The Rich Roll Podcast - LIVE from NeueHouse: Rich & Julie On Creative Partnerships, Enhancing Productivity & Why It’s All About Consciousness

Episode Date: January 26, 2018

Today’s podcast features Julie and I speaking at NeueHouse Los Angeles as part of their new series entitled Creative Couples, which examines powerful collaborative partnerships and what make them tick. A primer on how to communicate effectively, collaborate successfully, and ultimately elevate your creative output, this episode — which also features audience Q&A and a special cameo appearance by podcast favorite Guru Singh and his amazing wife Guruperkarma Kaur — is appointment listening for anyone looking to take their relationships and productivity to the next level. An exquisitely appointed work and event space occupying the landmarked 1938 CBS Radio Building on Sunset Boulevard, it was a true honor to present before NeueHouse's dynamic and eclectic community of creators, entrepreneurs, and cultural innovators. Major thanks to Meredith Rodgers, Brian Wanee, Alexandra Van Iden and everyone at NeueHouse for hosting an amazing evening. Plus mad appreciation for allowing me to share the event audio with all of you on this platform. Can I come back and do it again please? NOTE: I'm interested in creating more live podcast events (featuring various guests) in both LA and other U.S. cities. I would like to gauge interest before wading too deep into this exploration, so please let me know (via e-mail or @richroll) if you enjoyed this episode (or the live event episodes from Australia and Dublin) and/or whether you would be interested in actually attending a live event in your locale. I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

it's okay if we have a different process we don't have to be the same to have a very successful co-creative relationship and so i believe and we believe that if you cultivate your own gift completely encouraged without editing there's going to be miraculous, amazing stuff that happens. That's Julie Pyatt, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What is happening? How's it going? This is a podcast. It's called The Rich Roll Podcast. That would be me. I am your host. And you guys are in it. So, welcome. Spread out. Plenty of room here for everybody.

So, earlier this week, Neuhaus in Los Angeles hosted Julie and I for this live event that was the first in a branded new series they have created. They're and event space for creators, entrepreneurs, and cultural innovators in Los Angeles. It's right smack in the middle of Hollywood. It was the studio where Lucille Ball filmed the pilot for I Love Lucy. And apparently it was host to all kinds of amazing historical film and television projects over the years. Anyway, it was a great event. It was an honor to present at Neuhaus. They have done some amazing events in the past. They recently had Jared Leto and the artist Ai Weiwei present. And Al Gore presented there his latest documentary. So it was really cool. And I want to personally thank Meredith Rogers and Brian Wani and everyone at Neuhaus who helped make the event happen.

It was super fun sharing our creative, collaborative, professional, and personal experience with the Neuhaus community. And Meredith and Brian and their team were nice enough to allow me to share this audio from the event with all of you guys. But before we dig into it... 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, an 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.

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Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. 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. So this is Julie and I live at Neuhaus in a discussion about how, despite the fact that we are very, very different people, we are able to come together, to work together successfully, to collaborate creatively, to push each other to continuously enhance our work product and our ability to produce and maintain our marriage and ability to parent our children at the same time. This presentation features a beautiful cameo by podcast favorite Guru Singh, as well as his wife, Guru Prakarmakaur, and also has questions from the audience. I think you guys are going to really enjoy it. A final note, I am considering right now creating a series of live podcast events similar to this, but with various other guests in L.A., assuming that I can find an appropriate venue to do this.

And perhaps even going across the country, visiting a variety of cities. So, if this is something that you would like to see, that you think you you might enjoy that you're interested in, please let me know. I certainly don't want to put a bunch of time and energy into pursuing this if there isn't adequate demand. So shoot me an email or hit me up on social media at Rich Roll, preferably on Twitter, so I can kind of gauge the interest level. Okay, enough. With all that said, I now give you Julie and me live at Neuhaus. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. Welcome, belated Happy New Year to the Neuhaus community and invited guests tonight. My name is Meredith. I'm the Director of Cultural

Programming here at Neuhaus. It is an honor and a thrill. I'm so excited to present this event to you tonight and welcome these two incredible humans, Rich Roll and Julie Piat-Srimati, to launch a new series here at Noya House called Creative Couples. The series initiated from Noya House's platform being, we are a workspace for people in creative fields we're constantly interested in the creative process and the creative journey and the creative spirit and this idea

of when two creative powerhouses, incredible minds and beings come together and they collaborate and they live together in their couple and what that must be like and what their process and their journey and we couldn must be like and what their process and their journey. And we couldn't be more thrilled to be launching this series with Rich and Julie,

who've had an incredible journey as a couple, as individuals, as creators, as contributors to our culture. So you can read more about their bios if you're not familiar with their work. But I just really wanted to say sincerely thank you so much for joining us. Please stay afterward. Join us upstairs for a reception in which Julie's book, This Cheese is Nuts, and Rich's memoir, Finding Ultra, will be available for sale. As well as special tasting of Julie's incredible pioneering cheeses, vegan cheeses that are truly out of this world. So these are really

two creators and artists I would say to be thankful to be in their presence. So thank you so much both of you. Thank you so much Meredith. Thank you. Thank you so much for turning up tonight, you guys. We did it.

We're really excited to do this tonight. It's really cool. How cool is this place? Oh, my God. So incredible. It's like insane. Before we get going, how many people here already have a sense of who Julie and I are and what we do? And how many of you are just Neuhaus people who have no idea who we are?

We have to ask one question. Actually, I have just one of those. One of those. Make up your mind. Raise your hand if you have no idea who we are. All right, cool. All right, so the minority. That's good.

You can do a quick brief intro, though. Yeah, for the people who have no idea. So sorry, everyone else. This is my wife, Julie, a.k.a. Srimati. There's a whole story behind that. That's too long. We won't get into that tonight. Julie and I have been together since 1999.

I think so, yes. Since 1999, around 18 years at this point. We are co-creators and collaborators on a variety of projects. We work together on a bunch of stuff. We work separately on a number of things. We are a family with four children. Julie had two sons before we got married, and we have two daughters. I think some of them are here tonight.

I see Trapper back there. And we have our nephew also who's lived with us for seven years. So we really have more like five kids. Right. And we live out in Malibu Canyon and sort of a rustic area. Our home has been very much a compound, a creative compound. And it's the location from which we have birthed a number of projects together. We've written books together, cookbooks.

I've written books on my own. Julie is working on books on her own. I have a podcast called The Rich World Podcast. Julie has her own podcast called Divine ThruLine. She's an artist. She's a sculptor. She's a vegan chef, on and on and on with a number of creative pursuits that Julie does. And we were asked to come this evening to share a little bit about our creative process, how we work together as part of this creative couples series. So that's really the focus of what today's kind of discourse dialogue is going to be about. And we thought that we would share a little bit of our personal experience this evening and then open it up to questions and make it more of a participatory

thing at about, I don't know, 35 or 45 minutes into it. Yeah. And so I think one of the interesting things about Rich and about me is the fact that we are extreme opposites in many, many, many, many ways. I think we have one thing that really works for us, and that's that we do have this sort of very vast uh foundation of um similar values or uh similar similar humor similar similar interests but i would say i probably maybe haven't met two individuals that are as opposite as you and i are in many, many ways in the way we approach life. I have no idea how she gets anything done the way that she works, because if I had to function the way that she does, nothing would get done.

I can tell you that. And so it's been a journey trying to figure out a language, a vernacular for how to not only communicate, but also collaborate in a way where we don't want to kill each other, but actually can come together to birth something that would be more beneficial, greater than the sum of its parts. Yeah. And I think, I mean, in the beginning, I don't think we were planning on working together. That wasn't really the goal. We met each other, we were attracted to each other, and we fell in love. But we both had very different ideas of how we were attracted to each other and we fell in love but we both had very different

ideas of how we were going to express ourselves in life and I think the very first project that we really worked on is because I do many things I'm an artist and I just use whatever medium is in front of me I have this thing which I think has served me very well and that's that I don't necessarily think you have to have technique before you try something. And so it's mean that I've sucked at a lot of things sort of publicly, but then I find my groove, and I actually really achieve. So the thing is, is I wrote a script, actually. It was a script for a satire idea that I had about yoga in West LA, and it was called Down Dog. So you can kind of imagine what it was like. But I wrote the first

96 pages, and I really wanted to do this script. And I sort of threw it at Rich and said, will you write this with me? And he sort of was dragging his feet and after maybe six months, I said, you either write it or I'm going to get somebody who will. And then he wrote it and that sort of kicked off our first creative project. So yeah, this was about 2003, I think at the time. And Julie and I had met in a yoga class. So we had some context for this story and had shared a lot of stories and experiences that were pretty humorous. And we together thought, well, this would make for a hilarious comedy. Julie had sort of ignited this project through some of the work that she had done on it initially. And it was my first experience

of trying to collaborate with you on something, taking this project, working on it myself, throwing it back to you, going back and forth in this sort of volley. And that project ultimately became a short film that we worked on together, we wrote together, that I directed, that she produced, that ended up doing quite well on the film festival circuit. In 2005, it did, I don't know how many film festivals, a whole bunch of film festivals. And there was a moment in time in which we thought we were going to be these filmmakers. Our life has taken a different kind of turn and our focus is on other things. But that was really the first experience of working creatively together on something. And it was successful. And I think that's how we figured out initially kind of how each other works and how to tiptoe around each other and figure out that lexicon, like that language for communicating. And just

to kind of provide a little bit of background on that, you know, all you have to do is look at Julie's desk and look at my desk to understand the difference. Like hers is just a disaster. There's just papers flying everywhere. Everything is all over the place. And I have these super neat piles that I'm obsessively compulsively organizing everything. And, you know, that's a kind of window into, you know, the framework of how my, my, my mind works versus Julie's. And so to figure out like, okay, she's all over the place. She's working on 10 things at once. I have to work on one thing at a time and I can't shift until I've completed that task and can check that box and move on to the other thing. How are we ever going to find a way to work together in a productive manner where we're not, you know, at each other's throats all the time?

So how did you begin that? Well, I guess when you share that experience, what I want to ask is I want to ask how many women in this room consider themselves multitaskers, that you do 50 projects at one time. Okay. So I think it's a condition of the feminine energy, and I'll say feminine energy

because someone could be in a male body and then femininely expressed. But I think it's this awareness of the feminine. She is eternally creating, eternally. So for someone femininely expressed, it's just a natural way of being. And I think one of the key things, which it took us quite a few years to sort of unlock this, we had a lot of butting heads and a lot of, you know, just a lot of frustration

to understand that that is a fundamental, natural way of being for a feminine energy. And so we don't have to make each other wrong. Like, Rich doesn't have to make me invalidated or or or all over the place um uh and i don't have to get frustrated i mean that in a pejorative way by the way i'm just teasing but um you know or i don't have to be frustrated that he has to do one thing i mean what do we have the term like mansplaining? I had to like mansplain it to him. It's like, you know, the masculine energy is the concept.

They're giggling over there. I mansplain mansplaining to you. So, but you know, a masculine energy is more single focused. You know, he's in the void. He's in presence. And so I think it's an interesting conversation for us to have as individuals who are in relationships. You know, many of you are in relationships and interested in co-creating, or maybe your life has just brought you to that point. But I think it's interesting. It's an opportunity for us to really honor the differences in each other and understand that it's okay if we have a different process. We don't have to be the same to have a very successful co-creative relationship.

It was a very rocky road for me to get to that place of recognizing that and letting go of my desire or my need or my attachment for her to recognize that my way was better. And spending all of that time waiting for her to come to that realization and come over to my side, that's a recipe for suffering. And I suffered, you know, sort of ruminating on that for many, many years. And it was not until I could get to a place where I could let go and honor her process as equally valid as a means towards sort of contributing to the collective creative whole of whatever we were working on together. And I think behind that is an understanding or a journey towards trying to identify strengths and weaknesses. I don't even like that word weaknesses, but who's better served by working on what aspect of this particular project. For example, where would Julie's feminine, you know, energy be better served?

What was that? Well, I'm mimicking you you're like i'm this is the feminine energy it's always creating i'm like okay so how do i move that over here to where it can actually benefit what we're trying to do as opposed to the tasks where okay this requires like you know some really detailed um you know, thought to make sure that it gets, you know, done exactly in this precise way. Whereas, you know, Julie's better at the bigger ideas. Like, you know what I mean? It's sort of been a process of trying to figure that out. And I think likewise for her to understand like that she needs to have that same, you know, that same journey towards recognizing that in me

and not needing me to look at it the way that- Yeah. I mean, you know, that same journey towards recognizing that in me and not needing me to look at it the way that you do. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's really very true. I also had a lot of suffering trying to interact with the way Rich is expressing. And mostly for me was that I felt like I wasn't being seen for who I am. Because when you're always being told you're too much, that's too much. Stop that. That's too much. You know, how do I make a list out of you? And, you know, a lot of, a lot of women are shaking heads because I know, I know you're with me. I know you get it. So, yeah. So, it kind of feels, it kind of feels like that. And it's interesting because I came across the work of a, of an individual named David data. And he actually was at my house for an event, um, that he did along with a team master Wuda. And, um, you know, he came in and he's, you know, he's kind of awkward looking guy and he's

not married that I knew, and he doesn't have children. And he walked in and I was thinking like, what are you going to tell me about relationship? Or what are you going to share with me? Because he's a relationship expert. Yeah, he's a relationship expert. An author who's written many books on this subject. Yeah, and so he presented this, and I'm going to share it with you guys right now, because I think it's literally life-changing,

and it's literally what I just told you. The feminine energy is eternally creating. She is eternally creating forever, never stopping. The masculine presence is in the moment. He's in the stillness. Every time the feminine energy comes into the masculine's field, no matter how much he loves and adores her or the feminine energy, he will slightly cringe because she has disturbed his peace.

And when he delivered this wisdom, I was just like, ah. So this was a key for us and actually a pretty recent key that helped us to transform even to another level of this co-creation and creating things together. And it really gives us understanding. And I think as women or feminine energies, a lot of times we feel not seen, but if you, or I think I even use those words when I was speaking to Rich once. I said, you know, when I walk in the room, you cringe. And he said, I do not. I'm like, you do too. Because the thing is, is that as feminine energies, we're firing on many different sensory levels all at once. So it's not what we're seeing in the face or what's said. It's all the energy that

we're feeling with. And this was a huge key for us to just understand that. And for me to understand he needs his void. He needs his silence. He needs his peace. And I shouldn't want him to be like me either. Right? So it goes both ways i feel like you just described the plot of phantom thread yes let's talk about that movie how many people have seen phantom thread yeah beautiful go see it archetype that is set up in that but i think what's that that wisdom that lesson has allowed you and I to do together is to depersonalize these recurring sort of issues that would arise. For example, in the past, for you to come in and meet, to have that disruption or to play out whatever dynamic we've always played out every week or every month or over the years, years to then recognize like oh that's what this is it's not about julie the personality or even srimati the personality or myself

this is a deeply ingrained you know sort of genetically hardwired thing and to recognize that to have the presence of mind to be um you know in the moment enough to have that awareness allows you to step back and go okay i understand what this is let's move forward now and i think that has been a crucial um component in our ability to successfully collaborate yeah and i also think a really important key of our success in collaborating is that we we collaborate on projects but we do we do the the uh contribution completely separately so it's not like we're taking the trash out together like you hold that side of the can and i'll hold this side we sort of uh have the big project we identify what we're interested in and then we both deeply go into

that as individuals as complete individuals and then you know we may meet together to you know sort of bring that together but i think we work very independently can you imagine what would happen if we had to sit at a desk next to each other all day long. We would not be sitting here if that hadn't happened. Not be good. So I think fundamentally behind that is an important point that we've been dancing around but haven't quite discussed directly, which is, I think, a key aspect of our relationship, which is that I'm not looking for you

to complete me in any way, and you're not looking for you to complete me in any way, and you're not looking to me to complete you, in that kind of Jerry Maguire sense. Like, we come together, and we are able to do this dance and create and love each other and have this family. But I am on my own spiritual journey, and Julie is on her own spiritual journey. We come into the world alone, we leave the world alone, and we have to find that sense

of wholeness and purpose and fulfillment and direction and connection on our own. That is a a solo path that cannot be, cannot be, it's not served by looking to another person to resolve for yourself. Yeah. And this brings me to our sort of secret weapon of fighting, which, you know, we communicate very freely. That's the one thing that I'm extremely grateful in this relationship with Rich. There's such a level of commitment, and we call it freedom and commitment, because the commitment is so solid that we're free to completely express ourselves.

And that can get very intense sometimes. So we're very clear about how we feel or what's going on. But what I have to say is the reason I think we've been able to have such a close relationship for so many years and keep transforming together and keep, you know, just keep the love alive, really, is that all the answers exist within your own heart, within your own self. So whenever we get to a point where we're stuck, we both somehow have had the tools to just immediately go, okay, I'm going in, and I'm owning this part of it. And it's a taking responsibility for your part in the relationship.

And that ability that I've experienced with Rich has been invaluable. And I, I think it's a really, really key thing and something that if you apply in your own relationship, you will experience immense transformation and intimacy, uh, by being able to do that. Yeah, I agree. I don't, I don't even know what else to, to say to that. Yeah, I agree. I don't even know what else to say to that. I think that to do the opposite of that is to seek suffering and invite suffering into your life, which will then spill over into whatever it is you're trying to express or create in your life, whether it's on your own or in collaboration with your partner. in your life, whether it's on your own or in collaboration with your partner.

And I will also say, though, that there is such a vast opportunity in relationship for transformation and for expansion. And I think it goes back to the freedom in commitment. I feel so free in this relationship. You can see neither one of us wear wedding bands. We don't know where they are right now. But we're so committed. The commitment is so strong, but the freedom is vast, and that works really, really, really well and provides a really safe, huge playground, huge world to explore and discover yourself. And I do think that in these uncertain times, these intense moments that we are experiencing and the world, what is happening in the world and how things are being expressed, there is immense value in relationships and in the divinity of relationships. To be able to stay within the partnership and really go deep provides a lot of, I think, gifts, grace,

blessings, and nourishment that is going to serve us very well in the coming weeks, months, years. What do you think are the biggest pitfalls that derail creative partnerships? I think competition would probably be the first one that I would point out. And again, this comes from trying to fulfill yourself in another person or not being identified enough in your own expression, not knowing who you are, not having spent the time to really know who you are and really value yourself. So the most important relationship in your life is between you and consciousness. There is nothing else that's more important to that than that. And we've been sort of told in our life that that's a selfish way to be.

And a lot of times in, you know, when I'm on my podcast or I receive letters or I meet people. And you could get a very immature person who will say, I just want to help people. And what I always say is that the greatest help you could do is to know yourself. Because when you're not mature, how can you really help somebody? you're not mature, how can you really help somebody? And so I often use the analogy that it really becomes sort of like Derek Zoolander, where he's like, I want to make a school for kids who can't read good. And it sounds good. You know, it's a good idea. It's a good idea. But really what we need you to do is to know yourself because every single being in this room and on this planet is a divine expression of consciousness, the force, God, whatever you want to call it. And each one of you

was created in this unique divinity. And so I believe and we believe that if you cultivate your own gift completely in courage without editing, there's going to be miraculous, amazing stuff that happens. I mean, just look in nature. So a frog isn't lamenting that it's not a butterfly or like pissed off at the bee. So really cultivate your individuality and love yourself. Cultivate that. And then when you enter into a partnership, it can be a dance. But one thing that I learned, and some of you know this about me, that I've been married three times.

So I'm kind of a relationship expert. I'm also a really good wedding planner, if you need any tips. But what I found out, I was talking to, actually I was talking to Guru Singh last week, and we were having this conversation about divine marriage and divine relationship. And I shared with him that I learned after many men that... How many? My love. We shouldn't go into that. No, I'm getting nervous.

But what I realized is that the love that I feel is my love. No one can take your love from you. The love that you feel in a relationship is your love, which is reflected off another person. So if you break up with someone, your love is not gone. It's your love. And if you've, if you chose a journey like mine and you've been married so many times, you would have experienced this. And so it's a great freedom to understand that, that nobody can take your love from you. It's coming from within you. So once again, serve your own heart.

Find out who you are. Cultivate that. That is the secret. Yeah, and I would just add that if you're here, you're part of the Neuhaus community, this beautiful incubator of creative manifestation, what an amazing place this is to realize your dreams, the true greatest conduit to maximizing that expression is that heart connection, is that relationship that you develop and tend to with consciousness and with yourself. Because if you are divorced from self, if you do not know yourself,

then it is impossible for your creative vision to be materialized or manifested in the way that is best designed by God, by consciousness, by the ultimate force that runs within all of us. In order to express yourself at the highest level into your heart's desire, you have got to do everything in your power to prioritize that heart connection, that commitment to aligning yourself with the frequency of consciousness that will allow the birth of that creative expression on the highest level. And that's something you can only do yourself. to guide you into that or you're divesting responsibility of that into another person, then that is another recipe for suffering and something that will hamstring your ability to create at the level at which you're capable of. Yeah, beautifully put.

How many people here are in creative partnerships? It says quite a few. Yes, you guys are. You guys should be up here giving this lecture. And I'm interested in what the challenges are that you guys have. What are the issues that recur in the cycle of trying to collaborate and create with your partner? Does anybody want to volunteer any of those ideas? Yes, a brave soul. I'm not in a creative partnership, but I do have a question for you two relating to

creative partnerships. I guess we can do that. Okay. So you both have your own creative projects or aspects of a co-created project, and they come with deadlines and stressors. So even though you're both so opposite in the way you think and work, how do you help relieve that stress from your partner? We don't. No repeat so she asked that um okay

just to repeat the question um she asked she said even though we work very oppositely and we have these deadlines and we have multiple creative projects how do we ease the pressure for our partner in the face of deadlines is that a good sort of okay yeah i mean uh how do we help each other out how do you help me out i don't know do i i don't know this is what's so good about podcasts i mean we can only speak to how we do it but i would say there's a division of labor so we are able to identify like okay here's this thing this date is happening, the clock is ticking, we got to get all this stuff done. I'll work on this, you work on that,

and we go to our separate corners. And we've been doing this long enough to know whose strengths are served by which tasks, I think is fair to say. And there's almost like an unspoken shorthand with that now. We just kind of intuitively know like, okay, these are the things that Julie excels at. I'm going to give her those and she's going to give me my things. But what we don't do, and we kind of alluded to this earlier, is sit together and work it out together. I mean, I think we had to go through a number of years of figuring out, of doing that in order to figure out where our time is best served. And I think that's an individual thing. It really comes down to communication. Are you able to communicate honestly in a way that is going to allow you to identify which aspects of a particular creative project you should be focusing on versus the other person? And can that communication be delivered and received in a way where it

doesn't become emotionally heightened and a commentary on the state of your relationship or your marriage or your partnership? In other words, trying to be neutral emotionally about it so that you can be, so that, what am I trying to say? So that the project's end goal is always sort of taken in the proper context. And so what I would say, my take on that would be that it's simply do what you love. That's how it works out. It's like if you're in alignment and you're doing what you love, then you're naturally doing the things that you were created to express. So there's really not a meeting of tasks that happen. Maybe Rich, you know, his mind, he's thinking of it more like that. But, and maybe it's just, we've been together many,

many years, but it's like, it's very natural. It's very spontaneous. It's like, you know, I am the chef. He doesn't cook. He's never spontaneous. It's like, you know, I am the chef. He doesn't cook. He's never in the kitchen. And, you know, sometimes people want to, they're like, well, you know, we want to film you cooking together. And we always stop from doing that because you don't want to just do something because someone wants to see you doing it. We try to keep it very, very authentic. So he might come in the kitchen and kiss me and tease me and I might feed him a spoon of something, but we've been very clear from the very beginning that I am the chef, they're my recipes. And then he really excels on the science and the medicine

and the nutrition. I eat things for the vibration and for the taste and for the blessing and for the devotion to Mother Earth. And, you know, Rich eats things for performance and for the nutrition and for, you know, the science and all of that. So that's a little window on how our natural expressions dance beautifully together. And so when you have both of those things, it becomes very powerful. Whereas each one of us alone wouldn't be as powerful because we wouldn't have the holistic expression of life, which is as above, so below.

We are human beings having a spiritual experience no we are spiritual beings having a human experience i think it's also important to point out that that the work that julie and i do together that we collaborate on is not a function of some grand design that we whiteboarded one day and said we're gonna do this stuff together like it's weird that we are doing these things together when i listen to the introduction i'm like oh we're these co-collaborators i was like wow i never even really thought of it that way because that was never really the goal it was more like what julie said we were both on these adventures to deeply connect in our own ways with consciousness.

And those adventures and journeys have brought us together to ignite these sparks from time to time that manifest in these creative projects. natural outgrowth of our relationship, of trying to grow more intimate and closer to each other in a way that could perhaps also serve other people through kind of demonstrating what we've done to get to this place. But it was never our goal to like, do what we're doing today. Like, did you think you were going to be a vegan chef? I mean, it's like, when I think back to early years, like that would have been the weirdest idea ever if I said, Julie, one day you're going to be doing this thing. And I think there and just invest in that journey to connect with consciousness and know yourself as deeply as possible. And that non-attachment to what that looks like allows for these miraculous expressions to surface. Yeah. and I think it's really important to note, for those of you that don't know us,

is we went through a tremendous long period that we call a dark night of the soul together in relationship, meaning we went through complete financial collapse over a seven-year period, with a year ramp down and a year ramp up. So please don't misunderstand that we have this perfect experience of life and that it's been easy. It was far from easy.

But I will tell you that throughout that entire experience, we continually chose to serve our heart against all appearances to the contrary. Many people thought we were completely insane. They never ever could see the trajectory from where we were to where we are today. So once again, it brings me back to all the answers are inside your heart. and if you can connect to that individually and then enter into a relationship, keeping that focus of that internal devotion. Looking back in the rearview mirror, you can see what a perfect mandala Divine Mother created of your life. Now we've been together over 18 years. Now it all seems, um, on purpose, but at the time, uh, it didn't. So, and you know, there were many, many, many moments where we were just on our knees and we were, we were like, we're completely, you know, completely misjudged

every single thing. Um, but, um, if you stick with your heart, uh heart life will paint a beautiful mandala for each one of you lovely maybe we should open it up to questions from you guys how about you over there with a beautiful smile thank you guys, it's great to be here great to listen to you, your wisdom. Without

getting into the details or any personal, more than you want to open up, what's the that drives your language around money and assets? The question is, what's the language that you use around money? Yeah? Yeah, or what value drives it? What value drives it? For me personally, the way I've been seeing it myself is, again, treating it with that holistic approach where it's my financial world.

But it's an area that is still, there's not a lot of clarity there. But it's too early to really start having that conversation. I think I might understand what you're asking. Let me try, okay? So I think you're asking how do we relate to money, basically, in summary. Let's see. What I would offer is that it is not the focus of life to make money.

Like I said before, every answer to your self-realization is inside your heart. I find that it's often the thing that you love to do as a child when you were six, seven. There's huge keys at that time period. I firmly believe and have experienced in my own life

that when you serve your heart, that you will be provided for in various ways. The catch is you cannot make a deal with the universe. You cannot chant affirmations like the little train, like, I think I can, I think I can. No. You have to serve your heart and you have to serve it without any guarantee of what is coming. You see? And when you enter into that place, You see? And when you enter into that place,

you're in this beautiful vibration of beautiful energy. And this energy will bring you enough sustenance to fulfill yourself. Every life form has enough energy to fulfill itself. Look in nature. Look at a flower. Look in nature. Look at a flower. Look at animals.

The key is that it might not look how you want it to look. So in our situation, that meant living with four kids, with no health insurance, getting cars repossessed. I didn't have a bank account for four years. How does that happen? I mean, I had 740 credit before all of this. So the thing is, is, you know, I once went into a meeting with a bankruptcy lawyer. And I just went in and I said, listen, I have no shame or attachment to what is going on in this thing called bankruptcy. I said, just give me what you think the scenario is, A, B, C.

And his jaw just dropped open. And he said, nobody is having that experience that's coming in to see me. And I said, that's because we've all forgotten that we're not our credit scores. You're not your credit score, for goodness sake. And when you leave the body, it's not going to matter how much money you have in the bank. And does Jesus have a 401k just in case? Or, you know, Buddha have a savings account? This is the level that we're being invited to step into. And I don't mean to suggest irresponsibility, but I mean to suggest it's your life. This is your life.

What are you going to do? Give up your natural inclination to express yourself authentically because you're afraid, because you want a savings account. You have to step into your mastery and serve your unique expression. And I know that that seems scary or extreme, but if you ask me, I think it's extreme to not live your life. There's nothing wrong with money. There's nothing wrong with a savings account. There's nothing wrong with being rich or being poor or having a 401k or being an investment banker. It's all about our relationship to this neutral thing. Are you structuring your life around trying

to accumulate this neutral thing? Or are you pursuing what's in your heart, in which case the money is a byproduct of that journey and that pursuit? And my experience has been as somebody who spent most of my life pursuing that traditional American dream of get into the best college and study hard and get the best job and get the secure career track and show up early and ride that elevator up and down and lease the right car and make sure you're stocking away whatever you can into that 401k and make partner and all of that. i can tell you and this is just my own personal experience that was a recipe for a tremendous amount of suffering on my part because that journey was not being driven by my heart song it was being dictated by social and familial

pressures to live up to a certain expectation. And what got shortchanged in that equation, in that discussion, in that experience, is any regard whatsoever for what made me happy or what I came here to express personally or what my personal song is or could be. And I had to take that all the way to the wall until I was a completely broken human being in order for me to consider the possibility of looking at the world a little bit differently. And that consideration and that decision to adjust how I was living, to look inside myself and try to better connect with consciousness, with my personal song and find a way to express that has not been a linear or easy journey for myself. And like Julie said, we've had to weather a tremendous amount of pressure and financial difficulty.

But at every juncture, our needs were always, always met met money didn't show up the way i would like it to or in my mind i imagined it should or it could but there was no moment where we were not taken care of and it always reminds me of this cartoon you guys know popeye popeye the sailor man there's this little cartoon do you remember sweet pea the little baby in the cartoon there's one cartoon I will never forget it's probably was made in like the 30s but Sweet Pea like escapes and the little baby's like crawling around and crawls her way onto a construction site and climbs onto like an I-beam that then gets lifted up by a crane and swung around and the little baby's just crawling on the I-beam, and right when the baby gets to the end

and it looks like she's going to crawl right off and fall down 20 stories to the ground, another I-beam swings around and perfectly meets her at the juncture where she can then climb onto the next I-beam and on and on and on. And it's a beautiful analogy for how the universe works when your heart is aligned with your greater purpose. Your needs will be met.

It will not show up in the way that you imagine or would like, but you will be taken care of. And that is my experience. And that's the experience that I've witnessed in so many other people's lives. When you make space for that miracle, when you really are in alignment with that purpose. Cool. How many people here have been in a marriage over 10 years? Veterans. How many people over 15 years? How many people over 20? Really? How many people over 30?

How many people over 40? Okay, so it's Guru Singh and Guru Prakarmakar. And so I just like to ask, these beautiful beings are such an amazing force in our life and helping so many people and providing the most amazing support. And if you want to know their teachings and experience their support, you can find them at gurusingh.com. But I would love it if you guys would share something that might be of service to the rest of us who are a little bit further down the path or before you.

One of the things that I find in this many years is the discovery of how curious I can be about how you function. And as long as I remain curious, I'm enchanted by the resolution, by the way in which... And I'm sitting here and listening to the two of you and I'm going, Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. I think we're both a little bit more like you, Julie. I think we're, if you looked at our desks, when I see somebody with a desk like ours, I'm so thrilled. But I deeply respect, I deeply respect that because I strive for it. In relationship, remaining curious about who you are keeps me enchanted. And because we all wake up, you know, every single day it's brand new.

And as long as I can remember that you're not the person that I was upset with yesterday. There was this one moment. We had this one or two week period of time when we were at odds. And many decades ago. And Guru Prakarma walked up to me in the morning and she just grabbed my shoulders and she said, Guru Singh, I just realized we both want the same thing. And it was such a revelation that that could be so distorted by our observations.

We just sat there and laughed, and we couldn't even remember why we had been doing what we were doing for the last two weeks. I am not the speaker in the family. But it really is lovely to be here. And I would say that

any type of collaboration is work. It's worth the work to go through whatever is presented because you keep getting through the different layers, and then there's peace. And it's worth every effort to do that work, even when it's really uncomfortable. And one of the phrases I really like is when people are communicating, especially people who are close with you,

especially people who are close with you, one of the great purposes of communication is to connect, not correct. So that's helped me a lot. And also humor is the best ever. Just being able to bring humor and lightness into something that feels a little heavy. And something also that I'm still growing into experience with everyone, actually, that I meet is to see the other person as you. And when that grows and deepens the connection, it doesn't matter about the upsetting things.

And so those are the things that have been really helpful in um growing together and and i can say after 42 years um we really love each other really and um it really grows and so again it's worth every effort that might come your way. The honeymoon is still on. So anyway, love you. Thank you both so much. It's beautiful. One thing, I love that idea of connect, not correct. It reminds me of the adage, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?

Sometimes I really want to be right, though. The sooner I learned happy wife, happy life, the happier I was, that's for sure. life yeah the happier i was that's for sure um one of the things you guys shared that stuck out to me was you both independently shared the value of knowing yourself and i'm curious if you guys can each independently kind of elaborate on uh what are the things that were most profound in your life that um you got to discover yourself and know yourself. You guys shared clearly a bankruptcy and going through all that. That'll get you to know yourself pretty quickly. But I'm curious, like intentionally, what are some of the stuff that you did that really profoundly affected you? I have to just give a little.

Yes, absolutely. So the bankruptcy ended up never happening because I stayed with my devotion. And I was doing ritual and ceremony and divine energy just kept intervening and the whole thing just went away and I ended up resolving everything. So that was really amazing. But I have to say, discovering yoga is the most foundational thing that shifted my experience of life and reminded me of things that I knew before I came into this body. My practice that I entered into was a vinyasa flow, was a yoga flow.

And I've recently just released my first yoga video, actually, this week, which I'm extremely happy about. And I'm not just happy about it because I made a product that I get to offer and sell and do something that I love. I really, really fundamentally know at my core that this practice will gift somebody a level of connection to life that is absolutely undefinable. So I would, again, point everybody into a yoga practice. And you can say meditation. The problem is we have so much external stuff coming at us that without entering into yoga,

whether it's vinyasa or something physical to get you to a point, or doing something like Guru Singh and Guru Prakamakar offer in Kundalini Master here, extremely transformational breath work. I just can't express, I can't emphasize it enough. And it's beyond religion, ideology, get yourself on the mat. Get in there and start to explore it. Thank you for your question. I think Julie and I have had very different paths in our sort of devotional experiences. One of the things that's always befuddled and

confused me is that she actually volunteers for all of this self-betterment on her own accord. I don't know how that works because in my own personal experience, I have to be in a tremendous amount of pain in order to change any of my behaviors or my habits. And so my journey has been about reaching various pain points until I'm forced to confront myself in a newer and deeper way. And for me, that began with getting sober. You know, in 1998, I went to rehab. I hit my bottom with drugs and alcohol. I spent 100 days in a facility in Oregon. And that was my first introduction to a set of tools that I still rely on to this day that have been fundamental, not only in keeping me sober, but in creating or forging this spiritual trajectory based on this premise that we are all spiritual beings having a human experience.

And I've tried to build upon that, but each each it hasn't been a very linear experience for me again it's sort of i do things a certain way until it stops working and i still keep doing it until the you know the wheels just fall off the the car and i'm forced to then go deeper and julie's always like how come you're doing that why don't you do this and i'm like well because i'm not i'm not in enough pain yet. That's why. And so I've handled these things differently. And so I've probably been on a much more rudimentary course than Julie has, but I would agree with her wholeheartedly. And I met her in a yoga class. Yoga was the birth of our relationship. And I think there's something beautiful about that. So I would agree with what you said.

Then he stopped going to yoga after he met me. That was not as beautiful. But not as beautiful but it stopped right away pretty much no no and the thing yeah but i'm actually um i achieved my goal i guess um yeah i'm i'm looking forward to these later years because I think Rich is starting to embrace the idea that everything doesn't have to be so hard all the time. And I look forward to practicing yoga with you into our later years, side by side. Cool. Awesome. What do you guys think?

Do you think that was like a yeah or it was like a i don't know i'm down it wasn't very strong down so if pain is one of your main drivers of change your threshold must be like through the roof with these ultra bands and all the stuff you do i i i don't know i would imagine it probably is but all I know is my own pain threshold. So I just presume everybody has the same pain threshold, but maybe mine is a little bit larger. I don't know. Extreme. I think we have time for one.

We have five more minutes left before I think we have to shut it down. I'll just be quick. I'll try to articulate the question. But it actually has to do with you being the athlete you are. I'm an athlete as well. But it actually has to do with you being the athlete you are. I'm an athlete as well. And to go back to one of the biggest conflicts in a relationship can be competition.

So this question is for you, Rich. Like I said, me being an athlete, I know this. And I find a lot of times when I have competed at the highest level when you are competing you're very much in your own body and when it comes to a relationship and any relationship kind of taking that competitiveness outside of yourself kind of separating I haven't I if I'm trying to see it. How do you achieve the separation? How do you, or how do you, how do you, what is your relationship with your competitive nature in the context of having a healthy relationship sort of, right? Well, I think it's in order to

answer that you have to look at the motivation behind your competitive nature? Is that being driven by a desire to beat someone else? Or is it being generated by a desire to be the best version of you in that scenario, right? For me, I've always been driven by trying to be the best version of myself. It was never about like, I want to beat these guys or be faster than them. That motivation was never externalized in the form of another human being. It was always an internal thing. Like, did I do the best that I could do? So whether I'm doing an ultra endurance race or a swimming race, I always use the yardstick that I use is always against my own past performances or my sense of my own capabilities or potential. And so for me, that's a natural sidestep into how to approach a relationship because I can use that

framework of am I being the best version of myself in the context of how I'm interacting with my wife or my children. Now, where it gets tricky for me is I'm innately by default an incredibly selfish human being. I'm thinking about me and what I need and what I want. And when you're an athlete, you kind of have to have a capacity for that. That's how you develop. That's how you achieve your potential.

Now, of course, any successful athlete does not achieve that success on their own. It's always a team effort. But there is something about that personal responsibility and that kind of selfish internal drive to excel that can get in the way of trying to be the best you in the context of a relationship where other people are involved. So my journey, which has been highly imperfect, is about trying to overcome that selfish, innate, default nature to understand, like, oh, there's other people around me that need my attention. And again, that's difficult for me. You know, it's painful and embarrassing to admit that that is not my natural state,

that I actually have to work in order to develop that awareness. And perhaps you framing it in that way is interesting because I've never really thought of it in that way. But I think there is something about that athletic nature that creates an additional hurdle. But developing an awareness of that, I think is the first step to moving forward. What is your experience? Yeah, and just a note from the partner side of this would be, you know, like I said, I mean, Rich and I have this very true commitment that's at a very deep level. And I was very sure and very clear that I wanted to be with him and I'm extremely independent. So, you know, I'm not waiting for him to get home at five so he can have dinner with me.

Like, you know, I don't need him on a day to day, but I need to know that he's with me completely. know that he's with me completely. And so because I have that commitment from him, when we get together, it's meaningful. It's memorable and meaningful. But it's not about frequency. So it's not about every day. It's about creating an event or it's almost like, yeah, really making it count. Okay. So I want quality. I don't want quantity. I don't need him sitting next to me like all day. No. So, so a lot of times, you know, he can be in his, he can be in his own thing. We could get into the tent situation. My husband sleeps in a tent. That's actually true. We need another hour to unpack that. Actually, to end, this is actually really funny. Just to end, this is our secret to our marriage.

And we are deeply in love with each other and very committed. I love you so much, honey. And it's been an incredible journey that I've had with you. And I know we have so many more years ahead of us and Rich sleeps in a tent because he, we're so extreme. He, he runs hot like a fire, like all day. And I'm the opposite. And I'm also extremely sensitive, like intensity in the morning. No, no, no, no. You know, like I'm meditating, I'm doing my yoga, all of this. And so we just sort of figured out he sleeps great in a tent. And so awesome. And yeah, I mean, we giggle like we were down in the kitchen.

It's like, good night, honey. Enjoy the tent. He said to me two nights ago, he's like, it's really, really cold. And he goes, honey, I may have to come back to the bedroom. And I just act like I didn't hear him. I didn't even reply. I just walked upstairs with my tea. Shut the door. I'm thinking he's not getting back in here. No way.

And yet, that seems very extreme, but we have this amazing relationship. So what I say is loosen up with this idea of what a marriage has to be and just find your individuality. Create your own way and make it work for you. But I'm a hopeless romantic. I always will be.

I truly believe in love. And I believe that the future of this planet and its upliftment is going to be expressed through divine union in couples of all varying types. But there is this really great treasure in relationship and in creative collaborations in couples. So thank you guys so much for coming out to be with us and have this conversation. And thank you to Neuhaus for inviting us and to Meredith and Brian, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming. How beautiful.

It's my lovely wife. To end it, I will say what she is fond of saying often, which is we all need you to be more of who you really are. And with that spirit, I send you guys back out into the world. Thank you for coming. Thanks, you guys. So just a little note, if anybody is allergic to nuts, don't eat any of what you're going to see. But I'm super excited to share my cheeses with

you. I'm in the process of commercializing my cheese. I wrote a book this last year, actually, called This Cheese is Nuts. There's over 75 recipes of amazing plant-based cheeses. There's over 75 recipes of amazing plant-based cheeses. There's even a nut-free section in the book. So we'll have that. But I'm serving for you tonight fresh cashew mozzarella on tomato with basil. And then we have smoked almond cheddar spread. And we have a cashew brie, cashew camembert, and a cashew blue. The blue in the cheese is achieved with spirulina.

So the cheeses are fermented. They are probiotic. They are amazing for your body. I hope you enjoy them and hope I get to talk to you after the event. Thanks. talk to you after the event. Thanks. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Thank you for listening. If you would like to support my work, please subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcasts only takes you a second, but it really does help us out with the show's visibility. It helps with extending reach and growing the audience, which in turn makes it easier for me to book the very best people for future shows.

Also, you can share the show with your friends and on social media, leave a review on iTunes, subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash rich roll. We're filming all of the podcasts. We didn't do, we didn't film this one because it didn't take place in my studio, but we are filming all of the interviews going forward this year. We also have a Patreon setup for people who would like to support my work financially. Thank you so much to everybody who has done that. And finally, follow me on social media. I'm at Rich Roll on Twitter and Instagram. Hey, do you guys need help with your diet and or nutrition? Well, check out our meal planner with thousands of custom-tailored plant-based recipes, grocery lists, and even grocery delivery right at your fingertips. It's everything you need to eat the way

you deserve for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. To learn more and to sign up, visit meals.richroll.com or simply click meal planner on the top menu at richroll.com. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, for editing the show, for production, for interstitial music, for work on the WordPress site. Sean Patterson for help on graphics.

Michael Gibson for his videography, although he didn't video today. And theme music, as always, by Analema. Thanks for the love, you guys. I'll be back here in a couple days with an amazing conversation with race car driver Danica patrick i think you guys are going to enjoy that and until then make it great be well give freely of yourself and love deeply peace plants namaste Thank you.