Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5WybwqCZic
people don't understand their capacity you don't need to hit rock bottom to be the best version of yourself what you just have to do is I love that young Pueblo the expert in unlocking your true potential he's a meditator and best selling author whose work has impacted the lives of millions the world is incredibly challenging the demands are intense and whether you've experienced serious trauma or not hard moments get accumulated into the mind or trapped in this tight little bubble by our past it keeps us in a loop you react very intensely with anger with sadness with you to feel anxiety stress but healing and letting go are possible how the best tool that we don't access is meditation if there's someone listening to this now and they go I don't meditate I've tried it didn't work what is the pitch you'd make to them Steve Jobs the Sam Altman High performing people cultivate their minds and meditate stay cool Under Pressure make more creative decisions I can do more with less stress it's essential for your mental health when I grew up I didn't want to admit to myself that I didn't feel good I'm constantly trying to coat myself in pleasure by drinking as much as possible doing tons of drugs where I almost lost my life everything was going terrible but when I started meditating everything changed requires this application of self-awareness to really unlock your happiness you got to see what you're doing to yourself meditating even the biggest investment that I've made in my life in a specific way how does your meditation look there's two main things one is before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74 of people that watch this channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69 my goal is 50 so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode [Music] Diego Perez when you look at the body of work you've produced and you look specifically at the the writing the content that you've put out into the world
what mission are you on what is it you're trying to do what effect are you trying to have on Society at Large I think the mission is really hoping to raise self-awareness around the fact that healing and letting go are possible so I got into this world really early on I think uh it was 2011 when I started realizing that healing was even possible and this was before Wellness was even a giant sort of this giant world that it is today and um to me it was a shock you know when I grew up I thought that if you were sick physically or mentally in some manner you just had to deal with that for the rest of your life you couldn't really fix that in any way and when I started changing my habits when I started changing what I was eating when I started reassessing my friend group and then eventually when I started meditating the changes were so massive that I was so shocked by them that I wanted to really check in with myself and see that is this real and it was real so that just kind of pushed me into writing where I felt this sort of creative pull to to share the little bit about that I that I know you know and it was interesting because I know that I don't know everything I'm not fully healed I'm not fully wise I have a long way to go but hopefully some of the things that I'm reflecting on could Inspire other people to do the serious work as well and and why why does it matter that we heal why does it matter I think it's because it's pretty necessary to live a better life like I I think uh whether you've experienced serious trauma or not you've definitely had hard moments in your life and those hard moments get accumulated into the mind they literally you know the times when you react very intensely with anger with sadness with whatever emotion it is that reaction gets accumulated in your mind and predisposes you to feeling that same thing again and oftentimes we don't quite realize that we're sort of like trapped in this tight little bubble by our past and we're thinking the same things saying the same things making the same actions and it keeps us in a loop but if you start healing you can basically get access to your freedom so thinking about what you said there
about your own healing Journey where you couldn't believe the results Were Real and True what did you heal from I think a lot of it was anxiety and stress and this sort of scarcity mindset so I was born in Ecuador and the city called wayakil I came to the United States when I was about four years old with my parents when we got to the United States it was incredibly difficult like we were stuck in the classic American poverty trap my mom she worked cleaning houses my dad he worked um at a supermarket so there was no upward Mobility for us they didn't know English you know we were and we went through a really difficult time so as I was growing up I didn't notice how that was affecting me until I got to college where you know I had so much anxiety and stress about you know I would see my parents fight constantly about how they were going to pay the rent how they were going to get more groceries I experienced multiple times where I was you know eight-year-old child and I'm so hungry because there wasn't enough food in the fridge and this saw got accumulated over time and never really properly processed you know like I didn't have access to a therapist back then no meditating back then it was sort of just um you know coping mechanisms and when I got to University I hit this breaking point where I didn't want to admit to myself that I didn't feel good I was constantly trying to coat myself in pleasure by drinking as much as possible smoking as much as possible always with friends never alone and I ended up just like building all these bad habits where I was partying constantly doing tons of drugs and eventually hit that breaking point in the summer of 2011 where I almost lost my life um I talked to a doctor afterwards and described to them what happened and they were like oh yeah it sounds like a mild heart attack where I had just taken way too many drugs one night was on the floor crying basically you know praying begging for my life um because I didn't I didn't want to go out like that and going through that experience and then
basically taking a different route into the life that I have now I think um I'm really grateful that I had that strength and I want other people to know that they have that strength too zooming on that moment then when you go off to college you you know find yourself in addictive Cycles with drugs and alcohol and cocaine I believe um you have that miniature heart attack yeah and then at that point you make a decision that you're not going to let this thing kill you yeah what is the next step in your journey towards healing walking yeah walking some things I mean I was incredibly unhealthy right I was definitely overweight at the time but um but internally right I had an exercise probably in like four years four or five years and um so I knew I took the drugs threw them away um you know I'm home and I'm like okay how do I like revamp my life and I remember seeing some YouTube video or stumble upon or I saw something back then where um it was talking about how important it is to have more nutrition so I ended up buying a like huge tub of barley grass you know back barley grass used to be like really hit back then and um I needed some type of superfood because I knew I'm you know every day I'm just eating you know rice and meat rice and meat just like a very like South American diet and I was like okay let me get some nutrition let me get this barley grass stuff I can put it in my orange juice and just knock it back and I was like I gotta do something like I have to go outside and I just started walking and I remember I was so unhealthy started walking lightly jogging that I got the worst shin splints like I literally my legs hurt so bad that I was having trouble going up the stairs but I kept going and I kept going and like you know even this morning this morning I ran four miles no problem and thinking about that time it's yeah I've come come a long way I was I was thinking as you were speaking about yeah the Catalyst of change in people's lives like that moment where they hit rock bottom and they say enough is enough and what it takes for for them to make a meaningful sustained change in any
element of their life whether it's their relationships and leaving and going finding a better situation or a job or just life in general like you're describing where you realize you're on the wrong track and you make the decision to to to go in a New Direction two questions there what do you think it is that from your experience that starts that journey of change for people and the second thing is when we often speak to people who've changed the process seems to be really linear and quick like I made the decision to change then I changed I think people doubt their power honestly man I've seen that happen time and time again where people don't quite understand their capacity and especially when the situation gets severe and of course like you know not everybody makes it like some people get destroyed by the process of hitting rock bottom but other people stand up it's almost like a phoenix I remember writing a poem called Phoenix in my first book Inward and um I think that you know it's pretty personalized like I really don't think everybody has to hit rock bottom and I think um I like having that point of view because I think people want to like go to extremes often and kind of dramatize things but you don't need to hit rock bottom to be the best version of yourself I think that's that's kind of the situation that I was personally in um but for me man I remember when I was on the floor and I kept thinking about I was like man I feel my life like you know it's it's running out like I felt it running out and I kept thinking about my parents and I was like they worked so hard like you know they I wasn't even mad at them they didn't have time for me because I knew their struggle like I understood like I got it you they rolled the dice by coming to the United States because everybody doesn't win here the other major major thing like when I you know the few days after where I almost lost my life I remember sitting in my room um at my mom and dad's house and this was you know I had just graduated from college it was 2011 the economy was was pretty bad it was hard to get a job at
the time and I remember sitting in the room and I was like okay I was like what's the problem here like what like how did this almost happen and it hit me it was like oh is it because you didn't want to admit that you didn't feel good now if that's what got you here what can get you out of this and it's oh it's telling yourself the truth and this was you know before I had learned how to meditate or anything but I would just sit in my bed and I would challenge myself to stay with the feelings that I used to run away from so like I like to call it radical honesty with yourself like it's not it's not really about other people but it's between you and yourself and when those heavy emotions would come up normally I would just roll a joint smoke and just you know it help cover whatever was there but when the anxiety would arise when the stress would arise when those feelings of worthlessness would arise I would just sit with them and you know first it was a few minutes then 10 minutes 15 minutes and I was like okay like and I learned a lot you know I learned that these little storms that come up like they don't need to blow you over they don't need to totally overwhelm you they don't even need to govern your actions if you just sit there and feel them you realize they're totally temporary and it's gonna be okay you know and and I I didn't know that before until I started challenging myself to just be with that and I don't really know where that came from you know like I had hadn't really I hadn't really read self-improvement books or seen these things online or anything like that but I think instinctually I was like okay if you were lying to yourself before now tell yourself the truth and what does that look like a lot of the time it looks like feeling your emotions and not running from them we don't do that do we we um we distract ourselves constantly constantly yeah it's I was just thinking then how many how many of us really know how we're feeling like how many of us really know how we ourselves are feeling truly like when was the last time I think for most people listening to this have you really sat there on the end of
your bed or wherever and asked yourself how you're actually feeling all things considered what's out of balance it's rare but I think it's becoming more popular I'm pretty inspired by what's happening now I've um I've been watching this whole wellness world brew and grow and develop and obviously it has its Downs it has a lot of consumerism around it but there are a lot of positives and there are just millions and millions of people who are seeing therapists now there's millions and millions people who are meditating and there are millions and millions more journaling reflecting building self-awareness building language around these you know newer ideas um I mean actually old ideas but that have you know come back around um it's not also slightly concerning what do you mean because it's it's a sign that there is a increasing demand potentially for you know what I mean if it's if there's more fire extinguishers being sold right right right right oh it's totally concerning I think um it's concerning but I think to me it gives it gives us gives me hope honestly because of course the world is incredibly challenging you know the Advent of Technology especially with social media the increases in loneliness like we know we know like the cause and effect are very clear right but these tools have been around for like you know the Western tools of therapy what 100 150 years the Eastern tools of different forms of meditation indigenous healing practices these things have been around for Millennia and now that the world is globalized people in major cities especially have access to them like you can type in like what can what what can I do to deal with my anxiety and you have like you know things from from psychiatrists like you know you can go to your like local Meditation Center there are tons of things that you can do now and what you just have to do is find something that meets you where you're at so you do see these two things rise together where the demand for your attention is through the roof now from the media from Tech from everything that's happening around you family and friends but at the same time here are a bunch of tools for you to get
your mind right so that you can not be overwhelmed by these demands I am certainly guilty of using screens and other means to distract myself from how I'm feeling in fact you know when I'm feeling tired or so you know bothered in some way or a little bit agitated whatever it might be my way of dealing with that is to pick up a screen yeah that's good to be honest pick up a screen and either watch something on YouTube distract myself from the feeling maybe watch some football um or something else you know something else that's probably not so good for me um and I think that you know scrolling on my phone for example I think that represents the majority of people we use distraction as a way to avoid confronting how we're feeling because confronting how we're feeling is can be uncomfortable absolutely I mean confronting how you're feeling for a lot of us that's the gateway to growth right so if you're going to be there and stand with your emotions you either see so much that you want to keep running or you're like okay I'm gonna accept this Challenge and let's see how I should grow next so it is quite difficult there's a bunch of ways to say it what is that it's a meditation uh that's been around that originated from the Buddhist teaching so 2 600 years where you basically uh do your best to see reality as it really is and it's very different from how we normally see reality right you and I are hanging out we're talking we're having this conversation it feels like it's too individuals speaking but let's ask ourselves what's happening at the ultimate level where well Diego and Steven were basically just these like bundles of atoms that are changing so incredibly rapidly trillions of times and at the same time it's just mental and physical phenomena interlocking at incredibly high speeds that makes the illusion that we're here but in reality are we real no not really why is that an important or valuable exercise it's quite valuable I think the sense of self um when it becomes overgrown when it becomes highly traumatized um it creates a barrier to happiness so
what I've found through for positive meditation was that as I was observing the truth of impermanence literally within the framework of the body you know when you start learning that everything that arises ultimately passes away and you start understanding that change is it exists within the fabric of every single thing in this universe you start loosening up your identity it's not as rigid as it was before it's not like Diego always reads science fiction and he always loves blueberries actually it's not true sometimes I love watermelon sometimes I love you know like reading fiction some you know so it allows this uh understanding of change to help you loosen up and really evolve and I've have found that quite beneficial to my personal joy and happiness and definitely in my relationships because if you Embrace change you're not going to be as attached it's not going to be like I want you to do this this way all the time in fact you're going to understand oh no different conditions create different situations so yes I can have goals but if they don't come about I'm not going to be crying on the floor I'm just going to try again how do you think our earliest experiences impact the relationship we have with change because change it's funny because there's this almost duality of being a human where we seem to like things staying the same there's a certain security income yeah even the idea of self identity that's almost like a resistance to change it allows me to be understood if I if I give you my totally bio my business card it will say CEO of marketing company then you get me you know where I fit I feel like I'm I fit somewhere and there's a tribe somewhere but at the same time The Human Experience yearns for progress totally and we're not trying to have people get rid of their identities right what we're trying to do is create a sense of flexibility within that identity where we don't often see that human beings we tend to side on the extreme of the apparent reality that's what I was mentioning before like I am here you are there we're speaking to each other that's apparently happening
but we totally forget the Ultimate Reality we totally forget that everything is constantly changing even this hard table it's changing so fast so fast that you can't even witness it you can't even see it unless you profoundly calm down the mind and start developing your awareness your Equanimity and you do this within the framework of the body because when you understand what's happening within the body you actually understand universal law you understand what's happening you know throughout the Universe and missing that undercurrent of change missing that understanding that your ego is not this permanent thing it helps you tremendously so that you're not as attached as you're moving through the world because we're constantly trying to control everything control ourselves control the people around us control whatever situation we can get our hands on and what happens when you're just trying to constantly control things misery so much misery so much struggle so much mental tension and I think that's why embracing change like your original question you know what is our relationship with change it's a combative one it's a it's a situation where you know we grow up as children and we you know all we're focusing on is building our identity right when you're becoming little you're learning the culture you're sort of taking it all in and you develop your sense of self but when you become older you know when you're grounded and you have a you know a good sense of identity you also need to develop an understanding of what's ultimately happening around here and I think when you get a real taste of ultimate truth it helps you tremendously because I I think if if I didn't have if I didn't switch around my relationship with change um like I would have no access to peace it's interesting because you're you're totally right when I was younger I grew up hoovering in for information that allowed me to survive and I built my identity around the character that was required to survive in that context right not the character that would make me happiest in my life or most fulfilled or best in relationships so
what was formed by the age of 18 was this like insecure shame ridden kid who would run from relationships because he thought those were prison um and that stood in the way of all of my so many of my goals it certainly stood in the way of me being really happy but it also stood in the way of me finding romantic love right and it was unpacking that identity and becoming aware of its existence and then unpacking it and trying to unlearn it that allowed me to pursue the things that now make me fulfilled and happy I'm still not there yet I haven't really met anybody that is um but I find that really interesting that like we build that identity around survival and then as an adult at some point we need to like review it you hit it on the dot so I think when we it makes sense evolutionarily like you Evolution wants you to be able to survive it does not care about your happiness it does not care about your sense of thriving but as you come to fruition and you come into being and you're like you're here you have your sense of identity you realize that there's so much misery wrapped in the sense of self a raptor and wrapped in your attachments and to be able to really Thrive and to be happy it requires Letting Go I mean how much stress have you caused yourself right there's like we have to ask ourselves this like of course you know sometimes people get offended by this question but you have to realize that there have definitely been people in your life who've caused you harm people who've done terrible things but it's you and yourself in that mind of yours right it's it's just you and uh and we don't quite understand how many times we replay the pass over and over and then those same feelings of tension come up again and again and we have no way to really process that unless we try to actively find some sort of tool that will help us let go and I think it's really important to just you know you got to see what you're doing to yourself how self-awareness time alone reflecting have a good teacher you know have someone who can point things out to you that you couldn't see before I think that's ultimately what a lot of therapists are doing is like have you
asked yourself this have you been honest about this and similar with meditation and it's it's you developing a um you know a sense of inability to observe instead of just judgment because constantly when I'm looking out in the world I'm just evaluating things giving you this evaluation according to the memory that I have this record inside of my mind but instead of constantly just evaluating things why can I just observe why does it have to be plus or minus let me just watch what's happening right now we're all in Cycles aren't we every most facets of my life I think pretty much every facet of my life is in some kind of cycle now some of those Cycles are positive so me working out and going to the gym that seems to be a positive cycle that I've managed to build some people might call that a habit and then I do have other Cycles in my life where I go that happened I reacted like that that was not the reaction that would bring me closer to my goals and fulfillment um I'll try not to do that again and then the thing happens and that kind of cycle repeats itself and in so many and I think about myself I think about my friends I think about you know even some of my my close sort of mentors um I observe those Cycles in their life that they're trying to break harder but they just they just seem so stubborn right I've lived through so many of those stubborn Cycles where for years and years and years I've known it's a problem I've not known how to get out of it what advice would you give me or someone else in a situation where we we know we're in a cycle whether it's relationships or work or how we're responding to things and we feel stuck in that cycle yeah I think that's that's what a lot of us are going through is that um the past is constantly in a loop right a lot of like we are very largely formed by those first few years of life you know a lot of uh psychologists say it to you about the age of seven I would say it's more it's like it's um every time that you react it gets accumulated so those moments of heartbreak like your first love your first loss like all of
these things that have um really formed your sense of self they are impacting the way that you're perceiving and the way that you're reacting to the world and I think for a lot of us we probably one of the best tools that we don't access is just the ability to slow down is just slowing down literally just pumping the brakes and what you just talked about what you just described being able to spend time observing okay this is what I'm feeling this is how I want to react you know I have this because initially our initial reaction is pretty rough it's like the most defensive one the most survival oriented one but it's like okay that that's actually going to make a bigger mess of things what can I do differently like what can I do to change this play that's happening around me so that I can put a different input and hopefully get a different output and I think when we slow down we see that and that's one of the gifts that I personally got from meditating was I didn't have that ability ability before like the reaction was lightning fast you know someone said something about me I didn't like immediately like hate like I would be so upset so like you know wanting to control their view of me and now it's like let me slow down let me see how I would have dealt with this before what's like the actually the most skillful thing that I can do in this moment to like you know to just stay in value with myself and at the same time just like maneuver out of this like is this even worth my time you know you need to know where that reaction is coming from do you need to know the root cause no no I think a lot of people get stuck in like examining the past and like peeling the like okay like my mom said this one thing to me one time and then my dad did this other thing like it's totally valuable to understand your past but healing happens in the present moment like those feelings like if you want to deal with your past you need to be able to create space for the feelings that are coming up right now because often those feelings that are coming up right now are just Echoes of the past you don't need to know a narrative like you don't need to give a narrative to every single feeling you know you literally just have to be able to hold
space for them and when you do hold space space for them a lot of the unbinding happens so that you're not as knotted up inside oh no talked about what meditation being critical for you there to kind of slow down and have that space to reflect on how you're responding and and so on in a in a specific way how does your meditation look does it is it once a day for five minutes is it you know you go off to a retreat yeah so um you learn vipassana and this is an Essen tradition same tradition that you've all know Harare also meditates in um we you learn the technique by going away to one silent 10-day course um so it's a big commitment it's hard it's not easy you know the first one that I did was incredibly difficult like I just thought about running away for the first seven days um but you learn a technique that you know the first three days you learn how to observe your respiration and you're given this tool called anapana where you know you're literally observing the natural breath and then that helps calm down the mind enough where you can start feeling a lot more in your body than what's usual um you know for some meditators they can feel like the crispness of the pain that they're that they might feel from sitting long hours a day where they can like feel it to just like this hyper HD detail and it's not as overwhelming right because they're there with it um and or on the other end you know some meditators will be able to feel this like flow of you know rapid energy moving through the body and it's almost like like an atomic river that you're sort of fine-tuning your mind to be able to feel and you can feel how like yeah this is my bicep but it's actually it feels like tens of thousands of like changing vibrations that are moving incredibly rapidly and you sit there in silence for 10 days total silence for 10 days you can talk to the teacher you can ask questions um but you're like you're there totally by yourself um you're there with a group of people but you're like in an environment where it's basically by yourself you're not
allowed to speak to those other people no no eye contact no speaking you're like basically living like a monk and what about on a day-to-day basis what is your like daily on a day-to-day basis I meditate two hours a day ten hours a day that's right every day every day I've been doing that for I think about eight years now um and I meditate one hour in the morning one hour in the evening or like you know late afternoon or something like that what does that look like just sitting on your own or yeah I mean this morning I looked like you know came to New York City just to come hang out with you woke up this morning um and just like sat up on the bed and put my timer for one hour and started meditating yeah but we also you know meditate at home we have our little meditation room where my wife and I meditate and um and it's honestly it's amazing it's I know to a lot of people like two hours a day wow so much time but I think about it to myself like how much time do I waste like I waste tons of time like I get a lot done but I'm also constantly wasting time every day and what I've understood is that these two hours a day that I've been meditating for the past eight years they've been the biggest investment that I've made in my life like by far because it's one thing you know you go away to these Retreats um and it's incredibly valuable you know you can come out totally transformed but to keep the process going at home it just adds a deeper element to it that helps you continue evolving continue evolving and I think because I've spent that time my relationship with my wife has flourished because it was rough like before we started meditating there was a six year period where we were together and before we started meditating and our relationship was chaos it was it was like living in a hurricane constantly fighting fighting each other constantly blaming each other you know my relationship with my parents was very shallow my relationships with my brother and sister were even more shallow you know same thing with friends like work life everything was going terrible but when I started meditating everything changed everything opened up
I didn't even know that I would that I should write you know like all of this came from cleaning up my mind and then like my intuition started waking up and I was like oh you know try writing you know you know you know that you don't know everything but share share the process give me instructions then on the meditation you did this morning what instructions would you give me to replicate what you did I think so this is a thing it's like this style of meditation um you can't pay for it you can't um like get it off of a YouTube video like you you have to go to a 10-day course because it's not I can tell you the instructions but do you have enough of the cultivated qualities to be able to actually deeply feel the body like that's why it's a step by step that 10 days is literally like one giant guided meditation incredibly simple instructions but you won't be able to do them unless your mind is like calm enough unless it's you know it's like going to the gym it's like if you were to ask me to go run a marathon right now like I wouldn't be able to do it you know I have to train for it okay so I'm not going to be able to do it just based on your instructions I get that yeah but I'm curious as to the specific like yeah these Specific Instructions yeah yeah yeah so so the two the two Basics are um you know like what I was describing to you the first three days you're observing the breath I mean this morning and this morning same thing well this morning um I was basically observing my body you know bringing my attention to my body you know start at the top of the head and keep feeling my body as I'm moving down and you know it sounds really simple but when you put time into it when you like keep going to courses the amount that you feel um it expands pretty pretty incredibly yeah do you think the most important answer is that we're searching for are within us totally totally if you spend your whole life looking outside you could read
every book in the world and still be absolutely miserable I think it requires this application of self-awareness to really unlock your happiness like you have to develop what you're missing like develop like compassion is in your mind but it's undeveloped like self-awareness it's it's a capacity you have totally undeveloped like that's that's what was shocking to me when I went to go meditate was like my mind could do these things but my awareness was so Meek when I first started because it was like a muscle like when I go to these meditation courses you know I've gone to courses that are 20 30 45 days long and I come out of them and I'm like I just spent my whole time at the gym like it was just a mental gym I was like literally developing my ability to be aware my ability to be equanimous and my ability to have love for myself and all beings that's my favorite ever um quote that I've ever shot on Instagram is what you've just said which is there's no self-development without self-awareness you can read as many books as you like but if you can't read yourself you'll never learn a thing oh this this is why I saw like uh people listening around like this is why I became so interested in you was when I first came around your work and the algorithm started you know I started popping it up this was like two two and a half maybe even three years ago and I was like I was like dude we're on the same wave yeah you know we're not doing the same thing we live in totally different lives but there's something there that's like um yeah it's the same wave it's a curiosity it's a curiosity that I see um in your work in a new and it's funny because the subject matter it's not subject matter that is for everybody and you'll know this from doing the work you do this there's some people that when they read terms like self-love and healing you know what I mean but it's but it's funny I just wish those people knew that all of their goals start with that if they want to be a billionaire or a millionaire for whatever reasons they want I don't want to judge you you want a Lamborghini if you want to be happy
you want a beautiful relationship it all starts with these these words that self-love and healing it's and it's interesting man like I you know I just saw the movie air and it was I loved it you know it was incredible but what was really telling to me was that the guy who owned Nike he was meditating a lot yeah you know and like it was really helping him it was helping him stay cool Under Pressure you know it was helping him like make more creative decisions like same thing with um Steve Jobs like he is like he was a serious man and same thing with um uh Sam Altman you know created open AI like he's a serious meditator you know just met him the other day and like he's meditating quite seriously but like these are people who are high performing people who are make it a point to cultivate their minds and these are people that are obsessed with productivity totally and you know at that time that's something that has that blew my mind experiencing it personally where as I kept going as I kept going to courses I realized like I can just I can do more I can do more with less stress and to me that's been incredible like At first I was a writer and then I started opening up and going into the Venture Capital world and even later I'm thinking about opening a business but I wouldn't have been able to do anything if it wasn't really for that basic development of self-awareness and you know Equanimity and I keep using the word and Equanimity what I'm talking about is basically your ability to observe something as it really is without craving it or without having any aversion towards it you're not hating it you're not loving it and wanting it you're just observing it as it is it's a balanced mind why so this when I start the Diary of CEO the the base sort of premise of it was me to share my diary and with complete honesty so I feel I feel compelled to do that I've for a long time viewed meditation as a waste of time like I think that was my the thought of sitting there and just because you know what it appears to be on the surface is sitting there and just not thinking about anything yeah but then as you say all of these incredible people who are obsessed with
productivity and efficiency and time and are very very busy tremath as well um from from the all-in podcast so many people that I follow and watch and listen to they all and so many of the guests that have come here and are wildly successful they all talk about the benefits of meditation right if there's someone listening to this now and they go I don't meditate and I in any way whatever technique you know they might might use I think I've always thought it's a waste of time I've tried it didn't work what is the pitch you'd make to them about why they should persevere and persist well there's two main things one is you tried it it didn't work of course of course it didn't work like you no one starts out being good at meditation like what the Mind knows is distraction it's literally jumping from one thing to another flying from the past to the Future from the past the future just swimming and Imagination so that moment when you ask your mind to stay in one place for a few seconds it'll be gone totally gone so of course you're bad at it right but that's why you try again you keep trying you calmly you know without getting upset with yourself you put time into it the same way where you would you know use to build your muscles or educate yourself on you know if you want to learn Spanish you're not just going to know Spanish you need to study you need to spend you're not going to know you know zero Spanish when you begin and you put four five six years of serious work into it and you get really good at Spanish it's the same thing with meditation so one thing is accept that it's going to be extremely hard in the beginning and it will humble you because you're like damn I suck at this good then you keep going and the second part of it is it's an investment you're making a huge time investment that produces incredible results inside of you in the way that you see the world in the way that you talk to people in the way that you create whatever it is that you want to give to the world I think you but you have to give it time you have to give it time to really be able to see the results maybe at the very Crux of this or
thinking as you're speaking then people do what they want to do and most of the things they want they do because they want to do them are because they are clear on the reward of doing it totally think about human behavior like I went to the toilet I was clear on the results of going to the toilet and also not going to the toilet so I went to the toilet exactly the results of not going for a wee before you came here was I would urinate in my pants so I did yeah I ate breakfast this morning because I was clear on the upside of that and also I had the urge to do it um when we think about meditation I think when I think about the equation of why people do things the bit that I think a lot of people aren't clear on is that first part which is like what is the upside yeah I can take your word for it yeah um I can take a lot of very credible people's word for it but I think that's the that's the issue it's the issue it's like you have to experience it for yourself and I think a lot of people go into meditation for like its initial goals you know for Liberation for you to be free from suffering which is the most important goal like that's why I do it like I don't I don't meditate to be a better writer right I don't meditate to like for anything else other than to take small steps forward on the path of Liberation to truly try to Cease the mechanism in my mind that's causing me suffering and the outs are sort of the externality of that right is that you become incredibly creative like you don't need to be you know in film or writing or whatever you can be in whatever field that it is you can be an engineer you can be a doctor a dentist but you become so much more creative because your mind isn't as stressed as it used to be and it's able to make connections a lot more quickly because your mind is sharper and understanding that creativity and understanding how it impacts your relationships it makes them so much more deeper than before I think it gives you an access to new Beauty in life and why not you know why not spend that time on yourself
so you meditate to avoid suffering not avoid to be able to understand reality so well that I don't cause myself suffering what are the main causes of suffering as far as you're concerned it's craving craving craving yeah totally and it's not the same as wanting I think that there is a big issue when um especially when the Buddhist teaching came over to the west where it was translated as this desire is the cause of suffering and you can look at it that way to some extent but what seems much more approachable to me and makes more sense is craving like craving is not the same thing as as wanting something right as having a goal because there's a difference between having a goal and having a craving you can have a goal and put your mind to it put a lot of work in but then the moment that you don't get what you want and you're like okay it's okay you know let me go back to the drawing board let me re-strategize let me figure out how to do this better than before and you do all that without crying without being super upset without punching the wall you just you keep diligently working and moving forward it's possible the other side of that is craving is doing everything with craving when your energy is all nutted up when your mind is super tense because craving is basically the combination of wanting and tension like you're really craving something bad and you're you're sort of the mind is rippled with stress in the moment of craving something and in the moment of like even worse when you don't get it when you don't get what you were really striving for so I don't want to live like with a mind that's craving like I'm a householder right I'm not a monk like I I have I have a wife you know someday we're gonna have kids like I have a mother and father that I need to help take care of like I have to have goals right when I when I write a new book or when I start a new venture or do something like yeah I want to do my best and but I try to do that as calmly and as balanced as possible without stressing myself out that much in the process I'm not perfect at it but to me it seems like a much more effective way
to live than just like making myself stress all the time how do I know if I'm craving a goal that I have in my life or if I just you know it's just a goal it's the moment when you don't get it it's the moment that you know if you don't get what you were craving and you're super stressed out and it just makes you so upset then you're like crying and you know you were craving you can even feel that tension in your mind you're like you're wanting that ice cream so bad do you think people that crave achieve more professionally you know that's a really good question I think definitely there have been some like incredible High achieving people who are totally driven by craving dominated but were they happy like were they okay inside like what you know what is their karmic situation like I have no you know like Genghis Khan like people who conquered the world like it's totally possible to conquer the world with no morality but I wouldn't want to live like that like to me it's like I'd rather be super intentional and aware of how I'm moving about in the world so that I don't cause my self-harm or other people's harm like that's my thing now it's like compassion's really powerful like you can create businesses in a compassionate Manner and still be super successful like you can do the work that you want to do in a compassionate Manner and be a high achiever that intentionality around your goals it's something I've I think I've struggled with for for the last 10 years is being clear with myself and why I have certain things as goals yeah you know because I think in the first chapter of my life when I was very shame ridden my goals were driven by meeting really like to trying to dissolve the shame that I experienced as a kid and like get the things that I thought would make me love myself yeah I feel like I was enough I didn't know that though so I was pursuing these material things with these like superficial things thinking that they were my my ambitions upon getting there the anti-climax the yeah the underwear signaled that I was aiming at the wrong things and there was a big piece of work actually that's why I resonate so much about what you write about in chapter one of your book about
self-love there's a big piece of work for me to figure out that none of this stuff was ever going to make me worth more yeah inside yeah and that the place for me to to actually build my ambitions from was that place of feeling enoughness um can I ask you something sure I'm quite curious um not like I've seen your success you know and I really commend you I think it's it's quite beautiful and I think you're inspiring so many people but knowing your background knowing this shame know like coming from a place of not having everything like now that you do have so much so much success all the material things you can just you know buy whatever you want why do you keep going it's a great question so it's something I've mulled over because there's still a part of me that wants to accumulate wealth yeah and I keep asking myself why yeah you know because I also I spoke to someone earlier and I said I'm at a conscious level aware that there's nothing more that I could buy that would have an impact on my happiness in fact yeah it's probably the opposite to some degree yeah you know if things were a bit more simple maybe maybe I'd be more happier um why do I keep going so I I'm gonna throw out my hypothesis and please don't interrogate it because I'd love to chew it over with you please I'm so curious I believe that for me to be happy I believe chaos is my stability and I think it's for most people I feel like there's a certain type of chaos which is my stability and that my stability is chaos so what I mean by that is when everything in my life is achieved and accomplished and I have nothing else to strive for you see this a lot in Olympians or anyone that achieves their goals they then fall into chaos so we all need to live in a certain um state of worthwhile meaningful voluntary chaos which means like having uncompleted goals I I sometimes Ponder whether that's hardwired into The Human
Condition whether the reason why we're in a skyscraper now in the middle of Manhattan is because our ancestors had that hardwired into them they they had it hardwired that they would build and progress and move forward I did some research in preparation for my book and they asked people in work what's the most enjoyable day of your professional career yeah and everyone points out a day when there was some sense of progress I think that's hardwired into us so if I I almost feel like if I stopped I would become disorientated um professionally I'm looking for five things I'm looking to pursue goals that are meaningful and worthwhile I'm looking to have a high degree of autonomy I'm looking to have a sufficient sense amount of challenge again if something's too easy people lose motivation for some reason if something's too difficult they become intimidating lose motivation I'm looking for a sense of forward motion and lastly to work with people that I love um I think that recipe is the recipe for my professional happiness so that is what I'm doing ever bigger goals with people I love towards worthwhile challenges that I think are worthwhile um and I'm trying to remain as conscious as I can about the dishonest motivations that sit amongst that like certain decisions I'll make or consider I'll buy Rolls-Royce like why did that come into my mind and where is that from yeah um does that answer the question it absolutely answers it and you know one what I'm noticing from that trend of what you just described is you realize that these five things that you lined out and the Chaos versus stability that all of that to me sounds like this is essential for your mental health right that it's almost like it's giving you reason that's you know to keep taking steps forward to and to do so in a way where life doesn't become a mess so I think that's pretty cool let me challenge myself yeah yeah this is maybe the answer I'm scared of giving yeah um I'm still trying to prove to myself that I'm enough um um I haven't grown out of that I'm just
doing it with different games now I'm doing it with podcasting I'm doing it in business still they're just bigger games they're just different games right they're like different status games they're not materialistic status games because maybe I've evolved out of that but they are professional status games that I'm playing yeah um what I want to point out to you then and so if you bring that up one of the most challenging truths to accept is that life is inherently dissatisfactory this is one of the things that the Buddha pointed out he pointed out you know there's three major truths that everything's changing um that there's suffering which can also be translated into dissatisfaction um and there's no self right your ego not real um but that second one I think is it's a difficult one to totally Embrace but once embraced that you know you can keep winning winning winning winning winning winning but there's still more there's still like you know there's still something else to want because we live in this situation you know the way this universe works where we can continue ideating into Infinity we can continue like developing more knowledge there's more books to read there's more to understand so we're functioning almost on an infinite Spectrum even though we ourselves are very finite and I think that creates a situation where things can be so so dissatisfying because you never quite get there and like I've been trying to accept that understanding into my life and seeing like you know people ask me like how did you feel after you became a number one New York Times bestseller and I'm like oh well you know it was really nice for like a few minutes and I was like yeah that was cool then it was done like it was like well you know what happens after that it was like well you just keep living your life you know and I could have got wrapped into the sort of the the deeper existential dissatisfaction of that of like oh like you know what happens next um but it was like okay let me just be with it as it is um but yeah why'd you keep why do you keep
doing what you're doing because you're I I just realized you've done all of these amazing things your books just all Smash Hits you're a venture capitalist now you're an investor in great companies You're Building businesses why I keep going um like on a mundane level like I only write books if um if I actually have something to say if there's another topic that I want to cover so I don't do them for like the big check like you know I do them to to really be able to be of service and in terms of building companies like all of the companies that I um you know have invested in with wisdom Ventures they're all companies that are trying basically trying to prove that compassion is good business so to me that feels really critical on a deeper level right like why I even put myself out there I think it's just to have the ability to give honestly like just to be able to give I think um like I don't gain my self-worth from being a number one New York Times bestseller from you know like from selling over a million books or you know all that stuff it's like that almost over a million how many yeah yeah it's wild it's wild but those are just numbers like I don't I can't imagine a million like I don't know what that really is you know I can I can wrap myself around stories like you know I just I just talked to someone the other day I was speaking at an event in San Francisco and this woman was telling me like you know how these three books that I wrote like they saved her life and I was just I was like talking to her and I'm like what like what I'm like are you okay now like are you like are you good now and she's like I'm good and I was just like I couldn't so to me like a story like that I can actually feel but when I see the numbers like you know I can't even pretend to imagine what a million is but I I keep going because um you know I I want to be able to take care of my parents and I want to be able to to give to good things um and to me that feels right for right now like I'll see what that looks like five to ten years down the line quick
one I'm so delighted that we're now sponsoring this podcast I've worn a week for a very very long time and there are so many reasons why I became a member but also now a partner and an investor in the company but also me and my team are absolutely obsessed with data driven testing compounding growth marginal gains all the things you've heard me talk about on this podcast and that very much aligns with the values of whoop whoop provides a level of detail that I've never seen with any other device of this type before constantly monitoring constantly learning and constantly optimizing my routine for providing me with this feedback we can drive significant positive behavioral change and I think that's the real thesis of the business so if you're like me and you are a little bit obsessed or focused on becoming the best version of yourself from a health perspective you've got to check out woob and the team that we've kindly given us the opportunity to have one month's free membership for anyone listening to this podcast just go to join.woop.com CEO to get your whoop four point 0.0 device and claim your free month and let me know how you get on right now I'm incredibly busy I'm running my fund where we're investing in slightly later stage companies I've got my Venture business where we invest in early stage companies got a third web out in San Francisco in New York City where we've got a big team of about 40 people and the company's growing very quickly flight story here in the UK I've got the podcast and I am days away from going up north to film Dragon stem for two months and if there's ever a point in my life where I want to stay focused on my health but it's challenging to do so it is right now and for me that is exactly where huel comes in allowing me to stay healthy and have a nutritionally complete diet even when my professional life descends into chaos and it's in these moments where heels rtds become my right hand man and save my life because when my world descends into professional chaos and I get very very busy the first thing that tends to give way is my nutritional choices so having heal in my life has been a lifesaver for the last four or so years and if you haven't tried heal yet which is I I'd be shocked you must be living under a rock if you haven't yet give it a shot coming into
summer things getting busy Health matters always RTD is there to hold your hand what do you think makes a good partner broadly I sat here with Simon cynic and I threw out the idea that um because I think when I was younger and maybe a bit more immature I had this kind of like superficial list yeah brunette this this size whatever and as I matured a little bit I tried to consolidate that list into like the non-negotiables I I landed on intellectually stimulating which I think is kind of what you've described there where you don't have that kind of intellectual conversation totally and build and grow intellectually together this one's a bit of an interesting one they make me better at my what I do my mission now they support that in whatever and I have to say that's something that you have to be willing to reciprocate and then the third one is sexual attraction yeah yeah I didn't say physical attraction I was very specific about having to have sexual attraction Simon sinek added one he said it's three plus one he said the the one you need on top of that is timing and concluded it was three plus one anything else you would add to that in terms of I would actually simplify it I think um it comes down to the intuitive click I think that there are some people um like when my wife and I when we physically came across each other you know she was um 18 I was 19. she was a freshman I was a sophomore like literally from the moment that we met we both um come from very different backgrounds like I grew up in the city she grew up in The Burbs our idea right like our like list of like what we wanted in a partner was not each other we were like but there was just like this incredible pull to just like discover like who is this person you know and like we spent like two two and a half months being friends and then the moment that I saw that other guys were trying to pair up with her and be her be their boy be you know get together with her I was like oh no I was like that and that and then I realized my deeper feelings and I was like no no I was like I I actually have feelings for you I want to be with you and um do you come out to
friend zone yeah yeah yeah basically came out of the friend's house oh man but I think it's it's the intuitive click plus the willingness to grow I think that's what really can make a relationship healthy and productive because like we're we're all in different starting points but if you have the willingness to grow like I'm here like I want to learn for myself I want to learn from you like how can I how can we both do this better I think that you can make real magic from that when you encountered challenges in your relationship what was the root cause of that or what was missing um I mean between the two of us if you were to add up how much emotional maturity there was it would be zero like during that time like zero self-awareness zero emotional maturity like if one of us got upset about whatever you know whatever it could be it would immediately be finger pointing like this is your fault you know like and this is why you need to change in a few change then I'll be happy but when we started meditating we started realizing it was like oh wait this isn't about you at all this is between me and myself and I'm actually just taking these dense emotions and allowing narratives to be built around them that somehow just take the blame away from me and so that I take no accountability and it was rough man like when we were when we first got together like the connection was there but there was no there was no willingness to grow there was no emotional maturity to really hold it so we were like constantly fighting we'd break up get back together break up get back together and it was we were always it always felt like we were at square one like we were never really like flowering and blossoming together and when we started meditating we started noticing like our fights got a little calmer right the screams got a little lower and we started and the the switch was very slow where when the fight would happen it wasn't like you did this you did that it became how do you feel like what's happening like why you know what are you seeing and then I explain what I'm seeing and it's like we're trying to understand each other's perspectives as opposed as opposed to making each other say sorry
and like winning the argument you know it went from fighting as a thing for victory to like fighting as a moment that we can develop understanding like what's happening with you let me tell you what's happening with me you and her against the problem yeah yeah versus you versus huh totally totally that's really rare that's so rare yeah no and we're yeah and same thing like we're not perfect you know we still argue have conflict um but it's way less dramatic than it used to be the first chapter in your book is about self-love your new book your newest book lighter is about self-love the subtitle here is let go of the past connect with the president expand the future self-love what does that actually mean that that just means loving myself right no there's a lot more to that come on Stephen yeah no I think um when I started asking myself the same question that the whole internet was asking itself back in uh 2015 2016 when self-love just burst onto the scene like I don't know if you remember that time but on Instagram like everybody was trying to explore like what does self-love really mean and I asked myself the same question back then and to me the way I learned to Define it was that it's doing what you need to do to heal and Free Yourself um and I think of it as an energy like it's the energy that you use to evolve and I wanted to sort of put that definition out there because I'm like that's how I'm enacting self-love in my life and it's very different from what I was learning from you know the materialistic sort of consumer side of self-love which is just like buy yourself whatever you want take a bubble bath like all these external things that I I personally think don't they don't you know definitely treat yourself well but like that's not going to add up to that much like the problem is like you know in your own mind in your own heart a lot of that's still distraction isn't it it's totally distraction it's just you're just sugar coating the situation but you're not really going to the depth going to the root problem so I think self-love is um you know using that
energy to healing for yourself to really go deep within yourself and basically discover like you know you go you walk through your own inner Forest like there's so much like when you turn that lens Inward and you start examining like what have I gone through like what have I overcome like where do I struggle where are my blocks and you learn to learn you know you you learn from that and you accept it simultaneously it's it's beautiful the way you know the evolution can really flourish from there you describe it as going through that Forest yeah for a lot of people it's not quite a forest it's like a big Dark Canyon that there might be lions and tigers inside yeah so who wants to go into the canyon you know I've got I think so much about certain people in my life where they are seeing their behavior doesn't correlate or isn't aligned with who they want to be and how they want to behave yeah but the thought of going into the canyon or the forest or however you want to describe it is also scary it's also really scary absolutely but you're not going to have Victory without challenge like these two things go hand in hand like you're not just going to be given peace like no one's going to be like oh you're free now you know like you have to put in the work and sometimes the work is like pretty scary you know to really go in there to like sit there with yourself while all this anxiety or like you know panic attack energy or like whatever it is you know like this like this deep stuff starts coming up and you're with yourself and you're calm and you're patient and you're loving yourself through it like I think there's there's there's really no other way especially if you're trying to like you know just build a new structure in your mind and come out with you know peace at the center of it what's your view broadly on the the current state of um talks about your wife a second ago about cut the current state of like relationships and dating and what do people getting wrong I think a lot about this because again um I'm at that age now I'm 30 years old I'm lucky enough to be in a relationship but
I I see a lot of people that are struggling because I almost feel like there's a generation trapped between the technological Revolution where there's this one generation that are kind of accustomed to social media and dating yeah dating apps and then there's this other generation that kind of got trapped and they're now in their like early 30s right and um they don't quite resonate with the the culture of dating apps or social media but when you look at the data that more than 50 of meeting are now more than 50 of people are now meeting online so they're struggling yeah what's your overview what's your sort of opinion on dating and where we are in culture I think there's two main problems Perfection and craving um oftentimes we want the person that we're going to be with to be so incredible there's never a problem with them always good times you know they know how to support us perfectly when there's a moment of struggle and it's just not going to be like that you know to be able to develop a good rhythm with each other means that your flaws are going to come up that you know you're going to be such clear mirrors for each other that you're going to see parts of yourself that you have to face and do something about so being able to throw out this idea of perfection especially when like you know date one day two day three and then the first disagreement happens it's like blunt you cut it you know the second part of it is craving where I've seen you know with a number of friends and just kind of like what's happening out there is like you'll have a relationship for an X number of months but then there's the craving it's like oh there might be something better out there for me you know but like it's always going to be like that so how many Fantastic relationships have been ruined by this idea that oh there might be something else out there that's better for me and then you just throw away a fantastic thing a good question to ask you yeah I've Got a Friend um who has been single for a while and she's been on hundreds and hundreds of dates yeah hundreds and hundreds of
dates and she asked me for advice the other day and I didn't actually know what to say to her because she's going on the dates um I would assume that in hundreds and hundreds I literally mean three to four a week I would assume that I've met someone yeah yeah and you know I wasn't necessarily sure what to say to her I almost look at think about it like a marketing funnel where I think there's different in marketing you have at the top of the funnel you have awareness and then as the funnel gets thinner so you might meet awareness might be just like Impressions on social media you might get a million impressions a million guys or women that you see it interact with come across then we have the con maybe in the marketing context then we have the date then the date might convert into a relationship and the relationship might convert into a marriage yeah a top of the funnel seems to be going great yeah but there's lots of like you know Impressions yeah awareness but then that second stage in the funnel which is converting that date into something that is a relationship seems to be I don't know seems to be a problem there what would you say to someone like that that's interesting you don't know her again no no you have all the context information about what she's on the surface but if she gets hundreds of dates hundreds she imagine she's beautiful like she's beautiful yeah and I think that there needs to be two things like there needs to be self-analysis on her part like what is going on right because I'm sure out of those hundreds like there's probably a few people who are like ready to you know build something they must build something together just if you're playing the game of numbers you know like there's definitely someone who's like oh let you know let's let's go on a second date a third day let's go on a trip let's you know build something together um so I think there has to be a self-analysis where like is there a part of her that's afraid to actually like bring in that next level of vulnerability where we can like you know develop something beautiful together
um the other aspect of it I would say like the dating that's fine but make sure that you are not stuck in a loop like that you're answering questions the same way that you're asking the same questions over and over that you're not sort of like stuck in this system that your mind has created about what dating is like break that habit like create something new it's a make it into a different play between you and the other person how um I think yeah if you're always meeting at a bar don't meet at a bar like ghost go out meet in the park meet in the you know go for if you're live in New York City Walk 50 blocks together just like just do different things that you can do together um because if you get stuck in that same mode of doing it the way that you're familiar with then you're going to be saying the same things over and over and your mind's going to want like similar things so you won't be open to like fully Embrace fully embracing a person as they really are and then and the added third thing is just throw away Perfection like you got you gotta like you're looking for something and like you might be missing what's the Fantastic thing that's right in front of you an idea of being stuck in a loop is so interesting to me because you can be stuck in a self-sabotaging loop and not even know it totally man I so I learned this between me and my dad so like my dad he is like just hard hard working individual like that's how he shows your love for you he's gonna break his back so that he can support you um by giving you the monetary things that can help you um so my dad has been busting his butt just working working but I realize that like I love this man like I don't know what it is like me and him have a deep connection but our relationship was so stale and it was the same it was like the same light topics that we would talk about and I specifically remember this was like in that first year when I started my my personal growth Journey I was like my relationship with my dad it sucks but like how what can I do to make it better I and and you know the
first instinct is like you need to change and it was like no no I was like I need to change like I need to switch the game up because we have this play going on between the two of us but I keep doing and saying the same thing so let me switch it up and I remember one day he comes home from work you know super tired and I was like you know what like so [ __ ] it let me just give him this huge hug and I remember I remember hugging him because we weren't that affectionate like that you know I remember hugging him and being like I love you man and like dude let me tell you that totally changed our relationship and it was you know I don't want to give myself too much credit but there were a lot of things happening inside him but he's changed a lot since that like he used to be hard like a rock and now he's so open with what he feels and he wasn't open with his feelings at all before and that might have been because we were very very young and now that you know we're adults and we can like properly hold space with each other but I remember like that moment being like a clear like I changed the play you know and I was just like hug them and was just like I love you and now you know we text each other all the time and it's deeper and we're solving problems together like we solve family problems together where um like that it wasn't quite like that before and like he cries you know I'll hold space for him and it's it's a real real relationship and before it was just totally surface level had you not done a lot of work would you have been in a situation where you could have given him that hug and said those words I think what I think with courage yeah and I think just with slowing down and being able to observe because like at that time I hadn't done a lot of work this was like two three months after I almost died and I I just you know was examining like spending time with my emotions and examining like you know what am I doing like with with my wife like what's you know what's going on like why does my relationship with my little sister suck like you know what what more can I do and um and then when I came to my dad I
was like yo like you know her relationship is stale and I need to I need to I want him to know how much I love him because this man works so hard like he should do you know he gave me life and I'm so grateful what why didn't you say that sooner I think because my mind was like my attention was totally consumed on running away from myself and that's what made me Hyper self-centered at that time like I was only worried about what I craved only worried about what I wanted to watch on TV what I wanted to eat you know what party I wanted to go to next and like I couldn't I like I didn't have the mental space to actually like think about other people well hmm it's a lot of distraction it sounds like totally totally a miserable period I can I can I can relate in a tremendous tremendous way this conversation has really made me um realize how much I need to create spaces for myself I think that's one of the big big takeaways just I'm definitely addicted to distraction I think most of us are especially in the modern world where technology has been designed to um to take advantage of our brains yeah in a way that will you know I was chatting some of my friends this week and we had our stag do so my six best friends came together and halfway through the Stag do I looked around and saw that we were a lot of us were on our phone so I said let's compare screen time yeah and we all whipped out our phones and my one friend who I won't name you know who you are um had 14 hours a day screen time he was the the record holder no 14 hours a day and there was this really interesting moment where we we never we don't see each other much because we all live in different parts of the world yeah and we all just started roasting him because he was on his phone the entire time we'd gone jet skiing we'd gone there so did it and it wasn't just him it was most of us but the thought that you could be with your best friends and on planet Earth and still be spending 10 hours a day on your mobile phone there's something and I remember we went to a restaurant I looked over at the table behind us and one guy was watching the
basketball we're in a restaurant yeah it's 9pm at night one guy's watching the basketball on his phone there's a date across from us both of the people on the date were on their phones [ __ ] you know there must be a cost to this like cultural addiction to distraction but do you see the Paradox in that right where like I'm not trying to shame your friend or anything like so much love to him I'm sure he's a homie um but if you spend that much time on your phone a tool that's supposed to make you connected you're actually incredibly disconnected like totally because you spend that much time looking here and the whole world like the whole your life is happening around you but you're not plugged into it you know so there's there's no presence there that's hard these apps were sold to us on the basis of connection and that's that's the crazy thing we thought we'd become more connected we just became a lot more distracted and disconnected yeah and the loneliness stats are horrifying the suicide rates how teenagers feel about themselves these days and what's coming out about the impact of social media on like young minds it's pretty dangerous and I mean I've seen it like it's it's quite rough like I see it in myself and I've seen in young people around me too but um like the the internet that we have now like it has to be reformed with compassionate design you know we have to think about the way that we build our products with the user's well-being in mind and I mean that's why that's why we decided to build wisdom Ventures like myself and five other friends from Silicon Valley who all um you know worked in different areas of the tech world we came together and we basically wanted to create a venture capital firm that focuses on funding pre-seed and seed companies you know so brand new startups but that are intentionally building their products in a compassionate manner like when they're when whatever it is that they're trying to do you know whether it's in the well-being space or not they build in a way where they think about the user and they think about the mental well-being of the user like it are they going to be hurt using this program like are they going to be hurt using this platform and let's make it in
a way where it provides the service that they want but you know keeps them sane and balanced as much as possible in a society based on speed and productivity moving slowly is a radical Act I loved that quote chapter eight of your book you in the chapter about challenges during healing in a society based on speed and productivity moving slowly is a radical Act yeah I think um it's something that is so challenging because the demands are intense and they're just they just keep raising you know everyone is trying to reach these incredible levels of productivity and you know our capitalism is just geared that way where it's just it's pushing for growth growth growth growth and not internal growth like material growth um so to be able to look at your life and say you know what I just can't answer any more emails right now I don't feel good like I need to go for a long walk I need to sit down and meditate like I need to take some time for myself it's absolutely a radical act and it's necessary because if you're trying to live a life of thriving like a good life then you need to be able to live that life at your own pace if I'm trying to match your pace then it's not going to work for me you and I are very different people we can both be productive in different ways but we have to do it in a way that honors our internal system and we're just not going to be the same what's the most important thing that we haven't talked about in your view I think how healing changes the world because I think people like oh man I read a review of lighter and it's funny because the the feedback that I got from the book from the audience was so like they you know they love the last two chapters and I remember writing that book and I was like okay the purpose of this book is for me to put everything together that I believe is important for personal transformation so I cover the whole thing you know self-love letting go um the challenges that you face emotional maturity
um how that change ripples outward but when I started going outward you know that's the whole purpose of my pen name my pen name is Young Pueblo like my real name is Diego Perez but I I wanted to write within a particular frame and young Pueblo means young people like Pueblo is just a you know a Spanish word and it has different definitions all over Latin America but from where I come from it refers to the masses of impoverished people when I started meditating I realized I'm incredibly immature but the world is immature too because I've always loved studying history and I've seen how the basic things that we were taught as children right to clean up after yourself to share with each other to tell the truth to not hit each other to generally be kind with one another these things are done on an individual basis by some people but if you scale it up to the human Collective we don't know how to do these things at all right we're terrible at sharing with each other we're constantly hitting each other through all these wars that we're fighting we're not kind to one another we're lying to each other like systemically as one Humanity we have not mastered the fundamentals that we were taught as children and uh that's really you know I wanted to basically put that frame because I really believe that Society emerges from the individual and from our relationships right our society is a reflection of these relationships so I thought you know let me spend a lot of time talking and writing about personal development because hopefully if people do develop self-love like real self-love then they're going to be much less interested in harming each other Diego Perez young Pueblo you have 30 seconds 30 seconds left to live you're laid there on your final bed your work is done you have a conclusive message to send out to the world everybody is on the end of the phone all eight billion of us
what'd you say if I could speak I'd probably have everybody meditate with me I'd make I'd have them be aware of their breath and then die peacefully I was the one you first asked I was like I'd say nothing I'd just be meditating but if there are people waiting for something then then we have to meditate together is there anything else you wanted to talk about you know we've kind of known each other from afarer yeah a long time is there anything else you're curious about or before we close out this conversation um I I you know I want to get into the sort of the technical aspects of like how you manage your time you know because I I've been noticing one thing where now that I'm doing multiple things at once when I go into a new project I never specify how many hours I'm going to work on it what I do specify is what I can do for you like what I can bring to the table and what I'm going to be able to deliver on which is very different from saying I can give you 20 hours of my time yeah right because that doesn't mean anything like you know sometimes when you when you create a project you you know you put things together and they happen like quick you know and a bunch of the rest of the time you you are not using that time that well and um I found that to be really useful to just say this is what I can do for you but not how long I'm going to work and also never be in a situation where someone's my boss like it's always equal Partnerships I think that makes a ton of sense yeah is that what you do too um so I these days I I guess I do both so if I'm going into a new partnership or an investment I want to be very clear because I know expectations are the root cause of all unhappiness in business and in any form of relationship I want to be super clear on the expectations so um a what I'll deliver but also um clear deliverables in terms of like time like when yeah and I know that my
time is literally the most scarce asset that I have like right now before you arrived I'm being hounded by several members of my team for urgent things they're telling me that if I don't deliver X ones out of my book today then we'll have to move the publication day beyond August at the same time I said something I was like all of these things in my head um and then I have to say the most important thing is just this idea of who not how I think a lot of people especially entrepreneurs get caught up in trying to figure out how to do stuff but the big unlock for me after meeting certain entrepreneurs and spending time with Richard Branson and great people is those people default to who as in who can do this versus trying to figure it out or do it myself and I'm very lucky now to have great teams of people where it's meant that I can spend the time I do have on the small thing that I'm good at and that only I can do and that's like really my strategy to life it's like there's a there's a small thing that only I can do that I'm specifically good at let's try and spend all 16 waking hours doing that thing if I can um yeah but it's a mess and that is the most important thing I could probably say it is a total mess I hear about all these successful people or business people and there's like oh 30 minute routine and I have this time blocking technique and blah blah blah I can't yeah I I can't yeah I mean my life is a mess um it's a balanced chaotic mess where each element of my life kind of shrinks and expands in priority and attention as I go through different seasons right now I'm in a season of work because I'm filming a TV show and then I'm doing this this is my week off and I'm back to filming the TV show so where's my partner and all of that after the TV show is done I'll be back with my partner and we'll go on holiday so that'll expand so I'm okay with it being a mess yeah I think I've um one of the one of the things I'm most grateful for is they never believed in what you said which is perfection yeah I never believed it I saw all of my idols and I the way that they're portrayed in
interviews and stuff is like these superheroes or whatever I'm a total mess in so many facets of my life and I always believe that that was both okay and enough for me to achieve what I wanted to do that's really helped me Perfection creates that sense of inadequacy doesn't it it totally does that's beautiful to hear because I've been learning that like I can do it my way yeah like the same thing that you were just saying you know I can do it my way I don't have to be like the people around me I can learn from them you know have Role Models but I don't need to be exactly like my role models I can just you know just figure out how to you know achieve well in the way that works best for me and um I think coming to peace with the fact that you know there are just some things that I'm good at and other things that I'm not and like when you're when there are some things that you're not good at like I don't need to get an MBA I need to hire out an MBA you know like I don't know like I'm good at marketing I'm good at vision and I'm good at writing and I can meditate that's all I can do and that is a more than enough yeah and especially if you're good if you're good at those and you just focus on those things you're going to be in that you know Irreplaceable category of people that can do that yeah and the world needs that some of my best teammates are like fundamentally including myself some of the best people that work in some of my companies are fundamentally bad at critical things they're not good managers they're unorganized they're Ms but they are the most incredible creatives so instead of trying to fight their their what might be seen as their deficiency we've come to learn over time and with experience to nurture their their Brilliance yeah and that that gets the best out of them same with Richard Branson he can't look at presentations can't do English can't do math he said um at a high level but he's built one of the most incredible companies in the world we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave it for and the question left for you is what is
your rich life hmm my rich life would be being able to meditate as much as I want just to you know do more of these consecutive long courses and still be able to amply support my parents like take super fantastic care of my wife and you know my children's or if my you know siblings or my wife's siblings or parents need support that I'm just like I can just give without any sort of worry and being able to you know sit is what you know we call it being able to meditate and still be able to give without worry I think that's like that's the place where I'm trying to get to is um I've had a lot of success but I've also I also know that I'm still in a building stage like I'm still growing yeah that's very beautiful all your work is very beautiful it's um the way I would describe it is it feels incredibly refreshing to hear someone that has such a what I feel like is such a pure perspective about the path to um becoming our aligned happiest self like meeting you makes me feel refreshed it's almost like I've you've cleaned out a bunch of stuff in my head that needed to be cleaned out for me to get closer to the happiest life that I could live that's the like the way that I would viscerally describe it and that's exactly what your book is I mean that's what it's called lighter after meeting you and after having this conversation I feel inherently lighter this is what the book does to people it makes them feel like what a perfect title what a perfect title because that's exactly how I feel right now it's a pleasure to me it's a pleasure to talk to you thank you for doing such necessary work and I I'm so excited to follow your journey through entrepreneurship but also through Publications like this one over the next many many decades thank you so much my friend it makes me feel so happy that this moment finally came together and that you know just watching you from afar like I've been appreciating you all along the way and I've been you know supported by the wisdom that you've been putting out there but to also see you
act and create in the world to literally you know create things that people can benefit from that's beautiful and I'm happy to see people doing both like you can grow as an individual and you know be effective and supportive in this world and give people things they need yeah so thank you quick one as you guys know we're lucky enough to have blue jeans by Verizon as a sponsor of this podcast and for anyone that doesn't know blue jeans is an online video conferencing tool that allows you to have slick fast high quality online meetings without all the glitches you might normally find with online meeting tools and they have a new feature called Blue Jeans basic blue jeans basic is essentially a free version of their top quality video conferencing tool that means you get an immersive video experience that is super high quality super easy and super basically zero fast apart from all the incredible features like zero time limits on meeting calls it also comes with High Fidelity audio and video including Dolby voice which is incredibly useful they also have Enterprise grade security so you can collaborate with confidence it's so smooth that it's quite literally changing the game for myself and my team without compromising on quality to find out more all you have to do is search bluejeans.com and let me know how you get on [Music] oh [Music] foreign