The Rich Roll Podcast - Light Watkins: Doing The Work Is The Shortcut

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

How do you find purpose? What does it mean to live with intention? And why is it important to cultivate stillness? These questions are important. The answers are tricky. To solve these riddles to the human dilemma, you have to know where to look. Knowing Where To Look also happens to be the title of Light Watkins’ new book. Is it a sign or coincidence? The answer is up to you. In addition to being a good friend, a beautiful incarnation of the human form, a nomadic minimalist, and expert meditation and spiritual teacher, Light is also a prolific public speaker and the founder of The Shine (a groovy TED meets Self-Realization love child event series) and the author of three books: The Inner Gym, Bliss More, and of course, his latest work and the focus of our gathering, Knowing Where To Look. My third microphone communion with Light begins with a dive into his adventures in minimalism (every single thing he owns fits into a single carry-on bag) and what it’s like being a 50-year old ex-pat nomad living in Mexico City. We also touch on his experiences in meditation and mindfulness, and the impact of his activism on issues related to racial injustice. But mainly we focus on things like the power of kindness, the importance of patience and reflection, how to cultivate intuition, and how to have the courage to trust it. In a nutshell, this conversation is about how to put faith into action, and why the aspirational life is built upon a foundation of small gestures—tiny actions undertaken every day, every hour, every moment. If you’re new to the force of love that is Light Watkins, I suggest tuning up our earlier conversations, RRP #172 and RRP #357. Check him out in my book Voicing Change, which you can find here. Listen to his podcast At the End of The Tunnel and of course, pick up his new book, the choose-your-own-adventure style of daily inspiration that is Knowing Where To Look. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll603 YouTube: bit.ly/lightwatkins603 Light Watkins is one of my most favorite beings. My hope is that this conversation helps you find what you’re looking for. Light Watkins is one of my most favorite beings. May this conversation be a tuning fork for your gaze—and lead you closer towards what you’re looking for. Peace + Plants, Rich

The true wealth is the fulfillment inside, right? This is a living experiment. And it's not that I'm like walking around beaming all the time because I feel fulfilled inside. That's not really what we're talking about. It's just, it's having this inner security that wherever you are is where you're supposed to be. And if that means you get challenged in certain ways,

then that challenge is there for you to learn something new about yourself. And that new thing that you learn is going to add to the feeling tone of fulfillment, right? And so that's the underlying message of this whole path is your path is not leading you to more success or more comfort, it's leading you to know yourself better and ultimately to feel your connection with other people. And that could be a very, very treacherous path at some points. It could be incredibly uncomfortable at other points, but the happiness that people tend to look for outside

in success is much more temporal compared to what you can feel inside while you're going through all of those other moments and obstacles in life. I'm Light Watkins, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. How do you find purpose? What does it mean to live with intention?

And why is it so important to cultivate stillness? These questions are important. The answers, of course, are tricky. They're elusive and really only can be found by knowing where to look. Knowing where to look. Well, that also happens to be the title of Light Walk-In's new book, knowing where to look, knowing where to look. Well, that also happens to be the title of Light Watkins' new book,

dropping in today for his third appearance on this show, the podcast which bears my name, which I, out of pure coincidence, happen to host. If you're new to me or to Light, welcome and allow me to add that Light, in addition to being a good friend, a beautiful incarnation of the human form, a nomadic minimalist is and has been for the last 20 years, a lauded meditation and spiritual teacher. Just don't call him guru. He hates that.

It's teacher. He's also a prolific public speaker, the founder of The Shine, which is this groovy event series that's sort of like Ted meets self-realization and the author of three books, The Inner Gym, Bliss More, and of course his latest, the focus of today's powwow, Knowing Where to Look. We had a great talk about things

I think are important, things that matter, and it's coming right up, but first. 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. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen,

or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. 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. 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. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care

tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. 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. Okay, Light Walk-Ins. Today, we talk about his adventures in minimalism, everything this guy

owns fits into a carry-on bag, what it's like to be a 50-year-old nomad, and how his experiences in meditation and mindfulness impact his activism on issues related to racial injustice. is activism on issues related to racial injustice. But mainly we focus on things like the power of kindness, the importance of patience and reflection, how to cultivate intuition and the courage to trust it, to put faith into action and why the life you seek, the life you aspire to have really boils down to small gestures, tiny actions.

If you enjoy Light, please allow me to make a few suggestions. Check out our earlier conversations, episodes 172 and 357. He's also profiled in my book, Voicing Change, which you can find at richroll.com. Check out Light's podcast. It's called At the End of the Tunnel. And of course, make a point of picking up Light's new book, Knowing Where to Look. As for knowing where to listen, you're in the right place because it's time to do the thing. So please enjoy what I think is a wonderful exchange

with my friend, Light Watkins. Good to see you, my friend. It's been a while. I know. I can't remember the last time we crossed paths, maybe a couple of years. Yeah, I think I saw you actually on your birthday at Cafe Gratitude.

Yes. When you turn 50, I believe. 50? How old are you now? Dude, I'm almost 55. Couldn't have been that long ago. You'd turn 53 or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember that. I remember that. Pre-pandemic, Cafe Gratitude, you were wearing all black, a bunch of beads, hair was longer, no beard. A lot more hair. That helps to narrow down the time around when it was. And you're with Julie and I think it was just you and her.

I think it was just, or maybe the kids. Maybe one of the kids or I don't remember. Yeah, pre-pandemic though. Yeah. You've had an interesting- I was already like on the road at that time. Right. So I happened to be back in LA just randomly.

Right, so you've spent the last year, well, initially you were in Atlanta, right? Before going to Mexico City? Yes. Where did you go back and forth? I was started off the pandemic in Atlanta, then LA and then back to Atlanta and then back to LA and then Mexico City.

So I was actually in each of those places for like about four or five months. There was a little bit of a LA Exodus to Mexico City. Yeah. I have like three or four friends who kind of have been riding out the pandemic down there. Yeah, it's a great place to ride it out. How did you decide on Mexico City?

I had been hearing about it for years. And then when I went nomadic in 2018, I started going to Mexico City here and there for a couple of weeks, three weeks. And it's like, it's kind of like being in Europe without going to Europe, because you're still in central time zone in the US. And it's just beautiful.

It's just everything, it's green, it's very walkable. The food scene, the cafe scene is amazing. Service is impeccable. Like everything is great. And the dollar goes a long way. Right, it's affordable. Yeah. Well, I'm fascinated by this nomadic lifestyle

that you've been pursuing. I suppose, I guess this is part, it was kicked off by kind of the third purge that you've done. Yeah. This is not the first time that you've explored this. And there's a part of me that's jealous, like what it would feel like to just be that free,

to live out of literally a carry on and be that kind of malleable and mobile. Well, it's interesting because I'm in a, normally when you hear that sort of story, you probably imagine someone in their 20s, or maybe in their early 30s at the latest. Meanwhile, I'm about to be 50. So it's a little different in this life stage

because people, my peers are all like, they're really establishing serious roots. Some of them are even grandparents at this point or kids out of college. And so there's not a lot of people who I grew up with who can really relate to what I'm doing. So you really have to be sure of yourself and into the idea of it. And I've kind of been that way my whole life.

So I don't really know any different, but yeah, it's been an interesting journey. And I tell people who are intrigued by it. I was like, look, you know, I'm not, my example is not to go and sell off all your stuff and, you know, jump on an airplane overnight. Like it took years of experimenting to get to this point. And so for me, it just kind of felt like a natural extension of what I was already kind of doing. I mean, I was already prior to 2018, I was traveling.

I was going to London every month or so. I was going to New York all the time. So I started challenging myself to see if I could live off of whatever I could fit into my carry-on bag for those two weeks or three weeks I was gonna be on the road. And then after doing that for a couple years, then it was like, okay, well, I know I can do it.

Yeah. I've practiced it enough. Let me go ahead and sell all this other stuff and just commit to it. But there's a difference between knowing you can do it and reckoning with whether it's the right thing to do. I suspect you must come up against moments of loneliness or self doubt with this.

100%. I mean, you spent a lot of time on your own, but then that's where the meditation moments of loneliness or self-doubt with this? A hundred percent. I mean, you know, you spend a lot of time on your own, but then that's where the meditation and all the inner work kind of kicks in. You know, I've been doing that for 20 years and I try to tell people, you know, help people understand that that's been a part of my journey as well.

And one of the primary benefits of all that daily meditation is you become more self-aware, you become more comfortable with your own company. You enjoy silence and, you know, and I can be as, you have to also be relatively outgoing if you wanna find a social life, right? These different places. So, I mean, you know, I can kind of dip in

as much as I want to. And I consider myself to be more of a introverted extrovert. Like I can do the extroverted thing here and there if I want to, but I'm very comfortable with my own company as well. So, and I'm busy, I'm writing books and I've got a podcast and I'm teaching meditation trainings and organizing retreats. So it's like, I almost spend a lot of time.

It's kind of like when you and I first met at that hotel, the Ace Hotel in the Flatiron District in New York, you were, this was midnight. I was there doing some work and you were there doing work. I know. And I was on the road teaching, but after hours I was like writing my book

or I think I was marketing my first book, The Inner Gym. And you were there editing an episode. Yeah, I think I was getting a podcast up or something like that. I was in search of internet. And that's kind of my life is, I'm so passionate about the things that I do

that I just kind of busy myself very easily. And we've had conversations about that. Like there's no such thing as work-life balance when you're really passionate about what you do. So it's so deeply integrated. Well, there's a difference between getting rid of all your stuff and going on some kind of walkabout versus living your life intentionally,

being clear on what it is that you're doing, what you're seeking and being purposeful in how you kind of approach that very different type of lifestyle. Yeah, and I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones to have kind of centered in on a mission that I'm very, very excited about. Like I literally wake up in the morning

and I can't wait to get to work and thinking about ideas and spitballing and on the morning and I can't wait to get to work and thinking about ideas and spit balling and on my own, when I'm just walking around. And so every spare moment is really an opportunity to kind of tweak and refine. And then you add social media to it, right? And then it's like, okay, well,

I would love to put some kind of messaging out there. You know, when I get this quote in my head, it's like, oh, I gotta tweak the quote. And then I gotta turn it into a quote card on Instagram and then an audiogram. You know, it's like, that's like hours and hours of work. Are you doing all that yourself? I'm doing all that myself.

Wow. Yeah, all of myself. I mean, the idea is not to continue doing it all myself all the time, but it's kind of how I iterate. Like I have to get my hands dirty. I have to roll up my sleeves and see how things work. And I'll get so many more ideas of how to communicate more efficiently

and optimize the process just for myself, from just doing it myself. And then eventually I can explain it simply to someone to help me. And that's kind of how that works. Yeah, through the doing, you see the path, the path is revealed ahead of you, which is a big kind of message in the book.

Yeah, and it's all storytelling, right? And that's really what people connect with the most is whether it's an Instagram caption or a tweet or a daily dose of inspiration email that I send out. It's all stories and it helped every time I sit down. And especially when you have limitations, like I was telling a friend of mine, he said, your daily doses, these emails that you send out every day, they've gotten shorter and shorter. And I said, well, yeah, because now I want people to be able to like screenshot them and share them a lot easier.

So I intentionally keep them within 100 or 125 words if possible, sometimes it's not possible. But I also followed up with, it's harder to write a short- Much harder. Than it is to just let my thoughts rip and just not edit it as much. So it actually takes longer to truncate it

and keep it succinct. And also to put it through all the screens that you're very familiar with, because it's like you put out some really heartfelt, vulnerable post about your journey. And then you get the one person commenting about how you didn't include their little situation overlooked and it's like, no,

he probably thought about that. I'm sure he thought about it five levels deeper than anyone who's commenting on his posts, but you can't accommodate for every little exceptional situation. Yeah, brevity is not my strength though. The economy of your lifestyle in some part perhaps fuels your economy of language.

Everything is being kind of, it's like the path gets narrower. And when you read the words of the sages and the Buddhas, it's always very short. Like there's a clarity in that, that comes through decades of wisdom acquired through experience. Yeah, I mean, that comes through decades of wisdom acquired through experience. Yeah, I mean, that's one of my mantras is if you can't,

it's the Einstein quote, if you can't explain it simply, then you don't know it well enough. And so, and that's why I've really come to embrace reminders because, and reading things over, the same things over and over and over, because you just, you see them differently each time and then you're understanding them at a deeper level. And then it gets distilled down to its essence.

And that's really where it becomes, you know, almost magical in that, in its application and utility. I feel like, Light, that you're taking advantage of these very powerful tools that are available to us that allow us to uncouple geographic location from vocation. In past decades to kind of live the minimalist lifestyle and be a nomad would be akin to Kung Fu, kind of wandering into towns.

And there is an asceticism that's built into it, but you're still able to do all the things that you would be doing if you owned a home with a picket fence and had, you know, a car in the driveway. Yeah, and in a way I do still have those things. I just don't own them myself. I'm just using other people's.

Right, so where are you staying now? I'm staying in Mexico city. I just have an Airbnb that I rent. It's like a beautiful two bedroom, just like I had a two bedroom in LA. So I think people have this idea that I like to, I'm drawn to tiny houses and it's like, no, I actually like space and I like things.

I just don't need to own them myself. And unfortunately you don't need a car in Mexico city. And I'm just, I don't even know how long I'll be there, but everywhere I go, when I'm in London, I'll rent an Airbnb somewhere or New York, what have you. And I kind of prefer places where you don't need to be driving so much. But in Los Angeles, I'd stay with a buddy of mine

who's got a beautiful place and I rent a car. And so, I make it work. You're able to be in the modern world. Yeah, very much. You're not adorned in robes, walking barefoot down Abbot Kinney. And also, I'm on stage and I'm speaking. So it's like, I can't look like I'm living out of a backpack.

I want it to look like you don't even know that I'm living out of a backpack. That's something that's happening in the background. And, but yeah, you're right. I mean, it does help me practice brevity in all areas of life. Cause you just, you have to, you know, you can, people always wanna like give me things, which I think is very, very sweet., you have to, you know, you, you, you, and people always want to like,

give me things, which I think is very, very sweet. And I have to remind them. I said, look, it's nice that you want to give me this little token or this little thing, a book or whatever, but it's like, I really don't have any room for it. You can imagine how many people give you just this little thing and it adds up. So, so yeah, I have to.

But it's not personal if you have this general rule. No, it's not. But I imagine it must've been hard. You've talked about this a little bit. When it came to, okay, I'm gonna do this thing again, I'm gonna shed. And you're getting rid of like all your journals and all these kind of very personable memorabilia that were kind of hardwired to collect.

There must be a sense that, you know, once you've done that, like a feeling of lightness, but do you ever think like, I wish I hadn't, like those are things that when I'm old, I'd like to look at that maybe could have provided the foundation for the next book or are they all scanned and in the cloud? So you still have them.

I scan everything in the clouds. I scan every page of every journal. So I have everything. And that's what's great about modern technology is that we can do that. And in a way it's even more accessible now because now I can categorize it, I can label it all. And it's all in my file storage application.

So I can just go to it in a couple minutes and I've actually looked at those things a lot more than I ever did when it was just collecting dust in the back of my closet. So, I think that's something that people should do anyway is scan all of their stuff in so that they can at least access it whenever they're with somebody from their past.

And they're like, oh, wow, I have these photos of us from like 20 years ago and you don't have to go and dig for it and wonder where it is and which box you put it in and this kind of thing. So that became, and also I kind of worked the logic on it. And I said, look, when someone writes a memoir

or when someone dies, right? So even someone prolific like a Steve Jobs, right? The guy who created the iPhone when he dies. How many photos of Steve Jobs have we seen floating around out there? Probably a dozen, right? Maybe a couple more than that. But you could imagine he probably had a kajillion photos somewhere, but we only see like a dozen

and you can apply that to really anybody, right? So the point is, if this stuff is going to become used at some point later, you don't need that many. Right. You know, you don't need your whole catalog of this, no one's gonna sift through all of that stuff. But if you have kids, then you just start hoarding like crazy numbers of photos.

Yeah, but if you have kids, you know, in 20 or 30 years from now, and they wanna see old pictures and it's all categorized and they have the passwords and everything to your files, then they can see everything a lot more efficiently than like digging through and wondering, what is this, where is this from? So it's kind of a way to organize it a little bit better.

Yeah, well, even though we haven't seen each other in a while, I've been paying attention to kind of everything that you've been doing over the last year when the pandemic hit and there was this social permission for everybody to just kind of stop and stay at home and do nothing and not feel guilty about it. I feel like you've been incredibly productive

and in many ways really found your voice like in a new gear with all the stuff that you start putting out, those videos on Instagram, which were, are, continue to be like so well thought out. And every time I look at them, I'm like, is he reading off a script? Is he just spontaneously like delivering these incredible monologues that are so clear

and concise in their point of view and thinking. Yeah, I've been pretty open about the fact that those were all written out and rehearsed. And again, I wanted to keep them within like a minute, maybe a couple of minutes at the most, but really it was just to value people's time because I know that when I just speak off the top of my head, I have a tendency to drag on and on and on.

And I want it to be as concise and as clear as possible. And so my process was, I would, what you're referring to is I made a vow to myself when I was in Mexico City in February 14th, 2020, right at the very beginning, I made a vow to myself to post a video a day on Instagram. And the reason was because I wanted to practice speaking on camera.

And I'd been already writing my daily dose of inspiration emails and sending those out for four years. So I had already been used to generating inspirational content, because that's what happens when you do something every day, is you start to, it starts coming through you. And so now it's just kind of applying it to video form, but I didn't want to, sometimes I would borrow ideas of things I'd already written. Sometimes it would just be things that came through me and I would speak on that. And so it wasn't really about anything more than just practicing.

And then come April, May, when the George Floyd thing happened, it was literally just another day. And I thought to myself, okay, what am I gonna speak on today? I'm literally sitting on my couch in my Airbnb in Atlanta. And I wanted to go to the park and go for a run, but I hadn't shot my video yet.

And it usually is like an hour and a half, maybe two hour long process, depending on how clear my thoughts are. And I was doing everything myself. I had learned how to caption, how to put headlines, how to do all, it takes like, the process was like three or four apps before we posted. And I thought, you know,

this thing that happened to George Floyd, people probably exclude me from that category of person. Like I obviously I'm a black person, but a lot of my non-black friends, I think see me in a different way than they would look at someone like George Floyd. And I said, this is a great opportunity to communicate that actually the things that happened to him

have also happened to me, maybe not as extreme at this point in time, but it could go in that direction if I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong cop and all of that. And so I spoke to that, you know, cause I'm from Alabama and a part of being from Alabama, which was the staging point

of the modern civil rights movement. You know, that's a part of the ongoing conversation in all black families is black people, white people, this happened to us, and this is what we have to do. You have to work harder and all these kinds of things. So I just talked about a few instances where I had been racially profiled in my life all the way up until most recently,

when I was marketing my last book, "'Bliss More' the meditation book, I had been pulled over by a cop in LA because the cop had received a call that I was looking to break into someone's car. And I'm going to a book interview, to a podcast interview. But some person saw me

and I was looking for my friend's parking space. She said, you can park your scooter behind my car. So there are all these numbered parking spaces and I'm like, I can't find the parking space. And so somebody thought I was like- Like casing the- Casing the whole parking lot to find out whose car I was gonna break into.

I'm on a scooter meanwhile, like I don't know where I'm gonna, what I'm gonna carry on the scooter. You're a scary black man. But I'm a scary black man. I had a suit coat on and everything. So anyway, those kinds of things have been happening. And it's almost up until that point, it was unremarkable.

Like, who am I gonna complain about it to? Or that's gonna really care, or it's not gonna say, oh, that was just coincidence. But it happens all the time. Not all the time, but it happens often enough that to my black friends, it's like, oh it happens often enough that to my black friends, it's like, oh yeah, of course, you know, to my white friends, it's like, well, you know, okay.

And so I talked about those instances starting when I was like seven or eight years old, all the way up until that point. And that video, you know, normally I post a video, get maybe a few thousand views. That video got 3.5 million views. Yeah. I was like, wow. Yeah 3.5 million views. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I was like, wow. I guess people wanna hear more about this. Well, I remember seeing that video and then watching your daily videos and just getting this sense that you, cause you are this guy who, you're the meditation mindfulness guy. And you really exist predominantly

in kind of this white wellness culture. That's where you've made your mark and what you're known for. But in the wake of George Floyd, you really stepped up and met the moment in a meaningful way. And it's not a surprise to me that those videos have traveled in the way that they have.

And your demeanor in speaking about it is, I think a product of the decades of meditation that you have you're able to speak about these things with a degree of equanimity and objectivity while making your point, but in a manner that is digestible to a large audience, I think, is that fair? Yeah, I realized I was actually uniquely qualified

to speak on it because I'm black. So I have that experience, but then also, like you said, with the meditation and the wellness stuff, like I almost had like a way to kind of speak on it from a 10,000 foot perspective instead of the ground level perspective where everyone's like heated and emotional. And there's a time and place for that, obviously.

And I think it was also important to just relate to it from a little bit further out and show, you know, there's some connections here in a way that the people who follow me, which is primarily white people, right? Cause that's who I was really speaking to. I wasn't speaking to black people. Sure.

Black people don't need to be told about racism and all of that. Yeah, yeah. So, and then I got, you know, you get a lot of comments like, oh, I've never thought about it like that. Oh, wow. You know, I need to go and have a conversation. And it's like, well, no,

this is how you have the conversation because otherwise you're gonna have people be defensive and whatnot. So yeah, it was an interesting time. And I felt very, it felt very organic for me. It was almost like, if the world wanted to talk about ultra marathons and it's like, whoa.

Yeah. And suddenly in recovery. It's like, whoa. Yeah. And recovery. Yeah. It's like, well, Rich has a lot to say about that. Yeah, I applaud it. It was like, oh, he's stepping up to own a space. He must be feeling on some level like he's getting out of his comfort zone,

but it was so clearly not just the right thing to do, but the right thing for you to do. Like it felt like you were very comfortable doing it, even though it departed from kind of the way you normally operate. I mean, I remember one video you made, it was called something like for white people asking what to do about racism.

And I watched that and I think about that video all the time and I would have to tell you that, I credit that video and other videos that you've made with how I started to rethink how I'm approaching the moment. And that was a big motivator in our decision to go to Minneapolis the other week and have those conversations that we've had.

So, if you ever questioned the efficacy or the effect of what you're doing, like I can tell you that I'm personally grateful for it. Thank you, man. Yeah, it was interesting because I also, I didn't want to, once you go viral with something, it's obviously tempting to kind of feed into that. Like, wow, I could,

like my whole follower count doubled and everything. And so, but I didn't, I had to consciously choose to continually being organic with it and not try to force these topics because I knew that they would be very popular. I wanted to, because I think that's one of the reasons why it resonated initially

is because I wasn't trying to become popular. I wasn't trying to go viral. I was just speaking openly and authentically. And so it was just a really interesting opportunity to kind of go back within and still maintain that level of what I felt was authenticity throughout the whole process. And I'm honestly, I'm kind of,

it was nice to get back and talking about things that weren't necessarily directly tied into all of that. Because again, that's been an ongoing conversation in my consciousness for as long as I've been on the planet. And it ultimately, it's not my issue to solve, or even to give all this perspective to. I think ultimately it's something that needs to be worked out with white people, right?

And I'm happy to kind of give the impetus for that conversation to take place. But what would make me really happy is to see more white people just initiating that conversation with other white people and just kind of talking about it and hopefully getting other people to talk about it and just having the conversation more and more and more.

Cause I kind of started feeling like a broken record after a little while. Well, I think those conversations are happening. I think more white people are engaging in that in a more meaningful way than they have historically. I think a lot of white people feel paralyzed. They're so terrified of getting it wrong that it prevents the conversation from even happening.

And there's a permissiveness to the way that you kind of speak about it that provides that kind of opening, I think, that allows people to feel a little bit more comfortable engaging in it, knowing you're not gonna get it right or being okay with misstepping as long as in good faith, you're grappling with it in a way that perhaps could have some kind of impact.

Yeah. I don't know, man. What's your sense of all of it now? I mean, it's been a year. We came back from Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago. And part of that, you know, even if the trial wasn't going on, like it was something I wanted to do

because there's this sense like, oh, well, well we did the George Floyd thing. Like now we're past that. And like, now we're, we're good. Right. And it's like, no, this is, this is something that's gonna take a very long time. Like we have to keep having it. But at the same time, are we belaboring it?

Are we sounding like a broken record? Like finding that balance, I think also. Well, I think, yeah, I think that's the shift that ultimately needs to happen. I would, I'm not, I can't speak for all black people, but I will speak from my own experience. It's like, I don't like having, like I'm like anybody else.

Like I have a book, it's coming out. It's about inspiration. I have other things that I'm excited about else. Like I have a book that's coming out. It's about inspiration. I have other things that I'm excited about. And every time the police or there's some situation that occurs, right? It's almost like as a black person, you have to stop and start talking about that and say her name and all these kinds of things.

And it's like white people have the option to do it. They don't have to do it. They can do it if they want to, but ultimately, as a black creator, you kind of have to at least acknowledge it in all. So it's like, you have to figure out ways to thread in police brutality with talking about art of inspiration. And-

Well, you did it in the book. I mean, you tell the story of you and your brother's kids and the sort of legacy of that and how these experiences recur over the course of your lifetime. And you just learn to assimilate to that reality on some level, but that this is nothing unique.

Anybody who's living the black experience knows this well. Yeah, and that's just part of what you do as a black person. But you'd like to see it with other people this well. Yeah, and that's just part of what you do as a black person. But you'd like to see it with other people as well. You'd like to see people take it as seriously when it happens to anyone. But it's a big world, people have a lot going on. So it's gonna take time, I guess.

But we have to keep talking about it. So I'm glad we've talked about it here on this podcast. I'm glad to talk about it with you. I'll talk about it as much as you like, but we also wanna talk about the book, right? Let's do it. Knowing where to look, you did an extraordinary job with this book. I love it, it's beautiful.

It's as much an art book as it is a book book. It is a bit of a choose your adventure type thing. You can crack it open to any page. And it's one of those things where like, oh, I didn't know that this is what I needed today, but this is exactly what I needed to hear. The artistry behind it is very cool. As you said, there's like Easter eggs in here

and the layout, you know, is what you've done with like font and typeset and all of that and graphic design all kind of feeds the themes that you're trying to express. And it's all, you know, oriented around these 108, essentially like anecdotes, lessons, stories, and 108, of course, being this spiritually relevant number that permeates Hinduism and Buddhism,

and is this metaphor for unity and wholeness and any number of other mystical factors that apply to that specific number, including the number of beads on any mala that you drape around your neck. Yeah, initially, obviously there was a conversation around 365, one a day, but I didn't want the experience to have a linear,

even an accidentally linear approach. I really wanted people to feel like they could just start anywhere. And even if they needed to revisit the same one, it's almost like one of those magic eight balls that you from when we were younger, where you shake it up and it's got that little blue liquid. And then the answer to whatever your question was

would come into the little viewer. And so I wanted it to have that kind of feeling and level of engagement with people. And so I wanted it to have that kind of feeling and level of engagement with people. And I feel like we've succeeded in that. We painstakingly went over every single detail. Like there's literally no detail in any of those pages that we didn't at least spend a few hours going over

and talking about how we can really bring the meaning through the design and the way the text is shaped and all of that. So I want it to be like this little adventure that people may not discover what's hidden in there until they read it two or three times or more. And it is about brevity too. Like it's not, they're simple stories,

but they're powerful lessons. It's a book about all kinds of things, kindness, patience, reflection, relationships, gratitude, trust, faith. Everything we struggle with. Small gestures, compassion. Everything we struggle with on a daily, daily moment to moment basis.

Almost anything you're conflicted with right now, if you crack the book open, you can probably find. And I tell people, this is not about giving you the answer. It's just a little nudge to maybe look in this direction or look behind you. And that's where you'll find your own answer, your own solution within yourself. If there is a meta arc or theme to it though,

it's in my mind, a book about inspiration and courage. The opening of the book with this story about your decision to go to Paris. I mean, that's an amazing story, how the universe conspired to support you at just the right time. And it's sort of faith and courage in motion. And having that level of conviction about that

at a young age, I think is interesting and kind of foreshadowed the life to come, even if you were not consciously aware of how it would play out. Yeah, I wasn't consciously aware of it, but obviously in hindsight, I feel very fortunate to have had that kind of experience in such an obvious way. So what you're referring to is I was,

when I graduated college, I had a nine to five job for a few months, realized right off the bat, this is not really for me, or it's gonna be here later. So I may as well do something else, see the world, exercise freedom. And I had this calling to go to Paris and there was nothing really more to it than that.

And I spent my last little money on a one-way ticket to Paris, not really knowing anyone there, not speaking the language, just really a leap of faith in every sense of that phrase. And landed in Paris and ended up after, on the first day ended up running into some friends of mine from college who then- Well, let's just, hold on, I'm gonna interrupt you.

We gotta back up a little bit. Cause there's two things that immediately pop into my head that I wanna know more about. And the first is the impulse, the germinating impulse to even do it in the first place. Like what was the conscious awareness around that? Like it was this knowing, like you just had to do this thing.

You knew on paper, it was kind of insane. Like you didn't even wanna tell your mom what you were doing. You told her you had a job in Paris, but you had this compulsion that you couldn't ignore that motivated this whole thing. Yeah, it was a thought that would not go away. And now I realize that whenever you have a thought

that feels charming to your heart and it doesn't go away, that's an indication from the universe, in quotes, the universe to move in that direction. It doesn't mean that you're necessarily meant to fulfill that completely, but just take a step or two in that direction. And then the next instructions will come to you once you or two in that direction. And then the next instructions will come to you once you start moving in that direction.

Sure, it's one thing to have that sense and it's another thing to trust it or to take action on it, especially as a young person who's got all this social programming around, like you gotta get the job and here's what you do and this is how it's gonna play out. So there's something about you that I think is unique in your ability at that young age to have that cognizance

to be able to recognize that as the opportunity that you needed to follow. Well, there was some fear there too. You know, like I wasn't all courageous and like, you know, like I definitely was skeptical. I definitely had doubts. I definitely had doubts. I definitely didn't know what was gonna happen, but I had been testing the waters with following

that voice for a few years prior to that, even in university. I remember I was, I applied for and campaigned for this job as the editor of the yearbook in college, which was a very prominent position because you got paid, you got a great parking space at Howard University in Washington, DC. And I did that at my junior year.

And so the expectation is once you do it, and now you've already had the experience under your belt, of course you're gonna do it your senior year. Why wouldn't you, right? But I decided something told me not to do it. And instead to go and explore, like working on Capitol Hill and doing these other things, taking photography classes and all this other stuff.

So I listened to it and it was great. And I don't know what I missed out on from not doing it, but those kinds of decisions I had been making just kind of, and I guess a part of that was not identifying success with money or with prominence or with titles, right? And I feel like I consciously had been questioning all of that

for a long time. And so when it came up again after college and I was at that job, I decided to leave the job because I didn't equate my success with rising up through the ranks of that advertising agency. And so it was just kind of an extension of all of that if I'm looking back at it now. But I like to speak about these things in ways

that help other people access the same kind of thing. And I wasn't meditating or I wasn't doing, we're talking to the mid nineties now. So there was none of that happening. But I do remember intentionally just testing the waters and questioning if this is really making me happy or if this path is going to lead to some sense of fulfillment within.

And so on paper, or if you pull the lens back on my life at that time, it looks like I was kind of all over the place. You know, I was trying this and trying that. And, but really I was just trying to taste different colors of life to find, okay, what's the path for me? And it happened to be taking me to Europe for a period. So you go to the airport, you got like a couple hundred bucks, right?

That's it? Yeah, nothing. And a backpack and the flights oversold. So they start doing an auction, who's gonna give up their seat. The auction ratchets up to 400 bucks or whatever it is. And you opt for that. So before you've even left, you already have taken care of your return ticket.

Yeah, I got two of those in two days in a row. So another signal from the universe, okay, this might work out. And you meet people on the airplane or in the airport? In the hotel. Right, in the hotel before you left, right. Because they gave up their seats as well. So you already know people who are going to Paris

who are Americans before you even go. So you have some kind of grounding foundation. You go to Paris, you interview for a job you don't get, but down the hall is like your college friend that you didn't even know lived in Paris. There's like all of these crazy- Well, this guy looked at me in that first office and says, what happened with you in this job?

And I said, I didn't get it. And he said, he was American, he was from Chicago. He said, I've met you before. He recognized me from Chicago. He recognized my photo from- From some modeling thing that you did? Yeah, from some modeling thing I did. He recognized me.

He happened to live in Paris and he was from Chicago and he was in the office that day, that morning. And the first place I went once I landed and I told him, oh, I got rejected. And he said, follow me. And he took me out of that office on the same floor of the same building down to the next office, right next to it.

And we walked in and then we saw my friend from college who turned around and goes, Oh my God, what are you doing here? And he didn't know that she knew you. No, he didn't know she was in there. It's like bananas. She just happened to be there. She wasn't working there.

She just happened to be there with her friend who happened to have a spare apartment because his mom had just left town to go visit his sister. And he said, where are you staying? I said, I don't have a place yet. I literally didn't have- It was the same day that you arrived. It was the same morning.

It was within two hours of arriving. That's crazy. And I had an apartment, I had friends, I had two vouchers for $400 for a flight back. Right. I mean, that's a powerful lesson. You're like, okay, this trust in the universe thing, you know, if you do it right,'re like, okay, this trust in the universe thing,

if you do it right, maybe this is the way. Yeah, and that's the whole through line of the book is really to follow your heart, take the leap of faith, which is where the courage part comes in because it requires, it's not about getting rid of the fear. It's about practicing the little things, taking little leaps of faith, whether it's, you know,

go right instead of left when you're going to work, or whether it's drive the car, ride the bike, like these little moments where you're, something inside of you saying, hey, maybe you should ride a bike today. You know, just listening to that. And once you do it enough times in the little ways, then it'll start to accumulate

and you'll be able to do it in bigger ways. Yeah, it really is about those little ways, then it'll start to accumulate and you'll be able to do it in bigger ways. Yeah, it really is about those little decisions, those little moments, having the awareness to be attuned to them when they occur so you can course correct. I mean, when I reflect back on my own life, like the huge changes that I've made are the product of small decisions

or having enough awareness in a particular moment in time to know this is where I pivot this way. And those pivots are very slight. You know, when we think about things like inspiration and following your passion and all of these things, we think about sweeping grand gestures, but it doesn't really work like that. And I appreciated in the book,

how you really were mindful of noting that it's not about that. It is these little things. And those little things are things that I think are visited upon all of us. So it's really a function of how aware you are. And that cultivating that awareness always goes back to these practices

that you've been teaching and practicing yourself forever, the mindfulness and the meditation. Yeah, and it's not even just like, you know, things that light you up inside. It could be like on the way here to this interview, I was parked, my rental car was parked in Brentwood and somebody side swiped it and ripped the side view mirror off and all of these things.

Normally when you walk back to your car and you see that, you're like, shit, now I have to like deal with all of whatever that entails, right? But I tell a story in the book about being stuck in this traffic jam and on my way to teach yoga one morning. And it was like this phantom traffic jam in West Hollywood. It was at a time where there's never traffic

on Fountain Avenue. So I'm like zigzagging around the Santa Monica Boulevard and trying to find the shortcut. And cause I'm running late, cause I didn't give myself enough time to account for a 15 minute traffic jam, end up showing up at class and 10 minutes late. And then turns out right at the top of the hour

when the class was supposed to start, this wall mirror, floor to ceiling wall mirror somehow dislodged and came crashing down right where I would have been sitting starting the yoga class. So they were in there sweeping up shards of broken mirror on the floor and all the students were in the back of the room.

And I was like, whoa, that traffic jam that just spontaneously appeared out of nowhere was actually saving me, potentially saving my life or saving me from having a very bad start to my day. And so I learned from those kinds of experiences that even when someone side swipes your car, and it's, I didn't do anything. I wasn't like parked illegally or anything like that.

I was just, it was a normal parking spot, but it's like, okay, well, evidently, my path is taking me in the direction of having to file a police report and all this. And who knows what's gonna come from that, right? So there's this almost, there's a sense of anticipation almost where you have enough of these kinds of experiences. And it's like, wow, it's almost like,

because it's taking you off of your normal schedule, it's almost like, okay, what's gonna happen? What kind of cool adventure? What kind of cool things are gonna happen? This is not happening to me, this is happening for me. I don't know how or why, but that will be revealed in time. And if you can just shift your perspective in that way, it could allow you to find a little bit more presence

and be a little bit more open to whatever those opportunities could potentially be. So that's been my experience. And that's like getting rejected from that job in Paris. Like if I had been all sulking and not wanting to talk to anybody, I wouldn't have been open to the guy coming up to me, wanting to take me to the place

where I was gonna get all of the apartments and everything else I needed. So it's almost like you can't judge a situation based on whatever's happening. You just have to go with that flow of whatever it is, which sounds again, very simplistic, but it works. It's so hard to do. It is.

Just to maintain neutrality. Yes. Oh God, really? This is like interfering with my plan. Yep. That's why the book is called Knowing Where to Look. Cause it's like,ality. It's like, oh God, really? This is like interfering with my plan. Yep. That's why the book is called Knowing Where to Look. Cause it's like, even in those situations, the answers, the solutions are there

if you know where to look for them. So I want people to be able to use it for those purposes. When you're having a bad day for whatever reason, usually the bad day is a result of things not going your way, right? If you know, kind of, if I read that story about the mirror crashing, then it may allow you

to release that, that negativity around the situation and just kind of like settle into it and be open to it. And, and you never know what's gonna happen after that. That's what's exciting about life. Yeah, you mentioned, you know, if you had been sulking after that initial interview, and I think that's a key thing because it's about the energy with which you carry yourself. Like how you're reacting or responding is, you know,

directly correlates into how you're being with yourself and how you're being impacts how you're interacting with other people and how they're gonna react to you. You tell a story in the book about how you're interacting with other people and how they're gonna react to you. You tell a story in the book about how you engage with this flight attendant and you go out of your way to like shower her with praise and thank her for her hard work. And it must be hard.

After being angry that she was bugging me. Right, like to take that contrary action and then to get this amazing result. And I think that's really powerful. And it reminds me of an experience that I had when we were in Minneapolis. So our kind of Sherpa boots on the ground friend of mine who helped make this trip happen

and was a really wonderful host to us when we were in town. His name is Brogan Graham. He's been on the podcast before. He's the founder of November Project. Have you ever met him? Do you know him? No, never met him. He's an extraordinary guy.

One of the, I mean, there are extroverted people and then there are Broganverted people. This guy's so extroverted, it's like off the chain. And he has a practice of not only carrying himself with just unbridled positivity and optimism and everything that he does such that it's become constitutional to him, but he makes a point of going out of his way when you're,

I mean, you can't walk down the street without this guy going up to every single person and asking them how they're doing and engaging in them and saying we're new friends and like exchanging phone numbers, like it's exhausting, but it's also, it's a really powerful lesson because all of these people leave those encounters feeling better

because he's given them a little bit of love. He's funny, he's a comedian. He's like super, you know, present and engaging. And it was kind of a marvel to watch him do that. And at one point, I think it was Jason asked him, like, does anybody just like, you know, shine you on? And while he's like all the time, he's like, it doesn't matter.

He's like, it's just taking hits a bat. Like I'm just, you know, I'm getting more swings. You know, I'm just, it's a practice. It's a practice, I show up for it. And one of the other things that he does is rather than, and I've started incorporating this into my life as a result, rather than texting people or when you're in a text conversation,

he sends people what he calls short films. Like he'll just make a video and you know, he'll just talk extemporaneously about something and he'll tell a joke and he just sends that. There's no expectation that you have to get back to him. And there's such a difference when you get one of those, you feel much more connected to that person. And I've started doing that with some friends

and it's been a really cool experience of flipping that equation of like, oh, I'm too busy, or I don't wanna text this person back or doing it to somebody you haven't talked to in a while. And they just get a little movie in their messages app out of the blue. And it makes me feel better. And I just feel like it's a practice

that I wanna continue to cultivate. It's just an example of the story that you told with the flight attendant. 100% man. And I tell people, because people will hear that and go, oh, I'm not that kind of person. I can never do that.

But what's your version of that? Like maybe it's a voice note. Maybe you draw something on your drawing app and you send, like, there's different ways. Maybe you sing a song, maybe different ways for different people, if it resonates, if it kind of like tingles something in your heart, then that's a sign that you should not ignore

that you should find your way of doing that. And the only way to do that is to start doing it, not to overthink it, but just to start doing it in ways that make you uncomfortable. And then eventually you'll kind of hone in on what makes you comfortable. Well, the subtlety of it, the tingling can't be confused with the fear

because it does require you to do something different is by definition to get out of your comfort zone a little bit. So if there's that tingling, it's gonna push up against a little bit of a fear response. A hundred percent. And so like decoupling that or figuring out where you sit with all of that,

I think is a very subtle art. Yeah, it's like when I first started writing these emails that ended up with culminating into this book, knowing where to look, I had been receiving Seth Godin's emails forever. And then there was another friend, you probably know Jeff Kober from the recovery community. He's a meditation teacher.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he'd started writing these daily emails and I was like, oh man, the thought to write a daily email just kept percolating. And then eventually I decided, okay, well, I need to take this thing seriously, but I'm gonna run out of content after like three weeks. It's scary.

There's only so many stories that exist in the world. And I'd already written my book. So I'd already like thought about a lot of stories for my first book, The Inner Gym, which we talked about on this podcast many years ago. And so, yeah, the fear was there and the fear was just as intimidating as the idea was inspiring.

And, but again, I just had to start and sure enough, after two or three weeks, I ran out of content, but then something really interesting happened that I would never have discovered had I not started, which is from showing up every day and Steven Pressfield talks about this, this sort of muse-like creativity

started to kind of come through me. And I was like, wow, I literally would be, having to hit the send button when 10 minutes, and I had been sitting there for two hours trying to think of something interesting to say. And then in the final five minutes, it would like come through me and I would write it down and you get this feeling, okay, this is it. And then you would send it out. And the next day,

same thing would happen. Maybe you have a little more time, but I just realized that if you keep showing up, you don't have to figure out what to do. You just have to make the space for it. It's kind of like that story I told about, I don't know if you remember the Moses story, but it's one of my favorite stories in the book where it's a biblical story where, you know, we think about Moses as this kind of charismatic leader of the Hebrews and, you know,

he went and faced Pharaoh and all of these things, but the reality of that story, according to historians, was that Moses was a reluctant leader, right? When he was at the burning bush and got the message from God to go to Pharaoh and let his people, demand that his people go. So Moses hesitated. He was like, he didn't wanna do it

because as they have now identified, Moses had a speech impediment. So he was a stutterer. So this stutterer who had never been in a leadership position in his life is being told from, quotes, God, to go to the most powerful, most dangerous person in the entire land and make a demand on his property.

Right. Tell him to give his property away. So you can imagine his first reaction is, you got the wrong person. And God's like, no, no, no, you got the perfect person for this because you have to rise to the occasion. And so then Moses asks the most sensible question

that anybody would ask in a situation like that, which is, let's suppose I were able to get in front of Pharaoh, if that's even possible, which is probably not, but let's just run this hypothetical out a little further. What would I say? And God said, don't worry about that. Just get in front of him and then you'll know what to say at the time.

And that's kind of it. You know, that's the path. Like you want the whole blueprint. It's like, no, no, no, just take the first step. And that's exactly what happened to me. I started writing these things. I knew I was gonna run out of content. I didn't know what I was gonna say after that.

And I just had that message inside, just write what you know now, and then you'll figure out what to say next. Right, yeah, you have this quote, something about, that's profound, something about how the next steps aren't revealed until you take the first step. And I think we're all victims to one degree or another

of analysis paralysis. We wanna know what the map looks like in its entirety before we even begin. And so we never get out of the starting gate. And I know this, all the things that I've created started with taking a step and having no idea where it would head, but having on some level, some trust that if I take that step,

that that next step will present itself. And it's never failed me. And I think also, you know, the lesson in what you just shared is this idea that it's a witch's brew or this recipe between practicality and mysticism. Like the practical aspect of showing up every single day provides the space for the mystical unknown to enter.

You know, and that's something Pressfield talks about all the time. And there's also shades of kind of 12-step recovery. Like when you get sober, the prospect of never drinking again is completely overwhelming. And you're continually told time and time again, you don't have to worry about that.

You just have to hit the pillow tonight sober. You show up for the page. What's my daily email gonna be today? I don't have to worry about the fact that I've committed to doing it every day. I just have to get this one thing done for today and trust that tomorrow when I open up to the page that something will inspire me.

Yeah, it's a momentum game, 100%. And that's how this podcast started. We talked about it before on my podcast. You went to that warehouse in Hawaii and just kind of let it rip. I was like, am I gonna do a second one? I don't know. Like this was fun. Let's see where it goes. There was no, I was like, am I gonna do a second one? I don't know. Like this was fun.

Let's see where it goes. But you learned about the sound, you learned, you wouldn't know what to even think about the sound until you actually have echoey sound in the first few episodes. Yeah, like I didn't know that I probably shouldn't record this in a warehouse. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Or how am I gonna put these quote, these little monologues on Instagram with captions that look all fancy like these other people do? Well, I don't know. I guess I have to just film something first. And there's this thing called the internet

and there's seems to be a lot of answers on that. Yeah, it's not like the answers may come if you don't do the work. You actually have to do the work. That's the requirement. Yeah, you say, I love your quote, like the't do the work. You actually have to do the work. That's the requirement. Yeah, you say, I love your quote, like the work is the shortcut. Yeah, yeah.

You know? Yeah. We're all looking for a way to avoid that, but the work is the means by which you find the answers to which you seek. Just committing to taking those first steps. That's the shortest route. Yeah. just committing to taking those first steps, that's the shortest route. There is a sort of precarious aspect of stepping into this world of self-help

and grappling with the ideas of curiosity and inspiration and motivation and discipline and purpose and passion and living your life in accordance with your values and self-actualization, like these have all become commodified to one degree or another, and also sort of diluted in what they actually mean. I think the interplay between these types of words,

these words in general getting thrown around like fairly cavalierly reminds me that I'm not really even sure we agree on what they, they actually mean how they operate, how they interact with each other, let alone how to properly understand and leverage them to move your life in the direction of your aspirations. These are all themes and words and topics

that you are grappling with in the book. So I think it would be helpful and instructive to spend a little bit of time talking about that. I've got a story in the book about how I was in a yoga class one day and the teacher popped up into a headstand. And he said, you know, the headstand is the most spiritual pose in yoga.

And I was a yoga teacher at the time. I was like, what the fuck is he talking about? The headstand, how do you qualify? And then I realized that his definition of spiritual was different from his definition of spiritual was different from my definition of spiritual. And that was a big aha for me. Cause then I realized that every time I get into these kind of confrontations with people,

and this is important also in the race conversation, right? When you talk about racism or discrimination or whatever systemic, there are people have different definitions, almost all the time. Almost every relationship fight is the result of people having a different understanding of what it means to feel safe

or what it means to love someone, right? Somebody may think love is always being there, no matter what. Someone else may think love is allowing someone to fully express independently and then coming together and sharing whatever fulfillment they have inside. Like there's different understandings

of all of these really simple terms that we kind of take for granted. And so again, I'm not presenting myself as the big guru with all the answers to all these questions. What is self-actualization? What is what? I'm just saying, have a conversation and talk about what your understanding

of self-actualization or love is. And then we can contrast that with my understanding. We can find where we find the similarities and then we can move from there. Maybe the ultimate solution is we have to go to a therapist and have that therapist mediate like our mutual understanding of these things. Cause that's where you're gonna find unity.

Otherwise, if you'd wanna try to force your understanding onto me of whatever the term is, then that's where you're gonna get disunity and confrontation and what, you know, you're gonna create an experience that you ultimately don't want to create in your life. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's powerful.

When I think about how you think about these things, my sense is that it begins, like if you're on this path towards greater fulfillment or greater purpose, a greater purpose driven life on some level, that this journey is sparked initially by curiosity and the courage to follow that curiosity. That may morph into what we might commonly understand

as inspiration or a sense of direction, like a North star. And it's through that pursuit that purpose is revealed. Is that a fair like characterization of kind of how you think about it? Yeah, and I would go further to suggest, cause I don't think anybody knows for a fact, but to suggest that for those people who don't identify with a purpose

or don't think that they have found their purpose, I would suggest that it's almost like the fish and water thing. Like you're so deeply immersed and enmeshed in your purpose. Whatever you're doing is a part of that purpose that you can't really see it. And that's okay. Cause that's what's normally happening for most people. And if we start thinking about it too much,

it can actually cause us to be a little clumsy with our normal, you know, living our normal life. But if you just keep following whatever you can sense as your heart, a message from your heart, and this is where meditation and all those kinds of practices really come in handy because it helps you to discern between messages from the alcohol, from the pain body, from the trauma,

from the stress. Or the scrolling. Or the scrolling versus a legitimate message from that still small voice of your inner guidance. And again, that takes practice. So I say, start with the little things, find the courage with the little things, right? Even if it's, if your heart's saying, you know,

have a salad today instead of fried, whatever, you know, follow with that one little time, just to reinforce it. And every time we do that, it gets stronger and stronger. There's no way to shortcut this process. You have to like start listening to it in order to strengthen it and allow it to turn the volume up. And then once the volume turns up, then it becomes a lot easier to take those leaps.

But that takes time. So patience is a requisite in all of this. And I think, you know, baked into that is an appreciation for the slow evolution of these kinds of things and an appreciation for the fact that it is about small gestures that aggregate over time. And it's difficult in our culture

where we're so prone to fall in love with the overnight success, or we have this fantasy of that, or in our scrolling, we see, oh, you gotta quit your job and here's how I made a million dollars. And you know, like there's all these narratives out there that I think make a lot of people feel

either shame or guilt or inadequate because their lives aren't measuring up to this, you know, fantasy version of whoever is, you know, spinning some yarn in a short video or in a post on social media. That's why I love memorial services and funerals. As sad as they are, you get reminded of what's truly important in life.

You see everyone that all they talk about are the small gestures. So at the end of the day, no matter who you are, no matter how many accomplishments you have, no matter how much money you've acquired or titles or whatever, what people are going to talk about from your life are those small moments where you allow people,

you help people feel seen and heard, you stop, you went out of your way five minutes here and there. That's what people remember. Yeah, that tropey thing of, it's not what you do, it's how you make people feel. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it sounds cliche because it's true.

And I think we need to be reminded of that as often as possible because the social conditioning, no matter how much we intellectually understand that making more money is not gonna make me happier, right? There's still- We all seem to still think that we're gonna find an end run around that one. Yeah, and we still make choices based on that hypothesis, mostly subconsciously, because that's the society

we've grown up in, this sort of casino capitalist society of zero sum, I need to make as much as possible because no one's gonna look out for me and blah, blah, blah. And I'm not anti-capitalist, I'm not anti-profit, I'm not anti-success,, I'm not anti-profit, I'm not anti-success. That's what, that's not what my message is. I'm pro following your heart while you're doing all that other stuff, you know?

And if you can put as much focus and attention on following your inner guidance, what you're gonna find in my own experience, what you're gonna find is you become more fulfilled as a person. And then that inner fulfillment starts to drive the agenda. You start to take jobs, you start to engage in relationships and friendships based on what you feel inside, right? Which is I'm already complete.

So I'm just doing this because this is a great outlet for the fulfillment that I can tangibly access inside. And it changes the why, it changes why you do the things you do, right? It's not to get happy, it's because you're already fulfilled inside. And again, when I'm talking about these terms, fulfillment and happiness,

I'm not talking about binary terms. I'm talking about on a spectrum, right? Somebody may be at a five on a scale of 10 to fulfillment. Someone else may be on a seven. Someone else may be on a nine, right? And so wherever we fall on that spectrum, that will determine the extent to which we can make those kinds of more powerful, expansive choices, right?

So if you only, if you're at a five, then that means maybe half the time you can make that courageous choice and the other half of the time you succumb to the fear. So really the game is how do I raise my baseline level of happiness or fulfillment, right? And again, that's where I loop back around. And I talk about this a lot in the book,

back to meditation. Like you can't ignore that sort of foundational inner work that, and it doesn't have to be seated eyes closed meditation. It could be journaling, could be gratitude exercises, could be volunteering, right? Some kind of inner work is almost required. We'll take almost out of it. It's required in order to raise that baseline level.

You can't ignore that and be happy at the same time. That's the premise by which I'm presenting all of these stories. Yeah. People don't wanna hear that. No. You know what I mean? Just give me the good stuff.

Drink this sugar drink and you'll get happy. It's like, yeah, just give me the thing that's gonna give me the thing that I want. Like I get all that, that's fine. Or you don't understand my life. Like I'm working two jobs, I got kids. I'm just, you know, like that just sounds, that sounds cool, I'm happy for you, Light.

But I'm already, you know, tapped to the gills. And so I guess in the next life, right? So how do you communicate with somebody who feels trapped in that way, in a very real way? Yeah, I mean, look, in the recovery community, what do they say? Sometimes you gotta hit rock bottom in order to appreciate making different choices.

And unfortunately, and maybe fortunately, a lot of people are on that path, right? And the path is the path. Like it's, you know, nobody wants to go see a movie where the protagonist only has great things happen to them. And then the movie ends. You wanna see the whole trajectory. You wanna see the low moment.

You wanna see the rock bottom. You wanna see the self doubt. You wanna see the redemption. And so we're all kind of in our own version of that hero's journey. And so knowing you can't go wrong, that's the great news about it, right? Whatever your belief is about what I'm saying or about what you've read somewhere that you've dismissed,

you can't go wrong. That's a part of the story. And that's what's so great about it. Whether it's a traffic jam or someone side swipes your car, someone gets sick, like that's a part of your story. And all I'm saying is if you can be open to the fact that there's some opportunity there, whatever it is, then it will gift you with some insight

that you would not have had otherwise that could help you bring about the things that you feel you're being blocked from. Because if you're in that situation where you're thinking, okay, I don't have any time to think or space to think about any of these kinds of really highfalutin self-actualization concepts, then it's usually you see your job

or you see your family situation as the obstacle. And as our friend Ryan Holiday says, the obstacle is the way, but you have to be open to that as a possibility. So I just wanna help people look at that differently. That's all. The other big stumbling block and you've spoken about this quite a bit

is the inner critic. You know, that keeps people from even getting out of the gate or even contemplating the possibility that change is available. Yeah, and look, I don't wanna sugarcoat any of this. That's a real thing. Your inner critic is a real thing. And what I'm doing is I'm showing you

that it didn't come out of nowhere. Like the inner critic develops and gets cultivated over many, many years and many instances of reinforcing that belief. And so in order to really overcome it properly, we have to do the opposite. We have to reinforce a different type of belief. And if we have enough empirical evidence,

enough experience for ourselves that there's some light at the end of this tunnel, then if we keep moving in that direction, then eventually we will be able to contend with the fear and the inner critic and all those other things that are kind of stopping us from accessing our full potential. And so I just, you know, that's the whole idea of these stories

is just to kind of chip away at the critic and all those other inner voices that we all have inside of us. Like I have them, you have them, whoever's listening to this has them. The only difference in someone who seems to be on their path and someone who feels like lost is that, it's not that that person is less busy or less fearful

or any of those things. It's just that that person has usually challenged those small moments where the inner voice seems to be driving the agenda and they've experimented with a different choice long enough and held on in there long enough for some new insight to take shape. Sure, and that requires awareness plus courage,

but developing those always goes back to getting quiet. There's no end run around this inner work because if you're not consciously aware of how you're operating in the world and responding to the signals and the stimuli that are getting thrown at you, then you're incapable of seeing the broader patterns that continue to play out in your life

that then prevents you from being able to create that new narrative, to understand when it's the critic that's creeping up or the fear response, so that you can make a conscious choice to behave in contradiction to that. Yeah, and I would give your audience credit. I'm sure no one, I mean, you know,

there are very few people listening to this particular podcast who aren't at least a little bit open to that different sort of path just from your own personal story, you know, and transformation. And so, yeah, it starts with awareness. And that's all I wanna do is help people become aware. I don't have everyone's,

there's no one size fits all solution to any of it. But we do have to be at least aware that there are some inconsistencies in what's happening to me and the way I feel about it in life. Yeah. That can find more symmetry or synergy within that, at least mentally, right? Starting just mentally, like shifting.

Like I really had to work to shift my, when I first saw my rental car side swiped, I really had to, cause I didn't get the insurance. Oh no. My credit card should cover it, but you know, it takes, I have to literally, I have to work on that, you know? Yeah. And, and.

That'll throw anyone off their game. Yeah, exactly. And it ends up ruining your whole day. But then if that happens, what are you missing out on? If you let that, something like that ruin your whole, the rest of your day or week or whatever. Yeah, how are you so easily relinquishing your power? Yeah.

To some external event. But it's easy to do if that's, if you have a string of those, if you're dealing with racism and then you're dealing with a boss that's like, you know, not understanding you or it's incompetent. And then you're dealing with something like that. And that was the whole idea.

And if you can't pay it and, or if you do pay it, then you're not gonna be able to pay your rent. These are like cascading things that create a lot of chaos. That's what we talked about with the inner gym, which is like building up the inner muscles to be able to contend with that. Otherwise it feels like running an ultra marathon. You've never even ran around the block before.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's really true. And again, these things are subtle, they're whispers. And if you don't have that quietude or you haven't cultivated or finally attuned your awareness and you're just ping-ponging through life, reacting impulsively to everything that's getting thrown at you, you're gonna miss the miracle, right?

Is essentially what you're saying. And you have, you know, within many of the stories throughout the book, there are examples of little gestures that end up being very meaningful in a way that you wouldn't suspect from, you know, the kid who was gonna jump off the bridge and has a brief encounter with a stranger

that literally, you know, unbeknownst to the stranger, you know, altered this person's life. You know, it is things like that, that are the most meaningful. You know, you told the story of Moses, we all want God to talk to us directly and tell us what to do. And it just doesn't work like that.

Or, God is talking to us all the time from within. And, you know, we're reacting like Moses initially reacted, but what happens if we do the opposite? Kind of like the Jerry Seinfeld story of, that episode when George Costanza complains that his life is just in shambles. And Jerry says, why don't you just do the opposite of everything you've been doing?

Yeah. And he does the opposite and everything you've been doing? Yeah. And he does the opposite and his life turns out to be, you know, wilder than his imagination ever was. And so, you know, that those kinds of lessons, I think we just need to hear over and over and over in as many different ways as possible. So. Yeah, contrary action.

Yeah. That's what you hear time and time again in 12 step. It's like, well, my impulse is to react in this way. And it's like, what happens if you do the opposite? Because we already know what happens when you do it that way. You've got a lifetime of that and it doesn't play out well. So why don't you try this?

Like, oh, that doesn't feel right at all. Yeah, well, it's a muscle. Yeah, and the cognitive dissonance is so strong. Like I was talking to a friend of mine today who came up with this sort of, what I thought was a harebrained idea, but he had already convinced himself that this is what he needed to do.

And I've gotten better, because I'm not perfect, I've gotten better at just saying, okay, let's see what happens in that situation. And people have to kind of run their own research and experiments. And with the understanding that you can't go wrong, because even if you arrive at a destination

that isn't what you ultimately wanted, it's now you know, you have another, you have more evidence that this is not the way, right? And it may take accumulating, you know, all this evidence in order to finally be open to this other way. So that's why I say you're already on your path and your path may have to take you through these,

these twists and turns. The universe is always knocking and those knocks are kind of guardrails that are set up and you bang up against them. And those are little light knocks like, hey, maybe that wasn't the right thing to do. But if you continue to ignore those signals, in my experience, the universe starts knocking louder

and louder and louder until some cataclysmic event occurs that finally gets your attention. And it's only in retrospect that you realize like, oh, you know, it was trying to tell me all along, like I could have gotten off this train way back there and spared myself all of this pain, but it takes what it takes. Pain is a great motivator.

And when the pain of your circumstances exceeds the fear of getting out of your comfort zone and trying something different, that's the space where real change can occur. And that's the power of not numbing yourself, not numbing the pain. The pain is useful in that way because it can help you make different choices.

Whereas if you numb the pain, you tend to make the same choices. Which is at odds with all the cultural signaling that we have, which is that we should be pain-free all the time. We should always be happy. If you're not feeling that way, there's something wrong with you, here's a medication.

Yeah, so we have a lot of work to do. Yeah. How has, as somebody who's been practicing and teaching meditation for so long, how has it evolved? Like, what is your perspective on it now since the last time we spoke, particularly in terms of like this,

rather unique year that we've all experienced? Yeah, I think this was the pop quiz, like we got the lesson, you should be meditating, you should be doing your inner work. And for those of us who kind of took that seriously, I think this year was an opportunity to really go deeper into that. And for those of us who kind of, you know, didn't study for the test, it was just like it was in school. Like you felt overwhelmed, you felt unsure of yourself, but you made a point to go back

and take a peek at the lesson because the test is gonna be repeated again and again and again until we get it. So on one hand, I think that, again, like all quote unquote bad situations, there's some value and opportunity And again, like all quote unquote bad situations, there's some value and opportunity in even in the pandemic. And hopefully you were able to find something within yourself that you could help to improve

or to build or to work on and or help someone else. If you're already feeling complete, then you are able to use that as an opportunity to help other people, right? There's always an opportunity. And I really do feel like ultimately our life must be about service in some capacity. Yeah.

And so, whether we're serving ourselves, self-care, whether we're helping others, whether we're serving ourselves, self-care, whether we're helping others, whether we're helping our community, we have to make that a part of the daily agenda, not just how can I, you know, invest in more crypto for the sake of making more money so that I can be more comfortable. Like the whole comfortable approach to happiness

is really backward in my opinion. And it really needs to be about how can I use whatever I have to the highest advantage of the people who are within my circle of influence, which everyone has somebody who's in their circle of influence. And that could be through writing,

could be through speaking, could be through posting, could be through, you know, whatever means speaks to you the loudest at this moment in time. But I think that's what those kinds of opportunities are for. And it also exposes where we are living our lives most unsustainably and perpetuating a sense of disconnection and disunity with one another. So, there's some opportunities within that as well

as a society. And I'm glad that that's become a part of the conversation. What you said makes me feel hopeful, but then I look at what's going on. I see the divisiveness, I see the pain, I see very real suffering. A lot of people who are struggling in meaningful ways with the challenges that they've been presented with.

How do you grapple with, what is your perspective on humanity's ability to emerge out of this situation or just in general to thrive in a new and different way? Yeah, we're in phase one. Like if I came in here for this interview and I was like, Rich, you did X, Y, and Z to me. And you're like, what are you talking about?

I didn't do anything. I don't know you like that. And that's those kinds of conversations are happening with people where you have one group of people who are feeling accused of something that they don't feel that they are directly responsible for and another group of people who feel victimized or feel abused.

And so they're going through the stages of grief. And so that's gonna create contention in the middle. And we have to move through that. It happens with everything. It happened with me too, right? It happens with all these different movements where we kind of go in these extreme ways in the beginning, but then eventually we kind of come back to the middle

and we try to find unity in the middle. And I think it's a reminder that we're a lot more human than we probably imagine ourselves to be. All of us are, which is a good thing too, because we're, I mean, we pulled the lens back further. We're just animals. We're animals who can think about the future and the past more than say a monkey or a dog or whatever can.

And we can organize a little bit better than most other animals. We're not, I mean, it's still an argument of whether we're the most intelligent creatures, right? If you look at the way we treat each other, that comes in a serious question compared to whales and dolphins and things like that. So I think this is a great first step.

At least we're talking about it. Cause before this, you had a whole segment of population who were feeling abused and there was no one to talk to about it. Because before this, you had a whole segment of the population who were feeling abused and there was no one to talk to about it except for themselves. So now we're talking about it, you know, and maybe by phase four or five, you'll start to see a lot more unity in these conversations

instead of a lot of defensiveness. Yeah, I mean, the manner in which change occurs, transpires is super interesting. These changes always end up happening in the middle through conversations of people slowly coming together and trying to identify what they actually agree on and concessions are made and all the like, but the movements themselves are usually catalyzed

by people who have no interest in the middle. Like they, you know, it's through a very loud voice that's taking, you know, a very intense stand on a particular issue that tends to garner people's attention and create the conversation in the first place. So it's almost like you need those voices, you need people who can do that, are willing to do that. And then you need the negotiators

and the people in the middle as well. Like, I think it's like all voices are required. Also, if you look at Hollywood, if you look at just media in general, right? And this is, I don't know this for a fact, but I'll just guesstimate that maybe 90% of the stories that are told are pretty much all about white people in every conceivable situation, white people in space,

white people in the future, white people in the past, white people doing all these things. That's the lens on everything. So naturally it breeds empathy for people, white people in different situations, but there are not that many stories about this, the so-called other, about brown people in all in space. No one's seen a movie about some black person on Neptune,

you know, fighting with Matt Damon or something like that. And so there's not, it's harder to relate to these other people. If your story is being told in every which way possible, and then these other people are saying, well, I'm just like you. And it's like, well, okay. But I think what's happening now, which is great,

is that Hollywood is telling more stories of other people. And the more we hear those songs, the more we see those movies and television shows and narratives, the more people will start to relate to these brown and black people in all these different situations. And I think probably that is gonna bring us closer together faster than just telling someone, hey, I'm like you and I'm human just like you.

I have these dreams just like you. And then having them kind of use their imagination. We have to, we're a society, we have to actually see it. We have to feel the empathy in that situation. And then we kind of embody it in our life. And I think that's what's good. I know you did a podcast with Ava DuVernay. Did you, is that something that you talked about with her?

I haven't listened to that. Yeah, she talked about, she's got this initiative called Array where she is bringing more brown and black people to the crews of these films. So she's actually really passionate because she's obviously a director and she's done some wonderful work in documentaries and film.

And, but in most of Hollywood productions, even if it's a black movie, the people behind the scenes are not mostly black. And that can make a difference as well in the way that black people are filmed. Like literally director of photography may use different filters to bring out the beauty and all of the nuances of people with darker skin.

And those kinds of considerations aren't usually made in the executive suites of these studios. So the more diversity, and that's the big conversation now as well, is the more diversity you have in the boardroom and the C-suite, in the production, the more valuable the product, the end result becomes because it's really speaking to more people.

So you're able to do more of what you already wanna do, usually, which is make money and have influence and have impact. You're able to do more of that by being more inclusive. So that was kind of her general message. Yeah, and you're creating role models within those communities that lead to- Other little kids wanting to dream to be a DP.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, or director, exactly. And her story is awesome, man, because she didn't start directing until she was- I didn't realize she was like a publicist, right? She was a publicist. She had a very successful publicist firm, a PR firm. And then when she was 32,

she was on the set of collateral with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. And she said, you know, I could do this. Michael Mann was directing. She said, I could do this. And she started in her off time and her weekends, holidays, she started making these little short films. And then that cascaded into her making a first feature.

Also- Curiosity. Le leading to tiny actions. The leap of faith exactly. But it started really small for her. And she was almost, she was like uniquely qualified to do the kind of work that she was doing. And that's just kind of going back to our original message is that's what I'm telling people is that you have some unique qualifications that only you can do

and no one else in the world can do, but you have to follow the inner blueprint in order to unveil them for the world, right? It's like Ikea instructions. Like it looks confusing when you first look at it, but if you just take it step by step by step and it all kind of comes together and only you can do it. But the difference would be

when you get the Ikea instructions, all the instructions are there. So you could do it. But the difference would be when you get the IKEA instructions, all the instructions are there. So you could read through them all the way to the end. But in this case, you just get one instruction and you're told to trust that the next one, when you complete it, there will be another one. Right, and it may not, you may get it underneath the toilet

or you may get it on the roof. And it might be in Swedish. It might be in Swedish. And you won't be able to read it. Yeah, but you have to go to an interpreter and that interpreter ends up being your fiance because you have a connection and it's like everything is so beautiful. It's almost like a beautiful-

It's a game. Yeah, it's like a beautiful little game that all kind of comes together, puzzle. Right. But when you look back at the end of life, and that's what I love about what Steve Jobs said, you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back.

When you look back at the end of life, everything kind of- It's crazy how that works. And the older I get- Everything connects. And I reflect back and I'm like, it all makes sense. And when you're in it, it's utterly confusing and baffling. And it makes no sense. And you think you're the only one who's confused,

but when you get older, you realize everybody's confused. Nobody knows what they're doing. Nobody. And that's another great thing about the pandemic is it exposed the fact that even at the highest levels of government, nobody knew what they were doing. I know. You know, we're all just basically responding.

So disappointing you're a kid, you just think like the adults, they know what they're doing. They're in control. They got it covered. I was talking to my daughter the other day and I was like, cause she's 17 now. And I was like, my daughter the other day and I was like, cause she's 17 now and I was like, it must be so disappointing when you first realize

like adults don't know shit. She was laughing, you know, cause when you're 17, you think you know it all. Like I didn't hit on that part of it, but you are developing an awareness that all these people that you thought had things managed, you know, there's a lot of fuck ups out there too, right? And that I think fuels that adolescent or teenage,

you know, sense that like you could do better, which is great because we need young people to feel that way that gives them the energy to, you know, inherit culture and reshape it. A hundred percent, man. And yeah, it's a beautiful system when you really step back and take a lookhape it. A hundred percent, man. And yeah, it's a beautiful system when you really step back and take a look at it and everyone is necessary.

Like everyone's story counts no matter what it is, right? Even if you don't end up doing anything that you consider to be remarkable, right? But you somehow share your life experience with someone else that could trigger. I mean, a lot of these stories in this book are things I've heard from other people. Like the one, I don't know if you read the one

about the bridge, the little note that was on the bridge. No, I didn't read that one. In Vancouver. So I was on a, I was coming from a wanderlust event where I was giving a talk and a whistler and then me and Gary Zukav, do you know who he is? He wrote the Seat of the Soul.

It's one of my favorite spiritual books from back in the day. And he and I ended up being on the same speaking panel. I was so excited because I got to spend a lot of quality time with him. And then he and I were assigned to the same van to go back to the Vancouver airport. So we're in this van and our flights are both

at around the same time. And there's all this traffic, this unexpected traffic going over the Lions, I think it's called the Lions Gate bridge or something in Vancouver. And it looks like we're gonna miss our flight. So that's in the conversation and in the atmosphere, there's this little tension with these people who are like these spiritual people and whatnot.

And we're just kind of inching along. We get to the very peak of the bridge and I'm in the back seat and I'm just kind of like, just kind of glancing around and looking and I'm kind of feeling, I'm working the math on all the things I'm gonna miss because I'm gonna miss this flight because I have another appointment

and I have to, you know, rental car reservation, all this stuff. And I just glance over and then on the side of the bridge is this little, it looks like a little note card that's like taped very sloppily on the bridge. And this is handwritten things scribbled on there. And I don't have the best eyesight. I can see well enough to like get by,

but I got prescribed glasses when I was eight years old, never wore them because I didn't wanna have to be dependent on them for the rest of my life. So I see this- No way, get out? So you just walk around not being able to see well when you could just wear glasses? I mean, I could see well enough. I could read signs and stuff,

but sometimes it's a little blurry when I look at things closely. Anyway, I see this little message and I take my phone out cause this is what I do when you can't see well, you take a picture of it and you enlarge it. And so I did that, took a picture of it and then put my phone back in. And later on, we barely, barely got to the airport.

We barely made the flight. When I was sitting at- What page are you on? This is page 104. When I was sitting at the gate, I pulled out my phone and I found that I was just, you know, you just kill time. I'm looking through the camera roll.

I almost forgot about that photo and I found it. And you see it's actually on the right side. It's a really small thing. So you have to pull it close to see it because I wanted people to have that same effect. Go in there, I'm trying to scroll with my fingers. Yeah, right, me too. It says the future belongs to those who believe

in the beauty of their dreams. And I didn't know it at the time, but that's an Eleanor Roosevelt quote. But I started thinking like, well, it's the story behind, like who put that there? Was it for someone who may potentially wanna jump from the bridge? Was it for cars? Like, was it for someone who was stuck in a traffic jam

on their way back from Whistler to the airport, who would take a picture of it and share it in their book and use this story to inspire people to make little gestures of kindness like that. You know, it's like- It's a mystery box. Yeah, but it was just like this beautiful moment that again, if I was like stuck in the misery

of this potentially missed flight, I would not have had the space to capture that little thing. And whoever did it, I just, it's fascinating to me. Like they have no idea this is gonna be in a book that will potentially last forever. Yeah, that's crazy. That's like, you know, the butterfly that flaps its wings and you know, changes the weather.

6,000 miles away. Yeah, it just, cause it's not even like graffiti that's gonna be there. It's temporal, right? It's gonna rain and that'll wash away. But in the meantime, I suspect thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people

drove across that bridge, never saw it. Never saw it. Or if they saw it, it didn't register. You might be the only person. Maybe, that's what I'm saying. That was impacted in any way by that gesture that was there for reasons we'll never understand. And now it's in a book

and now we're talking about it on a podcast. We're talking about it on one of the most popular podcasts. Yeah, but I think it is a lesson. It all goes back to awareness, right? If you're, you know, it's that thing of, you know, if you're bored, you're not paying attention because there's just all kinds of utterly fascinating and amazing things happening all around you.

And there are certain people who are attuned to that frequency more than others. I have friends, writers, I'm thinking of a couple people right off the top of my head who will share on Instagram stories. They're incredible storytellers and they can take the most insignificant, tiny little thing and tell the most amazing story about it.

And it's always this powerful reminder that there is nothing to be bored about if you are paying attention. That's right. And that's a beautiful illustration of that very powerful concept. Yeah, yeah. There are no throwaway moments.

And what if all the billboards were replaced with messages like that? Yeah. What would society look like? Yeah. But the way I found out it was an Eleanor Roosevelt quote was because I told the story, I wrote a daily dose inspiration email about it.

And then someone replied and said, that's Eleanor Roosevelt quote. And so it's like a communal effort. Like everyone, she's like that person got an opportunity to connect that dot, right? Right, or it was Eleanor Roosevelt's ghost. Yeah, who knows what happened in that person's life and whoever else read it.

And so it's, and these are curated from the ones who, the emails that got the most engagement, like the biggest, so these have already been focused. Right, the book is like a five year project. Yeah, it's an anthology of all of these emails. The greatest hits of the most impactful emails. So it's exciting to be able to share those with the world. Cause a lot of those just, that was one that just kind of came to me,

I was sitting on my couch at 11 o'clock at night. And it just like, what the hell am I gonna write about for tomorrow? And you're like, oh, this photo. Oh yeah, exactly. And it just, and that's so. And you give energy to these things and then they grow and they evolve and become something else entirely.

And the way I'm measuring success is someone hears that or someone hears this podcast and then they're out somewhere and they start to adopt this idea that there are no throwaway moments. And they see something that they capture or they do something meaningful with, you know, for their own lives. And it just, there's the domino effect from that.

You just never know where it's gonna go. But, you know, again, in hindsight, you can connect those dots. And it's always, it's gonna go. But again, in hindsight, you can connect those dots. And it's like the connect the dot books that we had when we were kids. Like it always tells a beautiful, it's a beautiful image kind of appears that you never would have seen otherwise.

And that's what's interesting to me about it. Do you know Jedediah Jenkins? The name sounds familiar. Why does it sound familiar? He's a wonderful writer. He's been on the podcast a couple of times. He's one of those people that can spin an incredible story out of a seemingly banal event.

And he does it with unbelievable consistency and it's what makes him such a wonderful writer. Like he just has, he's touched in that way. But he just did this thing recently where, I think it, I can't remember exactly how it started, but he was hiking somewhere in Griffith Park and there are these caves that are in the canyon that are kind of off these trails.

And he either found a box with a letter in it in there or he, and then that prompted him to then write a letter and put it in the box or he put a different, I can't remember exactly the details of it. I'm sure I'm getting it wrong, but essentially he ended up putting this like wooden box hidden in this cave and left a letter in it and encouraged people to try to find it

and leave a letter there, like just say whatever you want. And it's a similar analogous kind of example of a social experiment in small gestures that actually are kind of meaningful and profound. Yeah, I'm gonna look that up. Another one of my inspirations is Humans of New York. Yeah, yeah, Brandon's. It's impossible to look at those Instagram posts

and not like get emotional, get teary eyed and just hearing people's just stories, you know, just all stories. Have you interviewed him before? No, I'd love to actually. I know he's done a couple of podcasts, but he's definitely on the list of people that I always wanted to have on the show.

I think he'd be great. I think there's a craving and such a hunger for real stories, that level of honesty and authenticity that only comes with somebody like Brandon who can engender the level of trust where people feel comfortable sharing on that level. And people know the difference between artifice or some kind of performative version of that

and the very real thing. And when you see these are just average people walking down the street, they're not trying to gain followers or anything like that. They're just being honest about their experience. And there's a universality in that, that we can all connect to. And that's what makes us feel closer to each other

and is a recipe, I think, a curative recipe for so much of what ails us. And I think that's our true wealth. You know, our life experience really is our true wealth. If we can relate to it in a way that kind of gets us out of our own head or our own misery and allows us to be able to share it to help somebody else

see things a little differently, right? Cause I'm sure anybody really could write this, accumulate these stories just from their own life. Most of the stories in here are my personal experiences and they're not, you know, I wouldn't consider them to be any more profound than anyone else's experiences. I was just paying attention a little differently in the way that was unique to me

because of my life experience. But someone else like Brandon or whoever, has essentially done the same thing or helped other people do it. And the way that they curate their story is, and again, Brandon talks about this, took practice. He didn't just come off from the very first one.

For a very long time. Yeah, he learned how to ask people questions in a way that draws out the best parts of their story, the most impactful parts of their story. And that takes practice. You learn from podcasting how to interview people in a way that draws out the best parts of the story. Brandon, I mean, it's another example.

Certainly this isn't something that he whiteboarded and thought, this is gonna be a great career path for me. He was following his curiosity. He could have never predicted that it would hit this cultural nerve and that people would be so interested in it. And now it's like this huge thing. And when I look at your career,

what you've written about in this book, I see somebody who is in this sort of dance with the muse, who's in communion with curiosity and how that translates into actions that you take or decisions that you make. And it's a far cry from this more mainstream paradigm of like, what is your goal? Like, what's the vision?

Like, what are you working towards? Like, where's this all headed light? Like, what, you know, I don't really operate like that. And I do, you know, I guess on podcasts, I get asked that question, like, what do you, where do you see yourself in five years? And I've caught myself like trying to answer in the way that I see other people answering it.

And then I have to check myself because it's like, I don't, I honestly don't think about that at all. I'm literally just, what's the next cool thing that I could do that gets me excited to get out of bed. And I'm in a fortunate position where I have my needs met and I can entertain those kinds of ideas. But I got to this point by doubling down on that as opposed to, you know, being very, you know, tactical

or, you know, planning out these things. Right, I mean, 12 years ago. This is how you're operating. You never would have imagined. No. That this conversation. And if I set this as a goal, I would have missed the mark by a thousand miles

because I would have missed out on why it got here, which was because I just made the decision to do what interested me as opposed to what seemed to make sense, I guess. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like throwing that back at you. And yeah, I'm the same. I mean, I, again, just,

I think the best thing I ever did in my life was following the guidance to quit my first real, quote unquote, real job when I was fresh out of college. That was like the best thing I ever did because I realized that what we've been taught by society about what you need to do is not the real story. Cause that's where my adventure kind of, that's how I opened the book is telling that story.

And the reason why I did it, and I didn't have language for it at the time, but I just kind of looked around and it was a great job. It was a great agency. Everyone was really wonderful, beautiful, nice people, no drama. I look forward to going there. I would be the first there to arrive

and usually the last to leave. But at the same time, I looked at the people who had achieved the most at that place. And I didn't really feel like anybody was fulfilled in the way that I ultimately saw myself wanting to be fulfilled. And so I said, okay, well, this is where this goes.

And that's a process that I've kind of applied to other things. If you are in a space with people and you're thinking of investing your time into that, whatever that space is about, look at the people who've been there the longest, who've achieved the most and ask yourself, are they where you wanna be, where you see yourself being?

And if so, then that's probably where your path is leading you. If not, then that's probably not your path. And it doesn't really matter what the external rewards of being in that space are. It's really about what you feel about them inside. And so we talked about this on the last podcast is that when I, many years later,

when I came across my meditation teacher, Tom Knowles, he embodied for me, he embodied that state of fulfillment that I had been looking for without realizing that that's what I was looking for. And immediately I knew that's my, that's the next milestone is to learn this thing, to help other people in the way that I was looking for. And immediately I knew that's the next milestone is to learn this thing,

to help other people in the way that I'm being helped. Cause it always came, it came back to service. That's how I kind of knew that that was really my path. And there was no, this is 2003. So there's no teacher trainings or anything like that. And I wrote about this in the book. So I just had to trust that it was gonna lead in that direction.

I just kept coming back and showing up and helping out. And then eventually many years later, he invited me and some other of his proteges to go to India and train us to become teachers. And that really set me off in a completely different direction from where I was before. But there was this trust that I had that developed. And I was very intentional about it.

I remember being 29 years old in my kitchen in Harlem and saying to myself, I'm gonna follow my heart no matter what. And after watching the Chris Rock movie. Takes what it takes, man. No, that story is where you talk about this idea of wiggle room. Like even if you feel like you're on a good path

for yourself, like not holding on too tightly to it and always making room to be malleable. To be inspired. Yeah, so that you can be available for the magical opportunity of going to India in the case of your story. And it's not about, because some people may look at the hair that and go, well, that's just you not committing

to whatever you said you were gonna do. And I would refine that and say, what's really your feeling about your path, whatever that is, whether you have language for it or not, is always gonna be there. But the day-to-day plans may change about how you get there or what occupation or what family lifestyle choices you have to go through

in order to get there. And so that's where you wanna be malleable and be open to inspiration, not in questioning the ultimate goal or plan, you really can't go wrong if you just keep following whatever you're feeling inside. Sure, but you also can't expect to be smiled upon by perhaps your peers and your colleagues. No, it takes you completely away from social proof.

You're gonna look like a dilettante, you know what I mean? Like, oh, this guy just goes from one thing to the next. You can't really like stick with anything. Did you read David Epstein's book, Range? No. So it's a very interesting kind of study of a variety of people who have excelled in different fields from science and education

to athletics and art, et cetera. And it belies this sort of Malcolm Gladwell myth of the 10,000 hour rule and demonstrates that there are those people, of course, the Tiger Woods and people like that. But by and large, most people who are fully expressed and excelling at the highest level of their, you know, specialized field are people who earlier in life

did lots of different stuff and were the people who just really couldn't commit to anything. And as a result, they develop this robustness of experience that back to that idea of in retrospect, you know, all the dots line up, make perfect sense with where they end up, but they're people of varied interests and many different passions who develop that capacity early

to be malleable and flexible, to have that wiggle room. And it's those people that we look at now as lazy dilettantes who ultimately it's reframing that and saying, well, and you talk about this, like how do you suspend judgment in the book? Like maybe they're like, you know, we should look at this a little bit differently. Perhaps they're in their exploratory phase

and they're gonna be magnificent and amazing and world-changing and something that they finally latch onto later in life. Yeah, there is a story in there about how I talk about leaving that first job for the reasons that I left. And then while I was writing, I remember the day I wrote that story, I was in Airbnb. I think it was in London, living out of a backpack,

didn't own anything, still don't own anything. I've got a little money saved up, but I had less saved up at the time. And I was like, compared to my peers, I don't really, I haven't succeeded. I haven't really done anything that led to the material success that we kind of aspire towards today,

but I've never felt more fulfilled. And I realized that the true wealth is the fulfillment inside, right? And that's, again, this is a living experiment. Yeah. And it's not again, this is a living experiment. Yeah. And it's not that I'm like walking around beaming all the time because I feel fulfilled inside. That's not really what we're talking about.

It's just, it's having this inner security that wherever you are is where you're supposed to be. And if that means you get challenged in certain ways, then that challenge is there for you to learn something

new about yourself. And that new thing that you learn is going to add to the feeling tone of fulfillment, right? And so that's the underlying message of this whole path is your path is not leading you to more success or more comfort, it's leading you to know yourself better and ultimately to feel your connection with other people. And that could be a very, very treacherous path at some points, it could be incredibly uncomfortable at other points, but the happiness that people tend to look for outside in success is much more temporal compared to what you can feel inside while you're going

through all of those other moments and obstacles in life. Beautifully put, man. You really stuck the landing. I'm like, it's not gonna get better than that. Like we should just end it right here. But there is one thing I wanna do before I let you go. And I think this is like specific to anybody who might be questioning the efficacy of meditation.

This beautiful passage from the book, and for those who are following along at home with their own copy, can find on page 80. It's called, So Gullible. I love this, man. I love this passage. So can I read it? Yeah.

I'm gonna read it. I'd love that. So Gullible. People think meditation makes you gullible, but it's actually stress that makes you gullible. Stress makes you crave French fries, cookies, and wine. Stress makes you come up with important sounding excuses about why you can't exercise.

Stress makes you think the reason you're tossing and turning at night is because you don't have the right mattress. Stress keeps you locked in codependent relationships with emotionally unavailable partners. Stress makes you say and do foolish things you have to apologize for later. Stress even makes you think you're incapable of meditating

because your mind is too busy. Meanwhile, meditation makes you bold. Meditation makes it really hard to put up with someone else's BS. Meditation makes it almost impossible to remain at a dead-end job or in a bad relationship. Meditation makes you stand up for others and follow your heart with no fallback plan.

Meditation allows you to be guided by your intuition instead of your fear. Meditation helps you accept others and let go of the need to control. Meditation helps you sleep like a baby, even though you don't have it all figured out. While I'm reading that, you know where my head was the whole time?

Like, why am I reading this? I should have asked Light to read this, you idiot. It's his book. I loved hearing it though. It was such a nice experience for me to hear someone else. Cause you know, it's like you live with this stuff and to hear someone else say it in their own words, it's like, it's really beautiful experience for me.

So thank you for gifting me with that. This is your post-it note on the bridge. Yeah, yeah, thank you. It's great, man, I love that. It just breaks it down into very practical brass tacks and removes all the excuses that we have. Yeah, and hopefully it helps other people who come across this work,

just look at things or consider things a little differently like meditation or whatever it is that they're questioning and find the solution within their own life experience. Yeah, I think the book, beautifully written all these stories, et cetera, they're all prompts. This is just a, you know, a catalyst to get you to reflect upon these ideas a little bit more.

You're not saying here's your listicle. This is how you're gonna solve this problem. It's like, maybe look at it this way and then, you know, circle back to me in a year, right? Yeah. Well, congrats on the book. It's a beautiful thing. Everybody should check it out immediately.

Knowing where to look with the wear upside down on the page to play a little optical trick on you, little optical tricks play out throughout the book, available at your favorite independent bookstore and on Amazon, of course, and that lightwalkins.com. Anything else you wanna leave people with? Continue to follow your heart and take leaps of faith. And I believe in you.

I appreciate you, man. Thank you. The world is a better place with you in it. I'm at your service. If there's anything I can do to help you or help advance your work, I hope you'll reach out to me. Thank you, I will. Cool, peace man, come back and talk to me again.

I will. For round four, right? This is our third one. This is the third one, yeah. All right, we'll do four soon. Yeah. Peace. Thanks. Clance, namaste. Do a handstand, it's the most spiritual pose.

Right, that was awesome. Cool. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today,

visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube,

and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg, graphic and social media assets,

courtesy of Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and AJ Akpodiete. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace.

Plants. Namaste. Thank you.