable to cook. It gives me something to do with my hands at the end of a long day sitting in front of a screen. So go to hellofresh.com slash feed to get 10 free meals and a free Zwilling knife, which is $144.99 value on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last.

Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan. some days I'll be like how much time did I spend today reading something, substack or a newsletter that I like. I guess substack and newsletters are close to the same thing. I guess that's my general way that I get information. I read different newsletters. And then I think to myself, what did I read today? And I'm like, I have no idea. Like I literally don't know what that hour and a half went to because I'm just kind of going.

And it's enjoyable. It's a little bit of a flow state learning for me. But that pause and then going, okay, how does this apply to me? Where would this fit in my life? What would this look like? That's hard in comparison. It's easy to just consume. It's hard to pause, reflect, and implement.

I talk about it all the time as sort of the knowledge to action gap. Right? And I have a book coming out in March that really is to a large extent about this very thing. How do we change? How do we change the way we think, for example? Like, what is a way that we let the intellect to use your words run more of the show than the mind? And so, yeah, I think you're right, that idea of reflection. Now, in that 30 minutes of stillness, you're reflecting. Is there any method to that? Or do you catch your mind wandering? Like, how do you keep that from being 30 minutes of just your brain repeating its list of grievances and ideas and things to do next.

Well, the mind certainly is doing that. Yeah. It's doing a hefty amount of that. The mind is so ancient, so ancient, and it is so good at scanning, looking for problems, magnifying issues, creating issues of nothing out of nothing. Anatomy of fear is just you're going to lose something that you want, that you have. And this desire and attachment is just the mind is so sticky. Yes.

And as the Buddhists say, there's 10,000 things. There's 10,000 things on our mind that we want. We think it might be one, that Amazon package that's going to get here in two days, and it's going to be the last thing. But then we realized like, oh, no, that was kind of just part of the other things that I wanted. I interviewed someone once. I was like, so what do you want in life? That's one of my favorite interview questions, just to see what, honestly,

it's just the entertainment in the midst of, a lot of interviewing for different roles for Magic Mind. And I interviewed this gentleman once and he said, I want $10 million. I said, well, why do you want $10 million? And he said, well, at $10 million, then I'd be able to make on interest, just on interest enough to do whatever I wanted. And I was like, so you want to be able to do whatever you want to do? What do you want to do? He said, oh, I mean, a lot of things. And I didn't belabor it and with him. But it was very clear that what he wanted was the freedom to do what he wanted, but he didn't know what he wanted. Yeah. He didn't know what he wanted to do. None of us do. Everything that we're chasing is just a

symbol of what we think we want and so much of the time. And so during that 30 minutes, my mind is definitely doing that. And the intellect is also described kind of like the adult in the room. You invite the intellect in to guide the child-like mind that can sometimes be childish. We've got three young girls, three, five, and eight. I love having children in the room. It's the, it is the best that one might bust in here in any moment and it will be a delight. But I would never leave them home alone. That would be extremely irresponsible. The adult in the room is what really gives the long-term joy of having a child around. So the intellect during those 30 minutes is stepping in and oftentimes it's journaling.

Oftentimes it is just sitting there still just reflecting on what I just wrote down. Maybe it's a specific line and then reflecting on that line over and over and over again. My journal's in the next room. And so here's a perfect example of why reflection is so powerful. I did that this morning for one line. for 30 minutes. And now it would actually take me 10 or 20 seconds to remember what that line was. I spent 30 minutes on one line.

I remember it is on the fact that attach you gain, detach you lose. I'm sorry, attach you lose to attach you gain. Even then 30 minutes of reflection took me about 10 seconds to remember. And then I still misquoted it. This is an exercise for anybody. spend a few minutes reflecting on something that, let's say the next time Instagram, an Instagram quote or TikTok reel stops in your tracks, just mark it down and see if you remember two hours later what it was. If you could tell somebody, tell your spouse, tell a

significant other, tell a co-worker, a friend, something that stopped you in your tracks. And it's so hard. So reflection in Vedanta has, and this tradition has so many explicit, precise definitions on all of these things you're asking about. What are the daily practices? What does reflection look like? The rankings of the forms of reflection of Vedanta are the lowest form is actually to sit in stillness with it. Higher than that is to write about it. Higher than that is to reflect on it with a group, which reflection with other people, that's in Buddhism called Sangha and Vedanta Satsung, and it's community and truth. But for I had exposure to this philosophy, I would have always thought,

Oh, reflection is what you do on like a quiet walk on your own or sit in stillness. And that's the lowest form of reflection within this tradition. Because once you have to talk about it, and then you realize like, oh shit, I don't, I don't really know what I'm talking about. I thought I kind of really discovered a truth. And then I'm talking about it with a spouse and fumbling over my words. And it's a good thing. It's a humbling exercise.

and I go through it daily, including this one, where I misquoted, and it's a reminder of that's going to require maybe 100,000 times more reflections for that principle to hit. Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What's one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it's there. You've tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major saboteurs of self-control. things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism, that quietly derail our best intentions.

But here's the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at one you feed.net slash e-book and take the first step towards getting back on track. I'm sort of promoting my book, so it's like always on my mind. But so many things you said tie right back into there. I use a quote in there. It's an old Chinese quote that read a book a thousand times and you will begin to understand it. And I talk about how when I got sober in 12 step programs, they would read the same thing at the beginning of every meeting. They would read the 12 steps. They would read the 12 promises again and again and again. And I went to a lot of meetings in the beginning. beginning. So sometimes two, three times a day I'm hearing this. And at that time, and there's so many cliches in 12-step programs that I just would be like, ah. And then I was reflecting on when I was working with my Zen teacher in a really intense period a few years ago, I spent seven months on a 165 page book for my job doing this. What was the book? It was Appreciate Your Life by

a Mizumi Roshi. For this podcast, I cover a lot of ground. I'll talk to you today. I'm interviewing two people a week. I'm getting a lot of stuff. And there's an enjoyment and there's a value and a purpose in that. But I also have to have this other part of my life that's like you're describing that says, like, let me just pick an idea and stay with it. Like if we were to try and build a virtue, something like, let's just pick gratitude.

it's an easy one. That is a long process of building it as a virtue, building it as a state of mind as a default. This is what you're talking about. You keep coming back to these ideas again and again and again because that's how we actually change. That's how one mindset gets shifted into another. And I just love that idea of also the group, right? I got sober in 12-step programs. We run communities here. And I agree with you. It's that discussion with other people that is so, so valuable.

So I run this program called Wise Habits. And one of the things I teach on Sunday, which is arguably the least important part of the program. And we pick a principle and we devote a week to it. But what we do is we divide the big group up into small groups that meet together by themselves on Wednesdays. And that is far more valuable, I think. than the 90 minutes with me. It's almost like one is really just the container for the other. Yeah.

So so many great things in what you said there. You touched on one idea. And I remember Rick Rubin, the famous music producer, he said in an interview three or four years ago. He said, right now in life, I'm not reading anything that isn't a thousand years old. And finding those things that have lasted longer than any human empire. and then adding in those timeless truths and then adding in the repetition.

Repetition is power. That reflection is worth it is 100,000 times more powerful than reading it once, listening to it once, hearing it once is basically nothing if we don't reflect on it. And Charlie Munger, the famous investor, he was Warren Buffett's partner and second best investor of all time right behind Warren Buffett. And he has this great quote on this. He said, take a simple idea and take it seriously. Yes. Yeah. I mean, my book is called How a Little Becomes a Lot, and the heart of it is a little by little philosophy. And what you just said, it's a simple idea. We all know it. We've got all kinds of phrases. Rome wasn't built in the day, and you eat an elephant a bite at a time and all that. But taking it seriously as an approach to the way you solve challenges in your life is an entirely different thing. I like that. Pick one idea and take it.

Seriously. So you do this morning reflection, and then when that's over, you're a busy guy. I mean, you run Magic Mind. You're an investor in a bunch of other companies. I now know that you have three children, which is a whole other animal to contend with. You do a daily podcast on Vodonta. How do you keep that stillness that you get in the morning? What are the things that you try to do to keep that as you go throughout your day? That's a challenging transition. It's like we've got my morning time. It's really special. And then the sun comes up to use your phrase and I'm off and running. How do you carry some of the morning with you? There's a great question. By the way, this is satsung. This is so beautiful because the way that you're even thinking is so different than,

and I think listeners, it's why they love your podcast, is just the line of questions is from someone that's pursuing truth themselves. And so asking about the specifics, these are the questions. Like when I was hardcore, all of the content I would ever digest a startup related for the first 15 years of my career. So it was like, give me the specifics. What is a fast growing startup actually look like? What are the numbers? Right.

And you really want to know the specifics when it's something that you truly care about. And so it's just beautiful that you care about these specifics because like I said, a lot of the podcasts are like, yeah, this is all well and good. But how did you raise a series A? How did you end? And I wish people ask more about the roots because I think if you see a life that for anybody listening, let's say you see someone on the cover of a magazine or you see someone that you look up to in the neighborhood that you want their life, look at their roots, not the fruits. Don't look at a milestone or an achievement. Look at their roots. What do they do on a daily basis? What are their non-negotiables? What are their boundaries? What are the things

that are most important to them that allow these things to stack up? And to your question, I think it's a reverse. It's not how do I find the stillness for these things that take place. It's because of the stillness, all of these take place. My life is summed up in effortless effort. It feels so effortless. And it's because through this stillness, there is this framework that is 5,000 plus years old

framework on how to live a life in the most beautiful, optimized way. It's so individual, so specific to each person. And it's a discovery of, okay, what is like one principle within Vedanta? And by the way, there's only about 25, 26 principles in this philosophy that another word for it is, Sinata and a Dharma, which means eternal principles. One of the principles is Swadharma, your nature. And it is better to die into your nature than is to live in a foreign nature. This also comes from the Bhama Gita, where it's saying like, you think you might be a starving artist going and becoming a musician.

it is better to do that than to seemingly thrive as an investment banker, what you're not wired for, or doing this other thing that maybe satisfies what your parents want of you, but not what you want of yourself. And if you did that music thing, and some people, like you and our, we play music on the side, you can also find outlets where it's just fun. But if your nature, I know my nature is not music all the time. I meet those musicians. And I'm like, yeah, that's a freak of nature. Thank God for all of us.

they died into that. You think it might be a death of some sort of like, I'm going to become a starving artist, I guess. But you're going to be so fulfilled by that alignment with your nature and nature itself that not only will feel effortless, you will thrive. It's like the surfer that learns to surf. And then after a while, it's just a few paddles and boom. They're going down the line, traveling 300 yards.

And the wave is just carrying them. It's effortless. they know which waves to pick. They are built to be a surfer. They put in the first three paddles and boom, it's a metaphor I talk about quite a bit on the daily Levitantic is 100 people listen to the podcast. So it's a small podcast. Literally, I'm like, I had a startup podcast. And I just, I don't care if 10 people listen. I'm going to just talk about philosophy. I'm switching gears. And one metaphor that I use a lot is the albatross can go up to 600 miles on a single flap of its wings. and that's because it is surrendering into its nature, which is to fly.

It understands barometric pressure. It understands air pressure. It understands wind patterns. It has these massive wingspans. And that isn't an anomaly. That's how we all should live. We find what we're wired for. It might be music.

It might be athletics. It might be business. It might be community building. It might be philosophy. It might be teaching. Find what you're wired for. and it's a single flap of the wings. Once you know how to fly, single flap of the wings,

and then 600 miles later, you're just gliding. That same albatross could be in the water saying like, no, no, no, flying's not my thing. I've got to paddle. It's in its wrong nature. And it might die before it goes a mile, much less 600 miles, paddling against a current versus gliding with the wind. So when you find that swadharma, your nature,

and a lot of introspection, and one of the best ways to do it is through reflection where it's asking yourself a question, what's the thing that you would do where the only reward is that you got to do more of it? No financial reward, no validation, no fame status. Your only reward is that you got to do more of it. What is that thing? As you cultivate an idea of what that is, maybe it goes back to what you're into when you're five, six, seven, eight years old.

When you do that, it is energy jittering. It is not energy dissipating. It's energy generating. And the definition of right action within Vedanta is that which generates energy. The definition of wrong action is that which dissipates energy. So you align your nature with nature itself. You generate energy and you go into parenting at 5 p.m. when you kind of close the laptop, the work you're doing and you're energized going into the night shift, so to speak.

Instead of former me would have been just so exhaust. I mean, former me sent me to the ER with. heart condition because I was overworking myself so much. So that stillness in the morning, that still point, those first 90 minutes, that is the reorientation back to these principles, back to my swadourma, back to duty service, surrender, that then allows me to work for seven, eight hours effortlessly, it feels like. And then I'm energized going into the night shift with the three kids going into the podcast, going into a conversation like this. There's been times where I knew I could use some extra support, some therapy, and then I would

start looking and it's like who's a good fit, who takes insurance, how do I even sort through all of these options? And that's why I love what Alma is doing. They've built a network of over 20,000 therapists and you can browse their directory without creating an account. You can filter by the things that actually matter, like what you're dealing with, the therapist's approach, even background. So it feels a lot more human and a lot of less like guesswork. And one thing that really stands out, most Alma therapists except insurance. On average, people save about 80% on sessions, which makes getting help feel a lot more doable. Because for a lot of us finding therapists, we just don't know where to start and we worry about

the cost. So if you've been thinking about therapy, but haven't taken that first step, this is a good place to begin. Go to hello alma.com slash feed. That's hello. a l-ma.com slash feed and find a therapist who fits you. Surely there have to be times that it's hard. I don't know. I cannot tell you in the last 10 years, a day where I have been stressed, there have been moments. So to answer your question, technically, yes, there's an hour here or there where I'm like, I've got to go on a walk. There was an hour in April of last year where I was like, I got a call from our landlord, three kids, and we had been told for months that we're going to be able to buy the home that we're renting. And they were going through a divorce.

And he said, hey, James. And he's a good family friend. He goes, James, I got some bad news. His ex-wife, she wants to buy the house. And you're not going to be able to buy it. This has been like 16 or 17 months of like, oh, next month, once the divorce finally is a wife. So that was so unexpected. the hallmark of intelligence, by the way, is how infrequently we have unexpected news and how

infrequently you're surprised is tied to our intelligence. So I was surprised. I was just, and I was like, I need to close my laptop and I'm going to go for a walk and went for a walk for an hour. That was last, not last April, it was April before last. So about two years ago. So technically answering a question, there are hard moments, but spiritually answering the question is so unrecognized. versus my 20s where I'm almost 40 now. So my 20s, there was a point in time where it was so hard where I had PTSD of just opening up my email inbox so much. I just couldn't handle any more work, any more bad news, and it was bad news all day long. But now there aren't many hard times.

Well, that's a testament to, do you say you do two hours of practice every morning or one hour? An hour and a half. Hour and a half. That's a testament to what an hour and a half of practice will give you is a much greater resilience. I think about this a lot because I think I'm doing what I'm, I don't love this phrase because it makes it sound like there's somebody out there designing the way things are. And I don't want to get into question about the divine. But what I meant to do, having these conversations, teaching the things that I teach. And there are moments where I find it challenging. Some of that I think is getting older. My energy isn't quite what it once was. But there are. moments that I find it's hard. And I also find that motives are so mixed. You talk a lot about this. It's one of the things you say, you say that it's not what you do, it's what you do it for, which is a beautiful idea of intention. And so when I look at just this podcast, let's just take,

let's keep it simple, the producing of this podcast, I know the main motivating thing that I do it for, right it was because i loved having these conversations i needed the wisdom and then over time it became that i know it helps a lot of people and so that's the thing right and it's also how i make a living it's also the way and when it doesn't go well that means that that could be challenged and i so what i find is i get these two things wrapped up then there's a third then the ego jumps in right there's the more pure intention. There's the practical, like, this is how I make money. This is important. And then the ego jumps in. And that's the one that's like, you know, how many downloads do I have? Why, you know, why am I not as good as ex-pot? You know, why am I not as popular as X podcast?

So all three of those things get wrapped into one bundle of I'm doing the podcast. And I agree with you that the thing that keeps the ship straight the most is going back to, what I would call the wiser higher self-motives. The more that I do that, the easier it does get indeed. I know there's some overlap with Zen on this, so I'd love to hear from you on this. Within Vedanta, it's 97% of the philosophy is action, action, action. I touched on that service. Service is just action for the higher.

So it's action for the higher constantly. And when in doubt, act, that's what, that's what, or the, Krishna, the charioteer, and the Gita. Gita is the most famous poem on the planet. It's a 30-minute conversation between, it's a super short read, 30-minute conversation between this charioteer and this warrior prince right before the beginning of the most epic battle of this great civil war, 13 years in the making, and the warrior prince.

It was the most famous warrior prince in the land. He should be so jacked up, and yet he is like, hey, Krishna, take me to the middle of the battlefield because I want to survey both sides. I want to see from a different perspective strategically how we line up and what we should do. Really, he's just kind of like balking at the thought of this. He wants to get some separation from his side. He goes in the middle of battlefield sees just how outnumbered they are. It's kind of this metaphor of righteousness and unrighteousness, just how outnumbered they are, the lower wolf, the lower self, seems to be so much stronger, so much louder than the higher self.

And he goes to the middle of the battlefield, and he sees how outnumbered they are, and then he has a complete meltdown. He can't stand up, throws his bow on the ground, falls to his knees, and he's like, Krishna help me. I can't fight this battle. We shouldn't even be doing this. And he comes over this famous spiritual bypass where the first chapter is just him reeling saying, we should go to the forest and study philosophy.

We should not be doing this. This is our kith and kin because it's a civil war. These are our cousins. His own guru is on the other side. And he's called to kill his guru. He's like, this isn't right. And Krishna, who you'd think is it, Christian is the symbolic embodiment of God. And so you'd think God would be like, yes, you'd figure it out violence.

isn't the way we should be practicing philosophy. But in not so many words, Krishna is like, no, you had your chance to seek peace instead of violence. You chose this battle. Now you've got to get the fuck up and fight and you've got to kill all of them. And it's like, whoa, from a spiritual, textual perspective,

that's so unexpected for us in the West. Yes. That it's like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Like this is supposed to be the spiritual embodiment of God, and he's telling this warrior prince that he's got to get up and kill everybody. And he's right. Like it's the spiritual bypass to say, you know what? Unrighteousness might win, but I'm going to go peace out. I'm going to go to the ashram.

I'm going to go on a 10-day retreat. I'm going to go meditate. I'm going to go on an infinite walk where I'm kind of shying away from. I'm going to close my laptop, go for a walk. Instead of an hour, you're just constantly looking away from the battle at hand. of, yeah, take your time, gather yourself. Arjuna, the warrior prince, has to gather himself, but then get up and kill everybody, kill all of the unrighteousness. And what Krishna says to Arjuna is, you're a righteous warrior. This is a gift. You've been given a righteous war.

This isn't an unrighteous battle. You're not seeking to pillage and plunder for your own aggrandizement. You've been given a battle to fight and defeat unrighteousness and you are equipped to. Your whole life has been leading up to this moment, this challenge, but you're equipped to. So I think in those moments of challenge where I feel challenged for an hour, it's a hard conversation or it's an investment that's going poorly and it's a conversation with a founder on maybe shutting it down or fighting on because sometimes it is not swat-armat. This thing that I might be working on might not be my nature. And I have to tell myself, you know what?

That was an indulgence and now I need to move over towards my nature, towards generating energy over time. And that was an indulgence for the ego or an indulgence for, I don't know, whatever reason, status and money and validation. Okay, now I can diagnose with a lot of reflection. That wasn't for the right reasons. And it's not what you do. It's what you do it for.

That matters. And I wasn't doing that for the right reasons. Let me reorient my resources over here. line something down. Or it's no, I'm doing this for the right reasons. This is my swadharma. I would do this. Even if I have retired a thousand times in my head, I can't stop myself from doing this. So this is my swadharma. And it's a challenging hour, afternoon, day, week, month. But this is the work. This is the work. And it's to rise above it and go into it. And yeah, it might kill me. But I'm going to do this, whether it's, you know, a podcast or whatnot.

But even then, it's a reorientation towards gliding towards like, okay, let me stop thinking about the fruits, the outcomes, the financial, the practical side, and only reorient towards the service, the surrender, and that aspect of what am I doing this for? It's for the two people that might get changed by an episode. And Swami will say that quite often. Our teacher will say that. the teaching side of things you show up and to let's say you offer to teach for a co-working

space. It's like, hey, James really want you to teach to this co-working space. Tell them all about Vedanta. You show up, you put five hours into it when you get into the things you couldn't do before, the commute over, the hour-long talk. You know that it might extend into another hour, so you block off the hour after or then the commute back. And it's five hours and two people show up. And Swami will say, our teacher will say, yeah, that's the work. Yep. So it's a kind of disconnection from any of the trappings that lower self might attach to. And it's a recognition that all of this work might be for that one soul that shows up

and has nothing to do with the numbers, doesn't pay the rent, doesn't support on any egoistic level. And then it's a reorientation to the, yeah, that is the work. And man, by doing that, it's a great healthy elimination of the ego. healthy reinforcement of the wisdom, the path, the sotsong, and I'm continually astounded by the things that I would have never thought were the thing I needed. I was delivered on a silver platter by that kind of divine logistics, by the one person that shows them, not even two, or the no people that show up. And I'm like, man, had I made this about a startup, how to raise $100 million for a start how to sell a company, how to build a company that I could use all of these superlatives that

magic mind has. It could have filled the room, but it wouldn't have been my true Suadharma or my service in terms of supplying something that no one's really talking about in this corner of Venice, Los Angeles on this Saturday morning. So what stops you then from chucking all of the rest of it? magic mind, the investments, the time you spend on all that. Forget it. I'm out of here. I'm going to teach Vedanta. This is the...

I love this. Every single question, Eric, you're asking. I'm like, hell yes. I put my hands up because about three years ago, went to the ashram that I study with, and I never get to tell this story. I probably told this story four times. And I went to our teacher.

Swamiji is kind of the nickname he's got in. And I said, Swamagyi, I've just loved the last, at this point, it was three years ago, so maybe 10 years into this wisdom. I was like, I've loved diving into this wisdom. And the first three years was listening to these titans of questioning, Alan Watts, Ram Dass, Terence McKenna, endlessly online, and then discovered that the philosophy they were studying each day. the philosophy Alan Watts was studying each day was invite to Vedanta, these kind of sans-score words I'd never heard.

So I was like, I want to study what, if that's what he's studying, 35 years in, I want to just go to the end of the movie and study that stuff. It's like when your favorite musician talks about who their favorite musician is. Exactly. I got to go check that out. Exactly. It was like, that's so it. It was like my favorite philosopher's favorite philosophy. So let me check it out for a month or two.

And then I'll probably go back to this beautiful articulation. And then that started the deep dive strictly into the text of Vedanta was a decade ago, still on that trip. And so three years ago, I had digested enough to her. I was like, I spent months, about four months, disentangling from all of my worldly endeavors. I brought on a co-founder and said, hey, you should be the CEO of MagicMind after a few months, had wound down to all of my angel investing. It's like, I'm not going to start any more things. and we've done financially well enough to where I can just, enough is as good as a feast.

I don't need any more and I'm going to devote all of my time to philosophy. And do all this and go to the ashram to tell Swamji this. He's 95 at this time. And I tell him this and he shakes his head in such an unexpected fashion, shakes his head in disappointment. He says, why would you do that? This is a 95-year-old Indian man that says, I loved his use of this language. which he's so unexpected in addition to the point. He said, why would you do that? You've got a good thing going. Keep it rolling.

And it's just such a funny way for, such a casual way for a 95-year-old Indian person to say, keep doing what you're doing, but he said, keep it rolling. And I was like, wait, what? I mean, my head was spinning for two weeks after this. Yeah, of course. But certainly in that moment, I was like, I thought I'd get like a pat on the back or some kudos for this,

at least for the height of my devotion to this philosophy and diving into it even more full-on. And what's so interesting, Eric, is that, like I was saying, one of the canonical texts of this philosophy, I keep it on my desk every day, is the Gita. And if people want a really digestible 30-minute read, the no-nakemakevah Gita, that it takes out the 72 nicknames that the two characters give to each other back and forth, it takes out the nicknames because it can be kind of confusing to be like, who is Maharaj? Who is?

Old Buddhist texts are the same way. It's like they repeat the same thing again. And I don't mean like the same valuable idea. I mean like the same line. It's just this weird format that it's all in that is very hard for the modern mind. Yes. And all of these nicknames, if you know Sanskrit, you're like, oh, wow. the easy to please, like Krishna, the symbolic embodiment of God, one of his nickname is easy to please.

If I knew Sanskrit, then I would be like, man, he's also easy to please. It would be like an additional identifier, but because I don't know Sanskrit, hearing all 72 nicknames that they give each other is quite disorienting. So I took my favorite translation of the Sanskrit Gita into English, but then I took out the 72 nicknames and just kept it. Arjuna, Krishna, Arjuna, Krishna. So you can buy it on an Amazon for like 10 bucks. And it fits in your pocket. So I keep it on my desk, read it all the time.

And it's a continual just rediscovery of, well, really all of these principles that we're talking about. Because it's not like the New Testament where you have 27 books and they triangulate with each other and they kind of like tell part of the story. Every Upanisha that might be 13 verses or the Gita that's 700 versus, it's all self-contained. the whole philosophy in those 13 verses or 700 verses, just with varying degrees of explicitness. There's a beauty in reading it over and over again and rediscovering it. And what's so funny and what's so needed tied to this story of why didn't I just, why don't I just cut all ties with the world and going to, I don't know, go to the Himalayas, is that when I try to do that and he said that to me, the next two weeks, my head was spinning,

and then it hit me. The canonical text of this philosophy, the Gita, the whole first chapter, as we discussed, is this warrior prince trying to get out of the battle? And I was seeking the ashram for relief. I was not seeking philosophy for, all right, this is going to be the epic dialed up challenge. I'm going to go into more dynamic living. It was, man, startups fucking suck. A lot of the time, they're hard.

Yeah. They're not nearly as peaceful sounding as sitting in an asherom with my family, bring them over. I'd already looked at homes that we'd rent, houses right around the property that you could rent, and study each day it sounded so nice. Yeah. And then I realized, oh, this is the spiritual bypass. I am built for these things. I should go into them, even if they kill me.

So, yeah, that was the reorientation. I think there's something really important in there, because it's easy to hear this idea of what do you do? something for and think I've got to go do something different than what I do. And sometimes that is the right choice. Sometimes you're like, okay, I am in a situation that I should try and find what's the right thing for me to do. And a lot of times, like there was a time in my life where I looked, when I added it all up, I was like, okay, a career in software is paying the mortgage.

It's taking care of the kids. And I generally like it. It's not my deepest passion in life, but I generally like it. It's good. It's challenging. It's interesting. I don't dread it, you know. And instead of thinking, okay, well, what I really need to be doing is being a guitar player, this idea of not, you know, what am I doing, but what am I doing it for is a really powerful way to reembody our values in what we're already doing, right? Like, I think about this a lot, this idea. We get into this mindset of I have to with a lot of things. life starts to be one big obligation. I have to, I have to. And the reality is for most things, we actually don't have to. You know, I use this example all the time, but it hit me one day when I was complaining

about driving two kids to their various practices. I was like, I don't have to do this. There's no law in the books that say I have to take my kids to soccer practice. And then I went, well, okay, well, what? Then why? And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, it's because I think that A, B, and C, It's good for them. They like it.

It's important. And now all of a sudden, the very same activity of driving kids to soccer practice is imbued in a different way because I've connected it back to go all the way back to your terms, back to my intellect, back to what really matters. And so I think so much of life is that constant reconnection, that constant, how does what I'm already doing in the world, what I'm going to go do today, how do I imbue that? with the spirit of effortless effort, with the spirit of service, with the spirit of love, with the spirit of devotion. I'm assuming that's what, when you processed your two weeks with your Swami, after that, you came back and you said, okay, if I'm not going to change all that, how do I continue to take what I'm doing and make it an expression of my deepest values? The cascade of reorientation was around the, and I'll mention a few of the other favorite principles within this philosophy that I love, that it's almost like 26 golf clubs in the bag of the game of life.

And so you've got to know which one to hit what you can't just get up on the driving range and hit the putter and expect, well, this is a golf club, I'm doing it. The right tool using the wrong way becomes the wrong tool. But once you have a recognition of like, oh, this principle applies right here. principle applies, I'd say if 97% of this philosophy is about action, action, action. And then 3% is about these really higher-minded aspects, these higher-minded things like 3% of the day, spend it in reflection. 97% of the day, action, action, action. Not in like, I'm going to sit in Lotus position for 15 hours and then I won't be able to relate to anybody. I actually won't ever put it to the test, you know, as the adage goes,

if you can't, if you cannot meditate in a boiler room, then you cannot meditate. That it's actually, you need to be able to apply this in the midst of the aisle six with the two-year-old melting down, screaming for the 35th minute at the grocery store. And can you find stillness there? Can you find it in the midst of a five months straight? The company revenue is going in the wrong direction and people are quitting and leaving. And all of these things. This is a week. This is a day for me to seeing these things happen.

and then feeling like, oh, this isn't that hard. This is one, like I was saying, around expectations setting, and a few of these principles that will kind of rattle off that you can fit together is the root of nearly all frustration is mismanaged expectations. So expect profits and losses. Expect a the world as defined as opposites within Vedanta. The world is opposites.

Yep. Good or bad, pleasure, pain, heat, cold. Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why I created the six saboteurs of self-control. It's a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them.

If you're ready to take back control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at one you feed.net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen starting today. One you feed.net slash ebook. In Buddhism, they call it the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. And you have all of it at the same time. Exactly. It's all here.

Expect it. And the aim to be a realist where you have the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel. The pessimist sees the tunnel, but not the light. but the realist sees the light and the next tunnel. Be the realist. You will have profits and losses. You will have pleasure and pain. You will have all of these things.

And then you don't suffer. You got the pain, but you expected it. You shit, you went out and sought it. You went out to the gym once a day to voluntarily take on some pain so that you don't have that three years of lower back pain because of bodily neglect for the 10 years prior. And that voluntary pain, that expectation of either I take it now or I'm going to get it later, the what is like poison in the beginning is like nectar in the end.

It ends up being like nectar. And you're like, yeah, that daily chewing on a little bit of poison and bam, no wonder I don't have back pain. And you kind of mix these things together. And it is just a really beautiful harmony where you have all these different notes playing but they play beautifully and those 26 golf clubs get used in the right way where you're your freaking scratch golfer of life hitting you know one under on that par five that would have been really challenging had you hit the putter off the driving range how do you how do you hit

the driver when you're eight feet out and you use the the wrong clubs in the wrong way so to kind of put it in a bow there are these different principles you you become aware of them you reflect on him. You know that none of this might speak to someone. There are as many paths of divine as there are people on earth, so it might not speak to them. But if these do speak to someone, you reflect on them, you internalize them, and then they become golf clubs. Then it's like, oh yeah, that guy said, can't remember the last time he'd had a hard day. But that's because every hour I'm like chewing on what is the poison that I should chew through right now. That's going to be like nectar in the end. We know this neuroscientifically, actually. Andrew Humerman, the neuroscientist, he said this once.

So it was so powerful. I wrote it down, learned it word for word, and I've said this in various settings because it's so, I'd say it's one of the most powerful things that I've ever heard in neuroscience. And this is his verbatim words is one of the most powerful things we've learned around the science and motivation is that you can train your neurochemistry to reward you when you do something challenging. One of the most powerful things we've learned around. the science of motivation is that you can train your neurochemistry to reward you when you do something challenging. And he gives an example of for six weeks it might feel like you're lying to yourself by telling you that I'm going to the gym and it's going to feel good. I'm going to the gym, it's going to

feel good. I'm going to go on a run. It's going to feel good. I'm going to go on a run. It's going to feel good. I'm going to do six to ten sprints for 50 yards. It's one of the most efficient ways to work out, by the way. I'm going to sprint 50 yards six times and it's going to be awesome. I'm going to feel amazing. He said for six weeks, it'll feel like you're lying to yourself. then it starts to reward. It starts to become self-fulfilling that you really do feel it. You feel the reward. You look forward to it like a best friend and you don't want to miss it, not because you're disciplined, but it's just nothing feels as good as doing what you ought to do. Feel that reward. And you can program that neurochemical reward. That's this. That's this principle of it feels like poison in the

beginning. And then it becomes like nectar in the end. And we know it, like I said, neurochemically. It's very easy to six weeks goes by like that where you start doing these quote-unquote hard things. And then 10 years in, someone says like, man, isn't that work out really hard? You know, like, I haven't thought about it that way. For the three hours leading up to it, I'm like itching to go do it because I love it so much. Thank you, James. That is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. We didn't even get to talk about what magic mind is your company. We're going to have a brief post-show conversation where we do that. Listeners, if you'd like access to that and all the other goodies you get, go to one you feed.net slash join. And there will be links in the show notes also

to all ways to find James, to find Magic Mind, to find his wonderful daily Vedanta podcast. Thanks, James. Thank you so much. Eric, thank you for the time and for what you put out into the world. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app

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