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The Matt King Show
033: Dandapani | The Monk Who Mastered Focus (And Why You Haven’t) | The Matt King Show
01:19:38
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- [00:00]
A
You didn't lose your focus. You gave it away. One swipe, one scroll, one pointless conversation at a time.
- [00:06]
B
Whatever you practice is what you become good at. So if you practice distraction eight hours a day, which is letting your awareness jump all over the place, that's what you become good at.
- [00:15]
A
This man spent 10 years as a Hindu monk mastering discipline, focus, stillness. And then he walked out with nothing but a laptop and a thousand bucks and a mission to teach others how to master their energy, too.
- [00:26]
B
But if I can't be focused, I can't be present. And if I can't be present, how can I experience you or hear the words you're saying? So I feel that a lot of people go through life creating these experiences for themselves, but somehow, when they're in that experience, they don't know how to be present in it.
- [00:45]
A
If you've been feeling scattered, like you're never fully here, no matter where you are, it's because your awareness has been hijacked. But if you can learn to direct it again, you can take back your energy. And when you own your energy, you own your life.
- [00:57]
B
My goal is identify what's important, who's important, build experiences with those things, and then learn how to be present in them. And the only way I can be present in them is to learn how to focus. So focus is one of the big tools that I work on and perpetually being better at.
- [01:16]
A
This is Don Deponte. What led you to say, yes, I'm going to go join the monastery?
- [01:27]
B
It was more. When I was about 8, 9 years old, I realized that everything in life was finite. And again, I couldn't articulate it as well as I'm doing now back then, but I just realized that everything in life comes to an end. And I remember going to my cousin's birthday party, and my dad was driving, my mom was sitting in front. We were all in the car. And I thought to myself, you know, we went to party, we played, ate cake, you know, had great time with my cousins. And then I remember in the car coming home, you know, a few hours later, and I thought to myself, that's it. It ended. Everything ends in life. Well, that sucks. And we didn't grow up wealthy, so, you know, periodically, my mom would take me out for ice cream. My brothers and I would be excited about going out and having ice cream. And then it was over. And I thought, what is the one thing in life that is the constant that doesn't end? People we love, we know they die. So is that what we're here on this planet to do is just go through this motion of going to school and graduating, getting a job, having a family and watching your kids grow up and then they leave and then you get old and then you die. Seemed a little bit unfulfilling. Not saying there's not beauty in it, there must be something more. So the seeking of trying to find the one constant in life was what really drove me to the monastery to find that.
- [02:51]
A
And what did you find?
- [02:53]
B
That we are essentially pure energy. And energy is in all things, which is science. Law of Thermodynamics states energy cannot be created or destroyed. So if I am energy and the essence of me is energy, and that energy was never created, nor can it be destroyed. So there's something that is in me that is everlasting, just purely from a physics point of view. So how can I go in and experience that? And you know, Law of Thermodynamics also states that energy can be transformed from one form to another. So if my body dies, is there a soul inside that is pure energy that essentially doesn't die? How can I experience that? And to me, that was worth pursuing to know that I've always existed because energy has always existed. Right.
- [03:45]
A
And you will always exist and I will always exist.
- [03:48]
B
And that's so beautiful. And the same energy that's in me is in you in everything else, which makes us all divine and allows me then to respect you and treat you with respect and love and compassion, because you are divinity. There's no one person that's lesser because that same energy is all pervasive.
- [04:09]
A
Right. But society says he with money is greater than and he without money is less than. But in reality, what you discovered is we're all just one.
- [04:18]
B
Well, just one.
- [04:19]
A
Just one thing.
- [04:20]
B
One.
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A
Just energy.
- [04:21]
B
Yes. And we have to go inside to experience that in a very subtle, profound way. It's not. It's not so tangible, right? Like a. Like this cap that I can pick up and feel that energy is subtle. And we live in a world that's training us to rely on exterior things to tell us how we feel. You know, like people will wear a ring, you know, wake up in the morning and the ring will tell them how they slept. Want to ask yourself how you slept? Want to feel your nervous system? Everything is app based. The app will tell me if my heart's beating too fast, if I'm stressed or this or that. But there was a time in society, you know, Matt, where in so many different cultures that people were so in tune with Their nervous system and with the world around them that they could discover this root has a healing property. This bark could do this. If you look at Chinese medicine or medicine that came out of India and things like that, how did they know these things? It's not like someone was sick and walked around the forest and chewed on barks and roots until they found the right one they intuitively knew through their nervous system. So, you know, if we could train ourselves to. Without using devices to really get in touch with our body, our nervous system, our mind, we would really start to understand and feel that energy inside of us which has always existed and will always exist.
- [05:46]
A
How long did it take you to discover that? That energy inside of you?
- [05:50]
B
It's not a binary experience like a light switch that comes on and off. Right? So I would. I always describe it as layers. Like, I can step out here and feel the sun's rays, but if I got on a spacecraft and traveled towards the sun, I would feel the intensity of the sun more and more. So I would say as you go within, you will start to feel the fringes of you being an energetic being. And as you go deeper, you would feel a lot more of it. So I would say depending on how much you desire to and your dedication to the practice and sticking with one practice. We also live in a world that people are committed to not being committed, terrified to commit to one practice. They love to eat off the spiritual buffet table. You know, I'll do a little bit of ayahuasca, I'll do a little bit of meditation, a little kundalini yoga, a little this, a little that. Put it all together in some kind of spiritual salad, and hopefully it'll take me where I want to go. Right. And the more traditional path is, you know, you define the goal, you define the path, you identify the tools that will help you get there. And then it comes down to practice, repetition and mastery, you know, and not just perpetually shopping. Not saying that any of these tools, I'm saying, are bad. You'll never gain mastery if you don't pick one. Right. And repeat it.
- [07:14]
A
So what tools do you use on a daily basis to continue to work toward mastery? Because my sense would be mastery is never really achieved. Like, there's always more layers.
- [07:24]
B
Yes, that's the goal.
- [07:25]
A
That's the target. But, you know, it's also a destination you're never going to get to.
- [07:28]
B
Yes, there's no. Like, I've done it. I've accomplished this. For me, focus is a big thing. I don't want to go through my life and miss out on all the special moments with the things and people that are most important to me. My, my family, the projects I work on. I love gardening. We have a 33 acre property in Costa Rica that we planted 9,000 trees and plants. But if I can't be focused, I can't be present. And if I can't be present, how can I experience you or hear the words you're saying? So I feel that a lot of people go through life creating these experiences for themselves, but somehow when they're in that experience, they don't know how to be present in it. Someone could be on a holiday or, you know, they land in Paris and they take a taxi and they're going to Paris, driving through, you know, Paris, getting to their hotel, and the whole time they're sitting in the car on their phone, not seeing Paris outside. So my goal is identify what's important, who's important, build experiences with those things, and then learn how to be present in them. And the only way I can be present in them is to learn how to focus. So focus is one of the big tools that I work on and perpetually being better at.
- [08:50]
A
How would you define focus? Because what I've found in life is there's a lot of words we all throw out.
- [08:54]
B
Yes.
- [08:55]
A
And we all have our own perceived definition of that word. Right. Like for me, focus is the teacher yelling at me, saying, sit down and focus. Right. But for you, how do you define focus?
- [09:05]
B
Well, that was my early experience. I couldn't focus when I was growing up. So in my book, I talk, I define all the words. So we have a shared vocabulary and a common understanding. Focus is my ability to keep my awareness, my attention on you without it drifting away. As soon as I drift away, I'm being distracted. My ability to bring my awareness back to you and hold it on you is my ability to focus. So that's how I define being able to focus. And my guru had a beautiful saying where awareness goes, energy flows. So if I keep my attention on you, my awareness on you, I use the word awareness. That's where my energy is flowing. And you feel my energy coming to you, to you, and you feel my presence. Let me ask you this question. Have you ever had the experience where you're talking to someone, maybe your spouse or someone, and they, they look at you at some point in conversation, go.
- [09:53]
A
Where are you all the time?
- [09:57]
B
The. The correct answer is, I'm right here. Yeah. But if they were to ask you specifically, where is your awareness? And then you say, honey, it left the moment you started talking. Because physically I could be in front of you going, that's interesting, Matt. But my awareness, attention is going somewhere else. I wonder what time should I have lunch today? Maybe this after, I might take a little break and get some coffee. Right. So for me it's not about physical presence, it's about mental presence. And if I can keep my attention, awareness on you, I can hear I'm being focused and then I can hear all the words that are coming out of you. I can also hear the things you're not saying to me. And you know, you with three kids, how many times have you sat with your daughter or your son and they're not saying something to you, but you feel them all the time. They're not. Something is not right or they're feeling something and then, you know, you lovingly try to bring it out at them. But you can't do that if you can't be focused. Yeah.
- [10:57]
A
Yeah. I mean, I had a beautiful experience a couple months ago actually. Our six year old.
- [11:01]
B
Yeah.
- [11:02]
A
Was just. I could just feel energetically. She was off and it was bedtime. And my wife said, what are you doing? And I was taking a garbage can into her room. I said, I just have this weird feeling that she's going to get sick tonight. My wife said, why would you think she's going to get sick? I'm like, I don't know, I can't put a finger on it. But I'm telling you right now, like, I can feel it.
- [11:20]
B
Yeah.
- [11:20]
A
And like, that's a great example of when you're focused, intentionally focused and aware of your kids and how they are and how they're showing up. You can feel things that they can't say.
- [11:30]
B
Exactly. And look at it this way, Matt, if your nervous system were like antennas and you trained your nervous system to be so sensitive, like almost a strings on a violin of the best violinist in the world, it would be able to pick up these energies that your child is emitting and you'd go, something is not right. Yeah, Right. But if you don't work with your nervous system and your body, there's so many people I've seen in front of the kids, the kids are having an off day and they don't even notice it. Yeah. Because they can't pick it up. So the only way you can pick it up is by training your mind, your body, your nervous system to be receptors of subtle frequencies of energy so that you can walk into a room and go, what's wrong. Yeah. Something shifted in this room. What was it? You know, and for me, that's what I want. I want to be able to. I define for myself as a parent. You know, what parent do I want to be? Because I feel like if you. And there's no right or wrong answer for me. I think if you define it, then you know what to do. If you don't define it, you don't know what to do. So for me, I want to create a relationship with my daughter where I selflessly serve her, putting my interests out of the way. I grew up in a community where, you know, you have to be either be a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer. If you don't, you fail. Yeah, I want to be a monk. Total outcast, right? And I never want to put that on my daughter. So in order to serve her selflessly, I need to work with myself more than with her so that I can be in the right place, the right framework, and be receptive to feeling her, hearing her, unspoken things, spoken things to support her in the best possible way.
- [13:20]
A
And when you talk about that, a lot of people listening will be like, oh, he must be a perfect parent. I'm sure there's moments where, you know, you talk about focus, you wrote about focus, whole books about focus. But your daughter's there, and you're not focused. You're not aware of her. Your mind's wandering off, as you alluded to earlier. Phone, lunch, coffee. How do you bring yourself back in that moment? Do you recognize it with her? Do you acknowledge it? Do you recognize it internally?
- [13:47]
B
Sometimes I may recognize it. And sometimes she calls me out on it, like you. You know, sometimes people would see me dressed like this, knowing I lived as a monk for 10 years, and go like, oh, he's got it all figured out. I do not have it all figured out. I run my own business. And there are weeks and months where the business is not doing well, and there's a lot of pressure in my mind. And when I sit with my daughter, am I completely present? No. You know, because my. My awareness is going somewhere else, and I have to train myself to perpetually just bring it back. As soon as I catch myself, it's not here, I bring it back. And that's my practice. Perpetually bringing it back and holding it on her. And after a while, you become good at it. And I have a saying, you know, I call it the law of practice. Whatever you practice is what you become good at. So. So if you practice distraction eight hours a day, which is letting Your awareness jump all over the place. That's what you become good at. If I practice the piano eight hours a day, I'll be really good at it. So if I practice concentration, focus, eight hours a day, I become good at it. You and I probably grew up in an environment where can you just focus for a second? That's when I got told, every day, every day, can you just focus on eating your food? No one told me how to do it. So when it comes to focus, there's two things. Learning how to focus and practicing it. It's like the piano. I can tell someone to practice the piano, they won't be able to do it. But if I taught them how to play the piano and they practice, they would be better at it. Now the question is, how much do you practice? Well, what do you want to do? If I want to play for my Aunt Ethel on the weekend, I might practice five minutes a week. If I want to play for Juilliard, it might be seven hours a day, six days a week, or whatever. So for me, it's not about being focused. It's what focus gives me is what I'm pursuing. Right? Focus is just a tool. The byproduct, the outcomes is what I'm seeking. Giving my daughter my undivided attention tells her I love her. I am completely here. Nothing else matters. This moment. What you say matters to me. I'll hear every word. I'm all yours for this duration. And she feels loved, she feels, she matters, she feels valued. When my guru did that for me, I never felt so loved in my life. I realized he was just 100% present and I never experienced it in a human being. So I thought, what a gift to give not only my family, but the people I love, anyone I meet, I am just right here. All here. What a sweet gift.
- [16:21]
A
Yeah. And how do you teach somebody focus? Right, like so now I'm going to take this back to my 6 year old and be like, now I'm not going to yell at you to sit down and eat dinner. I'm going to show you how we're going to sit down and eat dinner. Do you teach someone focus or do they have to learn focus through witnessing?
- [16:36]
B
No, you teach and then you role model. So the way I teach kids how to focus is you have to learn about the mind first. Because we focus with our mind. And the simple way of understanding the mind is there are two things. There's the mind and awareness. And I'll give an example for kids so anyone listening can teach the Kids. So I look at the mind as a vast space with many different areas. One area of the mind's anger, food, jealousy, happiness, joy, photography, technology, farming, whatever. And awareness is a glowing ball of light. And you are pure awareness traveling within the mind. So if I go to the anger area of the mind, it lights up that area and I experience being angry. Am I angry? No. I'm in an area of the mind called anger. Now I can move awareness out of there and go to the happy area of the mind. When I go to the happy area of the mind, I experience being happy. So what's the takeaway? The takeaway is I'm not the mind. I'm awareness moving within the mind. So critical. Two things, completely distinct. Now, the second part of this is at any given point in time, I'm controlling where my ball of light is going or my environment. The people and things around me is controlling. So you come up to me, Matt, and you say, down upon your shawl's ugly. No, I can let you take my awareness to an upset area of the mind. But if I had enough control over it, I could keep my awareness in a happier place and go like, oh, what a great opportunity to go shopping today. You know? Thanks for the suggestion. Yeah. Once you understand the mechanics of awareness and the mind, that the mind doesn't move, that awareness moves within the mind. That's the first thing you want to teach your kid. And I'll share a simple example on how to do this. So I get my daughter or kids when I teach kids to lay down in the carpet in a room. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Can you feel the carpet on your back? Yes. Can you hear the humming of the air conditioning? Yes. Do you hear noises outside? Yes. So now the awareness is in the room. Then I say, do you remember last summer when we went to Mexico on the holiday? How great was that? Oh, so great. I love the food. I love the donkey ride we went on. So awareness has left the room and it's gone to an area of the subconscious where the vacation stayed. So we stayed there for a few minutes talking about the vacation. Then I said, do you remember last spring when Grandma was sick and she wasn't feeling well? So now awareness leaves Mexico and goes to see Grandma, and she gets a little sad. And then we come back to the room and we talk about the room again. So what have I done? I've taken my daughter on a journey through the mine to different experiences from the room, which is kind of neutral, to the Mexico holiday, which Was very happy to Grandma being sick, not a bit sad. And every week I do this exercise with her. Then after a few weeks, I say to her, can you take me on a journey in the mind? She goes like, oh, dad, can you feel the carpet in your back? The room? Yeah, yeah, yep. Do you remember last week when you came back and mom was really upset with you? It's like, yes, I did. Thank you for reminding me. You know, we talk about that and then she'll talk about something else. And then she takes me on a journey through the mind. Now she's learning the mechanics of how the mind works. Now I say to her, when you go to school and someone says something mean to you, what are they doing? That is taking my awareness, my ball of light, to an upset area of the mind. Okay, what do you need to do? I need to move it to a different area of the mind. I don't have to let them take me there. Great. Because if you don't understand the mechanics of how something works, it's very hard to control and steer it. And that simple understanding that you're not the mind, rather your awareness moving within the mind, is the fundamental basis of learning how to concentrate. Once they get this down, then I can say, focus is your ability to keep your ball of light on dad. When Dad's speaking to you. As soon as your ball of light goes somewhere else and you're looking at dad, but you're thinking about something else, your ball of lights move somewhere. Now you need to bring your ball of light back. And then I use the right words, because I'm very big on using the right words and defining it for everyone. So I'll say to her if she's distracted, hey, sweetheart, can you bring your awareness back to our conversation? And she says that to me, too. Sometimes you know, that you're getting distracted. Can you bring your awareness? Where's your awareness going? Like it went off somewhere. So now she knows what focus is. Focus is keeping that ball of light on one thing.
- [20:54]
A
And as you've practiced this.
- [20:56]
B
Yes.
- [20:56]
A
Your ability to watch that ball of light wander and bring it back just gets better and better and better.
- [21:04]
B
Anything you practice in your life, you become good at. Archery, videography, photography, whatever, real estate, anything.
- [21:12]
A
So how do you determine where you shine that ball of light? As you look to expand your business, grow your net worth, grow your impact, grow the message with the book. Like, how do you determine where to shine that ball of light?
- [21:26]
B
For me, it's always coming. It's not a monetary value. I'M pursuing. For me, it's what is the lifestyle I want, what are the my purpose in life and what are my priorities in life? And I've clearly outlined for myself the people that are matter to me, the things that matter to me. And in correlation to the finite amount of time I have left on this life and the finite amount of energy that I have each day, every day I have X amount of energy I don't have infinite. So how can I take that energy and proportionately distribute it between the people and things that matter to me? That's what I focus on in my life. So even with business, you know, if there's an opportunity to grow my business or do something else, I have to ask, what is the cost of that opportunity? Am I going to be taking energy and time out of all my priorities to focus on that? Which is fine, because there's no thing you can build in business without sacrificing something else. And I'm okay doing it maybe three months or six months, maybe nine months. But if it's going to be ongoing and it means spending less time with my daughter or my wife or the people that I love, then it's not worth it.
- [22:38]
A
Then it's a no.
- [22:39]
B
It's a no. Yeah. Because I don't want to die one day and look back and say I didn't invest time in all the things that truly mattered to me. You know, Matt, when my guru was dying in the monastery, he had cancer, and we found out pretty late. And one of the last things he said on his deathbed was, what an amazing life. I would not have traded it for anything in the world. And I thought to myself, what words to hear from a dying man. There were a few monks that heard this and shared it with everybody else. You know, to get to the end of your life and look back and go, that was amazing. And the only way you can say that is if you had clarity around purpose, priorities and the ability to stay focused on those priorities. You can know your priorities, but if you can't focus, then you're just perpetually distracted with everything in your life. That's why for me, focus is so important, because a lot of people know priorities, but they don't have the ability to stay focused on those priorities.
- [23:41]
A
Yeah. And I think the world we live in today is actually guiding us and steering us to focus less and less on our priorities like they're trying to. The world is trying to get us to focus on the priorities of others. Right?
- [23:52]
B
Yeah.
- [23:53]
A
Whether it's the ads we See, Which I just recently read a stat that we see over 10,000 ads a day because we drive past the billboard, that's. We drive past the gas station, that's an ad. We drive past the restaurant that's. Now we pick up our phone. Add. Add. Add.
- [24:06]
B
Add.
- [24:06]
A
Add. So, like, our desire for focus should be higher than it's ever been before because the distractions are greater than they've ever been before.
- [24:16]
B
Absolutely. And no one teaches us to focus. And we don't teach our kids to focus. You know, ADD stands. I'm no medical expert, by the way. Okay. Just a simple little priest. ADD stands for Attention Deficit Disorder. You have trouble keeping attention on one thing for a while. How many kids are diagnosed with ADD and are medicated for it? So I have nothing against medication. Right. And my question is. And I understand for some people it might be biological or chemical, but there's a lot of people that can't. A lot of kids that can't focus. Because my question is, who has taken the time to teach them how to focus and then help them practice it so they can be good at it? If I said to you, matt, play the piano. And you go like, I don't know how to. I said, matt, play the piano. And you don't know. So now I label you with ppd, Piano playing disordered. And I drug you.
- [25:14]
A
Yeah.
- [25:15]
B
Is that fair? Absolutely not. When I was growing up, I couldn't concentrate in my school. I got hit with a ruler or a little cane for not being able to focus. Was. Until I went to the monastery. I met this wise guru that said, oh, you can't concentrate. Has anybody ever taught you? And I went like, no. Well, let me teach you. And now I can focus. I can write a book on focus. Yeah, Anybody can learn. But we don't teach people how to focus.
- [25:43]
A
No. Like you, I struggled in school, dropped out of college, bounced around. Just. I couldn't sit still because nobody spent the time to say, hey, this is how you focus. But at the end of the day, I didn't focus. Mostly because it wasn't interesting. Yeah, I was bored.
- [25:59]
B
I agree.
- [26:01]
A
So when you find yourself in boredom, do you still find the ability to focus? And how do you overcome it? Is it just shining that ball of light to saying, boredom is another part of the mind. Let me shine it back to being here in this moment.
- [26:13]
B
I would say I rarely find boredom because I've identified what's important. But there's a lot of aspects of my business that are boredom because. And I call it My guru had a beautiful face phrase. He called it regrettable exception. So these are things I need to do in my business that I don't want to do, but I do it anyway. And they're kind of boring. But, yes, I hold my ball of light on those things. It's essential for me to do some of these things in order to keep my business going and grow my business. And some of them are unavoidable. Or maybe if I was a better business owner, I'd find how to outsource it.
- [26:49]
A
Yeah.
- [26:50]
B
But, yeah, for now, I keep my mall online.
- [26:53]
A
Just gotta do it.
- [26:54]
B
Just gotta do it.
- [26:55]
A
So you have a really interesting perspective on money. You alluded to it a little bit earlier. Money, for you is mostly just energy.
- [27:01]
B
Yes. I, you know, because I grew up very interested in spirituality. The. In my culture, where I grew up in Asia, people often say that money is evil and money is bad, and if you want to be spiritual, you shouldn't be pursuing money. Yeah. My guru was the first person that created a healthy relationship among with money because he looked at money as a tool to create things. He said money is like fertilizer. You spread things around to make things grow, you know, And I love that perspective of it. And. And I love money now because I know with money, I can do a lot of work, impact work and impact lives. So I think the relationship I had to change my relationship of how I view money, you know, And I would like to make as much money as I can, because there's a lot of things that I want to do in the world, but not at the cost of sacrificing my time and energy with the people that I love.
- [28:05]
A
Yeah. It's beautiful because what I found in my journey, I have a very interesting relationship with money too. Like, what I've discovered is money is just energy.
- [28:12]
B
Yep.
- [28:12]
A
And the more I allow it to flow through me, or as your guru said, the more I use it as fertilizer to plant seeds for other people or myself, the more it can grow. So the more I allow money to flow through me, the more that flows to me. And I've recognized in my life that it's not really our money anyways. Like, it's here for a moment and then it's gone. All we are is stewards of the money.
- [28:33]
B
Yes.
- [28:34]
A
And so from your perspective, you know, money is energy. What is the biggest cost or the biggest investment you've ever made with your label or your definition of money, which is your energy?
- [28:46]
B
Personally or personally? To my spiritual growth and getting to Know who I am. I would say, you know, ever since I was a young boy, I had this deep yearning of really understanding what my life is about, who I am. And that is priceless. And most people don't spend time think, you know, Matt, on an average day, how much people interact with the world through scrolling on their screens, even when they're on the toilet, driving, listening to podcasts. They're at the gym, I go to the gym. Almost everybody has a headpiece and listening to music, something I don't have anything on, because if I'm listening to someone else, how would I ever hear my own thoughts or what's going on inside of me? I want to know what's going on in my head. I want to know who I am. And people are terrified to discover what's inside. And part of that journey of discovering who you are is being able to develop a great sense of empathy and compassion for yourself. Because if you cannot do that, you cannot begin the journey of going inward. You are going to see things that are beautiful and you're going to see things that are so ugly. And you just have to understand that. I look at myself as a building under construction. There's rebar, there's glass, concrete lying everywhere, still a work in progress. So I look at myself as a product of evolution. There's good stuff and not so good stuff, and I acknowledge it as, this is where I am in my growth and there's still a lot of work to do and now I'm okay with who I am. And the beautiful thing that comes out of it is that you never feel the need to prove yourself to anybody, to be something to somebody, and you can be who you are.
- [30:34]
A
So you leave the monastery 10 years.
- [30:36]
B
You were there 10 years? Yeah.
- [30:38]
A
And they, what did they give you when you showed up? I heard somewhere that they give you a MacBook. Is that true?
- [30:43]
B
Well, my guru, even though it was a traditional Hindu monastery, he, he was very different in his thinking. He adopted technology. So all the monks had Max. We used Max to do our work and publish our books and all that kind of stuff for monks that served a long time. To help them get started in the world, he would give them a Mac and $1,000 cash. So the monastery was in Hawaii. They were going to, they, they were going to buy me a one way ticket back to Australia, where I grew up. And I said, you know, fly me to the mainland, US. So they bought me a ticket. I said, they said, where? I said, la. So I landed in Los Angeles at midnight. With a 10$100 bills and a MacBook Pro laptop and. And my robes and that was it. Checked into a backpack of motel and the next day went out and bought some clothes. And my goal was not to borrow any money because I felt if I borrowed money now, I'd always know how to borrow money. If I learned how to make money, I'd always know how to make money. And I had been given an amazing set of tools in the monastery. Now it's about implementation.
- [31:42]
A
So you leave you land in the mainland of the US in la, no assets, no possessions outside of thousand bucks, some clothes and a MacBook. Yeah. What part of you from the monastery did you have to abandon in order to survive this quote unquote real life? Or was it a part of you that you had to embrace in order to survive?
- [32:06]
B
I think it was because I had gone from university straight to the monastery. The most formative part of my life, you know, in my mid-20s, mid-30s, where everyone's going out and experiencing the world and doing stuff, was in the monastery. So it was very cloistered and we were in there monks under vows. So I think the hardest part was coming out and realizing I'm not a monk anymore. I'm a household, a family person that I wanted to be, a family person that I will be and embracing the ways of the world. And that was very difficult to shift out of that. And I spent quite a few months staying at a Hindu temple that was belonged to a close friend of mine and quite a few acres the property. And I stayed there for a few months. I would never leave the property. I would walk to the edge of the property and stop there. Because in the monastery, monks didn't leave. And even though there was no rule I could do whatever I wanted, I didn't. So there's so much of that thinking that I had to adjust because I just knew how to be a monk. I didn't know how to live in the world. Eating three meals a day, not snacking in between. There was no snacks in the monastery, so we had breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I just never snacked. I just ate three meals a day. I just didn't know any different. So. And then even going out and seeing, you know, a bar, chocolate or french fries and going, oh, that looks good. It's like, oh, it's not. We don't snack. And then giving myself permission to go buy a bar of chocolate and eat at 3 o' clock in the afternoon, like, yes, baby.
- [33:43]
A
What was your favorite thing?
- [33:44]
B
You.
- [33:44]
A
You tried like, was it chocolate? Was it like getting back into, into this quote unquote society? Right, you, you now you can snack, you can do whatever you want. What was your favorite thing you did?
- [33:57]
B
I'll give a slightly longer answer to the mind because it'll help answer this question. The subconscious is very moldable in the first 25 years of life, and that's why I shared with you. You know, I'm spending so much time with my daughter because I want to shape it. And after like 20, 25 years old, we get very much stuck in our ways. And when the subconscious only changes after that, when we have intense life experiences, we go through divorce or death or business failing or something like that. Then you see people making pivots. Leaving the monastery for me was a intense time. And the subconscious, you can look at it as a piece of metal, for example. Once it solidifies, the only way to change it is to heat it up. It gets red hot. And then you can hammer it into a shape. So when someone goes through an intense life experience, like a near death experience or, you know, divorce, whatever it is, you could say it becomes red hot. And whatever they do in the next six to 12 months, roughly, not exactly changes the shape of that. And then when the metal cools down, it takes on the new shape. So when I left the monastery, I realized it was the most difficult decision I'd ever made in my life. My subconscious was red hot. Whatever I did in the coming months after I left the monastery would deeply impress my mind. So I made sure that the first year, year, 18 months of my life in the world, I only had experiences that would impress my subconscious in a positive way. I knew I wanted to have my own business, work for myself. I would never talk to any entrepreneur that had a failing business. As soon as someone was telling me, like, oh, it's so difficult, fail. It's a struggle, I would just change the conversation because I didn't want that to be the early impressions in my mind. And so I was very, very careful of what I did. So I didn't even snack, you know, I still don't rarely snack. I do with my daughter and, you know, I hang out with her. But I think it's important for, you know, even leaders to understand that when we go through, you see this. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs that exited such an intense time, right? They build a business 15, 20 years, and then they exit their business. You could say now their mind's red hot. Whatever you do right after really impresses. So I tell Be so conscious after that for the next six to 12, 18 months of what you do. You see people who retire and they say, you know, I've been working a government job or this for 30 years, retired at 55. Now I'm just going to take a year off. And you know what they do for the rest of their life? They just take the year off. They can't get out of it. And for the next 40 years, till they die, they're just taking the year off. Because the deepest impression that was planted right after was, I'm going to just relax and do nothing.
- [36:53]
A
Yeah.
- [36:53]
B
And then you just get stuck at that.
- [36:55]
A
So now, owning a business, you've obviously experienced hard times, failures, struggles. Many successes, too, don't get me wrong.
- [37:02]
B
Yeah.
- [37:02]
A
Do you wish you could go back in time and learn from those people who are talking to you about the failing business, or do you think it was crucial for you to protect the subconscious?
- [37:11]
B
Crucial to protect the subconscious at all costs. And same with my daughter. Right. Her mind now in the early. The first two decades of her life, so impressionable. My job is to protect it and navigate and curate what comes in the same way with people who have a company, you don't let any toxic person come in and be an employee. We're so protective of our company, how we think, but we're not so protective of our minds. So I look up, we protect our kitchen sink with a strainer, so why don't we protect our minds? So even my daughter, I'm so protective of. What? Impressed? Because I can learn about failures at some point, and I can also learn from failures, about failures in business, from people who know how to handle failures and how to take the best lessons out of it. Right. So.
- [37:59]
A
But then you're making the choice as to who do I want to learn about failures from, rather than just anybody, anybody. How do you balance, you know, this desire to protect your daughter.
- [38:09]
B
Yeah.
- [38:10]
A
Versus being overbearing? Like, is there a line?
- [38:15]
B
I. Yeah, I don't think it's like a black and white line in the sand, but I have. It's really watching myself, right. When, you know, I grew up in a culture and a family in the 70s and 80s, like, don't do this, don't do that all the time. And sometimes I find myself saying to my daughter, don't do this, don't wash your hands. I'm like, why? Why am I just, you know, writing her the whole time? So for me, it's just really observing myself, my patterns, my habits. What are the things I'M doing and just going in relation to her, is it helpful? And because I had defined my relationship with my daughter as taking a selfless service approach, how can I be a steward to her? Right. You know, I'm not trying to create a legacy with her. And there's a big distinction between that. Steward is like, you're a temporary. You're guiding this right. Then for me, then it's just asking, is this helpful and beneficial to her? And, you know, we don't always make the right choices. And sometimes we make wrong choices. And I do that. And maybe a little overbearing, a little too protective. And that's coming from a place of love.
- [39:28]
A
Yeah. And service.
- [39:29]
B
And service. Right.
- [39:30]
A
And service.
- [39:31]
B
Yeah. And sometimes they may not be the perfect decision. But I'm not perfect.
- [39:37]
A
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- [43:39]
B
Oh yeah, okay.
- [43:40]
A
And he went very deep in his spiritual journey. You know, kind of got kicked out of the NFL smoking marijuana. Just went really, really deep in his spiritual journey. And I had the privilege of spending some time with him and I was asking him like, oh, was that a good choice? Was that a bad choice? He said like, dude, you're you're missing the whole point of life. He said, there is no good, there is no bad. There's just purely choice and awareness. And once you have the awareness, you have the ability to choose either the same thing or something different next time it pops up. But until you have the awareness, you can't make the choice.
- [44:10]
B
Yes.
- [44:10]
A
And so when I'm parenting my children and a lot of people kind of look at me and my wife and go, you guys are crazy. Because, you know, our son is four. He came home from a parade when he was three years old and said, dad, I want a dirt bike. And I said, hey, buddy, you can't ride a bike yet. So I'll make a deal with you. When you learn how to ride a bike without training wheels, I'll buy you a dirt bike. He learned that day how to ride a bike. And so I had to go and buy him a dirt bike. So our kids whipping around the yard on a dirt bike at three years old, and people are like, you're crazy. He's going to get hurt. He wanted to go faster. And I've always found, especially with parenting, but also in leading business, sometimes the best way to protect is to let them do what they want to do and gain that awareness for themselves, but then also help them reflect on the choice. So as you lead business, you are 100% on focus. Right. Wrote a book on it, very into it. How do you help your team? How do you help your people? How do you help others around you when they are losing focus or they are distracted? How do you help get them back centered?
- [45:14]
B
Going back first principles, teaching them how to focus and teaching them how to practice. And if those two things can be done, they'll be able to do it. You know, and I think people don't realize that focus just doesn't come naturally to everybody. And some people naturally have that, but most people don't. And they actually have to learn and actually have to practice it. And one of the things I tell people is that rather than doing meditation in the morning, find what I call the non negotiable reoccurring events throughout the day. So let me ask you, on an average day, how many minutes do you think you spend with your eldest daughter?
- [45:54]
A
Roughly three hours was 180 minutes.
- [45:57]
B
Yeah. Okay. If those three hours you gather your undivided attention, there would be three hours of practice and concentration. You will never not spend that time with her. Maybe occasionally, if something crazy is happening somewhere, but if not, you would. So for me, it's Same with my daughter. I spend two, three hours with her at least every single day. From morning, she goes to school, she comes back, we play, dinner and shower and bedtime added up easily 2, 3 hours. Every time I'm with her, I give her my undivided attention. Now I have three hours of practice in concentration, and that's how you become good at it. So rather than create a separate practice in the morning, find the things in your life that are non negotiable and insert the practice into that. Every time you talk to your assistant. And if you talk to your assistant every day, a cumulative total of 30 minutes, 5 minutes here, 1 minute there. Every time you speak with him or her, give them your undivided attention. So now you're leveraging what's occurring every day as an opportunity to practice concentration. So after six months, you'd be practicing three, four, five hours of concentration each day, and you become really good at it. And then you. If you teach your employees to do that, then they bring that into the workplace. They're more productive, they're more efficient, they're happier at home because when they're talking to the kid, the kid knows mom and dad's present. Finally, the spouses know they're present.
- [47:22]
A
So you're traveling a good amount for work. Right. And you're teaching and preaching focus. So you have, you know, employees that I'm sure help you manage your schedule, manage the chaos that is your life.
- [47:32]
B
Yeah.
- [47:32]
A
They're at home, you're on the road, you've got a problem or an issue. How do you handle? They're focused on what they should be focused on. But you feel as though you need some focus and some attention. How do you manage that?
- [47:47]
B
I. I'm a big believer that not everything is urgent, you know, and people always make everything urgent, and I rarely find anything that's urgent. So if it's something that I can't solve myself, then I'll reach out to them and I let them know if it's urgent or not. That's the first thing I do.
- [48:06]
A
Yeah.
- [48:06]
B
And I can't remember, honestly, Matt, when it was the last time I reached out to one of my team members and said, this is so urgent. What is urgent in life? I can't think of one thing. If my daughter falls down or is hurt or something, then, yes, I need to.
- [48:21]
A
Yeah.
- [48:22]
B
But if not, I can't think of one thing that's urgent.
- [48:24]
A
Yeah, that's. I love that because the amount of times I hear business owners say, like, oh, I'm Putting out fires. Oh, I'm just really busy. Oh, there's chaos. I mean, I'm very fortunate that I'm not in brain surgery and I'm not trying to heal. Like those things are urgent. Right.
- [48:38]
B
Or the person answering 911 calls.
- [48:40]
A
That's it. There's nothing my life. And so I've always taught, you know, talk to my team about an email is like get to it at some point. A text is like, hey, whenever you're available. And if it's a call in non business hours, it's probably urgent. The amount of times I've had to call, probably two, maybe three. But it was actually urgent. It was like, okay, something's going on, I need your help. Can you help you out? And then they're there for you.
- [49:04]
B
Yeah. So I, I think it's. Yeah. Because I don't find anything urgent in life. I just never.
- [49:12]
A
Yeah, yeah, he's gonna go with it.
- [49:15]
B
Yeah.
- [49:15]
A
So. So if you spent a day with me.
- [49:18]
B
Yeah.
- [49:18]
A
You would probably recognize that. Maybe I do have add. Maybe I didn't need some medication, but I've learned how to channel that at least. My story, my narrative is into my superpower.
- [49:28]
B
Yes.
- [49:29]
A
I can hold a lot of things. I can hold space for a lot of things. And I can, you know, using your words, take my ball of light and shine it in many different places, but very quickly without losing overall attention and focus towards the mission or the goal.
- [49:41]
B
Yeah.
- [49:42]
A
If I said to you, hey, I'm feeling as though this has become a distraction for me, what's the one thing you would tell me to start with outside of, hey, find those consistent things and practice your focus there.
- [49:55]
B
Read my book, chapters three to five. Not, not, you know, pedaling. My book, chapters three to five, drill it into your head to get the understanding of the difference between awareness and the mind. Do you drive a stick shift car?
- [50:08]
A
I can, but I don't on a day to day basis.
- [50:10]
B
But you can.
- [50:11]
A
Yes.
- [50:12]
B
What's the critical thing to know? Gears, clutch, brake, accelerator. I need to know how to release the clutch, step on the accelerator and change gears at the same time. Three things, right? Yeah. If I don't get that right, I'm going to stall the car, it's going to hop. Once I get that down, I can start doing other things. But if I don't understand that, I can't drive a stick shift car with focus. The thing you need to learn is you're not the mind. Your awareness ball of light moving within the mind. Your goal is not to control the mind. But to choose where in the mind you want to go and to be able to hold that ball of light in one place for an extended period of time, you understand that concept and difference between understanding and realizing. What's the difference? Understanding it is intellectually knowing it. Realizing something causes a shift in behavior. Right. Like death. Everybody knows we die at some point. That's understanding that when you realize that you're going to die, you shift everything in your life. Your priorities become your number one. Today, everything else can wait. And when my guru died, I realized that, oh my God, the people we love die. And at that point, I made everything and everyone that was important to me my number one priority. And everything else is number two. As long as I have a home, I have food on the table, I can pay my bills for a few months, I'm golden. Yeah. You know, nothing else matters.
- [51:46]
A
And even that, if you didn't have the roof and if you didn't have food on the table, as long as you had your family, the people important to you, you'd figure the rest of it out.
- [51:55]
B
You figure it out. And not only just having family, but being able to be present with them. How many people spend time with their families? I can't tell you, Matt. I travel so much and I eating at a restaurant. How many people on their phone? The whole family, everyone's on the phone, scrolling, going out for family dinner, and no one's talking to each other at all. You know, I was on a holiday recently and we were at this resort and there was a dad and a daughter on a holiday by themselves. And the dad at breakfast is scrolling. And the daughter must have been seven or eight, she didn't have a phone, so she just ate her breakfast by herself for like 25 minutes while he was on the phone. Obviously nothing urgent because you can see how they're scrolling like, right. You know, it's not like typing frantically. Right. What's the point? So in his mind, he's spending time with his daughter. In my mind, you're not. You're physically there, mentally absent. So for me, that's where I would start. Understand awareness in the mind. Lock that in. Once you realize that you are in charge of your ball of light. Now you know how to drive a stick shift car. Now you can start going faster, doing donuts in your backyard, whatever you want. Yeah, right. But if you don't understand how to change gears and the clutch and accelerator, you're never gonna drive.
- [53:12]
A
So do you carry your phone on a day to day basis or do you have kind of like hard rules around when it's carried, when it's not carried, and how responsive?
- [53:21]
B
I have hard rules. I look at my phone as a tool and I think one of the important things is to define your relationship with the phone the same way I define my relationship with my daughter. So we have a 33 acre property in Costa Rica and we have lots of gardens and trees. So I have a shed with lots of shovels. When I want to plant a tree, I open the shed, I grab a shovel, I dig a hole, plant the tree, put the shovel back, the shovel is there to plant the tree. My phone is a shovel. It's not my partner, it's not my spouse, it's not my lover. When I need it to do something, I pick it up to do it. When I don't need to, I don't pick it up. And I think most people don't define their relationship with the phone. So then it becomes a lover. They pick it up, they cuddle it, they stroke it, they pet it, they caress it, and it's in the arms all day long. For me, it's a tool. I don't need to hold my shovel all day long. I like my shovel. I love my garden tools, but I don't need to hold it all day long.
- [54:17]
A
Yeah, you probably want to hold it all day long.
- [54:19]
B
I do.
- [54:20]
A
That's the tool you would.
- [54:21]
B
I have Japanese pruners and everything, you know, but it's a tool. It's a tool to do something. So for my phone, it's a tool to do something. And when I. And it's always face down, you know, away. And when I'm with my family, it's not even in the proximity.
- [54:38]
A
Do you have to, like, put it away just so you don't even think about it, or you've just built the discipline to stay focused on the family, not even worry about it.
- [54:45]
B
I just don't care about it. Yeah, like on a Sunday where it's family day for us and I don't do any unless there's something urgent going on with the business or launching something, then maybe it's an exception someday. My phone is either on my desk somewhere and who needs to call me. My parents live in Australia. If they're having a medical emergency, I can't help them. It's three days to get to Australia. Right. So don't call me. Right. You know?
- [55:12]
A
Right.
- [55:12]
B
So why, why do I need my phone? Yeah, my family's with me. All's good.
- [55:17]
A
How did your family take It. When you went and decided to start practicing as a monk.
- [55:26]
B
They never really expressed it, but I think it was very difficult for. And especially for my mom, who was very close to me. It was a very traditional monastery, and I hadn't planned to go in for 10 years. It was for life. And I think the fact that she thought, you know, I would never see my son again, I'll be able to talk to him or hold him or hug him is difficult. I mean, I think about my daughter now, how many times a day I hug her, and she's like, dad, you hug me so much, too much. In a kind of some personal space. No, you're not allowed personal space. So I can only imagine for my mom that, you know, not seeing her son again was very difficult.
- [56:05]
A
And how have they accepted you post leaving?
- [56:11]
B
I think, you know, my dad's more quiet reserve, you know, doesn't really say very much. I think my mom is proud of me in some ways because I. I have an online presence, and people go up like, is your son down to Pawnee? And she's like, yes, you know, like, mom, whatever, you know?
- [56:32]
A
Yeah.
- [56:32]
B
So I think that part of her makes her happy. Right. You know, and also I think she appreciates I'm doing something, hopefully, that's helping other people.
- [56:41]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [56:42]
B
And.
- [56:43]
A
And she gets to hold you. I mean, she lives three days away, but when you do see her, you get to be with her.
- [56:48]
B
Be with her. Yes. And be present with her. And, you know, I think for me, you know, that's. I think, you know, one message I would love for your audience to take away, you know, from this podcast, Matt, is that it's not about focus. It's about what focus gives you. Right. Because some people go, like, they don't understand. Why do you want to focus again? It's like meditation, right? It's not about meditation. It's like, what does meditation give you that practice gives you something that is so special. Focus gives you the deepest, most intimate experiences with the people and things that you love. Whether it's fishing or riding a dead bike, if you could be fully present with it, you fully experience it. If you're standing there fishing and you're mentally absent, you never experience it.
- [57:45]
A
Yeah. I think the most important thing in our lives is the memories. And what I hear you saying is, if you're not focused on it, you can't actually make a memory. We've probably experienced amazing things in our life where, like you said, driving through Paris, looking at our phone, beauty everywhere. But it's not a memory because we're not focused on the potential of it becoming.
- [58:04]
B
Yes. And then you think about the people you love. You can go through your whole life being physically with them, but mentally absent. And then you just go, okay, I didn't experience any of it. And I. I realize my life is finite. It's not short, but it's finite. There's a clear, definitive end. I don't know when that end is, but I know it will end. And I would always ask people, you know, how do you get orange juice? You squeeze the orange. How do you figure out your priorities in life? You squeeze time. If I told you you had three hours to live, Matt, would you do this podcast?
- [58:39]
A
No, sir.
- [58:39]
B
No way.
- [58:40]
A
But I do really like talking to you. But I wouldn't be here.
- [58:42]
B
But you wouldn't be here. Right. So same with me. If you tell most people, if you had three hours to live, what would you do? All their priorities would rise to the surface of their mind. Write them down. And then the goal is not to live. Pretend like you're going to die in three hours. The goal is to bring to the surface what's important and then focus on those things.
- [59:01]
A
Yeah. And like you said so well, like, people will listen to that and go, like, oh, that sounds cute, but I've got a job. I've got all this stuff. Like, it's chaos. What you said was so brilliant. Take the absolute activities that happen every day.
- [59:12]
B
Yeah.
- [59:12]
A
You brush your teeth, you spend time with your daughter, you eat dinner. Start there, focus there. Build up the practice, build up the habits. I mean, one of the things I've done is I used to not be very comfortable sitting with just me, like, in silence. And so I recognize every day I have to drive to work and I have to drive home. So can I sit in 100% silence for the 18 minutes it takes to get to the office?
- [59:34]
B
No podcast, no music, nothing.
- [59:36]
A
Just the road. Just the noise. Just the nail in my tire making the clunking, like, whatever it is. Right. Can I just be present?
- [59:42]
B
Yeah.
- [59:43]
A
And what I found is that's actually some of the most beneficial time for me. And then on the way home, I challenge myself most days, can I do it today? Now? Some days I'm trying to finish up the day and handle that last call or whatever, but if I can do that, just be present with me for those 18 minutes in the morning and then those 18 minutes at night, I have found in me that I can see me, accept me, forgive me, understand me, and then I can Be a totally better or more improved version with my family, with my kids, Because I see me.
- [60:15]
B
Yes. And why is it that we are willing to give everything and everyone else so much time and attention, but not ourselves? You know, how many podcasts do people listen to music? All the time, engaging. But you ask people to spend 20 minutes in the car by themselves, or if they're waiting for the subway, they have to pull their phone out of the pocket, scroll until the train comes. When you just stand there and listen to yourself, your mind can't tell you about you. If you're constantly engaging in something else. Your mind's just kind of like, oh, he's busy.
- [60:48]
A
So I think a lot of people that are feeling pain in their body, it's their body's way of trying to say, hey, listen to the mind. Because they're so distracted, it's like, okay, you're not listening to the mind. So let me tell you what. Yeah, so let me tell you, your knee really hurts. Or let me tell you, your shoulder really hurts. Let me tell you, your back hurts, you have a headache, or your neck hurts. And like, literally before we started recording this, I was talking to Corey. I was like, man, my neck really hurts. And immediately I go, because I've done the work. And I see, I'm like, huh? What is my mind trying to tell me? Like, okay, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. That, maybe it's this. Like, I'm trying to pinpoint, like, what am I missing? What am I not hearing that I need to hear? But I think a lot of times people just go, oh, the body hurts. Let me pop some Advil.
- [61:27]
B
Yeah.
- [61:27]
A
Silence the noise and not have to listen to the body, not have to listen to the mind.
- [61:30]
B
And I think the other part of it, you know, Matt, is that it's. It's difficult to listen to yourself because now you're starting to hear and see things that you don't want to. Yeah. And that's why I think that work needs to be done with a broader picture of understanding that you are evolving.
- [61:46]
A
Yeah.
- [61:47]
B
And you have made mistakes and you've also done great things. And to have tremendous amount of self empathy and compassion, because if you don't, you will look at yourself and you will just hate you.
- [62:00]
A
Yeah.
- [62:00]
B
And, you know, beat yourself down. I'm a terrible person. I'm a mean person. I'm this. I'm done. That doesn't help anybody. No.
- [62:06]
A
And what I found is I've had to change a lot of definitions and what I Mean by that is, you know, the way society defines failure is very different than the way I define failure. Like for me with my kids, with myself, with my wife, the only way we fail is when we're challenging the status quo and doing something that we're not comfortable or not practice doing. And how freaking cool is that to be trying it? Yeah, but if I talk to, you know, my grandma, failure is defined by you tried and you failed, you suck. So I've had to just change definitions for me and hold my definitions, hold my focus, hold my awareness on my definition and not let society or external forces tell me what that meaning should be. I've had to just create my own. And what I found in that is I've not had to give myself as much forgiveness or as much empathy because I'm not in my mind, in my eyes, I'm not making mistakes. I'm not, you know, I am flawed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not perfect. But I look at the world very differently of like, oh, wow, that's really cool. Celebrate that. Let's celebrate that. Let's celebrate that. And I think there's just so much wisdom in the mind now, it can be scary. Don't get me wrong, it is. There's days where it is a dark, scary place. But I tell people all the time, like, your mind is a garden and your garden, your property down in Costa Rica, you're having to weed it, you're having to prune trees, you're having to make sure. Right?
- [63:26]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [63:28]
A
Only the things you want to grow are growing and our mind is the same.
- [63:32]
B
And it's interesting what you said. I talk about having tremendous amount of self empathy and compassion. I'm like you, I don't have self empathy and compassion. You know why? Because I accept myself for who I am. Yeah, but at the start you have to.
- [63:49]
A
Yes, right, Absolutely.
- [63:50]
B
But I'm in a place right now like I'm still discovering things about me and if I discover something not so nice about me, I'm going to come. Well, all of this led me to where I am today. So that's one more thing that I need to adjust and slowly work on over time to be a better human being to all the people that I love.
- [64:07]
A
Yeah. And I look at a lot of myself as the same way you look at your phone or the shovel. It's just a tool, right. There's moments of me, you know, where I've showed up differently than I would like to show up. Maybe it's with aggression Maybe it's with frustration, maybe it's with disappointment, but I recognize that those moments in me are just me trying to use the tools that I think I have. And did that tool serve or did it not serve? And that's an awareness that I then can use to make a choice in that next situation.
- [64:36]
B
And the other thing you said about the mind is that it can be a dark place, but also a really beautiful place. And it's a source of wisdom. My guru. If you look at the mind as a mansion with different areas, imagine the mine as a three story building. The bottom floor would be your conscious mind, where you function every day externally. The second floor is the subconscious. That's a storehouse of all your memories, experiences, your habit patterns. The third floor is what he would call the superconscious. It's the source of intuition, creativity, spirituality. But in order for your ball of light that functions in the first floor, in the conscious mind, you know, emailing on the phone, driving to go to the third floor and experience that higher state of mind, it needs to go through that messy second floor. And if the second floor is so cluttered with information, unresolved experiences, and all these things, you can never penetrate through to the third floor. So doing the work on yourself is more about organizing the second floor so that you can move your ball of light to the third floor where the higher aspects of you are. Everybody has this. From the worst murderer on the planet to the most holiest person on the planet has this superconscious area of the mind. It's just that we're not able to access it. And one analogy I give to simplify it. Imagine the sun is the superconscious, the third floor. The sky is the subconscious, the second floor and the ground, the earth is the. This conscious mind. The sun's ray is always shining. But if the. If it's a really cloudy day, that subconscious, so filled with unresolved stuff and clouds, this light doesn't get through, right? You blow away all the clouds, the sun's rays touch the earth and you feel the warmth of the sun. And the superconscious, that higher state of mind where intuition comes from, creativity or deep spiritual experiences wants to come through to the first floor so you can perceive it, cognize it, but it can't get through the messy second floor. And that's why doing the personal work on yourself is so critical. Critical. And in trying to be the best dad I can be to my daughter, I realize I need my third floor to shine through me. So I can be that to her. I need to clear the second floor. And when my daughter was born, I doubled down on doing more work on myself because that's the best way I can. Surfer.
- [66:57]
A
Yeah.
- [66:58]
B
Then I can function from a higher state of mind rather than that messy place of mine. It's not about, you know, trying to shape her. It's trying to reshape myself so I can show up better for her.
- [67:10]
A
And most of that, working on yourself. Silence, meditation, awareness, conversations.
- [67:16]
B
Also with friends, with mentors that I have a close circle of friends that are. I share anything intimate with them, you know, that I've known for years, a lot of entrepreneurs. So sometimes I'll share with them something that I'm feeling. I'm feeling afraid about my business. So why do you think I feel this way? Why do you think I behave this way? And then they say something to me and I go, you're really valid point. You know, I had a friend who was a very successful entrepreneur say something to me a couple of weeks ago and I'm like, wow, it's like a punch in the gut. And he said it out of love. I've known him for years. We have such a great friendship. And I just paused and he said, I'm sorry. I said, never apologize. You know, we agreed long time ago we would support each other with love and compassion, you know, and candor. Yeah. Candid. And Ben. I just thought about it for two, three weeks and I was like, I need to work on this. He's so right. He saw something I couldn't see and I'm okay. I'm happy. I'm so grateful to him for sharing this because when I get through this, I'll be so much better for myself and everybody around me.
- [68:20]
A
Yeah.
- [68:21]
B
So I'm not afraid to do the work, but I take it also in chunks. Right, right. So that you don't drown in it.
- [68:27]
A
Right.
- [68:27]
B
Pick the one. I pick. I look at my life. What am I trying to achieve and what's the biggest obstacle? And I try and work with that inside of me first.
- [68:36]
A
So what are you working on right now?
- [68:38]
B
About myself. I'm not sure if I want to share it on a podcast. After we turn out the video, I'll be happy to share it with you. Yeah, Yeah. I look at the Internet as, you know. Let me just dial back a little bit and you can put this on. A few years ago, I was speaking to a company, a multi billion dollar company, and the head of hr, this lady said something to me. Always know your audience. And I don't. Even though I'd heard it before, when I heard it from her, it so profoundly impacted me. And I realized that when you put something online, you put it to the entire spectrum of humanity. On one end, it's the most enlightened, wisest human being, with full of love and compassion and empathy. On the other end is an unevolved Neanderthal. You know, and we're all evolving, all beautiful, God's children. Each one's going to respond differently. And sometimes when you share something that's intimate or personal or sacred, the ones on the other end of the spectrum can devalue it, take the grace out of it, take the essence out of it, you know?
- [69:51]
A
Yeah.
- [69:52]
B
And you have to be a little bit more protective sometimes of what you share and when you share and who you share it with.
- [69:57]
A
You know, I found something very similar, but. But I've reprogrammed my mind a little bit. And maybe this is just to accept it, right? Like, maybe this is just my story to get me through it, but I found that I'm just gonna share me authentically. Me. The good, the bad, the ugly. For those it resonates with, Amazing. For those it doesn't, amazing. For those who criticize me and call me a dirt bag piece of junk and they hope I get hit by a bus. Like, that's amazing, because for me, it's all, again, going back to what you said. It's all about, like, where am I focusing on? Like, what am I gonna give weight to my life? And if I give. If my words are impacting somebody, that is that Neanderthal, as you alluded to, so much weight that they take the time out of their day to bash me or criticize me. I feel like it's not my job to carry their shame or their blame or their criticism. And so I just let it go. But I totally also understand what you said, because I've also been, like, super public about a lot of things. And then I'll just get random people that will just show up at the ranch and be like, hey, can I see this? Zebras? I'm like, who are you? You know? Or like, another example is like, we got these zebras at the ranch. And I was just like, oh, my gosh, this is so cool. Like, I'm just going to share it with the world. Like, this is awesome. I get a call from our insurance company, like, hey, do you have zebras? I'm like, who's asking? They're like, well, our. One of our actuary Guys was doing research on you, and he saw you post the zebras online. And unfortunately, we can't insure any properties we with zebras. And so we're gonna have to drop you from your insurance. I'm like, never crossed my mind that that was a possibility.
- [71:33]
B
All right.
- [71:34]
A
Whoops. So then, you know, we had to go. Course. Correct. So I totally understand what you're saying at the same time, because you don't often recognize the impacts of what you're sharing and how that might come back, like the insurance. Right. They might come back to me and say, hey, you know, you're gonna get cancer.
- [71:49]
B
And also even, like, you know, a lot of people share secret moments with their family and this and that. And I think some kind of sacredness and value can be stripped when too many people are involved sometimes in an intimate group and that. And I'm probably not articulating this very well, but in. In a safe setting where everyone does trust and security and you share, you know, it's received well. And sometimes when you share something beautiful and it's not received well, it can have a repercussion on you. And no matter how good you are at controlling your mind and your ball of light, everybody can be impacted.
- [72:29]
A
Absolutely. And I think that's beautiful because I think a lot of people will listen to this and say, okay, he's got it all figured out. He's perfect, can't be penetrated. His subconscious is solid. He's good. And what you're saying there is, it doesn't matter how much work, it doesn't matter how many hours. We all, at the end of the day, are humans, and we are energy, and we have emotion, and words do carry weight and can impact us whether we want to admit it or not.
- [72:53]
B
And, man, I'll say this to you. There is a reason why monks live within walls.
- [72:58]
A
What's that?
- [72:59]
B
Because they can be impacted by others. So when you live within walls, you're secure and you're protected. And if monks were invincible, they'd just be on the street walking around. And they realized no matter how good you are, at some point there'll be a weak moment where someone can impact you. And what they're trying to do is protect their sanctity to have a more profound experience and a profound life. You know, it's like a violin, I assume. I don't play the violin, but if, you know, Yo, Yo Mai has a violin, I'm sure he's putting it in a really nice protective case and is throwing it in his trunk. In the car, you know? So once you realize that your mind is a beautiful tool, so refined and the most powerful tool in the world, it created this. Everything you have here in your business, you want to protect it. You look at it as a fine vial and you put it in a case. You want to be careful who touches it. You wouldn't just let your friends, kids, come and open it and play with it. No. It needs to be handled, and only the trained people can touch it. So when I look at my mind and what. I share it, if I'm sitting with someone and I feel a great sense of trust with them, then I'll share.
- [74:10]
A
Yeah.
- [74:11]
B
But I'm also very cautious about what I put on the Internet because not everybody gets to pick up my violin.
- [74:17]
A
Yeah, that's a really cool perspective that actually just gave me power in changing the way I look at things, because that. Like the way you articulated that, like, we have this violin, and not everybody gets to pick it up.
- [74:29]
B
No. I've seen people don't let. You know, top musicians don't let people pick up the tennis racket or the instruments. You know, one little. My brother is a really amazing percussionist. And I remember when I was young, he was tuning one of his drums with a few friends in our home. He'd hit it. He'd tune it, hit it. 20 minutes later, I'm like, Bro, sounded good to me 20 minutes ago. Why are you doing this? And his ear is so trained that he can pick up the subtle things as he tuned it. And the mystic trains his nervous system and his mind to be that fine instrument that's so sensitive to energy around him. He can manage it, but he also wants to protect it so that unnecessary people don't need to have access to it.
- [75:17]
A
Yeah. Well said. So my last question is, your guru had a profound impact on you in your life, and he passed away.
- [75:26]
B
Yeah.
- [75:27]
A
Knowing everything you know today, experiencing everything you've experienced, you go back in time. What's one thing you want to tell him that you hadn't had the chance to?
- [75:36]
B
Honestly, nothing. He taught me the profound experience of being completely present by being able to focus. And I was very fortunate to learn that so quickly early on that I never wasted a moment with him. And I've asked myself that if I'm with him now, is there something I should have said or would have said? I can't think of one thing. You know, every moment I was with him, I was fully present. And that's why, for me, this is what I want to teach Because I think how beautiful it is if you, if you had two hours with someone you truly loved. And I love my guru more than anybody else in the world. You know, my daughter would ask me, do you love him more than you love me?
- [76:25]
A
For now, yes.
- [76:29]
B
Why would you miss a second of it? You wouldn't. And when I look at my daughter, I don't want to waste a second of it. And the only way I can leverage that is through the ability of being focused so I can be present. And he taught me that and I was able to do that with him. That I have no regrets now. I miss him deeply. But nothing. I would go back and that's beautiful.
- [76:53]
A
Yeah, that's really cool. People are listening to this, going like, man, I really want to read the book. Really want to learn more about him. Want to watch the TED talk with 7 point some million views. How do people find out more about you? How do they buy the book? And how do they start focusing?
- [77:07]
B
Yeah. Book is available on Amazon. It's in 23 languages. So if English is not your language, hopefully one of them is Barnes and Noble, any bookstore. There's the Kindle version, audio version. My website, Dundapani.org has stuff. I have an app you can download. But we'll just cut here and your team will. I usually after I do a podcast, I send an email like, you know, dundapani.org Matt King or something. What would be a good one to put for you?
- [77:37]
A
That's fine. Matt King.
- [77:38]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's fine. So I, you know, there they can have access to like three tools they can implement in their life. So I can mention that if it's okay with you.
- [77:47]
A
Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
- [77:48]
B
So if you go to dandapani.org Matt King, if you could put that in the notes, you can access three gifts that I have for you there. My weekly free weekly email that I send out about the mind and life. There's also three tools that you can implement in your life right now that you can listen to that audio and three things you can implement right away. So if you go to that URL, you can get all of those.
- [78:11]
A
Well, look, man, I'm incredibly humbled to have this conversation because you've given me tools that I can take home tonight. Like, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna have my daughter and my son lay on the floor. I'm gonna show them how they can take their ball of light and shine it wherever they want. And that gift someday, I'm sure I'll be able to quantify. But in this moment, I'm thinking about it and going, that is a gift that I don't think I will ever be able to repay you or thank you enough for. Because if I can show them that power, their life truly becomes limitless. So thank you so much for making the time.
- [78:44]
B
You're most welcome. Thank you for saying that and. And thank you for learning so well. You know, I asked myself when my daughter was born, if I could give her one gift, what would that gift be? And the answer was clear as day. Give her the ability to control where her ball of light goes, because then no one can control her, because she can always decide where she wants to be in her mind. And if she can do that, she's golden. She'll figure out money, everything else. She's in charge.
- [79:14]
A
That's beautiful, man. Well, thank you so much for your time.
- [79:16]
B
You're most welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me on this podcast. Thanks for all these great questions.
- [79:20]
A
Yeah, of course.
- [79:20]
B
Yes.