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The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network
TIP779: Richer, Wiser, Happier Q4 2025 w/ Stig Brodersen & William Green
02:14:40
Stig Brodersen sits down with his friend and co-host William Green for Q4 of Richer, Wiser, Happier series.
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- [00:01]
William Green
You're listening to tip.
- [00:03]
Dick Brodersen
Every quarter, I sit down with my friend and co host William Green. This time you explore something that might sound mystical at first. We're talking about the power of the subconscious mind. We explore how you can tap into a flow state so your deeper intuition can guide you towards your goal and share the practice that I've used since age 26. Through trial and error, we also wrestle with whether we all want the same things in life, including respect, appreciation, love, love and independence, even if those needs show up in wildly different ways. In a world that feels so full of confusion and anger, how do we keep showing gratitude? How do we treat adversity not as a curse, but as a gift, a chance to behave well when it matters most. If you are curious and joining William and me on our quest to explore how ancient wisdom, modern psychology and everyday life collide, I think you will really enjoy this conversation.
- [01:03]
William Green
Since 2014 and through more than 180 million downloads, we've studied the financial markets and read the books that influence self made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Now for your hosts, Steve Broderson and William Green.
- [01:29]
Dick Brodersen
Welcome to the Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Dick Brodersen and today I'm here with my friend and co host William Green. William, how are you today?
- [01:38]
William Green
I'm great. It's lovely to see you. This is always one of the highlights of my quarter. So yeah, it's a delight to be back with you.
- [01:46]
Dick Brodersen
Thank you so much for saying so, William. And it's no secret that it's always a privilege to get the opportunity to speak with you. So thank you for making time. The first topic we're going to talk about here today is about the power of the subconscious mind. And I was listening to one of your episodes or re listening to one of your episodes here the other day with Arnold Van den Berg. And I mean both from your books. And I know I said this multiple times on the show, but I'll just say once again, that's my favorite person in your book. It's the most beautiful story and I'm just going to put you a bit on the spot here before we sort of dive into it. Just for the listeners who might not have been as lucky, tune into your most recent episode with you. It's Richer weiser happier episode 61. We'll make sure to link to it. But if people don't know who Arnold is, perhaps you could just give us a brief introduction to this incredible, incredible person.
- [02:39]
William Green
Yeah, Arnold is a wonderful human being. And I often say that he's not the most successful investor I've interviewed and written about, but he may be the most successful human being in the investment world that I've encountered. And part of that is because he just started out with such a bad hand that he was dealt. Because as you know very well, he was born on the same street as Anne Frank in Amsterdam in 1939. As a Jewish kid, he had to be put into hiding for the first couple of years of his life. And then he was smuggled into an orphanage, a Catholic girl who was a teenager who risked her life to save him. And Arnold's parents ended up in Auschwitz and amazingly survived. But when they came to pick him up when he was about 6, he didn't even recognize them. And he was so emaciated and weak that he couldn't even really walk. And so he just started with this terrible childhood and with all of these traumas and with the sense that he was dumb. He overheard his mom talking to a psychologist about why he was doing so badly at school when they had moved to la, and they said that he probably had brain damage from being starved, from being malnourished as a kid in this orphanage where there was no food. And he literally would sometimes eat grass or eat flowers and the like. And yet he's become this very successful investor. He's now, I guess probably about 86, 87 is my guess. I can't remember. But beyond being a very successful investor who's built this firm with a great 50 year record, he's also the loveliest human being and he's very kind. He's been married to this woman, Eileen for 50 years and they have a lovely relationship. He has a lovely relationship with his son Scott, who is the president of his firm, Century Management. And so in so many ways he's a kind of embodiment for me of what it means to have a successful life. And he's happy and joyful amid adversity, which is an amazing thing. So part of what fascinates me is the question of how did this guy, who was dealt such a terrible hand, gain control over his inner landscape? And what were the tools he used so that he could transform his mind and become very successful. And so that's why this question of, of the subconscious mind becomes really relevant. Because this is something that usually I would think, oh, this is so kooky, and I would have the resistance to this, of a typical sort of Eton, Oxford, Columbia graduate who was schooled in what my friend Pico I would call the institutes of higher skepticism. We were educated to be skeptics. And here's this guy who is obsessed with self hypnosis and the subconscious mind and stuff, but he's had this 50 year experiment exploring how to use the subconscious mind. And so you have to take it seriously. And so that I think is, is the backdrop to what we're about to discuss, which is really, in practical terms, if our listeners or viewers want to use the subconscious mind so they can transform their own lives, what would they do? What does Arnold teach you? What do you do? What do we do? And so, yeah, take it away. I hope that's a helpful background.
- [05:53]
Dick Brodersen
It's a super helpful background, William. And I think what I really liked about that interview was how well he articulated and how helpful it has been for him and his family. It's such a powerful concept. And if it's true that the best investment you can make is in yourself, at least that's what they tell us, I would argue that the best investment in yourself is in your subconscious mind and really unleash that power. And I feel it's almost cheeky for me to say that it feels like a superpower, but it's not like superpower like Superman who can fly and whatever he's doing, it's something we can all tap into. And so I can tell a bit of my personal journey. And then I'll be super curious to hear how you have applied it, William, and how our listeners can use it. And I'm a bit uneasy about going into it. Not because I feel it's embarrassing by any means. I think it's super, super powerful and something we should all lean into, but just more because I'm sort of like worried that the way I do it is completely useless for everyone else and perhaps it needs to do it their own way. So I'm kind of really curious to hear afterwards, William, how you're doing it and perhaps more some general techniques. So anyways, I didn't use this technique before I was. I think I was 26 or 27 before I started studying it. And you know, I sometimes think like I wasted my time until then. But the concept is very simple, even though in its own way it's also complex. So you can basically determine what you want to achieve and then have your subconscious mind guide you towards that goal. And Arnold used this technique to rewire his own self image after, to your point, a very tough period in his life. A lot of people with that type of experience might have gone in Very different direction. And Arnold chose the direction of kindness, which is he, you know, fabulous. Whenever you get to know his story. He also talks about in this wonderful episode with you, William, how he used this technique to help his son become an accomplished athlete. Even though that for all intents and purposes, a lot of us might have looked at his son and said that he didn't have the natural inclination to be that. But by the force of your thoughts, he achieved it. It's an amazing, it's an amazing story. And so I wish I had a personal and inspiring story like Arnold, but I, I feel it's a bit more plain and probably self serving. Whenever I say that whenever I learned this technique, I used it for something a bit more self serving. It was really, really important to me at that point in time in my life to become financial, independent. And so whenever I learned about technique, that was the first thing I went to. And I know it doesn't reflect well on me, but that was very much what I did, at least for me. I mainly just read about it. I didn't have any formal training or coaching. I know there are different programs you can take. I, I've never been smart enough to go that route, even though I probably should because I feel like I'm a very slow learner and I just did a lot of trial and error to harness that power. And anyways, that was how I did it. Perhaps someone wants to do a bit of more formal training or perhaps not. And so the way that I've mainly used it is that I've used different techniques to get myself into a flow state. And flow isn't the same as meditation, though they share certain qualities. So in meditation you quiet the mind and in flow you focus on it. And some people might say it's semantics. It sort of depends on how you look at it. But I would argue it's two different things. But it still lets you access the subconscious mind. And so the different techniques, I mainly use walking as a tool to enter the flow state and my subconscious mind, for reasons I can't explain, it typically works better if it's bright. And I think once you're in the flow state, it doesn't have to matter. It's not like you can't do it if it's dark and perhaps you have different triggers or you can also sit on your couch. I'm not saying that you can't do that. For me, it requires a bit more work to get into the flow state and it's harder for me to stay in that If I'm staying put. But that sort of goes to what I was trying to say at the beginning, that I think we all have different things that work for us, and then perhaps there are other things that work for other people. So I'll basically just encourage you to study it and experiment and then figure out what works for you. And so, like I mentioned before, you start to focus on what you want to achieve, and you start with the end in mind, and then you facilitate that flow, and you sort of, like, let your subconscious mind fill in the blanks of how you reach your goal. And you observe. Just like whenever you're meditating, you observe the thoughts that are coming your way. And the best way I can explain it is that it almost feels like a mental paper map that's being unfolded for you. And then you have to decide on the right path. And so you sort of, like, get different clues, and sometimes you go down the wrong path. So you gently but firmly put this thought aside. And then you go back to finding this, the right path through this maze of different thoughts you get. And it's kind of like a beautiful mental experience, especially, I think, for someone like me. And I don't know if it sounds too cliche for me to say this, but I've never tried any drugs. I don't really hold alcohol really well. So this is the closest thing for me to an addiction. If I have more like, let's call it eight or ten hours without that state, I sort of start to feel a bit restless. And so I can, for example, feel it sometimes whenever I'm traveling, just sort of, like, I get out of my normal rhythm. And so that sometimes whenever I don't go into that state, and that manifests in different ways.
- [11:32]
William Green
And are you doing anything in terms of breathing techniques or affirmations or anything like that as you're walking to get you in the state? Or is it just the movement that's getting you in that state?
- [11:44]
Dick Brodersen
I think it's the movement. And then it typically works better if I can see that there's an open road. It's perfectly fine if there are other people. But it can't be, like, super congested. Like, I wouldn't be able to do it if I'm at a concert, for example, and if there are a lot of stuff going on around me.
- [12:01]
William Green
So there's a sort of visual element to it in a way?
- [12:04]
Dick Brodersen
Yes, very much so. At least once you enter the flow state, there's a visual element, and then that sort of, like, goes away. And then you're alone with your thoughts. But it's in a way where it's almost like whenever you drive a car and you pay attention, so you don't, you know, run into other cars. But in the same ways, you're also sort of like in a state where you don't really focus on too much on the other cars. But of course, you don't want to go into an accident. And so I can probably best explain this entering of the flow state, like starting a campfire. And I say this metaphorically because I actually don't really know how to start a campfire. I was never doing a good job being a Boy Scout in the first place. But you can't light a roaring flame instantly. But you can gather dry wood and you can strike a spark, and then you can shield from the wind until it catches fire. And similarly, at least I can't go into flow state just like that. It's about making the conditions just right. So it's easier if you're rested, if you're not hungry, if you're surrounded by the right sounds, for example, or the right visuals. And I think much of this sounds. Perhaps some of this sounds counterintuitive. So, for example, if you had a very busy day, you might say, I don't have time to go into flow state. But that's actually the very opposite of the intention. It's whenever you're really busy that you have to spend time being in that flow state. And so I have different. I don't know if rituals is the right word, but I have different times of the day, almost the exact same time every day where I would go into flow state. And so that's why I was going at this before. Whenever I'm traveling and you're sort of like, outside of your rhythm, sometimes I forget to go into that state. And so it's always, like, afterwards, I realize, oh, I haven't been in that state. And that's perhaps why I feel a little stressed.
- [13:53]
William Green
So is the point of getting in the flow state in some sense that then you have more access or more influence over your subconscious mind because you're so relaxed in some way? There's less static on the radio. There's less distortion. And so you can kind of think more clearly or you can influence your subconscious by asking it questions, and there's just less noise, less static, less distortion?
- [14:22]
Dick Brodersen
Yeah, great question. I think the intention is twofold. One is it's just a very nice feeling. And then the second thing is, if you want to achieve something, you Both get the nice feeling, but it also helps you achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve. And so it feels almost like you're cheating whenever you're doing it, because it's like you are unleashing a power that I think we all have access to, but it's almost like you get a second engine. So it's not like if you want to achieve a lot of things, then you just have to outwork everyone. I actually think it's very much the other way, where the subconscious mind allows you to achieve bigger things while you don't exhaust yourself. And I feel like I'm not articulating this very well, but I think I can compare it with the battery you have on your phone. Like you have to charge the battery once in a while and then you activate it and then tell it what to do. And so if I can continue with this half baked metaphors, I don't believe it's doing a good job of is that it's almost like your subconscious mind with illuminated path for you, but it won't walk that path for you. So you can't simply, I don't know, think about money or whatever you seek and then money just flows into your hand. That's not how it works. The way I'd probably explain it is that think about it like flying from New York to la. Some people, if they feel like they have to outwork everyone, they would have to, you know, drive the whole distance and then there will probably be some detours going there. But you can tap your subconscious mind and then move effortless through the skies. But you still, even with the plane waiting, you still have to buy the ticket, you have to check in, you have to take your seat. So it's sort of like your subconscious mind gives you the flight path, but execution is really on you to get off the ground.
- [16:17]
William Green
So wait, so in practical terms, like let's say a listener wants to become like financially independent, like totally financially free. Like I remember many years ago reading Think and Grow Rich. And I think part of the conclusion that I got from that is that you should set a very specific target, right? So you would say, you know, I'm going to have $10 million by 20, 30 or by, you know, whatever it was. And then obviously you have to do the actions like you got to study the stock market, you got to, you got to work hard, you know, you got to execute having got your mind, your subconscious mind in the right position. Like in terms of like what you learned about setting a target or set like The Once you've got yourself in a flow state and you're kind of programming your mind to become financially secure or financially free or independent, what have you learned about what actually helps in terms of like giving the right message to your subconscious mind when you're in that flow state?
- [17:16]
Dick Brodersen
Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
- [17:19]
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- [19:36]
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- [20:47]
Dick Brodersen
Alright, back to the show. A part of it, whenever you have all of these thoughts, is that you have to choose the right path and you have to test it and you have to adjust it. It's almost like this path, this maze I was telling you before, and then you visualize where you want to go and then you're trying to step backwards. So I don't know if this is a good metaphor and I kind of feel like I'm giving terrible metaphors today. It's more like, you know, if you have quantum computing. Sorry, I have to invoke quantum computing now that we're talking about the subconscious mind in the regular world or with our conscious mind, you have ones and zeros with quantum computing or our subconscious mind because it's so much fast, you both have ones and zeros at the same time, so you both have the starting point where you are today, but you also have the endpoint to your point from think or go rich or whatever, you get your inspiration and that gives you the path you need to walk on. And so if I can continue on that, I would say that you have to learn how to go in and out of the flow state most efficiently and it's simple but not easy. And you have to be okay with the fact that sometimes nothing will come out of it. And whenever I say nothing, it's not completely true because actually it's a very, very nice state to be in. So if nothing happens, you probably still had a very nice walk or a nice rest period or whatever it might be whenever you calm your mind. And so having to put up numbers on things and I can't help myself, if you're so inclined, you can think about it as a quadratic equation and if you're very ambitious about using math. You want to target how you found the parabola's vertex. And if that doesn't make any sense, and it's perfectly fine if it doesn't make any sense, you can just think about it. That in the sense that if you need 10 good insights to achieve your goal, then going into flow state 10 times just won't be enough. At the same time, you also can't go in and out every five minutes because the world just isn't that kind. And so I find that to be very helpful. And if we look away from all that money stuff, which is probably not the direction you want to go, but whatever, that's really important to you. Let me give you another example that's a bit more recent. So I want to do something nice for my parents. And I know that especially for my parents, it's very much the thought that counts. And so I like to try and do something new to make them happy or give them a new perspective one way or the other. And so I would in this perhaps very simple case, but I would go into flow state to figure out how can I do something nice for my parents in a way I haven't done before. And so I'm not saying this is a very unique, fantastic insight or anything like that, but if I just sit in front of my computer or whatever, I'm not going to come up with something really nice for my parents. That's just not how my mind works. And so I would then say, okay, how can I achieve my goal? I know it sounds very businesslike, but that is the goal. That is the one thing I want to optimize for. And then I get these different thoughts and then I start to organize those thoughts and figure out how that logistically works out. And so this sounds very intricate, probably more intricate than what it is. But in this probably simple example, I came up with a specific type of gift basket and a card with some photos of my siblings and me and some cards about how much we love them and why we love them. So it's more like it gives you a different take of things where you start and stop the same place and then you sort of like figure out how those two ends meet. I don't think I do a really good job articulating how this process works. And so let me try to round this off and say, listen to William's episode with Arnold. I think he does a much better job. He's way more systematic than what I am and it's way less self serving than what I'm doing. And then, William, I'm super curious to hear how you tap into your subconscious mind and perhaps you can articulate a bit better how we can clone that for the listeners and viewers out there.
- [25:15]
William Green
Well, thanks for sharing all that. That's very interesting. I like getting this insight into what you do. I think it won't shock you to know that I'm less systematic than you are and less systematic than Arnold. And so in some ways, I think our listeners and viewers can do much better than to clone me, as I'm, A, not consistent enough and B, not really an expert. On the other hand, I've interviewed Arnold many times about this subject, and I've done quite a lot to kind of synthesize what I think are some of the most important things that he's learned over the years. And I've played with quite a lot of these tools. And I would say, obviously, it's really hard to know what has had an effect on you and what hasn't because we use so many different tools and techniques. But I feel like it's had a really palpable impact on my life. And in some ways, it started, I think, when I was first reporting my book Richer, Wiser, Happier. And I went to Austin, Texas, and I spent a couple of days with Arnold, interviewing him. And right towards the end of my visit, he hypnotized me on the floor of his office, and he played me the Four Seasons, which is what he always likes to do for Valda's Four Seasons. And he got me to do, I guess, this kind of, if I remember rightly, it was like you would tense your muscles and then relax your muscles until you gradually go into a meditative state. And before that, we had talked about various things that I was trying to achieve, various. And he had helped me to write various affirmations. And so he was then feeding those affirmations, I guess, to me while I was in this hypnotized state. And I. I don't know that I was a really great subject because I think right after that I had to get a taxi to the airport and fly back to New York, where I live. And so I think I was probably like, there was probably a little bit of underlying anxiety about, oh, my God, I'm going to have to leave soon. And so, you know. But nonetheless, extraordinary things started to happen to me very soon afterwards in terms of my career and the like. And I think part of it, as I understand it, is, I guess this was an image that Arnold gave me, is that often we're giving ourselves our subconscious mind, or whatever language you want to use for this slightly nebulous, vague thing, we're giving it very confused messages, right? Like we. We say we want to do this, but then our behavior is inconsistent with it, or then we talk to ourselves really, really brutally, and we doubt ourselves. And so there's all this distortion. And I think part of what Arnold was doing was removing that static so that it was as if you were getting a better radio signal. You were broadcasting in a much clearer way to the world. And so some extraordinarily good things happened to me and continued to happen to me, thank God, after that initial session with Arnold and after I started to use some of those affirmations. And I think, as you say, one of the important things is to decide up front what your goal really is and develop a clear and positive goal and hopefully define it fairly narrowly. And so Arnold, for example, early on had been desperate for financial success because he'd grown up in this family where his father had had a lot of financial problems as a. As an immigrant to the US and so he had this goal where he just wanted to be financially independent so that he wouldn't have to put up with any nonsense from anyone and could kind of be himself, do what he wanted to do, be thoroughly independent. And so it wasn't necessarily he had to be hugely rich. He just wanted enough so that he could live the way he wanted to live. So that was his. His primary goal. And he still thinks that if you're starting out in life, you really want to get financial independence. But gradually, as he achieved financial independence and way more than that, he realized that the great joy of having a lot of money for him was that he could help other people. And that was really a wonderful feeling to give money away and help lift up other people. And so he. He gradually shifted his goal to becoming really a kind and loving person who helped a lot of other people. And this, this really affects the kind of affirmations you set out as you think about the inputs that are going to get you to your goal. And so part of what happened to Arnold, he. He collects a lot of quotes and, and he's constantly reading, and then he distills these books and he saves messages from them. And so he's always been deeply influenced by Viktor Frankl, who also was a Holocaust survivor. And Frankl, as Arnold would quote me, said, love is the only true pathway to success and fulfillment. He said love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. The salvation of man is through love and in love. And Arnold also quoted to me this book that I got a guy called Ashley Montague, who's this British American anthropologist, an author who's a really curious guy. I, I looked him up, I sort of fell into a rabbit hole and started studying him. He was actually, he was born in London, his name was originally Israel Ehrenberg and he actually, he wrote a biography of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant man, which inspired the David lynch movie, which is about 45 years old. It's a great movie. And so later Ashley Montague, who actually gave himself the full name, having been had the first name, Israel, changes his name to Montague Francis Ashley Montague. And so he becomes this sort of parsh sounding Brit. And he was obviously a very brilliant guy. And he wrote a book called the Practice of Love back in I think 1975, which I got an old worn out copy of. And this also had a big impact on Otto. He quotes this a lot. And there's an essay in there called the Pathway to Fulfillment and I'll read you a quote from it that had an impact on Arnold in deciding he needed to change what his goals were. So Montague said the most critical of all human needs and abilities is the need and the ability to love. It is the central, the cardinal of all the needs of humankind. It is only through love that we can achieve fulfillment as a healthy human being. And so one of the things that Montague figured out that had an impact on Arnold is that he said if, if you're not actually feeling that loving, you know, what do you actually do to become, to bridge this gap so you become more loving? And he said the answer is simply to behave as if you were a loving person. And he said at a certain point, basically you wake up and it's like you've done this so much that you become the person you wanted to be. So, so you're doing these persistent low level acts of care, among other things. And so, so yeah, so the answer is simply to behave as if you were a loving person. He said. So anyway, this is a, this is a, to set the stage, this preamble for something kind of important which happened to Arnold, which is he starts to realize that what makes him happiest is when he shares his ideas, when he shares his wealth, when he shares tools and insights that actually, and books that he buys people and they change other people's lives. And he says there's no greater satisfaction than that regardless of how much money you make, it's that the Money is just not going to do it. And so what had a really powerful impact on me that I learned only in the last six months from Arnold, is that at a certain point, he changed his own affirmations. And I love the kind of granular detail of learning what someone says to themselves or a particular tool or technique that they use, because it gives you a sense of something that you can cling on to that that is. Is like, really tangible, that can help you in your own life. So for many years, Arnold would say, he would quote this line from Emil Kuwait, which is, every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. And Arnold would get in the shower, for example, he'd have a warm shower, and then he'd turn it cold because he became obsessed with Wim Hof. And he would say, 30 or 40 times, and he still does this every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. So he's programming his thinking through affirmations. And he thinks by. By getting in, making it cold, I guess in some way you are accessing a kind of different state, whether it's an alpha state or a theta state or whatever. I don't know. He. He talks a lot about these different. These different states that make you more and more suggestible. And so he's kind of rewiring himself by repeating this stuff. But then he would say again and again throughout the day. And he also believes you should write down your affirmations. So it's very helpful to write them down multiple times that you're kind of pounding them into your subconscious mind. He would say over and over again, I am happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise. Because, you know, he thought, well, these are the four things I want. I've got to be happy. I've got to be healthy. I want to be wealthy and financially free, and I want to be wise. So. So this had a big impact on me, right? And so I start to borrow some of his affirmations. And then what he said to me is, well, I realized that the ultimate end goal is the ability to give and receive love. And so he said, once I realized that, I actually had to change my affirmations. And so he said, I realized just being happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise isn't enough. You've got to be a loving person as well. He said, you've got to be able to give of yourself unconditionally, because that's what really brings you joy. So he changed his mantra, and he started to say, I am a loving, kind person, and I'm Happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise. And he said that's what he regards as true success. Right? Money's not the most important part. To have a happy life, you need love. So that sentence, that new mantra or affirmation of his, includes an enormous amount of distilled practical wisdom from this very wise, very thoughtful, very joyful man. And so I started to think, okay, what am I going to do to write down affirmations and then use them regularly, although nowhere near as regularly or systematically as Arnold, so that I can capture this as well. So I think you want to use your own language that resonates for you. And so I started to play with different things. I'm always wary of kind of saying this stuff in public, but I also. I want. And also partly because I never live up to this stuff, but I. I want to share this because I think it's helpful to our listeners and viewers that they have a sense of the tools, the ingredients in this. In this buffet that they can kind of play with that might help them. And so one thing I started to do was I would say, I'm a kind and compassionate person. I'm unconditionally loving. Because I would start to think, well, the Kabbalists who I study, I've studied Kabbalah for maybe 17 years, would always talk about unconditional love. And, you know, David Hawkins talks about as well. He said that to reach 540, which is very high on his scale of consciousness, 540 is unconditional love. So I sort of started to think, okay, so that's a. That I want to incorporate that. That idea. But then sometimes I would just play with it, and I would just say, I'm a kind, loving, and compassionate person, or, I'm kind, loving and compassionate. And then I would add what he said, which is, I'm happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise. And then sometimes. And I. I mix it up, sometimes I would say things like, there's a lesson from Michael Burke I had on the podcast, which I really. It always reson. Resonated for me. And so I would say I'm a resting place and a conduit for the light of the creator, because I think in some way, you want to be a conduit for something beyond yourself, beyond the ego. And so this is just a buffet of things that you're trying to use to program your mind. Sometimes I would try to convince myself. I would say things like, you know, I'm happy, healthy, slim, fit, calm, and kind. And I think there was always a part of me that would look at myself. So I said, slim and fit. And I'd be like, I'm not sure. I really believe that. You know, there's a little bit of resistance, but I think. I think it's really helpful. The repetition is very, very helpful. And so I. I would stick these things in habitify this app that I sometimes use that gets you to. To kind of come back to your habits every day. But I'll go days without even bothering to open the app. I'll forget to open it. So I'm. I'm in some ways a terrible role model. I also would write some of these things in the back of a daily prayer book that I try to use that I don't use every day, but I use several times a week. And so it would be among the last things that I saw in the prayer book for several years. And so one of the things that I wrote that is from my original conversations, I think, with Arnold, which I really like. And again, I. I don't know. I'm sort of wary of sharing these things with people, but hopefully it's helpful. I wrote, I live in a state of abundance and will always live in a state of abundance. And I deeply appreciate this state of abundance because part of what I'm trying to program myself to believe is not, oh, if I make this amount of money or I have this amount of money or I have this kind of house or no debt or anything like that, then I'm finally going to be happy and feel free and the like. And so part of what I'm doing there with that statement is I'm telling myself, no, no, I live in a state of abundance. And it's not a financial number. It's actually a state. It's a state of abundance or prosperity. And I'll always live in a state of abundance. And I deeply appreciate the state of abundance because I want to wire myself to have, like, deep appreciation for what I already have instead of constantly thinking about what I'm going to have and then it'll be okay. So those are some of the tools that. That I use. There's also this really important question that Arnold raises that we discussed a bit of how you actually get into this state of what he would call one pointedness, one pointed attention, which is another way of talking about flow states, I guess, which is what he's basically talking about. He's had this great revelation that there are all of these different ways where you're focusing the mind in a kind of extreme way on a single point or object. And so traditionally, it might be the breath, it might be a mantra, it might be visualization. And so you are trying to make the mind more stable so it's not wavering, it's not dull. So you're getting into these deep absorption states where you're not distracted as emotions and sensations arise, so you don't get entangled in them. And so you are able to direct your energy into a state of flow. And so Arnold's big revelation in the last year really, is that through hypnosis or through breathing techniques or through meditation, you are getting into these very deep states of absorption where the subconscious mind is easier to mold. And so he did it through self hypnosis. And he. It's sometimes maddeningly difficult to pin Arnold down when you're in conversation. And I'm always trying to drag him towards something, like, really tangible and get him to explain it. And so one of. One of the things that Arnold obviously does is when he wakes up each day, he thanks God for another day for all the blessings in his life. And then he lays his arms down on the mattress of his bed, and I think he starts to count from a hundred down to one while his arms get heavier. And so this is a technique that he uses every morning to get himself into a kind of flow state, into this state of deep absorption where he can, I guess, give instructions to his subconscious mind. I wish that I did that, but I find I often wake up and I. I do tend to say something in. In Hebrew that is sort of giving thanks for the fact that you got your soul back, that you have another day, that you have another opportunity to. To live more wisely than you did the previous day. Hopefully, those aren't the exact words, but it's a. It's a. It's a phrase that. That a lot of Jews say every day. And it's kind of beautiful in. I'll tell you a little snippet of it. It goes. And so I'll try to say that every morning. So you're sort of. You're getting yourself in a good state at the very start. And I find I then immediately slip into reading the New York Times or something and seeing what fresh disaster there is. And that takes me out of that state. So this is one of the reasons why I'm such a poor example of how actually we use these techniques. But then there are these other ways of getting yourself into these deep absorption states. And so one of the things that I've discussed in those podcasts with Arnold is this app reverie which is R E V E R I, which I've never got super into, but I've subscribed to it multiple times. I still have it, and I keep wanting to get deeper into it. I've used it a bunch of times, but it's created by this guy, David Spiegel, who's the Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and director of the Stanford center on Stress and Health and director of the center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. So this is a guy who's got serious credibility in the medical field. And so it's curious that he's using hypnosis to deal with things like asthma and stress and insomnia and pain and PTSD and to quit smoking and to eat better. And so I think that's worth our listeners and viewers exploring because this is a guy who's been educated at Harvard and Yale and he's written multiple books. And it's. It's not expensive. It's something like 100 bucks a year. And it's about getting you into this state of hypnosis, which he calls a. A naturally occurring state of. Of highly focused attention. The thing that I've used much more often that I've talked about in my episodes with Arnold, which I find kind of ridiculously helpful, almost embarrassingly helpful, is that there's this guy who had a huge impact on Arnold, a guy called Harry Carpenter, who wrote a book called the Genie within, which Arnold regards as in many ways the best single practical guide to using these techniques of, of training the subconscious mind. And it is a good book. And, you know, for me, it's a little bit hard because he'll. He'll literally. He'll use phrases like sort of the subconscious crock pot and stuff like that, and even like the title, the Genie Within. Like, I have a lot of resistance to this stuff as a sort of intellectual snob. Whereas part of Arnold's advantage is that he had no resistance at all. Like, he just, you know, he didn't go to university or anything, and he just was not an intellectual snob. And so he just used this stuff and it worked. And so I think there is this problem for a lot of cerebral intellectual people is that we're a little bit resistant sometimes to this stuff, and so we don't get the full benefit to it. But one of the things that I found really helpful is that Harry Carpenter, the author of the Genie within, has a website which is the genie within dot com. And on there, there are these affirmation CDs. And I ordered these as MP3s. And there's something like 10 bucks each. I mean, 10 bucks for the whole thing. It's not totally inexpensive. And there's one, it's called Track two, Attaining the Alpha State through Progressive Relaxation, which has this metronome sound in the background. And Harry Carpenter talks for about 11, 11 and a half minutes. And it gets you into an alpha state. And I find that ridiculously helpful. And I've used it a lot. And one of the things that it enables you to do also, the more you do it, is he teaches you, while in this state of deep absorption, to put your thumb and forefinger together and to say something like, 3, 2, 1, Alpha. And you get into that state. And so then you don't need to go through the tape the whole time because just when you want to go into this deep state, there's this kind of physical cue. And so I think you know, from. And then he also has one on getting into Theta state, which I think is Track three, the Theta state routine, which I've. I've used quite a lot, but nowhere near as much as the alpha state one, which I just find very, very helpful. And so there is this kind of array of techniques that people can use to get into these deep states of absorption. I meditate a lot. I mean, not a huge amount, but I try to meditate several times a week at least. And if I were a little more organized, I would do it every day, but I don't do it quite every day. But I think that gets you in a state of deep absorption where it kind of moves the clouds away a little bit, or at least you see the storm in your head a little more clearly. So I think all of these techniques enable you to see a little more clearly and to communicate maybe with this deeper part of yourself in a less distorting, staticky kind of way. But then there are other techniques that Arnold's used over the years that I think are also worth exploring. So he's done a lot with visualization over the years. So there's a guy called J.K. williams who had a project, profound impact on him, who, who wrote, you can make a mental image or a blueprint of the progress and expansion you want to achieve. And by impressing the concept of your objective upon your subconscious mind, you can cause the condition you visualize in your mind to be created. In other words, you create your own reality. And this had such an impact on Arnold. This, this, this idea from J.K. williams of Visualization that he took a. Arnold took a photo, I think, from Barron's in 1979 of some very successful looking investor in his beautiful suit and stuff. And he would just look at this photo again and again, visualizing himself becoming like this guy. So that's another way of impressing upon your subconscious mind what it is you want to become. And then Arnold has also been really careful to try to erase negative thoughts and negative self talk. And so he has this process where he said he screens his thoughts and when he has an angry thought or a negative thought, say he would just erase it because he doesn't want it to make an impression. So he would, if he had a negative thought, he could just say, no, I'm a kind and loving person. Or he could just say, in every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. And so he's erasing that negative thought. And this is hard if you're someone like me who's a writer. And a lot of what we were taught when we were studying English literature or learning to write fiction or whatever it was, was you need to be willing to go explore the dark side of life and let your mind run wild. And so it's difficult, the idea that actually you're kind of controlling your thoughts and you're putting them down this kind of constrained path. But as Arnold said the first time I interviewed him on my podcast, he said the single most important thing in life is what you believe. And he said your belief governs your feelings, and your feelings create your attitude and your attitude creates reality. So he became very, very disciplined about controlling what he thought and the messages he put in his subconscious mind. And so, you know, there's one other last point I would make. And sorry that I'm rambling for a long time, but I'm trying to give people sort of some fairly tangible tools here. What you said before about the fact that the subconscious mind can illuminate a path, but it won't walk it for you, that you actually have to execute, I think is a really, really important point. And so Arnold has obviously done a huge amount to reprogram his mind so that he has thoughts that are helpful. But at the same time, he's been ridiculously disciplined and driven. And so he, at one point he basically, I think I may have written about this in the book. He gave up chess because he loved it and he saw that it was just going to take up too much of his time and he wanted to focus on investing and becoming a successful investor. And he played golf Once. And he was like, yeah, this is going to shackle my mind. I can't do this and say, never play it again. So he was very. He was very focused on removing distractions. And this is something I think that he also learned from J.K. williams, who said, you can have anything you want, providing you are willing to pay the price. And so Arnold really doesn't believe in procrastination either. He would often say to himself, he has this mantra, do it now, do it now. And very disciplined in what he eats. He's. He's vegan. He was very disciplined in his exercise and his affirmations. He would do yoga the whole time. I mean, I have this video of him that I took in his office when I think he was 77. And he could put his foot on the bookshelf above his head at 77. And he showed me that he could put his legs in lotus position, sort of fully folded over each other. I mean, I can't do that. I'm in my 50s. And then he could lift himself off the ground on his fingertips. And I asked him recently if he could still do it, and he's like, oh, yeah, he can still do it. And so he also would have this rule where he said to me, don't sit when you can stand, don't stand when you can walk, don't walk when you can run, and when there are stairs, climb them. And so I think this is really important is this idea that it's not. It's not enough just to get your mind in a great state. You've got to actually be pretty disciplined in your work. You've got to be pretty driven in your work. And I. I wonder, in a way, I mean, I think that's probably a pretty big part of why life has gone better for me over the last decade is I'm. I'm pretty driven and pretty focused on my work. Like, you know, I'm pretty erratic in using all of these tools, like affirmations or whatever it is. You know, like, I'm always solid B minus or C plus or whatever on any of these things that require routine and systematic, regular behavior. But I'm pretty obsessive about my work and just always trying to prepare as much as possible and the like. And so I think you need both. I'm not saying one is more important than the other. I think you need the work, you need the discipline, but you also need to get your mind in the right place. The other thing is also, I would say not to be so focused on Always becoming something, always like, I must be this, and then I'm going to be happy. And I think this is one of the great lessons from Arnold as well. When I wrote about him in my book, he said, I'm the richest guy in the world because I'm content with what I have. And so that's another thing I think that's really key is even as you're trying to use all these things like the subconscious mind and affirmations and visualization and mantras and the like, to become something more than you are, I think it's really important to build this muscle of appreciation so that you're content also with what you have. And so I feel like this is something where I actually have made a lot of progress, where I'm just. I think probably because I went through periods of my life where things weren't that good, where I was sort of struggling financially or professionally, and it was just, you know, it was just difficult that I just. A lot of the time I just feel sort of overwhelmed with gratitude. And, you know, there's a part of me, you know, historically, like, for example, my. My late grandmother Muriel would have. Would, you know, would have been horrified by, you know, it was as if you were sort of tempting. Tempting God or tempting fate or tempting, you know, dark forces by saying, you know, I feel so fortunate. I feel so blessed. And I think that's right. There's a part of me that doesn't want to say that out loud. You know, Michael Berg will often say, you want to conceal your blessings. And I think that's true. And at the same time, at least in my own mind, I just want to really be constantly grateful and thankful for the, you know, whether it's the home that you have or the study that you have where you're surrounded by books or friends that you have or partner that you have, or just good health or the fact that, you know, you recovered from something, or the fact that you get to learn stuff that do work that you find interesting, whatever it is. I think you want to kind of build that muscle. And I think that's one thing that I see from Arnold is just this tremendous sense of gratitude and appreciation. And then at the same time, he understands the fact that developing a good character is going to be really key to his happiness. And so he's just really. He'll say things like, you. You never go wrong doing the right thing. And so he's just. He just is such a beautiful embodiment of somebody who's looking to behave decently and kindly. He, he once wrote a speech called the Power of Commitment, which I think he did entirely using his subconscious mind. And he never changed. Maybe he changed one word or something. And he said in it, if you've treated people with love and respect and if you've been honest and considerate, giving an enthusiastic, then in return, people will project those same feelings onto you. And so I think part of it is also, he clarified that it's, it's a, it's about trying to become a good person, you know, be a good person, treat people a particular way, be more loving, be kinder, be more compassionate. And then it kind of, it makes you joyful. And so it started with the money and the financial independence, and then it grew into something much bigger that he realized was important and that he embodies. And I think that's why he inspires us so much. So sorry that that took me a while to lay out, but I hope that gives people something to cling onto that they can use in their own lives.
- [56:35]
Dick Brodersen
There are so many things I want to hit on here, William. Thank you first of all for sharing that. You know, I'm just going to do a, a small detour just to embarrass William and then I'm actually going to get to my point. I find it to be absolutely astounding how many people I speak to about any subject you can possibly imagine and then they typically find a way to let me know how wonderful William is. And again, we don't talk about William at all. We don't even talk about value investing or work or we just talk about anything. And then suddenly someone would say something really, really nice about Williams, as in, oh, by the way, William, just a wonderful, wonderful person. So I just wanted to, to tell that to you, William. I, I see it all the time and, and obviously I see it in myself more than anywhere else. But, but thank you for being so generous in all walks of life and make us all go strong.
- [57:36]
William Green
Oh, I appreciate it. I, you know, it's, it's hard for me to receive praise partly because I'm English and we have a lot of self mockery and the like, but partly I think it's because I know what a schmuck I am and how badly I behave half the time. And so, yeah, so, I mean, I wouldn't, I can, I, I can say pretty words and eloquent words, but I wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that I live up to this stuff. You know, I'm screwing up the whole time as well, and stumbling and confused the whole time. And when I'm stressed, I behave poorly. And so I, I think what's helpful here is when you find someone like Arnold, who also wouldn't be a perfect human being by any means, but no doubt much better human being than I am, you see what's possible when you behave a particular way and when you understand certain principles, and then you try to be directionally correct, despite all of the stumbling and all of the failing and all of the mistakes and all of the ways in which we don't live up to this. And then, as Nick Sleep would say to me, you try to be kind with yourself about the failings and the mistakes. You give yourself a little grace. But I think this is really important because I, I, I think it's very easy for us to look at other people and think they've sorted this all out, or they've reached a much higher level, or they're beyond like, anger and jealousy and lust and greed. And, you know, and it's like, no, we're, we're all screwing up the whole time. And especially under extreme circumstances. And so I feel like what I, what I'm trying to share from people, share and distill from people like Arnold is kind of aspirational. And when I see someone who's much further along the path, who's transformed much more of their ego and their self interest, it's really, really helpful because it gives us a sense of what the target is. And part of what I like to do is just find patterns where I'm, I'm looking, for example, at Arnold and seeing that, you know, the stuff that he's found from his favorite author, James Allen, in a book like From Poverty to Power, like, he's looking at James Allen. James Allen is, is talking to you about overcoming selfishness. That, that's, that's the way that you're, you know, he'll talk about wage war against self. And that's the way that you're actually going to get to become a disciple of truth and a force for truth that you're overcoming, clinging to self. And then I think of this amazing Tibetan Buddhist teacher that I've learned a huge amount from called Kandrela. And she said, on this retreat I went on, we are trying to turn self cherishing into cherishing others. And so it's like, I'm hearing things like that, but it's like, no, I'm still doing a hell of a lot of self cherishing, and I'm not cherishing others. So I'm just trying to make it really clear that it's like I'm in the remedial program here. Like I'm. I'm stumbling and failing the whole time. So if people are saying nice things about me, like, I'm. I'm very grateful. But I look at myself and I'm like, really? You did that again? You behave that way again? Really? You still have those emotions and the, you know, and I just don't want to give anyone the false impression that I've somehow, you know, become some super elevated figure. It's like, no, I can distill what more elevated figures have learned, and then I can stumble in that direction.
- [60:59]
Dick Brodersen
Perhaps you should call this a unique condition, being human, William. What do you say about that? No. So, William, it was so well articulated what you learned from Arnold and others. And, you know, I used to be a college professor, but please don't hold it against me. And so one of the things that they teach us is that we have to figure out how our students learn the best. And there are different ways students learn best. Some are visual or some auditive whatnot. So one of the challenges that you might hear whenever you are listening to William or to me or you read a book about someone else is that we may have a tendency, well, I should pull William down to my lower level here, but I might have a tendency to run things through my own filter. And so I tend to be a very auditive person. I've studied or learned about this technique before, about how being visual that you also mentioned before, William. And I know of people have used clipboards, for example, to become financial, independent them to visualize, and it works for them. I'm not a visual person at all. My wife teases me all the time where I don't notice things at all. You could probably get new furniture in our condo and I wouldn't notice it. But I'm extremely visual. Sorry, I'm very auditive. And so I think it's. As you are exploring this and you might read a book about this, and it might have a bias to do a different direction. I would encourage you just not to give up if it doesn't work for you. Perhaps it was just leaning into a technique that is not as natural to you as it might be to the author. And then I would say something that has been. And again, this is running through my own filter. Especially in the beginning, whenever I was want to enter a flow state or deeper state, I would have a guiding voice, probably because I'm auditive that was helpful for me. And so that goes to what William was going before, where you could listen to the entire tape, but you can also take the essence of that and put it into something physical. For example, I think you said your forefinger to your thumb, and so you sort of would give your mind different clues. And so, yeah, this is another way for me to say if this technique doesn't work, perhaps another. And then you learn the technique and then you can easier go into that state. But it takes some practice, just like anything else here in life.
- [63:27]
William Green
I think the other thing that I realized as we were talking when, when I think about the techniques that I use, a lot of what I do is a sort of form of prayer where I realize I'm, as I'm driving towards my office here where I'm about to talk to you, I, you know, again, I'm sort of wary of saying what my inner monologue is, but I, I'm frequently, because I'm trying to get myself in the right state, I, I'm saying to myself, please help me to be a force for good. You know, help me shift the balance in the world towards, you know, qualities like love, mercy, kindness, compassion, truthfulness. And because I have an awareness of how imperfect and flawed I am, there's this beautiful concept that the Kabbalists teach, which is that you have, you have a perfected soul somewhere. You know, it's sort of like, like Plato would say, you know, there's like this, you know, this platonic form of you that's. And so one thing that you can do is you can say, you know, please let me borrow from my perfected soul. Because, you know, beyond time, space and motion, I'm going to be perfect one day. One day I'm going to be really elevated. And so, you know, the people who are listening and watching shouldn't suffer from the fact that I'm still such a schmuck. So let me borrow from my perfected soul so I can share something that's worthwhile. And so it's very personal. The tools that you use to get yourself in a state where you're shifting the balance. You're sort of increasing the odds that you're going to behave decently and that you're going to have a successful outcome. But I think the setting of intention is just hugely important, you know, to, to have the motivation to help other people and to be a force for good. I, I come back to that again and again and again and again. And I, I, I think that's hugely powerful. Because, you know, I, I see people like Arnold overcoming their own ego or, or Candler or any of these great teachers, Michael Berg, that all they're doing is trying to lift up other people. And you're like, why are they all happy? Like, why, you know, what is it that makes you want to be around them? It's, it's that it's like they're, they've overcome, you know, what, what Candela would call self cherishing. And so instead of cherishing themselves, they're cherishing others. And so I think somehow just the repetition of coming back again and again and again to try, to try to shift the consciousness. So it's like, yes, I want to be free from pain and suffering and I want to be happy, but I also want to help other people be free from pain and suffering and to be happy. And so establishing that motivation is huge. And however you can tap into that state, whether it's speaking to yourself or prayers or affirmations, whatever it is, that motivation sets in motion something that's very powerful. I absolutely convinced because I see people who tap into it very powerfully in their own behavior. You just, you know, you want to be around Arnold because he just makes you feel better.
- [66:25]
Dick Brodersen
Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
- [66:27]
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- [69:55]
Dick Brodersen
All right, back to the show. What a wonderful way to wrap up the first segment here of today's episode.
- [70:01]
William Green
This episode will go on for seven days.
- [70:03]
Dick Brodersen
It's for seven days. No, but it's so you know, if you want to wrap that up in one sentence, I'm not telling people they should skip the first part, but it's like along with the way of saying is that that is why you want to be around Arnold because of this and it's such a beautiful thing and without putting you too much on this spot so I'll just briefly mention before go to the next point. But I think it's the same thing I experienced with you and why I'm so excited about speaking with you and why I hear so many people I meet on my way and they're saying the nicest things and I think if I ask them why they like you. I think I'll probably get a million different explanations, but it makes one feel good to be around you. If I could take all of those million explanations and put it into one sentence, which is not fair at all, I'd say it makes you feel good. And I often think about. This is gonna sound wrong whenever I say often think about you. Whenever I'm in a bad mood, that sounds really, really wrong. So please don't quote me on this, William. But sometimes if I'm under pressure by negative thoughts, which certainly happens, I sometimes think about you as in looking at yourself from the outside and sort of like lifting yourself out of that negative state. And I think you've helped all of us being, if not a better version of ourselves, then sometimes a less bad version of ourselves, which, whenever you're deep down, is a very powerful thing.
- [71:28]
William Green
Yeah, thank you. That's kind of you.
- [71:30]
Dick Brodersen
Say, William, I want to transition here to the second part here of the episode. And I've called it Do We All Want the Same Thing? And for the listeners who might remember that last time we talked about eternal truth and we talked about how few truths there were that transcended time and culture, they might think that's a weird thing to discuss. Because today I'll make this bold claim, perhaps wrong claim, but this bold claim that we all want the same things. And I am perhaps going to exclude a fraction of people with a specific dinos, I don't know. But I would argue that evolution had made it so that we all want the same things. Or at least this is a thesis I would like to test out together with you, William. And so I think much of the conflict we had in the past and we have today is because we want the same things. But it manifests in different ways. And because it happens that way, we found other people to be very different than us. And it creates a lot of conflict. So one of the things that you talked about before is this need to be bigger than ourselves, which, to your point, I think you're absolutely right, 100% right. I also think it materializes different ways. And sometimes we shake our head at other people who just doesn't feel the same way. And so I might sound a bit like a simpleton whenever I'm saying this, so please take it for what it is. But I've been following the same sports team since I was a kid. And whenever I would meet up with others like myself that apparently get fascinated by people running around on the field, kicking to a ball, I feel it's Bigger than me. Many of our listeners go to Omaha, and I would argue that they feel there's something bigger than themselves whenever they're in that stadium. And perhaps they don't think about those specific words. But I do think that the need is the same. So I think it's this. It's the same thing whenever it comes to friendships that also materialize in different ways. So this example I came up with here is that. And this might be a cultural bias, or perhaps it's my bias, I don't know. But I think if anyone saw a transcript of how I speak with my friends, they would probably be outraged. They would at least think we had a nasty argument. But I'd be the first to say that whenever I can jokingly offend my friends so they can offend me, that's sort of a signal to how comfortable we are with each other. Whereas if you see me with my friends and we are overly polite, I think you would be like, oh, there must be a newcomer to the group or something, because all of a sudden, we behave whenever we're together. And so I don't know if that was the best example. But another need that's related to this is this need to be social. Whether that is on Google Meet or whether that's in person, I think it materializes in different ways, and we all have that social need. And so let me just tell you this quick story of perhaps how we are wired all differently, but how we want the same. I'm listening to this wonderful podcast, and the host of this podcast, he lives three hours away, and I know that he's. He's dealing with an issue. And so for whatever reason, I think I can actually solve this issue for this person. He has no clue who I am. And so I.
- [74:59]
William Green
You got to tell us what kind of issue. Like, this is. A financial thing, a business thing, an emotional thing.
- [75:05]
Dick Brodersen
Yeah. So. So he has a. It's. It's mainly a business issue, but it's very tied to his emotions, and it's because I've gone through the same thing, and I think I could help with him with that. So I sent him an email, and I was like, hey, dude, let me. Do you have time to jump on the call? And I don't remember exactly how I wrote it, so it might come off as a sales pitch, I don't know. But I was, like, saying, hey, please don't pay me or anything. But honestly, we're in the same business. I think I can help you. Would you like to jump on an Online meeting. You know, I'll talk you through how this result does. And I want to say I got the weirdest email back, because I got an email and he was so offended, like, that I would. And he sort of, like, he's an older gentleman, and I've only known him as, you know, I've only listened to him in a podcast format. So I never met him. He always seemed, like, super, super nice, but he got, like, so offended that I wanted to meet him, like, online. He was like, he was super keen on meeting in person, by the way. He would love to meet in person, but he was like, he found it to be such a rude thing to suggest that we could go on an online call, because that is not how you meet other people. And so, again, I'm not saying this is the best example, but I think we all have this social need. But if I only read it as, this is a guy who's really mad at me, he's really angry at me, I wouldn't have seen what's behind him, which is basically, we all have this social need. It just materializes in different ways. And so the last thing I just want to say this is that I think all of us think about what other people think of us, even though that we were taught from early age that's probably not how we should be thinking about it. But unless we are literally a baby who only have basic needs. Well, in that case, you probably still think about whenever you get food or whatnot. But no man is an island. Well, I think Hemingway might disagree with me, but who knows? But I want to say that we all social creatures, and you might point to someone like, I don't know, Elon Musk and be like, oh, he does whatever he wants. He doesn't care if anyone cares what other people think of him. It's Elon Musk. And perhaps it's not like whenever we are at the prom, you're like, oh, am I cool or am I not cool? Or whatever. And he has a get gazillion amount of money and he can. Yeah, but, you know, this is a guy who really has to care about what the market thinks of him or what. So, like, again, it materializes in different ways. And so my point of saying all of this is that I wanted to give. I wanted to give the listeners and the viewers a new framework where especially in a world that's a lot as confusing as the one we're in, where whenever people seem unlike you, they're rarely as different as they appear, they probably want the same things as you do. Respect, independence, companionship, love. But the difference lies in the shape that it takes. And I try to remember that, even though I fail over and over again. But I try to remember that whenever I meet resistance or I feel misunderstood. And instead of turning this other person into an enemy, I tried to see through that framework, which is. I don't know if you know this, but I think that's one of the things I learned from you, William, even if you didn't collate it in those. In those words. And so that's what I mean. Whenever I say, sometimes whenever I am down, I think of you, but I think about you in. In. In the. In a good context, of course, all of this is easier to remember this idea whenever you're calm and you're reflective. And it's much, much harder if you're frustrated and feel misunderstood. But let me throw it over to you, William, and ask you, how do you remind yourself in those moments that this is another fellow human being who wants the same things as you do? Or do you challenge the entire premise that we want the same things?
- [79:09]
William Green
No, I think the premise we all want the same things is probably, broadly speaking, true. Not because I think it's true, but because people who are much wiser and smarter than me have said it's true. So I often come back to this wonderful line from William James, who is, you know, a trailblazer in the world of psychology. I think the story is that he had some students at Radcliffe, you know, the girls at Harvard, who, after he had taught them, they sent him a gift, which I think was a potted azalea for Easter. And he was so touched that he wrote them a letter this in. In the late 19th century. And he said, the deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated. And so he was saying that he had written this big psychology textbook and had failed to include in it this really key thing, this idea that really what we all crave is to be appreciated. And that when they sent him this gift, it kind of reminded him, oh, that's what we want. And I think that's a really fundamental understanding about human nature, is that we just yearn to be appreciated and understood and recognized and admired. And so I think sometimes I really try to remind myself, the people I'm meeting, they just want to be appreciated. They want you to kind of listen to them and hold space for them and tell them why you admire them and why you like them. And I think that's a very powerful thing. And My friend Yen Liao, who I hope I'll have on the podcast before too long, who's very wise and thoughtful about these things, has written letters to various people, you know, family members and the like, telling them why he appreciated them so much. And he has a sense of urgency, you know, he's like, well, we don't know how long we'll live. We don't know how long anyone else will live. You know, like, say it now. And this kind of inspired me. And I wrote a long message to someone recently, a relative, saying why I admired him so much and respected him so much. And I think it had quite a profound effect. I think this person is quite tough, quite strong, and quite unemotional in certain circumstances, was so deeply touched and said to me that he tried reading it to his wife and actually started to choke up and couldn't read it. And I feel. I feel like we have this deep need to matter and to be understood and, and to be seen and to be heard. And so I think one thing I would encourage our listeners to do, inspired by Yen, is tell people, like, write to them. And it's very hard for an Englishman, you know, to express emotion and to be sincere. And I. I did it on, you know, it was like a big, round birthday for someone. And so I sort of chose that instead of getting a gift. Actually, I probably should have got a gift, but I was too lazy and ungenerous to get a gift. But at least I said, you know, these things that I think probably I had never said, actually, not even probably, definitely I had never said. So I think that's the first thing is like, recognize that people need to be. Appreciate it and try to express appreciation. And then the second thing, someone gave me this, this book by the Dalai Lama on the Four Noble Truths. And I. I opened it kind of randomly this morning, which I often do, and I. I sort of knew what it was I was looking for. But I think it came out on the exact page where he said, it is a fact, a natural fact of life, that each one of us has an innate desire to seek happiness and to overcome suffering. And that's a really fundamental Buddhist teaching, right? This idea that we're all the same in that we want to be happy and we don't want to suffer. And so I think. I think there are certain things that are just kind of undeniably true that we share. None of us wants to suffer and all of us want to be happy. And we're confused about how to do it and what the causes of suffering are and what the causes of happiness are. And that's one. One of the reasons why you study things like Tibetan Buddhism in the case of the Dalai Lama, or why you study someone like Arnold is so you can figure out, oh, well, these are the causes that create unhappiness. And a lot of it is created by us through our own behavior, not just our external conditions. And these are the causes that reduce suffering. And so help me do more of one and less of the other. So it's really important to have these understandings of what we want and what we don't want and how to get there. And I think Tibetan Buddhism is hugely helpful on that front. Another thing that I guess is absolutely essential truth of Buddhism is this idea that we're so deeply interconnected and interdependent. There's. There's even this idea, I think, that at some point, in some past life, basically everyone has been your mother or your father or your brother or whatever it is. And so we should have this vast compassion for everyone because they took care of us at some point. And whether you think that's literally or metaphorically true, it's a really beautiful attitude that because everyone wants to be happy, everyone wants to avoid suffering, and we're all interconnected and all interdependent, we should be compassionate. We. We should wish the best for other people. I think that's a. That's a really, really helpful basis for being compassionate. And then there are various other practices that I. I think about quite a lot that I think are kind of helpful for dealing sometimes with difficult people, sometimes just with people who aren't that difficult. But maybe we're the difficult one, or we're in a bad mood, or they just trigger something. And I think this idea that you mentioned before of just seeing things through their lens is hugely important. So I find intellectually, for me, it's reasonably easy to think, here's why they act this way, you know, here's why they're acting in a way that I think is really destructive to them or to other people. And to understand, if I were in their position, maybe I'd act the same way. So understanding the causes and the conditions that lead people to be the way they are is really helpful. And then I often think about this line from Karen Berg, who was Michael Berg's mother, who is a remarkable teacher, who would often say, there's so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us that you really can't judge. And I. I found that very helpful. Like, you know, there's a sense also from this. This great kabbalist, Rav Ashlag, who would say we're all unripened fruit. So it's, you know, at some point we'll ripen and we'll become. We'll become better and we'll overcome these issues. But we all have this potential for wisdom and kindness and compassion and love and all of these things. So I. So those are really helpful things intellectually for me to remind myself. But then there are these practices that I come across that I think are really, really helpful. And so, for example, I think I may have mentioned this book to you before by this woman called Tara Springett. S P R I N G E T T. She wrote a book called the Stairway to Heaven, which is subtitled Nine Steps of Consciousness From Unawareness to Full Enlightenment. And she's very interesting. I think she's a therapist living in England, although I have a feeling she's German. I can't remember. And she's. She's an author of multiple books and she's a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. And she's kind of remarkable. And I think that book is very interesting. It's got a lot of depth to it. She's a little bit critical, not in that book, but elsewhere, of David Hawkins, which I disagree with, because I think Hawkins is kind of remarkable. But in a way, it's a similar. It's a similar thing of climbing this scale of consciousness. Maybe they're rivals in the battle for enlightenment. But, you know, one thing that she does, which I think is a really helpful practice, is she talks about sending love to yourself and others. And so she'll say these phrases like, I wish you to be happy, healthy and fulfilled in every respect. And she writes in that book, everything grows and develops when enveloped with love. And I think that's true. I think we see it with our kids, but you also see it with difficult relatives or with difficulties, difficult friends or colleagues, that they want to be appreciated, they want to be loved. And so her view is everything becomes better when it's enveloped with love. And so you can kind of send. Send love to people in your own mind, send these thoughts, people in your own mind, whether. Whether, you know, whether you believe in this stuff or not. I. I think it probably works on your own mind to be sending these thoughts to other people, whether it helps them or not. I, you know, I have my own biases on this front and probably more credulous about it than you are, but. But I think it's very helpful for the sender as well as the recipient. And my friend Tom Morgan, who runs this community called Leading Edge and has podcasts called Leading Edge, was clearly really affected by this technique. And he interviewed Tara Springett recently. It's very interesting interview on the Leading Edge podcast. And, and she talked about this practice and gave it a very slightly different spin than I think I got from the book. So she would talk about imagining a beautiful white light, and then you surround the person with white light and you visualize it suffusing their heart and their head, their brain, whatever it is. And she would say, I wish you to be happy and healed. And again, as I was saying before with Arnold's affirmations, I would put this in your own language. So for me, I, I would probably say, may you be happy, may you be healed. But I think it, I think it doesn't matter. It's whatever rings well in your, you know, for you. And so I wish you to be happy and healed. So I think that's really helpful. So you're, you're coming from this place of kindness and compassion and love. And her view is that if you do this for a few days before dealing with a conflict, for example, it's very, very helpful. And there's a very related, powerful teaching. And I think it's probably no, no accident that Tara Springett has studied a lot of Tibetan Buddhism, but so is Sharon Salzberg, this great Western mindfulness meditation teacher. And so Sharon, who I've had the pleasure of meeting a few times in the last year, who's kind of an amazing person, she's a master of what's called loving kindness meditation or metta meditation. And she has these phrases where she'll say, you know, she'll picture different people. So maybe it's a difficult person, maybe it's a benefactor, someone who's done you kindness and really helped you. Maybe it's a neutral person, like the person you meet at the checkout counter or, you know, in your club when you go for lunch or whatever. And maybe it's really an antagonist, or maybe it's all beings and also yourself. And she'll send these wishes to them. And so she's, she's, I think, using her own wording, something that originally, I guess, came from the Buddha. And so she'll say things like, may you be safe, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you live with ease. But also she would say, may I be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. And then may all beings be safe. Be happy, be healthy, Live with ease. And again, you can change the language, but I think that's an incredibly powerful practice that has thousands of years of success behind it. And so, So I. I think there's sort of this. This array of. Of practical tools that we've learned from these ancient spiritual traditions that are built on an understanding of. Of the fact that we all need. Need a little love, a little compassion, a little mercy. And I'll finish by saying that I've been really touched by this song recently. I. I have this ridiculous playlist that I'll confess you. I mean, I have a lot of playlists on Spotify, but I have one that's my funeral playlist. That's a collection of songs that I'm gathering sort of half morbidly and half as a joke, but also actually because I think they're quite profound and beautiful for when I keel over if I turn out not to be immortal. And the playlist is called Love and Mercy, which is based on this beautiful Brian Wilson song, Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. But once in a while I'll hear a new song and it's new to me and it'll get on the funeral playlist. And that's kind of the highest praise. And there's one from this woman, Mary. I think it's Gautier or Mary Gota. G A U, T I E R or E R, Something like that. And it's called Mercy Now. And it's such a. Such a beautiful piece of writing, a beautiful piece of singing, kind of melancholy that's been going through my head again and again. I played it for my son yesterday. And it begins with her saying, I'll read you a couple of paragraphs. But it has this emotional punch that kind of gets you into. Maybe it's more powerful than this. Intellectual discussion of ideas and tools is actually like listening to a song like this. So she says, my father could use a little mercy now the fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground his work is almost over it won't be long and he won't be around I love my father and he could use some mercy now and then in the second stanza, she says, my brother could use a little mercy now He's a stranger to freedom he's shackled to his fears and doubts the pain that he lives in Is almost more than living will allow I love my brother and he could use some mercy now and then she sort of expands it and she talks about how my church and my country could use a little Mercy now. And she explains why. And then she says, every living thing could use a little mercy now. And that, to me, I think that concept, you know, I often think, like, when I have my personal sort of internal monologue, and I think, you know, please let me be a force for love, kindness, compassion, mercy, truth, oneness, you know, things like that. The word mercy always comes up for me, and I. Other people talk about, like, love and kindness and compassion, and those all sort of resonate really deeply for me. But for some reason, this concept of mercy is really powerful for me, I think, because I. I have this sense that, you know, we all need a little mercy now. You know, like, we're all deeply flawed and we all screw up and we all. We all are imperfect and close. An old friend who really kind of blew up his life recently through bad decisions. And this is a really lovely, wise, decent, kind person who's done so much work on himself, and then it's like, really, you blew up your life? I blew up his marriage, blew up, you know, blew up his family, all of these things. And I look at that and I see various people who've sort of, in a way, like, thrown my friend to the wolves and are like, you know, kind of really disappointed in him and upset with him. And I understand that. But I. I look at it, I'm like, well, it deserves a second chance because we're all idiots and we all do stuff that's stupid. And, you know, so I just think of that line from Mary Gautier. I guess it is. You know, every living thing could use a little mercy.
- [94:21]
Dick Brodersen
Now, if that ain't the truth. If I can go back to this idea here about reducing suffering, I see that in so many walks of life, how we try to reduce suffering and how we very often do ourselves a disservice in the attempt to do so many things in life come out of good intentions, which is a wonderful thing, but the world just isn't always that kind. You know, I sometimes see that with very successful, financially successful people who have suffered financially in their early years because it was such a terrible experience, and because they love their kids so much, they do not give their kids a healthy relationship with money, ironically, because they don't want their kids to have the same negative experience with money or the lack of it whenever they. They started out themselves. The other thing I wanted to talk about is this idea of. Of compassion. And this is something that I've. I feel. I've struggled with, but also I've taken an approach that's Incredible self serving and the sort of like. I feel a bit impish about sharing that with the listeners because I think that there's something very beautiful about what you said, William, about how we all interconnected and how perhaps we all be each other's fathers or mothers. Whether you would take that literally or metaphorically. And especially in the episode where we talk about the compassion and really understanding of people who look through things at different lenses. What I want to get at is I had a. I had a discussion with Mohnish Pabrai, our mutual friend, and he referenced a conversation he had with Buffett about meeting other people. And many of you said to Buffett, how can it be that you're such a great character of people?
- [96:24]
William Green
You mean a judge of character?
- [96:26]
Dick Brodersen
Yes. So he said he wasn't good at it, but if he walked into a room and this. Take it for what it is, metaphorically, he said there'd be a hundred people. Three of them would. He would deem them to be terrible people. Three of them would be the most wonderful people you ever meet. And then there would be 94 in between. And he would just go with the odds, and he would just go with those three people that he found to be wonderful. And that was sort of like. That was his technique. And so I've tried to clone that. And I know it doesn't sound nice whenever I say that, but I wanted to paint some color around it. If I can use an example with you, William, now that I have the privilege of speaking with you. It was very clear to me the first time I spoke with you that I didn't think about in those terms because I hadn't been speaking with Manus about this conversation. But I was like, William was one of those three people. Let me hang out with William. William is amazing. Why wouldn't I want to hang out with William? Then I'm also thinking, how much of the world's problems should I carry on my shoulder? And should I be around negative people because they need some joy in their lives and try to illuminate a path that would give them a better life? Or should I hang out with William? And you know what, William? I would choose hanging out with you every day. And so I wonder if you can have your cake and eat it too. To me, there are not two opposites. Where I think you want to be around people who have beautiful values and great character. And then you can still be merciful to the people who are. Who might not have the same character, not condemn them, not judge them too harsh. But then also not surround yourself with them. I'm kind of curious to hear how you think about that.
- [98:18]
William Green
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I mean, you remember. Remember Charlie talking about how you have to get toxic people out of your life and get them out fast? And Warren said, yeah, but, you know, it's good if you can use a little tact. And Charlie. Charlie. Charlie Munger, in his typically brusque way, was like, yeah, I don't mind a little tact, but just get them out fast. And so, yeah, I mean, it's difficult. But then, you know, I think they may even have discussed this briefly at the time, like. Or Charlie may have referenced this. What do you do if the people are in your family? What if they're among your friends? What if. You know. So I think whether we like it or not, we're gonna come across difficult, unpleasant people who are struggling, who are not at their best. And sometimes the people we're really close to who are just going through difficult times, and sometimes it's us, we're the one who's really difficult and unpleasant and going through a difficult time, not behaving our best. So I think whether you like it or not, the universe is going to put you in contact with. With trying people who are going to press your buttons. And I. This is one of the things that the kabbalists, I think, are very helpful at talking about is the sense of, like, well, why. Why is this person in your. In your life? Like, what are they supposed to reveal to you? And so I think, you know, you want to use the conflict and you want to use the difficult situations, and you want to use adversity also as ways to kind of learn stuff about yourself and elevate yourself and improve your behavior. And, like, that's not in. In contradiction of the fact that you also want to tilt the odds in your favor by hanging out with people who are better than you are, as Warren would say, and avoiding toxic people, as Charlie would say. But I. I just think people in situations that are difficult are going to come into our lives, whatever, and to have the attitude that it's in some ways a kind of mental or spiritual gym. You know, it's like some sort of workout. I think this is my daughter's phrase, Madeline's phrase, where she would talk about a mental gym. You know, these difficult situations, they give you a chance to, you know, think of Charlie, who said at one point, I think I quote him on this in. In a chapter in my book about him where he said, what A good idea it is to treat adversities as an opportunity to behave either well or badly. And that he. And he said in particular, as you get older, you get that adversities come thick and fast. So it's a really helpful attitude. And so. I don't know. I. I think you're right. Stick with. Stick with people you admire who help bring out the best in you and life goes better. But then also understand that these really difficult situations are where you improve and work on yourself and difficult people. And I don't know, I think often the easy stuff, where you're just with really great people in a really happy circumstance, it's like, yeah, it's great. It's like a gift. It's a blessing, but it's not like it's, you know, you receive the gift, but it's not going to have that big an effect on you in many ways. I was very affected many years ago, maybe 13 or 14 years ago, by a speech that Michael Berg gave one Saturday when I think I was visiting New York from London. And he talked about how there's. That these moments where everything's flowing and it's all just happy and good and you just feel great. He's like, that's just a gift from the Creator. That's a total gift. And he's like, just receive it and be grateful for it. It's great. But he said then there are these moments where it's really difficult and it's a real challenge. And he said, it's as if you're a little toddler and the Creator lets go of your hand so that you can stumble on your own and learn to walk. And he's like, those times where it's not flowing, where it's difficult, he's like, that's the most important point. That's where you get all of your blessings because it gives you this chance to. To really learn and accelerate your progress. And if in those times where it's not flowing and where it is difficult, it's not the circumstance you want, if you can be sharing and kind and loving in those circumstances and go against your nature, against the. The lesser parts of your nature, you know, the desire to be reactive or angry or. Or intolerant or whatever, he's like, you're basically planting these seeds for extraordinary growth. And I. I love that. I think that image. You know, often we look at those times where we're in a circumstance we really don't want, and it's like, well, wait, no, I just want to be hanging out with people I really like, who I'm learning from and who I admire. And it's like, yeah, that's really lovely. But I think the image that the. In. In the periods that are the inverse of that the creator is like, letting go of your hand and saying, you can walk on your own now. I'm going to trust you to walk like a parent of a young toddler. It's whether you believe that there's a creator who's doing this sort of thing or whether you're just using life. You know, you apply that attitude of, like, no, these are the times where I'm learning to walk. These are the times where I'm working on my character. I don't think it really matters, but I think it doesn't help to avoid the difficult situations and the difficult people that are going to press your buttons, because they're going to. They're going to come anyway, and they're going to press your buttons. And so when they do, make sure you use it. It's like we used to say in my family, you know, it sounds like really dark and sort of slightly unsympathetic thing to say, but during COVID when my wife, Lauren and our kids were living together here in New York, we would say, you better not waste a good pandemic. You know, it was like, we better use this to work on ourselves. You know, so we, like, really got fitter. We really exercised. We, you know, I really meditated. We had great family relationship. I got so much work done. It was like, don't waste adversity, you know, like, yeah, it was a terrible time. And yet there were things that I think we learned about ourselves, about what we need and who we value. And so I don't know. Is that helpful at all?
- [104:44]
Dick Brodersen
I think it's very helpful, and I think it goes to this underlying theme here of compassion. William, you know, I was speaking with a friend the other day, and we were talking about Munger, of all things. And I know that it's almost blasphemic on the Value Investing podcast to say something that's not nice about Charlie Munger. And I don't think he meant it as something that wasn't nice, but he had a philosophic approach where he said that Munger had beautiful values and he said all the right things. But he also wondered if Munger did the same things whenever times were tough that listeners of this show would know, like, that he had. It was. There were some very, very tough times for. For Charlie when he was younger. And I don't want this to come across as we are faulting anyone who is going through, through hardship that they have negative thoughts and may or may not blame different people for or whoever they would be blaming for, for that to happen. I think we can all have very negative thoughts. And I, I wonder if there is an element of truth to all of us playing cards differently because we were dealt different hands. I was reading a book the other day and the name of the author escapes me, but I think he might have come. I think he talks in the book how it wasn't always easy for him growing up and he felt there were a lot of people who were more fortunate than him. And he said that kids are from poor households, don't get a shot, middle class kids get one shot and if they don't succeed, they have to go back and be regular employees and kids from rich families get an unlimited amount of shots. And whenever they inevitably going to succeed, they're going to hold commencement speeches about how America is a meritocracy and how it's all about hard work. And he clearly felt really poorly about that. And this is not the podcast to tell whether that's right or wrong, kind of feel that that's a completely different discussion. It was nonetheless his truth, the way I heard it. And so I guess my, whenever I read that and sort of like trying to tie it to the discussion we have today is that it is sometimes easier to have all the correct emotions and values and the right character.
- [107:18]
William Green
Think of Buffett saying, you know, you, he never wanted to be in debt because he didn't want to see what he was capable of. So my view is that under certain circumstances, with certain pressures, financial pressures, emotional pressures, unfairness, lawsuits, you know, whatever it is, betrayals, all of us, I think are capable of behaving really terribly. And so I, I, I don't know, I, I, you, you want to be, sorry to interrupt you, but I think, I think you want to be really careful about setting up your, and this is a broader question, but setting up your ecosystem, set it, setting up your life so that you're less likely to be tested. So it's one reason why, you know, you want to live within your means. For example, you don't want a ridiculous amount of debt. You want to work hard, you want to work with people who are honest and honorable and you want to try to behave in a decent, honorable way so that you're less likely to get, you know, to have your reputation ruined. And you know, so I, I, I think There are things you can do to stack the odds in your favor. But I think it's helpful to be aware that under certain circumstances, people do terrible things. Good people do terrible things.
- [108:33]
Dick Brodersen
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for saying so. And certainly, yes, that is what I was getting at where I think you're think you're absolutely right in what you said. I think that there are probably some circumstances where it's easier to feel the right emotions. But on the other hand, it's also, whenever it's not as easy that we really get tested if we, if we do behave the right way, and then if we do not behave the right way, on the other hand, don't beat yourself up too much, you hopefully get a second chance where you can behave better.
- [109:05]
William Green
Yeah. And before we close out this topic, very much to Charlie's credit, according to Mohnish, Charlie never complained as his eyesight was going, he would just say, well, I might have to learn to read Braille. There was no self pity. And so whatever anyone might want to criticize Charlie for, you know, in terms of his Bruceness or whatever, I think there's so much to admire there in the stoicism and the sense of honor and the sense of integrity. And I don't think he needs to be a perfect man any more than Arnold needs to be a perfect man for us to look and say, yeah, there's a lot that I want to clone.
- [109:48]
Dick Brodersen
Thank you for giving me the Brits here to the third and final segment here of the episode. It's about books that had made us richer, wiser, and happier. And if there is someone who are like clone is the author of the book Joyful Wisdom. And the name of the author is Jeongmi Mingur Rinpoche. And my apologies if I. If I butcher that name.
- [110:09]
William Green
Yeah, I think, I think it's Yonge Mingyu Rinpoche. Minky is. People usually call him Mingyu Rinpoche. Okay. And Rinpoche is such a beautiful word because, as you know, it means precious one.
- [110:23]
Dick Brodersen
Yes. As I was reading this book, and this is just to display my own ignorance, the first thing was I googled the author, which I probably shouldn't, but I googled the author and I saw he was brother of Sokdi Rinpoche that you had on the show. And as I was going through the book, I was like, there's so many people named. This is such a big family. There are so many called rinpoche. It means prescience1. Or is it like an honorific title of the many People that are named Rinpoche in the book, they're not all in the same family. I just want to say, for the record, and it's such a beautiful book. In one of the first chapters, this is the story I want to highlight because it goes to one of the things that you mentioned before with Arnold. But Mingur Rinpoche talks about this conversation he had with his teacher, Salje Rinpoche. And as the story goes, imagine that you are walking down a long empty road and that winds through the mountains of Nepal. And so it's a beautiful road, but everyone's warns you that it's a dangerous path because there are bandits hiding in the hills and they're ready to jump at you and rob you if you pass. By hearing about this, most people never dare to take the first step. Rather, they want to stay where they feel safe and risk not being attacked. Then there are people like the wise traveler. He would do something different. He would walk alone, without fear. And when the bandits finally appear, because they do, he doesn't run. He simply looks at them and says, I know who you are. I don't want to fight you. I want to hire you as my bodyguards. And Minkoway Rinpoche uses this story to show the emotions that we all fear. Anxiety, anger, jealousy, sadness. And he talks a lot about in this book how he has suffered from anxiety and how they've been bandits of his mind like most of us, or at least I can join the club here, or I can found. The club is that we spend our lives trying to run away from these thoughts and fight them. But it's whenever we face them, then they lose their power. And so the key takeaway is whenever these thoughts or bandits arrive, don't push them away. Let them walk beside you. I think it's a very beautiful thing. I think his brother you had on, he referred to them as the beautiful monsters that you're saying hi to. And I wanted to tie that into what you talked about before with Arnold's technique that I have also unsuccessfully tried to implement in my life, where I would try to. And it's probably because I don't understand Arnold's technique, because I would imagine he has a very, very good technique. But I would try to. To push them away and not lean into them. And so it sounds like there are two different techniques. And so I was curious to hear, William, how you do it and whether I would misunderstand how Arnold is saying hi to his beautiful monsters.
- [113:28]
William Green
Yeah, it's a really important insight that I do Think there are these two very different techniques. So someone like Sir John Templeton also would use these techniques where he would just immediately reject negative thoughts and cast them back to the darkness that they came from. And if something difficult happened to him and he had terrible things happen to him, I mean, he lost his first wife in a motorcycle accident and she left him with three young children to raise. So it wasn't like life was always easy. But he would say, this comes to bless me whenever there was, you know, something difficult arising in his life. And so that is one approach is. And I remember talking to Tony Robbins about this point and he's. There's something about this at the end of Unshakable, one of his books, where he talks about this technique where before, before I'll gobble this a little bit, but basically you. You're killing these negative emotions before they have a chance to grow and kind of spiral. He would just replace them with something positive. And I remember once getting in a bit of an argument with him and I was really upset about something and he said, and we talked afterwards about how he dealt with it. And I could just see, you know, his eyes, like watering up and he's just like suffusing me with love. And he said, you know, sometimes it's really hard to. To access love in these difficult situations, but you can access appreciation. It's much easier to access appreciation. So he's like, I was looking at you and accessing sort of appreciation. You know, he's like, here's my friend and he's suffering. And so he's sort of replacing. He's not allowing negative emotions or thoughts to grow and he's neutralizing them early. Arnold is not allowing them to take. To rent space in his head at all. Templeton wasn't either, it seems like. So there are like these different nuances of how to do it, different techniques for how to. How to get rid of these emotions. I think part of what I love about what Sokni Rinpoche and his brother Mingyur Rinpoche do is this approach of radical non resistance where everything is free to arise. And as Sokni would say, the kindness is non judging. And so you allow all of these negative emotions to arise. You don't judge them, these difficult sensations. There's one guided meditation of his that I sometimes do where he says, you know, your back hurts. And he says, wow. And so he's like, you know, now he gets the word wrong. Instead of saying, you're bored, he says, now you're a Little boring, you know, like you're bored with my meditation. And he says, you came here for this elevated experience beyond concepts with this great teacher. And he's not, and he's not providing it. And he says, don't run away. And so it's really beautiful. It's like your frustration comes up, your painful back comes up, and you don't run away. You're just with it. And Mingyu Rinpoche has a video that I remember watching, I think it's two part video that he recorded maybe 12, 14, 15 years ago about how he dealt with his panic. You can find it on, on YouTube. It's about dealing with panic attacks and stress and anxiety. And he talks about how he used to get panic attacks from the age of, I think seven or eight. And his father, and Sokhne's father was this guy, Tuku Urjiyan Rinpoche, who was an amazing teacher, this legendary teacher. And he taught Mingye how to deal with all these very difficult emotions. And so instead of avoiding them and turning them into your enemy and saying, oh, this is ruining my life and trying to get rid of it, Mingyur, as I understand it, turned the panic into an object of meditation. And so he would befriend it. He would do this kind of calm abiding with the fear, with the panic. And then at times, Sgni talks about this, I think, in why We Meditate, this book that he wrote with Daniel Goleman and my friend Adam Cain. And there's a. There are times where the negative emotion is so much that you have to retreat to a safe place. Maybe you think, okay, well, let me think about a happy experience, a happy memory, that the anxiety is too great. But his basic point is that you don't want panic about panic. You don't want fear of panic or fear of anxiety. And so there's something about this radical non resistance that, that's very powerful. But I was just really happy when I, when I heard that you were reading a book by Mingyu Rinpoche because they're such an amazing family. And this friend of mine, Adam Kane, who helped Soak Ni, he helped Soak Ni and Dan Goleman with, with the why We Meditate book. And he's a translator for Sokni Rinpoche and Mingyur Rinpoche and also this teacher Khandrela, who's a friend of theirs who I've been studying with, who's unbelievable. And they're all unbelievable. And so Adam had been in Nepal for a couple of months A year or two ago. He goes there every year, I think. And he'd come back. And I said to him, you know, what was one of the most memorable experiences while you were there? And he told me this story that I'll probably gobble a bit, but that's directionally correct. Where he had been with Mingyur Rinche and Sagni translating for them, although they both speak beautiful English. And there was a. He said usually they're surrounded by people who treat them with great reverence, right? Because they're kind of these holy, very elevated, very enlightened figures. And he said they were with some student who was so difficult and so stressed and so unpleasant and kind of rude. And he said it was the most wonderful thing to see because he said the more difficult this lady was, the more. The more unpleasant she was, the more they just kind of melted her with love. And he said you would just look at their eyes, and they're just so full of love and compassion for this woman because they see that she's suffering and that she wouldn't behave this way if she weren't suffering. And so there's something really beautiful about it. And. And I. I went to see this. This interview that my friend Pico, I, who's. Who's been on the podcast before, did, I think last spring, with this lady called Helen Tvorkov, who's a fantastic writer who. She's in her 80s, and she had written a book called Lotus Girl, which is subtitled something like My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism in America. And she was the editor of a famous Buddhist magazine called Tricycle. And so Pico interviewed Helen Tvorkov. And I actually haven't read this book, Lotus Girl, because I bought it, and my wife immediately stole it and loved it so much that she then gave it to someone else. And Helen Tolkov's an amazing writer. She ghostwrote a book of Mingyu Rinpoche. That's a fabulous book. And so she's a terrific writer. And so I said to Pico afterwards, it's so curious that this woman, Helen Talkoff, who's like 82 or whatever she was, and has known so many of the great Buddhist teachers, ended up with Mingyur Rinpoche as her teacher. And not only that, but she helped him write, write this book. It's called In Love with the World, that's about Mingy going off, I think, in his mid-30s, disappearing from his monastery one night and just deciding to be a wandering beggar for the next four years. And almost Dying of food poisoning. It's an amazing book. And she had written that with him. And so I said to Pico, it's really curious that she chose Minkyo Rinpoche of all these teachers to be, you know, he's so much younger than her, for one thing. And so he wrote me this note and he said, actually, I asked her your question. And he said, emailed me back. And he said, she said rather beautifully, purity of heart and a sincerity that is heartbreaking. So that's what she saw in Mingya. And Helen Torko said she knows Sokni very well and is very temperamentally drawn to his approach. And I love Sukhni. Sokhni is so funny and so smart. And she said, but there was something about Mingyur Rinpoche's sweetness and depth of understanding that she finds very touching. And I think it's true. When you see him speak in that video, for example, he has this kind of high pitched sweet voice and there's something so gentle and so lovely and so kind about him. It's really touching. So I love the fact that you're reading his book. I think he's an amazing teacher.
- [122:07]
Dick Brodersen
So the name of the book is Joyful Wisdom. We'll make sure to link to it in the show notes. It's definitely worth a read. There were two other books I would like to highlight here before I throw it over to you, William. Not really related at all to the first book or to each other. It's more talking about a concept. But the first one is called the New China Playbook by Qiu Jin. And then the other book is called the Hundred Years War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi. And it's not necessarily because I want you to read those two books. It might be so that you find those two topics to be the most boring topics or not interesting at all. But the reason why I wanted to mention it is that I often look for books where I tend to have a strong inkling that I disagree with some of the viewpoints. And so why would I do that? I come from that framework where I read books because I want to learn and grow. And I know that I have this terrible tendency to have confirmation bias. And so I would sit in my own echo chamber with people similar to myself, whether it's about life or investing. And I sometimes feel, especially in a world where so many other people are sitting in their own echo chamber, that's probably a dangerous path to be on. And I also want to say, for the record, it doesn't mean that now I think that China and Palestine are whatever. I know they're politically sensitive topics, so that's not my intention to talk about. But I think that reading such books give me perhaps a bit more of a nuanced understanding. And I found it just to be healthy to be able to argue the other side, even if their values I don't align with necessarily. I'd like to think that we would have less conflict in the world if that was something we would lean more into, rather than think that everyone is less enlightened or just not as smart as us if they have different values or different opinions. Perhaps if you studied why they think what they think, you might still strongly disagree with it. But perhaps there have been different experiences that they had in their lives that made them feel a certain way. And so with that being said, I don't really know if that was endorsements of books or not. I think if anything it was more about the concept of reading books for a specific reason. But I wanted to ask you, William, perhaps if any of these books or just in general sparked any reflections you want to share with the audience that might be useful to clone or perhaps any of your own books that you read.
- [124:39]
William Green
I would definitely go deeper on studying anything from Mengy Rinpoche's family. As I said before, his book In Love with the World, which is a monk's journey through the bardos of living and dying, is really beautiful. Ghostwritten by Helen for of which is not concealed her role as a ghostwriter. But I remember when I read it thinking, God, this book is good. Like why is. Who the hell ghost wrote this? Like there's no way any, you know, it was so unusually good. And I looked it up and I started to kind of. And you know, he. It says on the COVID with Helen talk of and so I started to kind of research who she was. And then when she came out with her memoir Lotus Girl, which she, she read a little from and talked about in this talk with Pico at the Asia Society, it just became clear why it was such a good book. But it's also, it's such an amazing story because Mingya, you know, came from such a privileged family, I think never even really had to make tea for himself or carry money or anything like that. And then just leaves one night in the middle of the night to be a kind of holy beggar, a wandering mendicant for years. And so there's something kind of inherently cool about it and has these near death experiences. So I think he's really well worth reading. And Sokhny's books, amazingly well worth reading. He wrote one called Carefree Dignity and one called Open Heart, Open Mind. And I've been reading, I've been reading these really obscure books that are collections of his teachings from the 1990s that were put together by an Australian translator. I don't think they're even really publicly available, but they're kind of like that family is just astounding. And their father, Tuka Urjen Rinpoche, who taught people like Sam Harris and Dan Goleman, was just amazing. And he wrote a book called as It Is. That's. As Rav Ashlag would say, this is deeper than deep. They're beautiful books. The books I would mention that I've read recently are actually by Sebastian Junger, J U N G E R who's best known for writing the Perfect Storm, which I haven't yet written read. And he's a, he's well known as a war reporter for Vanity Fair. And I, I kind of randomly, I, I like reading stuff randomly, basically. And so I was in a, a local bookstore in Tarrytown here in New York, the town next to the one where I live, and I was waiting for, for my sushi to be prepared. And so I'm kind of wandering around this bookstore and they had a copy of my book, so I signed that. So I was very well disposed towards them. And, and I see this book by Sebastian Junger from 2016 that's called tribe, and the subtitle is, the subtitle is On Homecoming and Belonging. And a lot of it is about soldiers coming back from war. And he's obviously spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan and Iraq with soldiers in extremely dangerous situations. And one of the things that he's surprised by is, is, well, obviously we all know that there's a lot of Post Traumatic Stress disorder among soldiers, but he said a lot of them really weirdly miss war because what. And they find it incredibly hard settle back in society because there's something kind of magical about the connections with their fellow soldiers, the sense of meaning, the sense of belonging. And so this becomes an exploration of how in modern society we've, we've lost the power of personal connections with other members of, of our tribe. And we've become kind of isolated from our wider communities. And this is something that he was writing back in 2016, before the kind of extreme political polarization that we've seen separating decent people on all sides before we saw the rise of remote work that separated us more from the office, before the rise of. Of every screen and app and AI tool that I think has made us more reliant on our phones and our computers and our iPads and the like. And so one of the things he talks about is that with these gains in affluence and comfort and safety that we've seen in wealthy societies, there's actually been this surprising increase in depression and loneliness and anxiety. And he says humans don't mind hardship. In fact, they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end. And so he tells a couple of really beautiful stories. One of them in the introduction that I actually, I told it to my masterclass the other day in the first session that I had with them. And then I told it to my daughter when we were driving to Boston the other day for Thanksgiving. And I actually. When I told it to her, I got so choked up that I had to sort of stop. It was kind of embarrassing. And. But it's this. It's a beautiful story that I'll spare you, but that I want. That I want people to go read. But I'll focus actually on a story at the very end of the book which is really beautiful, which. Which is. It's in the postscript, and it kind of echoes that, that first story. And he talks about this anthropologist called Eleanor Leacock who had spent all this time with Cree Indians in Canada. And so she's on this hunting trip with this one Cree, and he meets these two strangers who'd run out of food and were in real trouble. And he gives them all of his food, all of his flour and his lard, I think it was. And that means he's going to have to cut his hunting trip short. And this anthropologist is asking him, you know, what the hell were you doing? Why did you do that? Now you're not going to be able to go on your trip. And he gets kind of frustrated with her and then finally says, basically, that if he didn't give him his food, the phrase he uses is he says, just dead inside. And there's something so beautiful about the story, just this recognition of our interdependence and his sense that if he didn't help these people who were in need, he was just dead inside. And. And the first story, the one that I'm not going to tell you at Great, like, is sort of about. About the same thing. It's kind of a homeless guy seeing. Seeing him and Taking care of him and saying, you know, I wonder, you know, I saw you and I wondered if you were okay. And the homeless guy takes care of him as a young man. And, and so it's sort of, it's sort of about this part of us that I think needs nourishing. And the reason I mentioned it to my masterclass is that I think in some way we have to create containers that enable us to build relationships with each other and to get this depth of interpersonal connection that I think we've somehow lost because of the privilege of our society. And you know, I like sitting quietly on my own in my study and reading. And I like the fact that you and I can do this over a screen from thousands of miles apart, but that, that we need that personal connection. And then this led me to another of Junga's books which I've been reading over the last few days and I'm not yet finished with, but I'm about 100 pages through, which is called In My Time of Dying, which is a great title. And the subtitle is How I came face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife. And one of the things that's kind of remarkable about this book is Junger is kind of this very pragmatic, tough, you know, war hardened guy, right, who's seen everything. And he has this experience that almost totally undoes his rational mind in a really interesting way. And so I think he must have been about 56 and he had had kids very late, so he got married and has these two young daughters. And one day he has this dream where he's kind of hovering overhead and his wife and his daughters a sobbing beyond reach down below him. And he's aware in this dream that he's died carelessly, which must be very resonant for a guy who's been a war reporter and has put himself in all sorts of danger and a surfer and the like, you know, kind of a danger junkie in some ways. And in this dream he can't comfort them. And then 36 hours later, after this very strange dream, that sort of premonition of his death and leaving his, his kids and his wife, he has this rupture in his abdomen and he's, I think, about an hour and a half away from the hospital and he ends up almost bleeding out and dying. And he talks in great detail about this near death experience. And his father was an MIT trained physicist who is brilliant and very rational guy who had been dead for eight years. And as Sebastian Junger is lying There kind of in and out of consciousness and right on the border of death. He sees his father as kind of some sort of force hovering above the left side of his bed. And he said, it seemed like his father was saying, it's okay. There's nothing to be scared of. Don't fight it. I'll take care of you. And so this whole experience leads. And some other experiences lead Junga to start looking into all of these near death experiences that you can't quite explain. So, for example, there's a. There's an amazing story I remember him talking about on a podcast as well, I think probably on the. On the Fresh Air podcast where there's a woman in a coma after a drug overdose. And when she comes out of the coma, she knows things that you just couldn't have known. Like, for example, she knew that the doctor had been speaking to her roommate in the waiting room at the emergency room. And she knew that the doctor had some sort of stain on his tie. And the doctor over lunch had been eating spaghetti sauce and had splattered his tie. And then he was in a rush, so he does up his white lab coat, so it obscures the stain so it's not visible to anyone. And somehow this woman in her coma has been sort of hovering around, observing what's going on. And so there's this lovely line where Jung E says that the problem with rationality is that things keep happening that you can't explain. And I love this because I kind of like uncertainty. I like the fact that things are unknowable and things are complex and. And things are contradictory. And I often think there's this beautiful line in Hamlet where Hamlet's father, who's dead, has appeared as a ghost, I think, to the night watchman. And he says to his friend, Horatio. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And I always come back to that. I mean, I come back to that at least once every couple of weeks. That idea from Shakespeare, it's sort of part of my inner monologue, just on the limits of our knowledge and our rationality. And, you know, Shakespeare knew this back in like 1603 or whatever, when. When Hamlet first started to be performed. And it's good to read these things that are kind of not central to what we do necessarily, but that remind us a little bit of these ideas that we often ignore. And it's. And it's all, as Charlie would say, everything is one damn relatedness after another. And so I think of Templeton for example, who would say how little we know, how eager to learn. And so I think in a way it connects to your two books that you read that you don't necessarily agree with but that broaden the mind and challenge your preconceptions. And I think that's a very useful thing for an investor, but I think it's a very useful thing for a human just to have this sense of like, what do I know with my little pea brain and my limited perspective on everything. And so it's kind of humbling and mind expanding and so I don't know, they're not books that you have to read. But I think with both of these Sebastian books, partly because he's such a good writer, they get under your skin. And I was happy over Thanksgiving, I mentioned this to my brother in law who's a psychiatrist, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration and I told him I had read Tribe and I, I sort of wondered if he would be kind of dismissive of it and he's like, no, Sebastian Jr. Came, came on, on rounds with us at the hospital and he said he was absolutely wonderful and he said he listened to the, the questions from the, the veterans with such compassion and such, such respect and, and was just kind of remarkable. And so maybe that's the theme that we just keep coming back to unconsciously and unintentionally throughout this episode is that, you know, as that song says, you know, everybody needs a little mercy now. And so that all of these books, all of these investors that we're talking about, the Arnolds and the like, they show you a kind of better, a better way, you know, to be a little more open minded, a little bit more compassionate, a little bit more understanding. And so there's sort of, I don't know, I like the fact that there's some probably intentional on your part, but unintentional on mine, kind of connection between a lot of the things that we've discussed today.
- [138:12]
Dick Brodersen
I can't think of a better way to end with we all need a little bit of mercy. That's so beautiful. Thank you for bringing that into our lives.
- [138:20]
William Green
Thank you. It's been a great pleasure chatting with you. I really enjoyed this conversation, as with all of my conversations with you, but this one, I feel like we touched on some, some important stuff here. Thank you for listening to tip. Make sure to follow. We study billionaires on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com this show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.