The Rich Roll Podcast - How One Man Reimagined His Life, Went Off-Grid & Found His Zen

Episode Date: August 4, 2014

Today we go off-grid. As some of you know, this show was launched from a yurt on Hawaii. It was about a year and half ago. At the time, we were at a crossroads. Unsure about our family's future in Los Angeles, we were looking for something new and different. Then out of the blue, a unique opportunity arose and we seized it. An opportunity for myself, my wife and our kids to see and embrace a different approach to life. Next thing we knew, we found ourselves living at Common Ground– a living, breathing organic farm on the north shore of Kauai. For three months we ate and lived off the land (well, mostly). Our kids learned farming and permaculture harvesting food in the gardens. We cohabited in communal yurts shared with a bevy of energetic young people passionate about the environment, sustainability, food and soil. All told, we embraced a completely new and different experience of daily existence, cementing the idea that we have choice when it comes to lifestyle. The notion that — all of the plenty excuses aside — we don’t have to live the way everyone else does. A powerful concept we wanted our kids to see, understand and experience on a fundamental, tactile level. It takes courage to step outside the norm. In our case, we obviously returned to Los Angeles. In all honesty, I just wasn’t ready for that level of disconnect on a permanent basis at this stage in my life. But that doesn't mean it wasn't invaluable, because it was — an experience I will always treasure and never forget. It's an understatement to say that it broadened my horizons. As a family unit, we were permanently changed. A powerful and constant reminder that there is another way. Always another way. During our time on Kauai, I got a call from my friend Evan Rock. A successful young, enterprising commercial real estate executive, I first met Evan when he was dating the young woman who frequently babysits for our little girls. I didn’t know much about him at that time, other than that Evan was a young man with a plan. Dreams of making it big financially. Driving a Porsche and living large. But not too dissimilar from me, Evan happened to be undergoing his own personal transformation. Something Julie calls dismantling. Taking stock of his life, he began to critically evaluate how he was spending his time. He discovered meditation. Unlocking, he then started asking himself questions — big questions. What am I doing and why? What makes me truly happy? How can I better serve myself, my fellow man and the planet? This practice soon led Evan to yoga, then plant-based nutrition. An increase in vitality led him to fitness, even dipping his toe into triathlon. As he continued to search and expand, he ultimately adopted a full fledged high-carb fruitarian lifestyle. I'll never forget running into him at Whole Foods in Tarzana about two years ago. Clad in suit & tie on break from his commercial real estate firm across the street, I watched Evan devour an entire watermelon for lunch to the bemusement of fellow lunch-goers. This is a long way of saying that Evan was undergoing some fundamental, core changes and looking for more. During that phone call I could hear the earnestness in his voice. Mental gears turning, Evan expressed a deep curiosity about the hows and whys of what we were doing in Kauai. I could tell a plan was starting to hatch in his mind. Fast forward to about 5 months ago when I discovered that Evan hadn't just quit his job, he completely cashed out of his comfortable life of financial security. The new owner of a nice chunk of property on the Hilo side of the Big Island of Hawaii, he just up and moved there.

Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 98 with Evan Rock. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. My name is Rich Rich Roll and this is my podcast. It's my grenade tossed in the morass of obfuscation and confusion and misdirection and paralysis when it comes to food, fitness, and basically how to live, how to escape the status quo doldrums of life and raise the vibration to simply be better. And my deal with the audience, with you guys is this. On a weekly basis, I scour the earth to find and sit down with some of the most interesting forward-thinking paradigm exploding minds in wellness. And some of these people you've likely heard of,

maybe you've read their books or seen their videos, but others like today's guest, well, these are people you probably haven't heard of, but nonetheless, people who are rattling the status quo in fitness, athleticism, creativity, diet, nutrition, art, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and spirituality. These are the people that inspire and intrigue me, the people that motivate me to be better. And these are the people that, in my opinion, are making things happen, pushing the envelope, and here to provide you with the tools, the knowledge, the experience, and the inspiration you need to discover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. You're part of the deal. Just take what resonates with

you, discard the rest, but find the nuggets, the truths that seem to make sense to you. Play with them, use them to get out of your own personal comfort zone, because we all have one, and then implement them to change, to improve, to grow, to share with others and to serve because that's what we are here on earth to do. All right. So today, today we're going off grid. As some of you know, this show was launched from a yurt on Hawaii. It was about a year and a half ago. And my family was looking for something new and different, a different kind of experience for our kids. And an opportunity arose and we seized it. The next thing we knew we were living on an organic farm on the North shore of, uh, the island of Kauai. It was three months of basically living off the land. Well, mostly not entirely. And most importantly,

an opportunity for our kids to kind of see and embrace a different approach to life. And the idea is this, that we don't have to live the way that everyone else does. And this was kind of an ethos that we wanted to show and experience and instill in our kids so that they could better understand that there's a big world out there and many different ways of living. Personally, I think it takes quite a bit of courage to step outside the norm. And in our case, obviously, we returned to Los Angeles and truthfully, I just wasn't ready for that level of disconnect. But nonetheless, it was an experience that I really treasure and I will never forget. And I know my kids will never forget. My horizons were definitely broadened and I think it permanently changed my children.

And I think it serves as a powerful and constant reminder that there's another way. There's always another way. In any event, how does that pertain to today's show? Well, I'll never forget it. When we were on the island, I got a call from my friend, Evan Rock. Now, who is Evan? Well, at the time, Evan was a successful, young, enterprising commercial real estate executive. And I first met him when he was dating the young woman who was our babysitter for our little girls.

And I didn't know much about him at the time, other than he seemed to be a young man with a plan, dreams of making it big financially. He was driving a Porsche. He seemed to be living large, but also he was undergoing a kind of interesting transformation that is not dissimilar from my own experience. He had recently discovered meditation and that was a practice that led him to embracing plant-based nutrition, which led him to yoga. And incidentally, we first met because Julie was teaching a yoga class at our house and he came over to take the class.

Then he started dabbling in triathlon and ultimately he became a full-fledged Woodstock Fruit Festival attending fruitarian. I'll never forget running into him in Whole Foods. It must've been about two years ago and he was wearing a suit in tie, it was lunchtime and he was eating an entire watermelon for lunch to the amazement of the other people

in the sort of cafe area at Whole Foods. In any event, Evan really began to question what he was doing with his life and he was looking for a change. And he called me that day because he really wanted to hear all about our Hawaii experience. So fast forward to about five, six months ago or so,

only to discover that Evan had quit his job. He cashed out. He bought a nice chunk of property on the Hilo side of the Big Island of Hawaii and just up and moved there. Just him, a pickup truck on a completely off-grid, completely overgrown, seemingly hospitable piece of tropical jungle.

And nonetheless, a piece of land teeming with all kinds of fruit like mangosteen and durian, but most of all, potential. Perfect. He slept in his truck. Eventually he moved into a tent. He tirelessly cleared the land. And with the help of friends that he met on the island, he recently built a tiny one room shelter. I hesitate to call it a house. It's almost like a lean to at first. And now his land is home to several. It's like this seed germinating his vision of creating a conscious community and ultimately a retreat center. You can watch this entire process unfold because he documented it

in real time on his YouTube channel. It's fruitzen, youtube.com forward slash fruitzen. And I'll put a link in the show notes to that. And just this weekend, he launched a new website for his property, which he calls Fruition Hawaii. So that's fruitionhawaii.com. You can go to that and find out a little bit more about what he's doing out there. So in any event, it's a really fascinating story. It's a brilliant arc. And whether this is your vibe or not, you cannot deny the courage, the cojones that it takes to make a stand, to turn off the autopilot and put some thought and ultimately action behind the life that you really want. Not just the life that's expected of you or the life that you think you're supposed to lead, but to actually remove yourself completely from one life and boldly enter a brand new one, a life with no rules, none of the familiar trappings and distractions of modern

urban existence, and just be. All right, ready to go off grid? Let's do this. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.

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I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. First of all, like, what is it? Tell me again what you're reading right now.

What am I reading right now? I'm always reading like five books at a time. Right. Yeah. I'm reading an Osho book. I'm reading a translation of the Bhagavad Gita that I enjoy. I'm reading the autobiography of Alan Watts and a couple other things among some, you know, health articles that get sent my way that, you know, per great interest. So that's, that's a far cry from like, you know, the Harlequin romance novel, right? Yes. That's some heavy reading. Yeah.

Osho's cool. Like, have you, have you heard his discourse on the word fuck? Oh yeah. That was actually my first introduction to the man. And, you know, anytime you hear someone like that, you know, Etcetera, Ananda, Saint, whoever, speaking, you know, real serious person speaking on something so kind of comedic, it just takes it to a whole other level. It's really... I like it because... Wakes you up well it also helps you understand that there's this perception or this sort of um uh i don't know inclination to kind of hold hold somebody like that up onto some kind of higher pedestal of consciousness or whatever because of their

knowledge and experience and yeah i suppose on some level they deserve that but they're also human beings and so it's like oh he can talk about that too. Like he's, you can emotionally connect to that. I don't know. It provides like an entry point or an ability to kind of access the other teachings. Yeah. Somewhere in the last couple thousand years, people started associating religiousness or, you know,

spirituality with seriousness. And that's like the complete wrong approach, you know? It's really, it's really can it's just about being ourself and laughing is part of ourself just as much as you know sitting under a tree trying to figure out the self and you know real intent well the isn't the path really about trying to find a way to bring more happiness and satisfaction and joy into your life? Absolutely. So if you're holding on so tightly to some kind of dogmatic idea and you're all serious about it, then what is, how is that, how are those two worlds, you know,

they're at odds with each other then. Yeah. Right. Totally. Totally. So what's, what is, so what's, what is the book that you're reading about Osho right now? It's, well, there's a couple of different ones that I're reading about Osho right now? Well, there's a couple different ones that I'm reading, but they're all transcribed from his discourses. So actually, if someone asks me about any enlightened person, I say if they've lived in the last hundred years, try to find their audio because it's often what the books are written from.

Most people don't actually write their own books that are at that stage of self-awareness. They're just speaking to disciples in an intimate environment. And there's so much that's said in between the words that often gets missed. So at this point, it's hard for me to even read the books, because I'm not trying to squeeze any any knowledge out of, you know, a lot of these people. It's just the constant reminder to go further, to go deeper. You know, like we're saying in the car driving over here, you know, it's like be your own teacher and find that within you that is speaking.

Right. within you that is speaking. Right. It's that balance between, well, what we were talking about really more specifically is the inclination of the spiritual seeker to kind of divest themselves

of their own power and be subsumed by the guru. And where do you strike the balance between being somebody who is open to and interested in learning from somebody who is, you know, somebody of great experience and knowledge and all of that, a great master teacher, and creating the boundary around your own kind of power and what you're willing to let go of

or give over to somebody else. So you see the person who will become the, you know, sort of So you see the person who will become the, you know, sort of complete, you know, aesthetic who will just drop their whole life and follow that person around versus like somebody who can passively enjoy that knowledge. And where is the balance in between those two things where you can learn but also still be your own sovereign self? Yeah, you said that in a very political, politically correct way because, you know. What's the unpolitically correct way? Well, if a man of meditation has it their way, they kind of scorn at the devotee, the bhakti. And the bhaktis have gone to Krishna events, and they have their own opinion about the way in which enlightenment is sought

or higher spiritual truths are attained. And then the path of yoga, the yogi thinks that that's the right way. So as you said, it's all balanced. But at the end of the day, everyone's somewhat different and different things wake up different people. Like if someone's wearing earplugs,

you want to poke them. But if someone's encapsulated in a, I don't know, pressure chamber, then you want to like knock loudly, you know. So it's like, how are you going to wake someone up? It depends on the situation. Yeah, it's where they're coming from and what their like, what their frequency is, what's going to tap into that frequency, you know. And that's kind of like why even with this podcast, I always preface it with saying, you know, I'm going to present all these people and ideas to you. And I'm not saying that you should, you know, you need to take on all of this. You take what resonates with you and you discard the rest, right? What is what's working for you? What isn't? Yeah. And I don't have any

attachment to that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I've met people that came to a healthy way of living through, you know, reading something in the Bible, you know, and then I've met people that came to a healthy way of living through, you know, reading something in the Bible, you know, and then I've met people that came to a healthy way of living by getting yelled at by some, you know, boot camp instructor or some people, you know, hear Dr. T. Colin Campbell and he articulates it really well. And then that like makes sense to them, you know, so it's like, who's to say and if health is your, you know, main caring theme or binding element, then who's to say what's going to lead someone there. Yeah. Julie and I, uh, we just got back from Tucson. We were at this amazing sort of summit retreat, health and wellness kind of summit retreat over the weekend, uh, that was sponsored by mind body green. It was called revitalize and I can talk more about it later. But we decided to drive instead of fly. And so it's an eight-and-a-half-hour drive each way. The night before I was leaving, I was like, that was a stupid idea.

My whole idea was I was going to bring my bike, and I just want to have all my stuff, and I thought I was going to have all this free time. Of course I didn't, and I was like, I don't know why we drove. But anyway, I got to spend some nice time with my wife, and we talked about a lot of things. And kind of on the way there and back we were talking about relationships that we've had with other people over the years and how those relationships have been flow and change and

and even in the course of experiencing this summit where there were all these kind of thought leaders that all have different points of view on diet and fitness and wellness and medicine and all these different things and how we could all kind of cohabitate you know in this cool experience over the weekend but how everybody has their own unique perspective on everything and julie kind of summarized it by saying everyone's just having their own experience man like don't take it personally like they're seeing the world through their own filter that's informed by their lifetime of experience and what they've been exposed to. And that shapes their opinion and their outlook of the world. And it's not about you, man.

I love the part in your book when you talk about the people that are following the artist, the quasi-artist, shadow artist, or whatnot. I heard you say that somewhere, and that was the first time I got exposed to that idea. And I think that whether you're listening to a poet describe some beautiful scene or you're listening to some health guru say what's going to make you live longer, be stronger, it's up to you to really figure out what works for you. That's an underlying theme for sure.

Definitely, absolutely. I mean, the shadow artist concept is really, for those that aren't familiar, I mean, that comes from Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. And it kind of speaks to people who are creatively stymied, people that want to be more expressed creatively but can't figure out a way how to,

primarily because they're too afraid. And so what happens, and I'm guilty of this, this is what I've done in my life in the past, is you find a way to be in the orbit of those people that are doing those things and kind of help facilitate them. So maybe you become a talent manager because you really want to be a singer, but it's a good way for you to be in that world.

It's a safe way without really taking any risk. You know what I mean? Or you become an art dealer when really you want to be a painter or something like that. That's a shadow artist kind of. And some people are made for those jobs, and that's what they want to do, and that's great. I'm talking about the person who really wants to be the artist. and that's what they want to do, and that's great. I'm talking about the person who really wants to be the artist,

so is kind of the unhappy art dealer, because they really want to be doing what their clients are doing. Yeah, it seems to stem from worrying about the outcome of the whatever art form. Right, and that kind of brings up the other book that you're reading, this translation of the Bhagavad Gita, right? Yeah. And who's doing the translation? Stephen Mitchell. I really like his translation of the Tao Te Ching,

and he just puts it in a good way. And so how would you break that down for somebody who's listening? Break what down? Just sort of how, like the core kind of concepts or principles that are being translated. I was just talking about how we're all just a fractal lens of the same light. And there's a myriad of forms that manifest. And the true seeker eventually comes to a point where they see that light is coming from the same source.

And whether it's creativity, that's a great example. I always tell people, if you want to be more creative, don't be concerned with the result. Just do it for the act itself. Enjoy playing music or enjoy writing poetry. No one's going to pay you for it necessarily. You know, you don't have to turn it into a career. You don't even need to share it with anyone, but you know, just like the dancer loves to dance, you know, you can find something that you like in this world and that's, what's really important. Yeah. And it's the expression itself.

Yeah. That is the, the point and the meaning and the value of the whole thing. Yeah, and expression, it could be good, it could be bad, but the whole object in this school of life is to kind of transcend good and bad and get away from the duality and the worrying about always finding the good. Well, I mean, duality is a human mental construct anyway, and good and bad are just subjective value judgments that we make a decision in our mind to place on something that has no relationship to objective reality. Everyone's definition is different.

Yeah, and it goes to what we were talking about in the car too, this idea of just being focused on the process rather than the results. And we were talking about how you had a piano recital the other day and kind of your preparation for that and, you know, your frame of mind going into it and drawing an analogy between that and kind of what I was experiencing getting ready to give this talk that I had to give the other the other day this 15 minute lecture and the kind of anxiety that comes around that comes with the performing of that and the preparation of it uh and my message and kind of the approach to it oddly you know is consistent with what I was talking about which is it's not about the result it's about the journey you know, is consistent with what I was talking about, which is, it's not about the result, it's about the journey, you know, it's about, it's not about how people receive what you're putting out there. It's about just putting it out there, like doing the best that you can and releasing yourself from the results or the reactions. That's a good word release. You know, I find just with my YouTube videos, like if I just, if I hesitate and I don't put it up like

that day or the next day, I don't upload it. I just don't want to put it up and I don't put it up like that day or the next day if I don't upload it I just don't want to put it up and I won't do it but if I just release it and let it just go I don't agree with a lot of the things that I've said in the past I don't really even resonate with a lot of the diet philosophies that I've tried and experimented over the course of my journey or a lot of the spiritual truths that I think that I've attained or whatnot. A lot of it was just, it needed to be expressed. It's like almost therapeutic to just speak it. That's why people sit on a psychiatrist couch, you know, cause they need to, they feel, you know, just too trapped and they need to let loose, let it out. So when you're having that experience of

like not wanting to put up a YouTube video, I mean, is that, what is the resistance? Is it, is it fear or is it just because you're busy doing other things? It would be, I mean, just the fact that, you know, a person is such a vast phenomenon and like we change so much day in, day out. For me, two days ago, it's a different person, you know? So every relationship that I've been in, if I consider it a good relationship, it's someone seeing me in the fresh, in the present. I can resonate with myself in the present. I can't necessarily resonate with myself two days ago. It's usually just that feeling.

I don't know what word would work for that. Well, like temporal right so if two days go by and you didn't put up the video then maybe that video is no longer relevant to whatever experience you're having in that moment yeah yeah that's interesting yeah well that's that's detaching you know that that's really detaching from you know your story of yourself i think you know it's like all these gurus talk about how the root of suffering can be boiled down to our attachment to these stories we tell ourselves about who we are that are based on a few isolated incidents that have occurred in our past that we place value judgments on and

then extrapolate to create some identity or sense of meaning about who we are and how kind of insane that is. And that's really not who we are. And we have the power and the ability to let go of that or create a new story or let go of that story altogether, which I think is probably the more enlightened but yet challenging path to take. Yeah, exactly. And if you don't like all the New Age terminology,

there's some science behind that too. You know, read the work of Tony Wright, you know, Left in the Dark or Return to Eden. It's a great analysis of how basically just from a change in diet, we've degenerated into a species controlled by one hemisphere and we've got, you know, a dominant right hand

and that left hemisphere has certain traits, certain qualities, many of which are characteristic of the egoic sense of self that psychologists talk about or spiritual people talk about. And it's pretty observable and repeatable in scientific experiments. When someone's in the creative right hemisphere of the brain, whether it be an autistic savant that's able to, you know, amazingly recreate a music piece after hearing it once or mathematically, you know, multiply, you know, 10 digit numbers or, or paint a beautiful picture after just seeing it, you know, just photo realistically, they're trapped,

they're like really engaged in the right hemisphere, which is usually turned off like most of our lives. And a lot of these practices, whether it be meditation or yogic practices of cleaning the body or eating sattvic foods or healthy foods, vegan foods, whatever, it allows us to kind of silence the survivalist left hemisphere brain that is always trying to plan the next move and reference the past and make sure that we're going to get that next meal or whatnot. It's trying to silence that so that those dormant abilities can shine through

or there can maybe just be more of like a balancing, some more equality between the right and left hemisphere and you can feel some senses of peace and equanimity yeah uh that is um that's so true and uh yeah it was beautifully put but it's it's so hard to get into that state it's like we're our left and our right hemispheres are at war with each other but because of the lifestyle that we've all signed up for we're basically you know we're under tremendous amounts of stress and lack of sleep all the time our cortisol levels are you know off the charts and and you know we're constantly taking stimulants in and and other and foods that

numb us and all these things get in the way of being able to access that creative voice that numbs out that right side you know that right hemisphere and the left is just in its get through the day mode yeah every day right it's a very complex equation in fact it's not even a comprehensible equation you know we like to think of science in the cartesian model of like you know observing a specific thing and measuring it and seeing how it, you know, is by itself. But everything is systems theory nowadays, you know, eternally. It's, we're, those hormones, like you said, that cortisol, that testosterone, and Tony talks about that in his books and how, you know, eating certain foods elevate those stress hormones and that, you know, masculine hormone.

That makes people go through puberty earlier. And then the whole brain doesn't fully develop and you're trapped with basically a neural framework that's subpar. And how do we go through the world with that? Well, the first thing is acceptance and just being like, okay, I know that sometimes I get jealous. Sometimes I'm prone to anger. Sometimes I'm prone to greed, whatever.

And I'm bigger than that because I'm the awareness that watches that. And just retaining that broader perspective is always what's important, you know, the broad perspective. Whether or not it's you looking at your life, like for me, coming here to California for three weeks, it was like a way for me to kind of digest what I'm doing over in Hawaii, you know, and it's just being able to see myself from a third-party perspective. myself from a third party perspective, uh, that's the kind of experience that leads to making the choices that might be the best ones for yourself. Yeah. You have to give yourself that moment to reflect. It's like being the observer of, of your thing. It's sort of like being the higher consciousness to your, the chatter of your thinking mind, being,

taking a step outside your reality in Hawaii to kind of evaluate. Because otherwise you can just go on to the next day and years could go by and to be able to take stock of it and really, you have to infuse some contrast into your life in order to gain that perspective, I think. Yeah, yeah. Right before you picked me up, I just picked up this little book of quotes or something.

It was right by the coffee table. And it said, most people are fascinated by the idea of mind control. And most people are fascinated by the idea of taming a wild animal. And it's like, you should start thinking of yourself as being that wild animal. And your mind as being the one that you should aim to control. And that's a good way to look at it like oftentimes physically we can be all over the place we're wild you know and we don't know what hormones going through our system whether we want to eat a meal and we're

just you know we can't really uh we can't just sit through that that urge that desire you know or if it's our mind running wild and we can't just silence it, those are the things that we can watch and become more present about and eventually... Right. I mean, I think most people would think or would say that they're more in control of their mind and their decisions than they actually are. And a good way to kind of tap into the reality of that

is to just sit for 10 or 15 minutes and close your eyes and try to focus on your breath and see how long it takes before some thought pops into your mind, like I've got to call that guy or I've got to do that errand or what am I doing here, whatever it is, like your monkey brain. It's not going to take long, especially to somebody who's untrained in that kind of discipline. And you realize, like, unless you really develop a skill set for managing that, it runs you.

You don't run it. And throughout the day, you're constantly making decisions that you think you're making consciously, but I think that you're on this weird autopilot thing. And to understand that actually you could have greater domain and control over that, that would improve the quality of your life, is maybe difficult for a lot of people to digest.

But being somebody who's attempting that, and I'm not saying I succeed at it, I struggle and I fail and I'm trying, but when I have those glimpses of of you know of what that can be like that's you know an incredible experience that I would like everybody to you know be able to have more of in their own life yeah just like peak uh experiences when it comes to health you know like getting to the top of one of these mountains that was was a huge thing for me. When I was 18 years old, I had completely taken,

or actually probably like 21, I started biking on these mountains. And my health had really gone downhill because I shattered my elbow really bad. And I hadn't gone to the gym, hadn't worked out, hadn't done any of the things that I love to do. I hadn't really surfed at all.

And it took me a long time to work up to that. But when you get to have that peak experience, it's just so rewarding. And same thing with meditation. When I first had one of those glimpses where everything kind of fell away and it just was hitting the reset button. everything kind of fell away and it just was hitting the reset button. And I had never come across that, not with any drugs, not with any, you know, any experience on the outer form. It had to like come from going in and it's so worth it that you want more and you want to increase its frequency.

Yeah, for sure. some kind of like flower power kid or whatever, you know, Malibu surfer guy and like what part of that is true and real and what part of it isn't. So let's, I want to hear about, I mean, I know it, but I want, I want to talk a little bit about your background and like disabuse the audience a little bit of where they might think you're, you were originally coming from. Yeah. Uh, we like to use a lot of different, uh different adjectives and nouns to describe people. I studied economics, business in college, and I had a big ego. I really wanted to conquer the world. I didn't come from a very wealthy family, but I was around a lot of wealth growing up, all my good friends.

And so for me. Grew up in Malibu, went to Malibu High School. Malibu High School, that whole thing. And Malibu High School, for those that don't know, I mean, it literally is basically on the beach. It's ridiculous. It's literally across the street from Zuma Beach, which is like, you know, it's world class surfing. Like, yeah, it's everything you might imagine it. It was world-class surfing.

It's everything you might imagine it might be. Which is very tempting for a young kid who's driving to school in the morning, and then you see the offshore winds hitting Zuma Beach Break, and it's just perfect. You just want to not make a first and second period. I definitely did that a few times. What did your parents do that brought you to be growing up in Malibu? My mom was a flight attendant, and my dad, he was a software engineer. And they bought a house back in the day.

Old school, like coding dude, like the punch cards and things like that. Yeah, he's an amazing guy. He actually escaped Hungary during the 1956 revolution, you know, with a knife through a minefield and got into Austria. And then from there came to the U.S. and was able to get a scholarship to UCLA, put himself through school and, you know, played tennis in, in USC and UCLA varsity and, you know, somehow like made a life for himself in this country. My mom was always really inspirational too. She was a really hard worker. Every few nights she'd fly to New York or something and then come back. But she'd take the night trip so that she could spend more time with my brother and myself,

which was really admirable. And I kind of got a few different qualities from both of them. really admirable. And I kind of got a few different qualities from both of them. But, you know, I went to college, studied business, studied abroad in Australia, had a few interesting experiences out there. I thought I wanted to just move there. You know, I thought I was kind of running away at one point, but eventually came back here and did the whole, you know, corporate thing right out of college. And that was in 2008. The sky was falling. The economic crisis was really just getting started.

And I had been reading real estate books since I was 17, 16 years old and had learned quite a bit. And I knew that was the industry I wanted to go into because one of my good friends, his family was a real estate family and they just had the best lifestyle. And I always had a lot of hobbies. You know, I've been playing music my whole life and always liked to be, you know, doing different creative stuff. And so for me, it was like, okay, what can I make the most amount of money in for the least amount of work? And that seemed to make sense for me.

I actually wanted to be a doctor for a period of time. And so I broke my arm and I spent some time in a hospital and I'm like, this is not where I want to be. So, um, I basically was driving from the top of one of these mountains all the way into century city every day with the Toyota Tacoma truck during the worst, like recession working, uh, basically, uh, for commission. And I didn't make a dime. I got a bunch of commercial real estate brokerage. I got a lot of listings. I had my name on a couple of properties, had some signs up for big deals, but it didn't pan out because no transactions were happening. So that kind of fell apart after a couple of years, but I made a good contact. And I eventually went into business with that guy and his cousin. And we started buying up junky fourplexes in Bakersfield that were just

section eight, which is like, you know, welfare. It's like HUD housing. We didn't really actually make any money on those deals. We spun our wheels for like three years, but we got, you know, some, we got some bigger investors and then started buying bigger deals and eventually went into real estate syndication, which is basically partnering a bunch of investments so that, you know, people make money, you make money and everyone's happy. And so I'm still loosely involved in that, but I've done that whole business world. And, you know, I was the numbers guy, I was crunching the numbers. And I feel like I learned a lot reviewing contracts and pricing deals. And I wouldn't trade a second of it. But

I definitely worked hard for, you know, to get where I'm at. And one of the things that kept me sane while I was in a 1970s moldy building in Tarzana in the valley during the summers when I wanted to really be doing something outside was to get into a lot of this basically Eastern philosophies that to me kind of put things into perspective. Back when I was trying to sell real estate, I got pretty depressed because my whole life plan wasn't panning out. What was the life plan? Of really just like going to business and be successful and that was going to lead to happiness.

And the whole thing about that desire is I saw that it was going to lead to a lot more desires. And so I kind of had like a midlife crisis really early. I bought like a Porsche even though I had no money. Like it was like 15,000 bucks. I like borrowed some money from my girlfriend to pay for half of it. It was a stupid decision, you know, but like for some reason I felt compelled to do it. And I had it for, you know, a couple months and, you know, realized, okay, there's a lot of maintenance bills for you know a couple months and you know realized okay there's a lot of maintenance bills you know keeping that thing in shape and then i took it to she got a

front and you got a front you know and and i took it to a mechanic in venice and he was like drive this thing immediately and trade it in for something else because it's about to explode so i brought it i drove it up it looked good though, man. I saw it. You saw it. Yeah. So I drove it up the coast and took it over here to Calabasas and I traded in for a Mini Cooper. But it was, it was what I had to go through, you know, and I'm still going through all these lessons. Life is just a, it's a school, like I said before. It's, you know, so. So you start to get this inkling, this idea that, you know, as you said, you said, the fulfillment of a desire will just lead to an additional desire. That this is like, in some respects, chasing the dragon that you will never slay. And so, I mean, for most people to kind of get to a place in their life where suddenly they're looking elsewhere for answers,

whether it's through meditation or Eastern, you know, spiritual practices or what have you, they generally have suffered some kind of crisis in their life or, or, you know, have some kind of pain body that blossoms enough to get them to, because it's hard to change, you know, it's hard to change your behavior path, even if you're in a low grade pain to get you to do anything different than just your daily routine. Yeah. It's, it's hard. Right. So, um, so you're experiencing some of this, but was there one incident that occurred that really catalyzed it or is this a slow degradation of you just becoming progressively more interested in a different way? I started, uh, starting, started doing a good amount of yoga

because my arm that I said I shattered and it's, you know, I still can't extend my arm that well. I can't bring it in. How did you do? It's kind of cringy to see. Yeah. Oh man. Put that up to the mic. I tried to. I think they heard it. So yeah, I mean, I've got a chronically messed up elbow and being a swimmer, being a surfer, that was pretty traumatic for me. I remember going to Indonesia and just putting myself into really stupid situations surfing there. And, you know, with this injury, it wasn't smart, you know, surfing big waves. But I've always been like a risk taker. And I always liked that feeling of just being in the present moment alive, right?

of just being in the present moment alive, right? So for me, I was trying to find that, whether it be for drugs or, you know, doing like a Bikram yoga session for like two hours in the sauna and being like, ah, you know, I've always really resonated with that feeling. And for me, going into yoga, it led to hearing things like,

oh, well, raw foods or, hey, check out meditation. And, you know, after like a couple of years, I mean, I actually grew up completely making fun of people that were like that. I mean, the friends that I've had since I was in kindergarten in Malibu, they're like, you've done so many 180s. We don't know where you're at now, you know. So for me, it was a big thing to just embrace maybe, hey, let's try meditation. And that's when I met Narthana and, you know, who, you know, is now Carmen, but, and met your wife. And, you know, I was doing a lot of yoga and I actually really made some progress in becoming more balanced and

centered with that. But the icing on the cake was, Hey, let's look at the inner world a little bit more with some intensity. And I did a weekend workshop where I did all different meditation techniques from like Sufi whirling to like gibberish to like running in place to staring at a candle flame to like cathartic, you know, screaming and yelling and just silent, you know, just Zazen type, you know, meditation or mantra based. But I always resonated even from the very first experience with like just the silent introspection, looking at tension in the body and trying to increase both awareness and relaxation at the same time. And how much of that can you do with your own intention?

And for me, that changed my life because that intense weekend, I had a glimpse of an experience that I had tasted, you know, surfing big waves or doing drugs or biking up a mountain or whatever. surfing big waves or doing drugs or biking up a mountain or whatever. And, uh, I was just sitting basically in a room silently doing nothing, but I had this unity experience and, um,

it was very refreshing. I remember trying to relate that to my girlfriend at the time and she wasn't like, she couldn't understand it. And it was like, you know, speaking Swahili to her. So that relationship didn't.

Yeah, maybe. But, you know, I, the thing that was interesting is, yeah, like it, my life started flowing better. Like you talk about once you kind of have a taste of that and things start to, to go your way a little bit more. And that's nice. You know, that's kind of like a byproduct or it's not the goal really, but things go better when you're more present.

You're not running in that autopilot mode. For me, though, I started really appreciating just beauty more, like artistic expressions and aesthetics in various forms forms whether it be a piece of fruit or a piano piece and i started playing classical piano again after i had taken you know eight years away and i started exploring the world of fruit and finding my favorite ones and becoming obsessed with durian and i started writing poetry my crazy fruit guy yeah the woodstock fruit festival yeah one of those long-haired hippies well i think that that uh it seems like a lot of those kind of the the outward manifestations of this process are really a result of figuring out a way to be

more present like your appreciation for aesthetics or an artistic expression or your ability to kind of just appreciate the beauty of a piece of fruit that's isn't so much of that just about being able to be more in the now you know and let go of like what you're projecting into the future this you know what happened yesterday and that comes with that mastery that you develop with some level of like acumen with the meditation practices i like to not say that it's a mastery you know mastery kind of implies skill and i always see meditation as more like a knack it's not something you can really repeat but you get better at realizing when you're not doing it so you're your best teacher and knowing and being honest with yourself.

Like, hey, this is really not like, you know, no one's going to bust you. There's no like meditation police. Like you were thinking, you know, or you're, you know, lost in thinking. But if you can just be radically honest with yourself, then that might be the right path for you to just sit, look inward, then that might be the right path for you to just sit, look inward, and be as present as possible, not lost in the future, not lost in the past, not lost in thinking about other people or thinking about yourself. Just simply aware of as much as you can, but also aware of nothing at the same time or attached to nothing at the same time. And for me, having discovered how to do that, it transformed my life.

I was able to handle situations that people were just astonished. How come you didn't blow up and react? Your best friend started hooking up with your girlfriend of six years or different things like that. And for me, the answer was always like, I don't know. I just, whenever I'm feeling this really intense emotion, I just get really curious now. And I like want to sit with it and watch it and see what it's all about. And every single time, if I'm really, you know, persistent, it just dissolves in the light of awareness. And you just keep watching it and it just becomes, it just falls back into existence. And you realize that you don't really exist.

You're just a bunch of, you're like an amalgamation of all these different tensions, whether it's physical tension in the body or in the mind, these different thought patterns and conditionings, it's all tension. And if you can consciously relax, then you don't need massage therapy, even though massage is nice. You don't need to numb your brain at the bar on a Friday night. You can consciously hit the reset button on your life and always come back to that fresh, the eternal, the creative, the innocence that basically everyone tries to return to. We want to be wide-eyed like children. Well, also you have the ability to choose how you're going to respond as opposed to being in that state of impulsive reaction.

And when we were at this event this past weekend i spent a lot of time with charlie knowles who's been like a meditation teacher to me and he was teaching a bunch of meditation courses over the course of the weekend is he the aussie or the he's aussie he's aussie yeah he's tom knowles's son he's like the guys this charlie is amazing he's just a wealth of information on meditation he has an incredible ability to be able to communicate these principles in a way that helps you to understand it as a Westerner or as a layperson. Like, you know, it's free of jargon, and it's been very helpful to me. But he said something, something you just said reminded me of something

that he said yesterday, which was people say to him, well, if I start meditating all the time, like, you know, and I just become this blissed-out, calm dude, him, well, you know, if I start meditating all the time, like, you know, and I just become this blissed out, calm dude, then like, you know, you know, I don't, I won't have my edge, you know, I won't, I won't have that anger that I feel like I need, you know, to get ahead in business or whatever it is. And, and he's, and his response to that was, was really cool. It was like, um, actually anger is a very, you think it's a powerful response, but it's actually, and there's, there are times in your life where anger is appropriate. You know, there's, of course, it's part of our pantheon of emotions and we have it for a reason and it serves us in certain

situations. But when you're in a reactive state of mind and that, and your buttons get pushed and you're angry, you have an angry response. You're very limited. You know, you're, that's the only reaction that you have in that scenario. Whereas if you can develop a sense of control or the upper hand and can go through that situation where normally you get provoked to an anger response and you can take a breath and then make a conscious choice about which reaction is best in this situation, then you're the master of that conversation. You have control, much more control over the outcome because you're in control of your own actions

or what comes out of your mouth. Whereas if it's just anger, and Charlie's like, he goes, the easiest person in the world to manipulate is an angry person because all you have to do is figure out what their buttons are and push them and they get angry and you can get them to do whatever you want. Just like

yeah. And it's such a waste of energy. Yeah. I mean it goes back to the whole power versus force thing. You know Gandhi he didn't get angry much but somehow he overcame the British Empire that wanted you know to really subjugate any revolution that was trying to happen in that country.

Well, it doesn't mean the subjugation of strength. There's great strength in not being angry. It can be confounding. Yeah, and breathing is always the best way to come back to the present moment that I've found. Because it's always there, just like a heartbeat, you know, and it's in the unconscious world, it's in the automated world. And watching that and realizing that, hey, we really don't have control, that allows you to say, hey, I'm not trying to control, I'm not so attached, I'm trying to

control the outer world of my life, the story, and how everything is going to unfold. I'm not so attached. I'm trying to control the outer world of my life, the story and how everything is going to unfold. And just having that awareness, you can, you know, perspective again, you take a step back and that's where true strength come from comes from is, you know, just having the ability to react or to respond or choosing even not to respond and just wait, being patient. So you're having this experience, right? You're going along the path. You're starting to learn these things, and it's starting to change your perspective on your life.

And where do you reach this point where kind of how you're living in this corporate world, this real estate world, no longer becomes kind of what you want to be doing? real estate world no longer becomes kind of, you know, what you want to be doing? Well, it's, it was clear to me, you know, right from the beginning that it was always going to be a temporary thing. And the motivation behind it, you know, really looking at the motivation behind everything in my life, for that aspect of my life, it was to make money, you know, and why did I want to make money? Well, I want to have money well I want to have freedom I wanted to have security and you realize that that like need for security security it just goes back all the way to the womb where you had like everything's provided the the thermostat was just right and food was coming in

through your your belly button and you get to hear the drumbeat of your mom's heart and you're fully satiated. And I thought that if I had a lot of money, well I could buy the things, the comforts in life that would make me feel secure. And I'd have the freedom to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. But it's worshiping a false idol when you think

that money is gonna somehow provide that. Money is just a, it's like technology technology it's not inherently good or bad it's just a medium that can enable things to happen at a quicker rate um but i still realize that hey we live in this world i'm still practical and i stuck stuck with it for as long as it took to really do my time, essentially, really learn all that I could learn from the business and build a level of trust with my partners where they were comfortable with me leaving and they could take the business on from there.

I always wanted them to be successful. So for me, that was like five, six years before I got to that point. And, uh, this last December I went and spent a month on the big Island with my friends, Megan Elizabeth and Joey, her boyfriend. And you can find her on YouTube by the way. But, uh, they're, they were doing the same thing, living their own way out. Basically, with the age of the Internet, you can live anywhere in the world, and you can do whatever you want to do. But they had that freedom, they had that security,

and I really respected and admired it, that they took that leap and wanted to replicate it in a way. And just being immersed in that culture and feeling the sense of community and how there's a lot of people out there that have just kind of you know fallen off the grid or gone away from the normal cog in the wheel mode of operating in society to kind of doing their own thing you know being closer to building their their structure or growing their own food or being more artistic and having the free time to do that instead of having to hold down a nine to five and being tired all the time. So for me, I saw that and I got immersed

in that and it was like a no brainer. At that point, I felt comfortable enough. Like, you know, I've made a little bit of money. I can go buy a piece of property or at least put the down payment for one and get started and just have the faith and trust and existence that it's all going to work out. And so, yeah, because I remember, I mean, these sort of wheels were turning. It wasn't like an impulsive thing. I mean, I remember when my family was, we were living out in Kauai for, we were there for three months. We weren't sure at the time how long we were going to be out there. Maybe it was going to be longer.

Maybe we were going to relocate, you know, all together together and we were living in yurts and this whole thing and i remember you know speaking to you on the phone this was like december of 2012 i think and you're like you wanted to know all about what it was like and you were sharing how you were thinking about making this change and you know interested in what was going on in kawaii and you know you could hear the the gears turning you know that you were like going on in kawaii and you know you could hear the the gears turning you know that you were like headed towards something like this and that was a full you know more than a year before you made that happen yeah and i was thinking about it long before that i'm sure yeah for someone that really i don't plan that much like i really

i try to live as presently as possible um there was a certain amount of like, hey, let's just be patient. Let's think this one out. It's a big life change. So I'm not like against having some kind of strategy in life. That's not what it's about. It's like you want to always retain enough freedom and enough space in your life to allow for the synchronicities to just deliver the goods, you know, and good things to happen to you. You know, like even me coming back here for three weeks, I had to go to a wedding and I had to do a piano recital.

But outside that, I did a lot of stuff. Once at Yosemite, I'm doing this podcast with you. I met several friends that I didn't expect to see and we did spontaneous trips. Got to do a lot of things, catch up on other things that I wanted to do. Right, right, right, right, right. Just got to let life unfold how it's going to. But I mean, it's not like we talk all the time. We see each other periodically or randomly.

And I've told the story before on the show how I would run into you at Whole Foods and you'd be in your suit eating a whole watermelon. So the diet, which I want to get into in a minute kind of comes into play as well. Uh, but I didn't actually, I mean, I knew that you were thinking about like doing this Hawaii thing or potentially, you know, doing this off grid, you know, project somehow, some way, but I didn't know that you had actually done it. And then I can't remember how it came across my radar, but there was like, there was a YouTube video and you were like, you know, like basically, you know,

in a truck in the middle of this piece of land that hadn't been cleared. And you're like, I'm here, you know, I sit there and I was like, oh my God, he's actually did it. Like, I can't believe it. Just you out there totally alone, like in the middle of a field with like, you know, it was so overgrown all the way up to your shoulders you know i was like how is he gonna make this work yeah it was there's no there's no dwelling on the land like so explain

yeah you know how this all happened this piece of property and so i spent like a month and a half i mean you know i make things happen pretty quickly i just you know it's like a lot of people dilly dally and i'm i i went there and i was just, hey, I've got all this free time and I'll look at different properties. And I was in the Puna area, which is kind of, you know, lava zone, a lot of hippies. And I love that. I go down there quite a bit. And I was really close to buying a piece of property there. Down by the Red Road.

Yeah, down by the Red Road. And my friend Govinda at the time he's like hey I know this property up on the Hamakua coastline it's got a durian orchard and it's big and it's beautiful ocean views views of Hilo Bay and there's a waterfall close by and all this amazing stuff

and I'm like oh great it's way more expensive up there and I go up there and we're walking around he's like yeah the trees aren't producing there's no fruit on the trees aren't producing. There's no, you know, fruit on the trees really just because it's been neglected. There's 10 foot tall Guinea grass. And, you know, but then boom, like literally almost kick a 16 pound durian on

the ground, even though we didn't see any in the trees, like maybe like one little small one. And that happened to be back in December. And I was like, wow, what a sign. Like, that's great, you know. But then he told me the price and, like, how it's off market. And the guy that owns it, you know, might be hard to get a hold of and whatnot. And so I originally, I said, you know, forget about it. I crossed off my list. And when I came back in February or late January, I went back and checked out the property

again because it happened to be close by and saw it. And I'm like, this is awesome. And I was walking through the property. I stumbled upon a mangosteen tree and it was just loaded with mangosteens. And I had like a monomial of 40 or 50 mangosteens. And that was like the second sign going to that property. It was meant to be because it was really out of season, just mangosteens. And that was like the second sign going to that property. It was, you know, meant to be because it was really out of season, just like the durian, you know, it wasn't, there was no other, of the whole mangosteen orchard, there's no other trees that had fruit.

And I just- So it's like, despite this sort of neglect and being overgrown, nature was still finding a way to produce this fruit. Yeah, and it just kept telling me, you know, even though I was like, oh, it's probably too much. I shouldn't, you know, I should do something more conservative.

So I just threw that, threw caution to the wind and I met with the owner and he, he was a really great guy and him and his wife, they offered to, to work creatively with me to, to take over the property. And I immediately said, Hey, let's do it. And I drove my truck over there and busted out the weed whacker and, you know, kind of carved out a place for me to park on the property right next to the driveway and how far off like a main road is it like i'm trying i mean i know that area fairly well but i'm still having a quarter mile up from the main highway overlooking helo bay it's just it's one of the so if you're going north if you're going north from helo five minutes north it's five. So you cross that steel bridge or whatever, and you start going north.

And that's on the left-hand side? Left-hand side, going up the mountain a little bit. Got it. And, you know, it was tough for like three, four months, you know, going to the bathroom in the hole. Were you sleeping on the bed of your truck? Yeah. Or what were you doing? You know, the pigs were just all over the property.

And I was like, hey, you know, I'm by myself. And these guys, some of them are pretty big, you know? Yeah. And it just felt safer up on the truck. How many acres is it? 17 and a half. 17 and a half. Yeah.

But only maybe two acres is just a field of cane grass, you know, that I had to cut down. The rest is just orchards, right? So, you know, I was just putting a tarp every night over the back contractor cage on my truck and sleeping and just waking up and working really hard and going to Starbucks to use the internet, going to the ocean to clean up. And you're getting rained on at at night out there, right? Yeah. Probably quite a bit. Yeah, yeah.

There was one night when literally the – I was just dead asleep. And the tarp was held down by bungee cords like on the wheel wells and stuff. But it rained so hard that it just pulled up maybe like 50, 60 gallons. And then the whole thing snapped and broke and just poured on me. And I just got 50 gallons of water completely soaked in the back of the truck, you know, in the sleeping bag. Just had to strip down and then go in the car and turn the heater on at 2 in the morning and wait till the sun came up. But it was all worth it. Yeah, it's funny.

You have one or two videos there too, of you trying to clear the land with like the wrong kind of equipment. Like you have like the sort of consumer weed whacker when really what you need is like a giant, you know, industrial size. Yeah, no. And I actually, I bought one of those, uh, you know, lawnmower tractors at home Depot for a couple of grand, you know, it was like a big investment. I barely fit it on the truck and I'm like, Oh, this is going to help me. And the thing just, I mean, I basically almost lost it in the mud and got stuck. And luckily, I was able to return it to Home Depot, and I'm grateful to them for taking it back.

It's so lush and thick, unless you've seen what that kind of topography is like. Yeah, it's been a steep learning curve. And coming from an office job topography is like so it's unique yeah it's been a steep learning curve and you know coming from an office job trying to trying to do this it's not easy you know it's not all fun and games but when you're doing something that you've been planning on doing for as long as i've been planning it in my head and just being really excited about it didn't really seem like work and it all it felt fun and just you know part of the process and i felt really in the zone and flowing with life and what's been cool though is in the videos that you've been putting up like

you know from the very first one you're like I'm here you know I wonder what's gonna happen you know you don't know and then and then like boom boom boom you know video after video and you're like hey I found these guys I'm building a house and then like you know literally you build a house in like two days you know it's a little like you know thing but like you have a roof over your head and now we're doing this and now i have these other guys that are helping me and yeah you know this whole vision and idea that you had of like i'm i bought this land i'm here but my i have this vision and this vision is to create this conscious community of you know that will attract like-minded people and i'm interested in hearing from you and just being very open uh you know, in your journey and having the courage to kind of put that out there when

there really was nothing going on. And then to kind of see, you know, incrementally, you know, how you're moving in that direction and making it happen is super fucking cool. I mean, to know, to know you and to know where you were and to be this guy working out in the valley in commercial real estate to doing something that's so completely different. It really is this kind of modern day take on Ralph Waldo Emerson or Walt Whitman, you know, leaves of grass or Thoreau, or you're having this kind of, you know, you know, the kind of version of that, that you can have in 2014. It's like, you know, and that involves social media and sharing your videos. It's like, you're not completely, you're off grid, but you're not, you know, you're still, you know, you're still, you know, a citizen of the world who's participating in, in our,

you know, dialogue about how to make the planet a better place, you know, citizen of the world who's participating in in our you know dialogue about how to make the planet a better place you know in your own specific way and i'm still i'm totally trying to figure it out i'm not trying to be an authority on anything like i don't have my act together with one bit like at my website i don't really have a website you know like i'm not i don't have a product i'm not selling i'm just like really interested in learning what life's about and that's what i think you know throw was doing when he went and built his cabin on Walden Pond. He was like, I want to see what life's about instead of having someone give me a packaged

saran wrap piece of meat or having unlimited choices in a supermarket. To me, that's a false sense of freedom. That's not really what life's about. Where does all that food come from? What is high fructose corn syrup? Is that, oh wait, 95% of the corn in the US is GMO. Like, you know, it's just, it's a rabbit hole when you start getting down, going down it and learning about, you know, how the world actually functions and what is, like you said, what is your place in the world.

The only way to really know that is to start doing things for yourself and seeing how much really goes into a certain activity. That's one of the favorite references. What I love about Thoreau is he's like, hey, it was just easier to be a vegetarian when I was doing everything myself.

It was dirty. It took a lot of time to kill something and clean it and then store it and whatnot. It was easier to grow some beans. And so you couldn't come to that conclusion unless you tried it yourself. So I'm trying it myself. Right. it yourself, you know? Right. So I'm trying it myself. Right. And, and by, you know, we were talking about sort of becoming the third party observer of your life and to have a, have a greater perspective on what that existence is in Hawaii. You come back here to, you know,

kind of have this experience for a little bit to, you know, recalibrate your gauge or what have you. But to go there or for Thoreau to go to Walden, you develop a third party observer perspective on how everyone else is living. Maybe not in a judgmental way, but almost in the way that de Tocqueville had when he came to America from France and was able to kind of observe how democracy was working from the perspective of somebody who wasn't raised in that system. And those became very insightful observations that to this day people look to for, you know, guideposts about how our government works.

So, you know, when Walden, or when Thoreau says, and I use this quote when I talk all the time, like the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and what is considered resignation is confirmed desperation. And, you know, I think it's more true now than it was in his day when we're in this cubicle culture and especially as a man you know the extent to which most men are emasculated by the way that we're kind of compelled to live our lives it's no surprise that you know the paleo diet and CrossFit become massive sensations

because they speak to that latent desire and sense of masculinity that we've been stripped of, that sense of primal existence of being connected to nature and kind of what we've been hardwired through our DNA over the last six million years to express and be. And what you're doing is a way of reconnecting with that in your own personal way. It's like, I'm going to live on the earth. I'm going to figure out what it's like to grow my food and make more conscious choices about what I'm putting in my body, how I'm spending my time, and who I'm spending it with.

Yeah. To me, it's a lot more manly to climb up a 40 foot coconut tree than it is to shoot down a deer from like, you know, however far with a sniper rifle, you know, just. Or to barbecue, you know, a ham ham shank in your backyard. Exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's really interesting. You know, I like, and to, you know, compound that it's like, And to compound that, it's like you look at how people try to live in a way that somehow they aspire, society conditions them to believe is the best way, and they do that using other people's money. As Thoreau said in his book, ASLENM, it's a very old way of existence.

The Romans did it. You know, ASLEM, alienum means another's brass. And, you know, you're using another person's money to live somehow the life that you think is going to fulfill you. And, you know, the more ballsy way to approach life is to say, hey, I'm just going to forgo eating a meal and I'm going to forgo having this extra stuff and go try to make something out of nothing, you know? How dare you? How dare you? That gets into like a really important thing that I want to talk about, which is how people are reacting to what you're doing

and how you kind of process and navigate that. Like everyone from your family to your buddies that you went to high school with. Yeah. I mean, because, you know, it's like you have you got it. You have like a dude bro crowd, right. Of like dudes that you went to high school with who are like just doing like, you know, what kind of guys in your age group, you know, usually do. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that.

And what you're doing is so radically different. So like, what are they like talking, what are they saying like behind your back or to your face about what you're up to? You know, I mean it, it's I mean, it's hard to say. You know, a lot of them don't like really comment anymore because it's like I've been doing it for quite a bit now. That's just what Evan does.

That's just what, you know, he's always. He's always been the seeker on some level. Yeah, on some level. And I've like flip-flopped and changed my mind about things. I don't really care about being consistent. You know, like that consistency to me is boring. Um, so, you know, at one point in time I was super like conservative in my like economic, financial and political views. And then I became super liberal. Now I'm just like, forget it all, you know, like forget about it. Um, and same thing with diet. It's like, I've. It's like I like to test the extremes and see what it's all about.

And, you know, I don't blame people for wanting to go down the path of mediocrity. That's not what I'm trying to say, you know. But it doesn't really come into my equation that much because I'm really centered in myself and the way in which I relate to other people. I realize that a lot of our anxiety is just self-created. It doesn't matter what other people say about you. It's how you actually are able to navigate the waters. You know, do you have a strong compass bearing? Because if you do, it doesn't matter where the winds are blowing, you know? And, you know, with the dude bro crowd, it's like clearly the wind's blowing one way. And then with my family, it's another way.

And with people that are like-minded or, you know, supportive, that's great too. But I don't try to play into that too much. I'm really bad about comments like on YouTube. You know, I know social media, it's like you got to post your videos everywhere and you want to like be really active. And I totally get that. Like it makes sense to me. But for me, it's all about spiritual, personal, self-development, self-realization. And I see that digital media, that social media as being a pretty interesting tool or method to look at yourself and see what you're attached to and to see like how you care if someone approves or you get a lot of thumbs up or

subscribers and or whatnot but for the most part that's like all it's good for you know I mean it bring it can bring people together but it can also it can also disseminate a lot of bad information. It can lead to a lot of, like, Facebook's a great example. Like, I got rid of my Facebook account, had all my college friends, high school friends, completely different crowd. I was just seeing party picture after party picture. And I had, like, this really bitter taste in my mouth when it came to that social media. And then I just got rid of it. And then somehow I just came back and tried it again. And at that point in time, I was friends with a lot of fruity people and, you know, Woodstock Food Festival scene and, you know,

speaker there and doing those things. And I got a lot of friends and I'm starting to look at the newsfeed and it's like all positive quotes and like beautiful pictures of healthy food and like fit people. And so in that way it can be, it can be a good thing. Inspiring and a reminder. Yeah. So again, it's like not inherently good or bad. It's just like, no, it's a tool. It's how you use it. And I think that, uh, and, and, and it's, yeah, it's having, it's, it's, it really is a good barometer of the status of your relationship with yourself. You know what I mean? Like how compulsively are you checking it? How much does that stuff matter to you?

Whether people are saying nice or not so nice things. And is that affecting you or not? I mean, it's a pretty good mirror of kind, of kind of where at least I, you know, I know in my life. Yeah. So I mean, the one channel fruits and channel is just random clips. I mean, I just, whatever, whenever I have my phone, I, I take a little video like, wow, we're having a big feast and this looks pretty cool. Or look at this amazing view, you know, and it's just mashed together. And, and sometimes I talk about health and whatnot. And I've just kind of kept that channel like a vlog. And then, you know, when I actually had that channel as my only channel, I was starting to talk after I'd sit

and meditate in the morning. And then I'm like, wow, this is like really contrasting. And maybe I'll just start another channel. So I started putting that all on one channel and that's really, you know, me at the most blissed out of my day, which is not all the time, you know, it's me sitting in the morning after like 45 minutes of trying to relax and calm myself. And sometimes a interesting idea pops into my head and I want to convey it. And it's really, just like I said earlier, it's therapeutic just to have that release. And I started putting it out there on the world or on the web. Right. And getting the feedback, it's nice.

I usually don't look at it for a day or two, if that even. Sometimes I don't even check it. But it's nice to get the positive feedback and it's nice to get the negative feedback as well, because I like to see how much I care. You know, if someone's saying something bad, you look so stoned and like all this stuff. It's like, well, yeah, I'm literally I'm blissed out in the mornings after sitting meditation. And it's like, I don't do any drugs anymore but that's why they call it buddha you know because it makes you uh appear at least on the outer form to be a little bit more content and buddha-like yeah i mean youtube is really kind of like the worst when

it comes to the trolling stuff so yeah that's interesting and and uh but it's but it but you have been able as a result of this the the vlog to, you know, create interesting community around what you're doing. And that's translated into like you've had some interesting people now that that you've already have some people that are like staying there with you now. Right. Oh, yeah. So it's already kind of it's great on. And I don't know exactly like the full direction of where it's going to go. I'm leaving it really open. I know there's a mortgage I have to pay. So I might have to have some long term rentals on the property, you might have to run some retreats. But other than that,

it's just putting that frequency in the world of hey, fruit, flowers, meditation, beauty, like life is a celebration. Let's see to what extent we can take it and that's that's just the subtle intention driving and holding everything together right and and after having spent three weeks back here on the mainland i mean what are did you draw any kind of conclusions uh about you know your life on the island that maybe are different now than they were when you were three weeks ago? There's just a heightened state of gratitude. I'm flying out tonight,

and I'm just so blessed to be going back to that place. Everywhere on planet Earth is beautiful in its own way. I love these mountains here because I grew up right up the street. It has a special place in my heart. It's really amazing to be closer to nature, to be away from the chaos of the city. I like the small town feel that exists there.

People get lost in cities and they go to cities to get lost and to just be by themselves because you never have to see the same people again if you don't want to. There's how many millions of people in L.A.? And I've been used to that, and I've had glimpses of more community. Just growing up in a smaller town by the beach, you see some of the same people. Or going to UC Santa Cruz for school, it was a little bit smaller.

But L.A., it's really, you feel disenfranchised from your fellow man, so to speak, and from nature, too. There's definitely the cleanliness of the water and the air that I'm really grateful for. Health is such a broad phenomenon, and there's so many different spokes to the wheel, and food is just one of the spokes. And I'm really enjoying the the spoke of water and the spoke of air like those things if you've got that nice trade wind blowing over the pacific ocean and you're the furthest from any landmass that it definitely impacts your health i mean you breathe a lot more than you drink and you drink a lot more than you eat and being able to swim and and crystal clear streams and drink from springs coming out of rocks i mean that's just such a such a gift so right i'm not i'm not

trying to say nana nana nana you know like right right right right i think that that um kind of like the modern you know the easy sort of knee jerk kind of reaction would be like oh it must be nice i mean like i do yeah oh yeah i wish i could do that but you know i some people have to work for a living dude you know it's kind of this resentful like oh you know screw you you go back to hawaii man you know some of us have real you know like whatever and uh but i mean you know you you know you made it how you made it a prior a multi-year priority to try to figure out a way to do this and you've executed on it man and it's awesome and i so i think you know kind of what i always like to do is try to you know with people that

really have been able to change their lives in dramatic ways is to kind of share not just the inspiration of the story but kind of the wisdom and then find some tools or some things that people can take away because you know i think most people are stuck or we're trying to find a better way to access you know a healthier or a more kind of you know personally satisfying version of our of our lives even if it's in just the smallest way definitely yeah and there, I've met people that literally have done it with absolutely no money and gotten creative. And I'm not, I'm not saying that, you know, society should just completely dismantle and everyone should just,

you know, uh, but it depends how important it is. Maybe it should, maybe it should completely dismantle. Just from an economic perspective, I studied one of my graduate-level classes. I actually wrote my thesis in this class. It was on financial crises. I have some knowledge on this stuff. I'm not an expert, but from my whole perspective,

a lot of things weren't changed from the last collapse, and it wasn't allowed to collapse. And, you know, it's a house of cards and there are certain things, systems that in place that I fundamentally disagree with. You know, there's economic externalities that aren't being protected, environment being one of them, regulation of derivatives and the leveraging of money 100 times to one is just crazy. And we, as a society, choose how we want the future to be. And how we want the future to be is really how we raise our children and what we set the example of and how you live your life.

So it comes down to actually taking those radical changes if you want to affect the world, so to speak. Thoreau said philosophy, it's a great idea, but there's few and far between philosophers nowadays. Most of the people are just preaching it and they're not actually living it. Philosophy is like living according to one's dictates. It's really actually living it. Philosophy is like living according to one's dictates. It's really actually doing it. So if you like the philosophy of why people eat fruit and the fact that, hey, it doesn't harm anything and it's actually encouraged by the planet, wants to spread its seed, that's why it made it nutritious and beautiful and appealing to all your senses and that resonates with you, then start doing it for that reason. If you like the idea of just not hurting other animals, that's great too.

If you like the idea of helping the environment, that's great. But a philosophy usually leads to a life change or changing your situation in some capacity. On the economic point of view, have you ever thought about just going fully Bitcoin on everything? Because I feel like Bitcoin is like the economic veganism. It's sort of like, I'm going to opt out of certain aspects of this system. It's really interesting.

We live in interesting times. And seeing how the decentralized currencies are going to play out over the next 20, 50 years, 100 years, it's just going to be really fascinating if more wealth moves into that mode of exchange and there's really no need for banks. Bankers run the world. And I'm not like a big conspiracy theorist or anything. I'm just like, realistically, hey, the Federal Reserve is as federal as FedEx. It's completely a private institution run by really wealthy families,

and the large banks are the chairs of the board. And why do you think, remember, what was it, Washington Mutual, or what was that bank that basically Chase just took over and, you know, well, they weren't part of it, so they didn't get the bailout money. Right, right. There's very clear ways in which, you know, the economy is turned off and on, you know, with the switch of interest rates and how money is regulated and how foreign countries get our aid and how we exchange that for certain you know resources and whatnot

and it's a lot more complex than we think it is just like our body is extremely complex and it's not just all about macronutrients you know so so bitcoin bitcoin sorry yeah oh i'm so distracted yeah no but it's all relevant but i mean it's just like you say you've been thinking about it. I would just say the decentralized currencies are really interesting because basically you don't have a banker or an exchange medium who can control or affect things. So it allows more free market economies to function seamlessly. And there's even more interesting ones than Bitcoin. There's one called Dogecoin. Well, there's that. And there's another one that's actually programmable. So like

you could say you wanted to leave your money to your son, an heir, and you wanted them first to go travel the different places that you went when you were 25. Oh, it gets like activated or released based on preconditions being met. Exactly. Like a computer program algorithm. Yeah. And that's just like one example of how it can kind of automate itself. So, you know, and I don't know the full implications of that. Like I see benefits of it, but then again, like how much do we want to trust technology, computers, artificial intelligence? It's trippy.

I use as a compass going back to nature. Just give me my big durian. Just trade me that shell for this shell. You know, there's probably some people listening that don't know what durian is. Yeah. It's a big alien egg spiked fruit. That's several, like I've seen some up to like 16, 18 pounds, even some are smaller, but you rip open these five different pods that have this fetus like, uh, flesh fruit flesh. That's, and I don't know why we use that word because it's, you know, not a meat, but, uh, and it's creme brulee. It's, and it's so complex. It's one of the most complex foods I've ever come across. And I was raised, my grandfather was a butcher, my mom was a gourmet cook.

She fed me really well. And it's more complex than that, especially when you start to allow your taste buds to become more sensitive and you don't eat a lot of the spices and the stimulating foods, and you allow yourself to kind of heal the tongue and the stimulating foods and you allow yourself to to kind of heal the tongue and the nose and maybe even have a really hungry stomach like you work all day and then you you take a bite of this and it can have flavors of vanilla of cappuccino of chocolate of fruit of garlic of just the most amazing caramel like deliciousness you've ever had. And then the texture is even more unique and each one's different. Fruit is such an endless rabbit hole. I mean, it's so amazing.

There's thousands of varieties of every different type of fruit. And we just don't understand that. It's amazing just eating the bananas that i've been eating on the big island because i'm trying to save money and i'm trying to do it as efficiently as possible but i feel like i'm in heaven eating the silk fig bananas and golden pillows and the apple bananas and the ice cream bananas and anything but having to eat cavendish you know which is just bread for its size and its disease resistance and it's not that flavorful no it's not that it has almost no, it's not that flavorful. It has almost no taste in it. And I would imagine not that much nutrition either.

They look really great in a grocery store. Yeah, so people try to do the fruit lifestyle like with supermarket food and it's just like you're destined for disaster, especially on a digestive system that's been degraded over several thousand years, you know, on an agricultural system of domesticated plants and animals and that's what youed over several thousand years, you know, on an agricultural system of domesticated plants and animals,

and that's what you've been fed. It's like going back to the roots where you evolved, it's a risky thing. Like, you don't know how efficient you are. And I've met people that are super efficient. Like, they can extract a lot more out of a piece of food than another person that might you know just be basically Crohn's disease or irritable bowel syndrome or I mean all the different disorders

that really are a result of our food system and the the mono agriculture and the deficient soil and the genetic genetically modified organisms it's really a trip to think about what people try to do you know the in the fruity world on just subpar fruit you know yeah i mean i think in talking to michael arnstein about it i mean he goes to the you know the warehouses or whatever and you know just loads up his truck or whatever but he said he was saying that he doesn't worry that much about organic non-organic i think basically everything or most of what he is eating or at least was before he moved to hawaii i don't know what it's like now um just conventionally grown like supermarket food right he seems to do okay with that yeah he's uh

he's a super super. He's amazing. It's hard to follow someone's example like that that can run from Athens to Sparta or whatever he's done. He's really, like you, you're an amazing athlete. For me, I've always struggled trying to perform at any real world-class level. Like I've never, maybe my constitution's not strong enough. I can get out there, I can do a triathlon, I can get a good time, but like, wow,

I just have a lot of respect for people that can do what he does, what you do. For me, there's something to be said about the organic and growing it without pesticides and fertilizers. Like, you can get thyroid issues. You can really mess your body up eating large quantities of produce that's been produced in a way that is laden with chemicals. Like, it's not something to joke around with. Especially if you're juicing that stuff.

You're getting super high concentrations of that. Yeah, and I know several people... And washing it doesn't... I mean, some are worse than others in terms of the pesticide load because of the way the foods are grown, etc. But there's a misconception that if you wash this stuff that it's okay. But it's in the soil, so it gets absorbed into the roots. It's in the inside of these foods. Everything is so porous.

If you need an experiment on that, rub a piece of garlic on the bottom of your foot, and you'll smell it in your nose like 10 minutes later. Really? I've never tried that. Everything is porous. The root systems. And just learning from organic farmers on the Big Island, like when it comes to how to make the best quality produce, it's going back to nature.

how to to make the best quality produce it's going back to nature it's it's having the indigenous microorganisms that actually bring the bring the minerals to the roots or you know somehow make the minerals more absorbable or digestible just like the flora and in our gut you know helps us to function the plants need the same thing and just putting in you know potassium or you know whatever mineral you think the plant needs it's not going to do the trick it doesn't work it's a it's a very complicated it's a system yeah brew it's um i think he was our second or maybe third podcast guest this guy hendrikus hendrikus shraven who's he's like a soil whisperer yeah i don't know if you listen to that one yeah but he's a master of how you create these tea composts and how you restore the the health and vibrancy of the soil and it's like even if you're if you're if you're

growing organic foods out of soil that's depleted of its nutrients and minerals then you know does it matter like you're yeah you have an organically produced banana but if it doesn't have any there's no new there's nothing nutritious in it because it didn't have anything to pull from in the soil yeah right and this guy was like talking is very similar to the microbiome in the gut you know the principles are the same there's a bacterial culture that you want to propagate to create the healthiest foods out of this. The interesting thing is it completely goes against the big corporations to address the problem. To address the problem, you do natural farming techniques like Korean natural farming. What do they do?

They take two cups of rice, they cook it, they put it in a wood box, and they put it under a bunch of leaves under a tree. And those leaves that are decomposing have these little strands of mycorrhizae in it. And those mycorrhizae, the fungus, eat the rice. And then after six days, you mix that with brown sugar. And then you put that under the tree. And then all the bacteria in the area, they eat the brown sugar. And so now you have this bloom of the fungal and bacterial growth that's native to your terrain, your climate, your humidity, your altitude, your part of the world that's specific to yours. And you can't sell that in some store and it's not going to work in Idaho. It has to be for your piece of land. And you mix that with a bunch of soil, you spread it out, and it can completely revitalize

everything that you grow. And I've heard just amazing testimonials. And I'm just scratching the surface on this stuff. can completely revitalize everything that you grow. And I've heard just amazing testimonials, and I'm just scratching the surface on this stuff. I'm not an expert, but it's fascinating to me, and I want to explore it, and I want to try it. And to think that the best fertilizer we can do comes from two cups of rice and two cups of brown sugar that's enough to fertilize two acres of land,

that's amazing. That is amazing. It's really cheap. Well, I think what's really kind of fascinating and timely is that Hawaii really is the battleground on this GMO war right now, and that brings up the issues of pesticides in the soil and all the ways in which we're growing food

in a way to satisfy our industrialized system of factory farming. And Hawaii is the forefront because of the way that Monsanto and these other companies use it as a testing ground. I know in Kauai people are out of their tree because the winds blow the pesticides over the schools. And it's really created a lot of consumer activism there on a pitch, you know, fever level that doesn't exist, you know, here in the continental U S and so kind of with your interest level and living there and seeing that and knowing these other organic

farmers, I mean, what are you, you know, what are you seeing and what's your perspective on what's going on? Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing, you know, coming, uh Well, being here in California, what was the proposition? 37. 37 failed or didn't pass. I knew some things at that time, but it's amazing how much money was advertised in support of the big corporations and how much little people were informed. I watched a documentary when I went to the big island called genetic roulette and that was like right prop 37 was a big part of that you know documentary and just listening to the scientists argue or speak their truth for an hour and a half

just completely opened my mind and made me realize how serious of an issue it is it's like with every new technology comes new responsibility. We have the atomic bomb. We have atomic energy. Well, what can we do with it? What can we do when we can actually play God and modify some kind of vegetable so that we can basically put an herbicide in it

so that it won't be affected to herbicides or whatever. I mean, there's so many different ways, you know, mixing a fish with a tomato. It's craziness and our bodies don't recognize it. And we have an immune response and it's clear in the documented studies that, you know, it doesn't work on pigs' guts and pigs' stomachs are more resilient than ours. So what makes us think it's safe for humans? I mean, we even put it in baby food. It's like nuts. And there's no long-term studies. And it's just, for me, being in a place like Hawaii, where you've got papayas, which cross-pollinate really easily, and Monsanto

owns a bunch of the land. It really is, like you said, the battleground. I've met so many people that are super passionate about it. And for me, I'm still learning about it and learning how I can affect the change. But, you know, again, I don't want to be a martyr. Right. So it's just interesting. And are you, I mean, other than the sort of fruit trees that are pre-existing on your land have you started to kind of cultivate the soil to start growing yeah it's another example of community coming together like uh two of the guys that are now

on the property while i've been gone um really cool guys that are working on sprouting a bunch of rare exotic seeds that a lot of people don't. And we want to start a rare nursery, and we've been growing varieties of durian and grafting them and doing, you know, marang, chempadak, different varieties of jackfruit and sapotes and rillinia and all kinds of different annona family fruits that are amazing. I mean, some of these these fruits like there was a chimpadak downstairs across what is a chimp tell me what it's like a variety of jackfruit jackfruit's the fruit that i know jerry's made juicy fruit gum over you know and it's the

biggest fruit in the world and it's could feed the world you can eat it cooked you can eat it raw i mean it's just amazing it actually works really well as a almost like a meat analog like if you're making tacos or burritos you can like lightly saute it and uh it's absolutely delicious it's kind of great it's sort of like a chewier version of a pineapple but not quite as sweet it actually tastes like it has like a weird meat consistency yeah to it and uh and it's got a floral fragrant flavor that's just so amazing and i hate to like compare a lot of these amazing fruits to to animal products because they're just so much more complex and and above and beyond you know i see meat as being like a really dead food i see grains as being like a really dead fruit. It's just like macrobiotic. It's proteins, it's carbs, it's fats, that's it.

Whereas fruit, it's like the womb, it's the ovary, it's the reproductive organ of the plant kingdom. And we evolved in a symbiotic relationship eating this. And you better believe that it had an effect on our neural framework and the way in which we evolved. And it's so biochemically active, rich with phytonutrients and polyphenols and all these different things people try to you know extract out of superfoods and you know drink tea for and all these different things it's it's native predominantly in fruit and it's

natural and um jack uh chempadak is a variety of jackfruit that has such an amazing flavor. It's almost like a cross between durian, which is a very round, complex flavor, but also jackfruit, which it's in the jackfruit family. So it has the pod-like thing around the seed, and it has that really interesting texture that just dissolves, melts in your mouth like cotton candy, kind of and but it's also juicy and it has a complex robust durian almost flavor to it that is amazing and i could smell it from upstairs in my little bungalow down across 30 feet away you know and it was calling me you know it's so amazing

and some of these tropical fruits are like that. They're just mind blowing in their complexity and in a ways in which they lure us with all our different senses. And I don't see it as a bad thing. I don't see life as being like something you have to abstain from. I'm not like, I love minimalism, but I'm not like an ascetic. I don't want to just like abstain from any pleasure. You know, I'm not a total hedonist, but I'm not, you know, going to say, hey, this fruit isn't amazing, you know. Right, right, right. And so are you subsisting like on an entirely fruitarian diet right now? Because you mentioned earlier that, you know, you're always evolving and you don't want to be dogmatic about your sort of, whether it's diet or otherwise.

I like to keep myself in check, make sure that I'm not too idealistic. I've been very idealistic in my past. And as I get older, I try not to follow labels or live up to labels or whatnot. The only thing I'll say is I just love fruit. And if it's in front of me or if it's relatively easy for me to get,

like I walked into ralph's this morning and raspberries organic raspberries were on sale for 99 cents a little case and that's like you know i was i loaded up i mean you can see in my bag i've got a bunch of a bunch of raspberries the only way i always know a fruitarian because they get so excited when they like see a deal on fruit like that like like their faces light up. It's just hilarious. And the interesting thing for me is that like, you know, I've never gone fully fruitarian, but all the fruitarians that I know are incredibly, you know, vibrant, passionate, super healthy people who, you know, are, are they, they're doing just fine. You know what I mean?

And, and I contrast that with kind of this conventional wisdom about medicine and health. And now we're seeing this kind of pendulum swinging back in the favor of these high fat foods and, you know, butter is on the cover of time magazine as like, you know, where it's back to butter again. And, you know, what does that mean? What does that say about our society? And in this conversation about, mean? What does that say about our society? And in this conversation about, about sugar and kind of how this movie fed up, this documentary fed up, I don't know if you had a chance to see it or not, is it all about like how sugar is making us obese? And certainly, certainly it is. But what happens is fruit gets lopped into this conversation as part of the problem because fruit is a is a you know high glycemic you know

high sugar content food and there's a lack of discernment between high fructose corn syrup and you know a pineapple or whatever and so there's a lot of people out there who are cautioning people about not eating fruit and then i have friends that eat nothing but fruit because and a lot of that is like oh you're going to have insulin resistance. You're going to have all these problems. You're spiking your insulin, all this blood sugar stuff, all that kind of stuff. But the fruitarians that I know that basically just eat fruit all day are some of the mellowest, healthiest people.

I know. You said that it was high glycemic index. Well, not all fruit is. Yeah, and it's actually not. If you eat it in its whole right all its fiber yeah if you're juicing it that's yeah juicing it's i mean it's not natural i mean we weren't born with a stove we weren't born with a juicer on our back you know and eating the the pectin the guar the soluble fibers and fruit helps regulate the uptake of the the sugar which is basically what most or all cells in your body run off of.

So the more you're able to utilize that, obviously the more fruit you can eat, and also something that helps with that, the less fat that you eat, the better insulin does its job. And insulin's mainly, it's just like a transport hormone mechanism that brings the sugar from the bloodstream into the cells. And people who have a damaged pancreas, it's it's mainly because not well if you look at neil bernard's work on diabetes it's he says it's because of a high fat diet because the fat really interrupts

the blood sugar and you're converting a lot of your fats or your proteins into sugar anyways and it goes into your bloodstream to go get distributed through your cells. But if you have too much fat in your blood, that interrupts that body's natural process. And you're right. Fruitarians are usually vibrant and healthy. I've done several years being strict 100% raw and on fruit. And I was thriving. I kind of advocate people not to take too low fat of an approach and to be conservative in the sense that like, get your blood work done and really monitor what you're doing. It's not for everyone. It's for the people that feel called to it in life. And I definitely get excited when I see a deal on raspberries or if I smell a chempadak down the river. Or if a durian, if I kick it when I'm walking through a piece of property, it's a sign to me.

And I think that these fruits are just a metaphor for life. for life and that's to find what brings health in your life whether it be relationships or environment or uh what brings beauty into your life and that can be you know the creative works that you do or whatever you find is your purpose in life yeah i love that analogy of the you know it's the womb it's the egg of the plant kingdom you know it's the it's the it's the birth of it's the it's the potentiality of life. You know what I mean? And in the same way that, you know, we look at a chicken egg in that regard. But, you know, really we're overlooking the seed.

You know, the seed is the, it's the potential of what can be. Yeah, and seeds are really powerful things. And I advocate eating seeds too. You know? Seeds are really powerful things. I advocate eating seeds too. I look at it almost on an energetic level. During the day, we've got the masculine energy of the sun. Then the feminine energy of the fruit seems to balance that. Then at the nighttime, you've got the feminine energy of the moon, of the night, of resting, not being, you know, action.

It starts to get sound sexist, but it's not, you know. But then you've got the seed, the nut that maybe you had stored during the day, and now you're sitting down to sleep for the night, and you still have a few of these nuts and seeds, and then you eat some of those, you know. But if you stumble upon a mango tree during the day when you're walking around in wherever, tropical jungle,

you would eat until you're full if you're living off the land. I mean, you fill up your backpack, which is really your stomach, and go on with your day. And a lot of the times to open seeds or nuts, you know, it requires a little more effort, but they're also transportable and they don't perish. So you can just bring them for later. So, uh, it's all symbiosis and balance. How much, uh, how much are you able to eat, uh, off just off your land versus what you have to buy? That's a good question. Uh, mangosteen season just came to an end and lychees are picking up. Uh, I've got a few banana plants

and it's really, you know, I could, I could eat a good amount of it, but five minutes away in Hilo, there's the farmer's market and you know, you better believe on Saturday, I'm going to go check to see if they have any good smelling durians or any like really good stuff that looks appealing. Um, there's jackfruits that I've eaten off the property that are great. But it depends what you want to eat. I mean, bananas, sugar cane, papaya. In 18 months, you've got producing food. And fruit trees are the most calorie-dense crop per calorie,

per acre, whatever, on the planet. And you can definitely see how a decent sized piece of land could feed a whole family if you've got some mature fruit trees. I mean, I see mango trees that are just dripping with mangoes. I see, uh, relinea trees that are just, they several parts out of the year. It's also known as beer, but in, in Costa Rica or Latin America, but it's, it's kind of like a chair Moya. It tastes like lemon meringue, but they're really prolific. They produce fruit in four years and they're just multiple times a year dropping fruit. That's calorie dense and nourishing. Bananas are like weeds, sugar cane.

We just set up a juicer and you can just, I mean, that stuff is like a grass. So it just grows like crazy. Papayas produced really easily. So some trees like durian take 20 years to really mature and drop good fruit. But some things are really fast and just tons of calories. So, yeah, I haven't eaten a certain percentage, you know, like consistently over the week. So I can't really say. But I see in the future it's possible to just be self-sustaining. So when you come, like, after sort of living that way consistently in Hawaii

and then you come back here for three weeks, like, what is it? Is it like a like, are you suddenly, like, because you're, just by virtue of geography you're having to eat differently. Yeah, totally. I mean, how has that impacted your energy levels? I love this part of planet Earth.

You should check out Robbie Barbero. He's amazing fruitarian. I love this part of planet Earth. You should check out Robbie Barbero. He's an amazing fruitarian. I love Robbie. Yeah, he knows you. He listens to every podcast that you do. But he's got a great Instagram and Facebook page, and he's going to start doing YouTube. But he posts amazing pictures of his ha of his halls back from the downtown produce market. And

he gets some amazing stuff. And it's admirable because I could never really do that when I was holding down a job, you know, every now and then I'd go down and get a bunch of cases, but, you know, it requires a little more planning living in a city, you know, in Hawaii, I just kind of do whatever and there's so much abundance, so I'm not worried about it. But coming back here, first thing I notice is the community. It's so dry here. This is a desert. Second thing I notice is the air and the water.

It's hard to find good water, and it's the air. The first two days I notice it, I feel different, whether that's less moisture in my lungs or if it's actually pollution, you know, you look over LA and you tell me, but, um, uh, yeah, I'm a little burnout. I'm really stoked to, to go back and, and be in that environment again. And, uh, you know, when you're with friends and family and visiting people, There was a time in which I really put my foot down and stayed a hundred percent raw and ate really clean. I keep it vegan, but you know, if I'm going out with all my high school friends that I grew up with, you know, out in Malibu, we go to a Bowie sushi. I'm going to get some veggie rolls, you know, some rice. It's like not a big deal to me

anymore. Right. And so you're heading back. And what is the, I mean, if there is one, like, what's the, what's the plan? Like, what is it, where do you see this going? Or are you just rooted in like, Hey, let's just see where it goes next week. Or do you have like a grand design of like where you would like to see yourself and all of this and, you know, five years. Yeah. Uh, I think in five years I'd love to be a little more, uh, just free in the sense that maybe the, the property was established. I had a few longterm rentals, maybe some retreat spaces that could bring in money and pay for the property. And I'd be able to do some traveling. I really want to visit India. I want to travel

through Southeast Asia more. I want to come back here and hike the John Muir Trail or do whatever, you know, I want to be able to spend time in California. And I'm just, I see freedom as the most valuable commodity in planet earth or life or whatever. And I'm chasing finding ways to increase that. So for me, it's, it's all about how can I, you know, go back to the property in Hawaii, start building as cost effectively as possible and create a space that people can really resonate with and enjoy and be like, Hey, I want to support this vision. And I appreciate what Evan's done. And I don't mind playing some rants or coming for a retreat. And, you know, I see it as, you you know paying for an experience more than right so

it becomes a self-sustainable thing that you're not just funding for everybody's kumbaya yeah and i'm not i'm not looking to burn myself out like doing a bunch of retreats all the time like just as i'm not looking to burn myself on building a big internet following it's not really my modus operandi i'm not like i'm not following that as the model. For me, I see that world is playing a part, but it's not everything. Right. And I feel like this has evolved, and this is to kind of start to bookend this

and how it all comes together, at least in my mind. I mean, you've always had this kind of seeking nature to yourself that's just hardwired into who you are. But I feel like that got expressed in various ways throughout your youth or your younger years. And then when you kind of started tapping into meditation, yoga, and cleaning up your diet, like those three things really sort of conspired to completely change your life, you know, in terms of how you perceive the world, how you deal with energy and the kind of vibration that you take into your body and put out. And these are all things that like as a Western society, you know, we just, we struggle

with, you know, like when I at at this retreat charlie knowles who teaches meditation for his living he's like i said this on my instagram the other day but he said in meditation class i feel like a dentist in a land where nobody brushes their teeth because he's like don't you see like how this could be like is is a important aspect of what it means to be healthy and how how your life can be improved by this and and we're just so resistant. It's just like we can't see why this could possibly benefit us. And just sitting down for two minutes is impossible, right? And I've been meditating pretty consistently now for a little while. I'm on a good streak.

I go on streaks, but I'm on a pretty good one right now. And it's incredible the difference that I feel. And so I'm more energized and, and enthusiastic about it than I have been in the past. And I see the change that has happened in your life as a result of this, that's led you to a place that is, you know, you're in a place where your life is consistent with who you are and where you want to be. But it's also can be very threatening to, to a normal person, like, Oh my God, I don't want to meditate because I don't want to be the guy who suddenly goes off grid and like, you know, is living in the back of his truck in Hawaii. You know what I mean? Like, how do you speak to that?

Well, there's plenty of examples of meditators and business and, and politics and different, uh, different industries that will point to that as being a huge factor in their success and whatnot. For me, it's hands down the most important thing in my life that in terms of revolutionary engagements, you know, it's not an activity, it's a counteractivity. And when I finally figured that out and allowed it to transform me, just brought me back to my own true nature. And that's like what it's really trying to teach is that you're sufficient as you are. And anything that bothers you when you're looking inward is really just inherited from the outside. And that's why it's false. That's why it's illusionary or illusory. And the light of your awareness really just completely shows that

because no matter how scary or dark your inner world is and how much you seek distraction, whether it be drugs or just making fun of meditation, thinking that it's useless, when you can make friends with yourself, and be completely content, looking within and taking a period of your day to acknowledge your existence and your life. It's, I mean, only good things will come. Like, I couldn't imagine, you know,

I mean, I see the fear could point someone away because of lifestyle circumstances, but there's so many studies now that have proven how effective meditation is in dealing with stress and how much stress is a killer. If you're concerned of your health at all, do it for your health. I'm not trying to say, everyone, go meditate. It's not like I'm not trying to get up on a pulpit and really advocate that it's the be all end all.

But for me, it really is. And when I actually did that weekend workshop, you know, a lot of people maybe wouldn't have had the same experience that I did, but I'd never missed a day meditation since. Wow. How long ago was that? That was, it was about around the time that I met you. So like five, six years ago, something like that. What kind of workshop was it? Well, like I said, I would just did all different meditations, but the one that really, I had a glimpse, like a little Samadhi, a small Satori,

sitting just in the silent Vavasana, just the Zazen style where I was just not doing anything. There was no activity, there was no mantra, there was no nothing. And I was just looking and I had just a glimpse of a space and I was completely engulfed in a blissful satisfaction that I'd never felt in my life up until that point. And it took me another month to really find that. And I sat every day after that and sometimes, you know, 30 minutes to an hour. And that's how inconsistent it was in the beginning. And then it started happening like once a week, and then it started happening every other day. And now it's like poured into certain activities that I do, even when I'm speaking. Sometimes I'll just like, when I put my camera on, I'll just get in this completely present moment level of connection with my own truth and satisfaction in life.

And you can't put it to words because words are just these really abstract things that can't really describe such a intimate experience with existence. But the one thing that I know is that feeling or that sensation or that connection with reality is what everyone's really looking for in different ways, whether it's trying to find a lover or trying to find success or trying to find health. They're really looking for that complete merger with existence, that yoga, that union. And it can happen directly. It doesn't need to have an activity. And that's why I always tell

people, you know, people say, Oh, I like to meditate, but I like to, I like to run when I'm meditating and that's my meditation, or I like to paint and that's my meditation. And I always really think of that as kind of, you know, well, if you always use that as the crutch to get to that state, then how much authority do you have over that state? You know, and you kind of will always, you will say that that state comes as a result of that activity. And it's not inherently yours. You know, that peak experience where you felt really connected to the world looking at the sunset was a result of the sunset. No, it's within you.

It's within yourself. And you can find it outside of the outer world. And when that moment happens, when you find it, when there's no activity to blame it on or to point a finger at, you have sovereignty over it, and it's yours.

If you, in that moment, can like own it yeah that's that's that's really interesting and amazing i i never really fully thought it through in that context of sort of it's almost the analogy of having to take you know you have to take a drug to get a certain effect so it's like i have to run or i have to see the sunset or it has to be completely quiet or all these external circumstances that have to conspire to to access that state of mind but only through you know time and diligence and patience and however many years it's been that you've been doing this to develop i know you don't like the word mastery but some sense of facility to be able to summon that uh you know and it's funny like you said

silence it when i was first starting, I would go sit in these mountains and think that I was having a really deep meditation session because the silence kind of helped a little bit. I could see a little bit more. But as you progress down that rabbit hole of meditation, you realize that actually the noises, the distractions, sitting in the airport or the train station or having annoying people blabbing on around you

actually are the best situations to try meditating in once you know what meditation is because you're constantly getting woken up. You're constantly getting a reminder. You have to be more diligent in bringing your consciousness back to sort of removing the thoughts. To detaching from the outer. And that's really the trick of it is just how can you become that witness,

that detached observer of your experience of reality. And once you can do that, you realize that you fall back into reality. You surrender into whatever's happening and you transcend it at the same time. You become liberated from your your suffering or from your joy and you reach that dual that space beyond the the positive and negative dualities that we you know inhabit and how does that having that awareness or that experience color how you kind of perceive you know people like you know in terms of judgment and compassion that's interesting well you always have to be i'm not claiming to be enlightened or anything you

know like i i right but i guess i guess what i'm getting at really is sort of it's almost like you've taken the red pill from the matrix right and so now you're seeing your perception of the world is different and it will never go back to being the way that it was totally and so then now you have this ability to see how everyone else you have this kind of like laser-like ability to observe other people and how they're living their lives and knowing oh i kind of used to do that now i see things differently yeah how do i interact with that world in a way that is yeah you know there is a point in time when some of my guy friends you know from Malibu I like go out and you know they're they're just average guys in LA good careers you know doing their things partings partying on the weekends and you know I'd like

you know go out to dinner with one of them and and at one point I just got like almost walked out on because one of my best friends I've known forever, he's like, bro, you always become philosophical within the first two minutes of talking. What's the deal? Chill. And I was like, oh, wow, that's totally true. And I'm sorry. So there is that red pill aspect because like I do look at things in a way that I never did before and I will tell you though that the judgment of other people has fallen away like there was a time when I was actually really judgmental and looked at people size people up and now it's like man I mean I see a beautiful car drive by and it's I almost feel like it's like yes I get to enjoy this car while it's next to me like it's part mine like and I see like myself and other

people and they're just that constant wow there's not a vast gulf between me and other things or other people it's we're a lot closer than you know we think like you are me, I'm you, you're my mirror, I'm your mirror. And thank you for being my teacher. And thank you for being my master. Thank you for, you know, we're all learning and teaching each other at the same time. And I've learned from old people, I've learned from young people. And I always find it really awesome when like someone who's older than me can like actually take time to listen and resonate with what I have to say and share their experience with me and give them, give me that presence that, uh, you know, admires the journey that I'm on. And that's what I try to pass on to other people too, is just that

presence. You know, I'm not like trying to look at my phone every two seconds, even though sometimes it pops up, but you know, we're losing that, that interaction, uh, of coming closer on the physical level or the, the in-person level that is, is kind of sad in this digital age. And I try to definitely make an emphasis of that in my videos, um, that it's, it's important to, to, you know, be unedited sometimes and just speak off the cuff and see how well you can articulate and express yourself fully,

whatever genuine ideas you have at the time, even if it's not profound, even if it's about the Kardashians or whatever. You can be your authentic self in this moment. You don't need to second-guess yourself so much. And that's what being able to articulate yourself is really about. It's just trusting that the right words are going to come at the right time and you don't need to plan your sentences. And a lot of the times, yeah, getting up in front of the stage and giving a public speak or like I did yesterday playing

a piano recital, you got to prepare, you got to practice. But a lot of life is just being real and being open and being spontaneous. And you actually can practice spontaneity. You can become better at it. Spontaneity is terrifying. And so is being authentic for most people. They want to be very controlled in every environment that they're in. It's a hyper consciousness about putting your best foot forward or, or, you know, making sure that you come off or appear to be the person that you want people to see, as opposed to being who you are, because being who you are is, is that's scary, man. That's scary. And it brings up, you know, whatever your background is, you know, we all have insecurities and fears and we all want to be liked

and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, to kind of, you know, beat a dead horse, because I always talk about this on the podcast, but, you know, our bullshit detectors are very finely attuned in this, you know, digital internet age. And, you know, it's like, whether you're watching a politician give a speech and it's like, oh, fellow Americans, you know, we live in the greatest kind. It's like, who talks like that? Right. It's like insane. Or the newscaster who's like, you know, reporting live from, you know, it just doesn't sound real. And you sort of take that red pill and you start to go, whoa, that's a trip that that politician is like, look at how he's talking. That's amazing. You know?

trip that that politician is like, look at how he's talking. That's amazing. You know? Yeah. And not just that, you start to see within yourself, all these different personalities, like you start to behave a certain way to your parents and then you behave a different way to your kids or to your friends or to whoever. And that's what personalities are. Persona means mask. And we wear all these different masks that are not ourself. You run these programs. So when we see those programs for what they are, we start to fall away from them and let them just turn off. And then, well, we still have to interact,

so how does the non-program interaction come out? What does it look like? And that's usually when you're being authentic and you're being spontaneous. And it's cool to see that, to see like, hey, I can talk the same way to you as I talk to anyone. And people resonate with that. They do see that.

They do pick up on that. Right. And because of all of this sort of artificial, you know, content that's been, you know, shoved down our throats for the last however many decades, like there's a thirst and a desire for that authenticity, for that feeling of connection and what's real. And that's that's so beautiful about like the podcast medium, you know, it's just, it's just, it is what it is, man. You know, like I'm not editing this, we're going to put it up. People are going to get a really good idea of who you are, you know, and they're either down with that or they're, they're not. And that's cool either way. You know what I mean? So I love the long audio format. Like it's such a great

thing. Cause you can, you can just plug it in anywhere when you're doing anything and you can just listen and come close to people that you, you know. I mean, how often do people speak like this? Never. And it's like what a gift. I mean, in my own life, it's a gift to be able to sit down with people that inspire and interest me and be able to have an excuse to have this super long conversation with them and get to know all about them what a beautiful thing and then to be able to share that and before podcasts i mean yeah unless you're at a dinner party or like when are you going to be like you're going to call your friend up like dude i need to talk to you we're going to sit in a room for three hours and we're just going to we're going to we're going to hash it out man no cell phones you know it's

like no that would never ever happen you know yeah it only happens occasionally at like some really cool dinner that you're having or something like that like a special occasion and it's you know it's a relic of maybe a past time where we had more free time and we were living in these villages where you know there was a lot of time of just sitting around the campfire or you know the pace of our lives was not what it is today. And a huge part of our human happiness quotient or being satisfied and feeling good about our lives is our connection to other human beings. And that only comes through an intimate exchange of authenticity. comes through you know an intimate exchange of of you know authenticity you know and it's like what a beautiful thing that podcasts are that now we we can you know like i i just program all of my

audio of podcasts i like to listen to people that interest me and and what a gift to be able to tap into those conversations and learn and be inspired and and to be able to be part of that conversation with this little small little thing is so cool and i just want to emphasize continually be inspired because people are always changing they change their mind they learn new things they become more master at whatever trade they do or they take up a new a new thing and i like to check in with people and a lot of times friendships it's like you figure each other out. You have that one deep conversation and then you never do it again.

But it's great to be able to like check in again and again and again and develop a relationship. But once you had one of those conversations with somebody, that's always there. That like for the rest of your life, you both know that like you had that. And that bond, there's a bond there that can never go away. Right. So even if 10 years go by, you could call that dude and be like, what up, man? You know, like, and he knows it too. Right. So totally. I just drove, um, up to Yosemite with a friend of a friend, but he's been in like the social group for a while. And I just had never gotten to have that conversation with him, but, you know, going up to, you up to on a six, seven-hour drive, eight-hour drive, you get to come close.

And I'm really grateful that I was able to do that with him because I learned some things about him that I never knew before. Just meeting him out at bars or seeing him in social gatherings, whatever, where the conversation is much more superficial. Yeah, cool. All right, man, I think that's a beautiful place to wrap it up. Right on. What do you think? Yeah, absolutely. Anything else you want to say?

No, just thank you so much. Keep inspiring people like you're definitely an inspiration to me. And I'm really grateful that, you know, you had me on the show. Well, I'm really inspired by what you're doing and uh you know whether somebody you know aspires to do something similar to what you're doing or not just for you to be an example of you know irrespective of anything or of outcome to just say hey man i'm i took a stand i'm i opted out of you know a life that would have been very comfortable and easy for me to stay in and i'm going to try something different and it might fail. It might be hard, whatever. And I'm

going to share part of that with you guys is, um, courageous and inspiring and cool. So I hope, I hope that you hit it on the head. Like that's exactly it. Just if I want to be an example for anything, it's just, Hey, look inward sometimes and figure out what you really want, but also have the courage to like make this life extraordinary because you don't like the worst thing is getting to the end of this life and be like, would it, should it, you know, and you, you can like, you can make this life really interesting. If you want, you can see the people that inspire you and you can come closer to them. You can go to the places, you can do the things that resonate with your unique,

uh, genetic makeup, energetic makeup, whatever it is that makes you special. And everyone is special. Like each person that I meet, they're completely unique. And that just blows me away. So don't follow anyone's blueprint. Just be yourself. There you go, man. Right. Yeah. Access that better version of yourself and start expressing it, man. All right. We got to get you on an airplane back to the islands. I don't know if you guys know how cool Rich is. He's just the coolest guy in the world. here man that's what it's all about so all right cool so uh if you're inspired by evan and his journey or you want to learn more about kind of like what his vibe is all about the best way to do that is is your fruit zen channel right is that where yeah uh youtube.com slash fruit zen or youtube.com slash evan the rock if you're more into the meditation stuff. Yeah, man. And go back to the beginning of the Hawaiian journey

and watch these videos in chronological order and you can kind of see the evolution of this little situation that he's got going on out there. It's pretty cool. I hope it all works out. Yeah, man. Are you off Facebook? No, I'm on Facebook.

I don't have like a page though. I don't really have. I'll get my act together soon. We'll see. All right. Cool. All right, man. Thanks for dropping by.

Thank you. Peace. Peace. Durian. Durian. Plants. Power. All right, you guys.

That's our show. I hope you dug it. I hope you dug it. I hope you dug the Evan Rock vibe. He's an extraordinary guy. And I think there's a lot of wisdom to be divined by tapping into his journey and kind of reflecting on your own life and things we take for granted

and things that we kind of go through our day and don't really question when maybe we should. So if you're feeling sort of powerless in your own life or stuck or kind of amazed at what Evan was able to do and thinking, I don't know how I could do that. I want to change too, but I just don't even know how to begin. I don't even know what I would want. Well, I would suggest that a good place to start is you can check out my new course at MindBodyGreen. It's called The Art of Living with Purpose. And it's kind of on point with today's episode. It's all about how to get unstuck out of your life, how to

kind of delve deep within, go deep within yourself and start to kind of unlock that mystery of what it is you could possibly be passionate about. It's also about how to set and achieve goals and all kinds of good stuff. But essentially, at its core, it's really about how to kind of blossom into the person that you really are meant to be and deserve to be, really. So if you're interested in that, you can check that out. It's at mindbodygreen.com. Meditation was a big part of how Evan unlocked himself. We have a

meditation program on our site at richroll.com. It's called Jai Release. It's a guided meditation program, a series of MP3s. It's a humming technique, which sounds weird, but it's actually really cool. It takes all the thinking and the guesswork out of the process itself. You can just load it onto your mobile device or iPod or whatever and have it accessible whenever you can catch a few minutes to tap in. So you can check that out. Also plant-based nutrition, also a big part of Evan's story. I want to learn more about that. I have a course on that at MindBodyGreen as well. It's called The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, how to incorporate more plants into your life,

how to get plant-powered, no matter where you are on the spectrum, whether you're already a vegan or maybe you're an ardent carnivore, but kind of tiptoeing around the edges of this and interested, it's a good place to tip your toe and see what it's all about. Of course, richroll.com for all your plant powered provisions. We've got some awesome t-shirts there, all kinds of good stuff, nutrition products, my Jai Repair vitamin B12 supplement, Ion, our new electrolyte capsule supplement, great for the athletes among us, especially during the sweltering late summer months. And we've got signed copies of my book, Finding Ultra. If you haven't checked that out, you can do that as well. Thanks again for supporting the show, for telling a friend,

for using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. Thank you to those who have donated. You can donate to the show. We so appreciate that. And I'm loving all the Instagram pictures of you guys posting images of where you're listening to the show. Super dig that. Keep doing that. Tag me, tag hashtag RRP or hashtag richroll, at richroll, whatever. And I'll throw some love your way. So thank you so much. And I just, I love the community aspect of all of this. And that's what social media is great for, is bringing us all together around this message of transformation, this message of the plant power revolution. Also, again, my newest fascination is Snapchat. I've been putting up little videos every day,

newest fascination is Snapchat. I've been putting up little videos every day, just slice of life stuff, me out on a trail run, me making a smoothie or stuff with the kids. So if you're interested in taking a peek behind the curtain of what my life is all about, maybe learn something along the way, check me out at Snapchat. You can add me there. It's IamRichRoll, I-A- am Rich Roll. And I'm having a lot of fun with that. The videos are super hacky, amateurish. There's nothing fantastic about it, but they're kind of fun to watch and I'm having a good time with it. Okay, that's it.

This week's assignment for you guys is to get that journal out and start putting pen to paper about what you would like your life to look like one year from now. When I look at Evan's life and I see this massive transition from where he was only a year ago to what he's doing now, it's pretty miraculous. But it didn't happen without conscious thought, without hard work, without effort. And I'm sure that he had a plan that he set in motion quite

some time ago. It starts with visioning. It starts with getting concrete with yourself about what it is you really want. And all of that always starts with putting pen to paper, not fingers on a keyboard, but actually the tactile experience of writing things down. So start making a habit of that. And that's what I would like to see you guys do. All right. I'll be back at you next week. And until then, have a great week, everybody. And thanks for listening. Peace. Plants.