Yung Pueblo - Self-Love

Full transcript: Yung Pueblo on London Real

3:50 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Diego Perez, the meditator, writer, and speaker known as Yung Pueblo. Originally from Ecuador, you moved to Boston as a child and soon became involved in activism by campaigning for personal liberation. This led to your writing, which now reaches hundreds of thousands of people on social media with your message of self-healing, self-love, and the wisdom that comes with truly knowing ourselves. Your book, Inward, is an Amazon bestseller, and today you travel the world speaking to audiences to help them find tools to build inner peace and mental clarity.

4:21 Diego, welcome to London Real. Thank you so much, Brian. It’s really an honor to be here and I’m really excited to talk and just go deep. Yeah, I’m excited too. We’re already been talking, so we’re just gonna get it all out there for the camera.

4:32 You know, before we jump into that, what’s it like being in London and does this city feel different than, you know, Ecuador or Boston, other places you’ve been? Places do feel different and it’s funny because when you’re actually meditating, you know, a lot of that environment and what things feel like, really depend on how you’re feeling in the moment, but I just feel like I have, I just love this place. I’ve only been here twice, but both times have been just extraordinary in that they really left a vivid positive memory and people are just so kind and maybe that’s just the people that I’m interacting with, but I’m always so happy to be here.

5:05 Yeah, I mean, in a weird way, I’m drawn to it. You know, I’m from San Diego and it doesn’t make any sense that I’m wearing a suit in London, But this city’s always been kind to me. New York literally kicked my ass and literally almost killed me, which maybe we’ll talk about later. But London, for me, it was always a breath of fresh air. I always connected well, so that’s why I stayed.

5:25 But it is a great town. Yeah, it makes sense, makes sense. It’s great to have you. I think we were trying to figure out how I first came across your work earlier. And the truth is, one of my students from the London Real Academy gave me this book.

5:38 We have these graduation ceremonies every quarter here in London, Sometimes I get gifts and cards and thank yous and got this book and I just remember I was riding the tube home at like Midnight after the graduation dinner and I was looking through it and I was just like, okay This is interesting. And then later I found myself following you on Instagram and I was like, man There’s something fresh about this something different about this and then I started noticing a bunch of London Real guests were following you as well and You know, I wanted to find out who was the man behind this message Does it surprise you that that I’ve kind of described you that way or how would you describe what you do? No, no, that’s that’s fantastic.

6:16 It’s always funny hearing people’s personal stories about how they even heard of young Pueblo and and you know how they’re connecting with the words but my attempt is really to just take different things that I’m understanding and bring them through a really powerful minimalistic framework so that I know that we live in a modern time where things are really moving so fast and we have very little time to reach each other and connect with each other so I was like, okay, what am I learning and how can I put that in as simple of a framework as possible, as few words as possible and see if it really reaches people because it does feel like a time where we’re all really growing up and I knew that this might be something that other people would be interested in, and at the very least these are the things that I’m learning.

7:07 So I would enjoy seeing them in one place, but yeah, it’s really just sort of combining intellectual wisdom with minimalism. And these are a lot of the lessons that you’re trying to convey and the thoughts are things that have been around for thousands of years. Totally, totally. And yet you kind of do it in a way that’s kind of, it feels like you’re on the journey with us, you’re learning, it’s not preaching, and again, it’s on social media, you’re they’re very big on Instagram, but it doesn’t feel Instagram-y.

7:34 Sometimes Instagram feels like, click this, tag your friends, this kind of thing. But when you get a young pueblo, little bit of a, like little nugget, it’s like, oh, let me think about that today. I’ve never thought about it that way. It’s also really original, your stuff. And I don’t know how you do that because it feels fresh, original, creative, even though it also feels timeless.

7:57 Yeah, one of the biggest things that I try to stay true to my virtues is it’s easy to read something and you think you know it. But I really believe, and especially through meditating, it’s taught me that you don’t really know something until you’ve deeply experienced it within yourself. So it’s one thing to intellectualize something, but to experience an insight within yourself and it really sort of catalyzes and crystallizes inside of you, then it becomes yours.

8:22 Otherwise it’s someone else’s words. So that’s why, yes, these things have been around for thousands of years, but once I really sort of feel them inside myself, then I feel like I then have the right to explore them myself and what’s my experience of doing no harm, what’s my experience of understanding that we’re one and nothing. These things that, yeah, they’ve been around and have been said before, but now I feel like I’m starting to touch them. But at the same time, I’m also growing, so it’s really fun to let people know, yes, I’m putting this thing out there and this is what I may believe now, but hopefully what I believe a year from now is a little deeper and a little different because I’m still growing.

8:59 I have a lot to learn. Yeah, and sometimes I hear something that you say and it’s just said with a different word or in a different way and it just clicks with me differently. I wanna read like a couple of things. Yeah, yeah, sure. Because the people that never heard a young play before, they’ll be like, what are you guys talking about?

9:11 So there’s a lot of good ones in here and maybe even you’ll read a few later from your book. Sure. But like here’s something you posted recently And it said this, three signs of a good friend. You do not have to perform for them. They hold space for you during struggles.

9:26 They are truly happy for your success. Again, it’s simple, but it just makes you really think about that. Yeah, and you know, there’s been so many conversations about toxic relationships, right, toxic people. And I think that it’s well and good and it’s important to realize who’s harming you. But I also think it’s quite dangerous to describe an individual as a toxic person, right?

9:50 It’s better said, this person has harmful behavior because no one is inherently toxic, right? So as opposed to, you know, a lot of great people are writing about that. To me, it would be redundant to write about that. So let me instead focus on what is actually a good friend as opposed to just seeing the negative side of things because then you can kind of easily more so parse out and say, oh, right, this person is actually very supportive of me because if they see my success, they feel it as their own.

10:16 And whenever I rise, they’re also rising with me and being able to highlight the positive side of things I think can be a little more helpful sometimes. Yeah, let me hit it with a couple more just while we’re at it so we can get a flavor of what we’re talking about here. Here’s another one. A partner who supports your dreams and your healing is a priceless gem, a heaven in human form. Where do you, do you just come up with these things?

10:39 Yeah, that one just came, that one, that’s an old one, that’s from like 2016, 2015 and it just appeared one morning. Wow. And again, it’s just said something that, if you think about it, it seems like a truism, but I’ve never heard it put in that way. And it’s something that I can kind of meditate on for the day and just start thinking about it. And again, I think you said it earlier, this is stuff we all need to meditate on as it takes time to really process these things.

11:03 You know, what’s funny is when I started writing and I realized, let me really give this a shot, put my energy behind it, what I would picture is an individual on the train in NYC opening up my future book, reading one or two pieces, and then just thinking about them for the rest of the day. You know, because I designed the book to literally just be like one thought, though it may be very sparse on the page, it doesn’t take up a lot of space. It can take up a lot of space in your mind if you really want to consider it.

11:29 And why did you say NYC? Because that’s the oasis of madness. Yeah, I mean, I was in NYC when this all started coming together, and I would always, you know, look for books that, you know, that I could fit into my pocket something light, and that would just help me, you know, hopefully be a little wiser. So I was trying to just add to that bunch. Yeah, and maybe we’ll talk about my time in New York City later, because you definitely need a break sometimes.

11:54 This is another one that I really liked and all, and then we’ll get to talking about some other things, but here it is. Maturity is knowing that when your mood is down, you should not trust the way you see yourself. That really applies to me a lot. Uh, thoughts on that one? Me too.

12:09 Honestly, that one came after just three days of just processing my own sort of deconditioning. When you’re meditating, when you meditate daily, it’s basically a deconditioning process. You’re literally sort of releasing whatever you’ve accumulated from the past and sometimes that comes with very visceral emotions. You literally will feel the sadness or anxiety or whatever it was that you felt very intensely in the past. You’ll feel that again.

12:38 And your mind becomes so cloudy that in those moments, not only will you not feel well, but everything that you’re perceiving is being clouded by this emotion that is very thickly in the front of your perception. And in those moments, you’re like, oh, I’m terrible. You know, I can’t, I’m not doing anything right. I’m, you know, I need to change this and that and that. And to me, one of the major lessons I’ve learned is that’s not the moment to make big decisions.

13:01 You need to make the biggest decisions in your life when your mind is calm, and especially around self-analysis. Yeah, and you have some other great quotes when it comes to being calm and things, which we’ll talk about. But what I struggle with a lot is anger. I always have, and sometimes, but usually these days, I can recognize when I’m angry. Like, I’ll be like, I’ll make a few mental decisions or judgments in my head, and I’ll be like, oh, you’re in the angry mood.

13:26 That means you have to be really careful today and not say something that you’re gonna regret to someone because you’re in an angry mood. So you can’t trust yourself, your judgment’s off, your behavior’s off, so what you need to do is do something useful today and make sure it doesn’t pour into something because tomorrow, you’re not gonna be angry and you’re gonna regret those decisions that you’re making. Absolutely, and I think that’s actually brilliant because it’s in those moments that you don’t actually wanna suppress the anger at all.

13:55 You wanna be able to feel what’s happening because the moment that you start suppressing it, you’re just duplicating it and making it stronger and it’s setting up a situation so that in a future moment, it may come out even bigger. So being able to feel that anger without reinforcing it, I think that’s one of the biggest signs of maturity is being like, okay, right, I don’t feel well right now, but I’m gonna pause and I’m gonna make sure that I don’t hurt anyone, that I don’t say anything mean, and I’m gonna feel what I’m feeling, but I’m still gonna try to live my life gently. And to me, that’s real, real maturity.

14:26 And it’s a skill that takes a lot of effort to cultivate. Definitely, yeah. And I had one of those moments a couple nights ago where I was like, wow, I’m really unhappy right now. I’m not very impressed with myself, but I’m like, you know what, I’m not gonna feel this way in a couple days, so I need to not make rash decisions, I need to not make it affect my relationships with the people, but I also need to not run away from it and not go drink a six-pack of beer, which is what I used to do, which we can talk about later, and that was a way of not processing it and then it would just fester, and I know you talk about that and we’ll talk about that a little bit later, but it was just powerful thinking out, and you know, who knows?

15:02 Your stuff probably already affecting me. And I got told the same thing when I was training for my Ironman race from one of my coaches. He says, Brian, when you’re in the moment where everything hurts and you feel like you wanna stop and that it’s only gonna get more painful, always realize that that is temporary. And if you can remember that, you know, because 20 minutes later, you could be in euphoria on the same run with the same temperature on the same day and it’s just, it’s like riding those things out.

15:28 I think that’s one of them, especially in relation to pain and difficult moments. we are so quick to forget that everything’s always changing and that situation is so momentary and so fleeting that it’ll be gone. So why create yourself even more misery? Because a lot of times we don’t realize that, right, physical pain will be a certain amount, but the mental pain that we create from that, we literally multiply it so much more than what it really is that we’re just basically drowning in misery unnecessarily.

15:58 Yeah, and I wanna get into that later. First of all, do you find it weird that you are the most popular on a social media platform that most people go to to just escape, right? I mean, most people are going there for like funny looking videos and funny pictures and funny memes, but you’re putting out stuff that really is quite pure. It’s these thoughts. Yeah, I think there’s Instagram’s an interesting place.

16:24 It’s also, it’s a giant spectrum, right? From cat memes to like very serious things about personal transformation. And to videos, to pictures, to quote pictures like is what you’re really good at, to stories. There’s a lot of weird things on there. Right, there’s just so much.

16:42 And I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people are, I feel like collectively, especially in the Western world, I feel like a lot of us are growing up. We realize that money can’t buy happiness. We realize that we have a lot of things that we need to deal with that have happened in our past. So a lot of people are actually asking themselves, how do I become happy? How do I let go of these things that I know I’m feeling inside?

17:04 How do I release this intensity that’s sort of limiting my ability to think clearly, to be free, to be happy? And I think social media is sort of fitting that place. And a lot of people who have done and are doing that inner work are trying to share with each other, whether they’re meditators or psychologists or yoga teachers or who knows what, right? So many people are out there who have done some of this work at least and are sharing with other people, this worked for me or this is what I’ve been thinking about and you can, that’s one of the beauties I think especially of Instagram is that I remember hearing before that it’s one of the places where people actually become the most depressed, right?

17:40 They’re seeing other people, they’re checking other people’s lives, but I would also say that it’s one of the places where people are most inspired by far. So weird. It’s like this weird designer drug and I’ve been on social media for about eight years now and that Instagram app, especially if you launch into the discovery place, don’t hit the magnifying glass because you literally go down a road where at the end, you’ve binged on something and it’s like eating a box of donuts.

18:07 Afterwards, you feel horrible. You don’t respect yourself and you’re like, ugh, what did I just do? But it literally is the crack cocaine of social media because you can get lost in there. But at the same time, you can also find some amazement. Right, you can find things and ideas that you’re trying to cultivate now so that you can be that future self that you know you really can be.

18:29 And I think to me, that’s so important that we can even support each other in that way. It’s big. And I love that you said that you can lose yourself in Instagram. That’s one of the, what I like to tell people is use that timer. Like in your settings, set up that timer.

18:45 I set mine to an hour and a half. The moment it clicks and it’s like, Diego, you’ve been on this for an hour and a half. It’s like, all right, I need to put it down. I did enough work. That’s fine.

18:53 Yeah, I’ve been getting the 30 minute notifications recently on Instagram. It’s like a slap in the face. Yeah, yeah. And it’s funny we were talking I think recently about this guy Naval who was on Joe Rogan I forgot his yeah, yeah his surname and he said so I think it was him where he says You know We are now in a crisis of abundance when it used to be one of scarcity say a hundred years ago And there wasn’t enough food and there wasn’t enough of this and there wasn’t enough media But now we’re in a crisis of too much So now your biggest job is to not eat the food to not consume the media to not whereas in the past It would be like there’s not enough food. There’s nothing. There’s not enough love. There’s not enough communications There’s not enough ideas now. There’s too much. So when you would go in you got to be disciplined You got to be you got to be following young Pueblo in London Real and nobody else, right?

19:37 But you have to curate your life and be disciplined right because if you’re not you’ll go down into this Road of you’re gonna fall into a pit of pleasure And I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people don’t realize how quickly we become addicted to pleasure It’s not necessarily, you know, this thing or that thing. It’s more so just like the sensation of pleasure that we want to feel things that are not only are pleasant, but are just easy, simple, or enjoyable. And when we get caught up in that, we lose ourselves very quickly and that can become a very dark place.

20:11 But it’s funny because when you say discipline, it’s not only for the individual, right? Because at the same time, we have to find that discipline within ourselves and not fall into all this abundance, but collectively, isn’t it the same thing, right? We as a human species, we need to figure out discipline because we’ve been able to create all this amazing technology, all this abundance, but at the same time, it’s harming our world. Yeah, we’ll have to try to dive into that later and try to figure out where we go from there.

20:37 You once said that social media is a way for humanity to have a conversation with itself. Totally. What does that mean? I think it’s been amazing. I mean, so I’ve been on social media since it’s existed, right, I’m 31 years old, so I was there in the beginning.

20:53 But what I’ve especially seen happening on Instagram is in this whole field of wellness and personal transformation is this conversation maturing over time. I remember back in 2014 to 2016, everyone was talking about self-love. Nobody really knew what it was. People had an idea, they were hesitant around it, And they were like, you know, does this mean narcissism or does this actually mean really taking care of yourself and healing yourself so that you can not harm yourself anymore and you can better support the people around you.

21:27 And people were literally taking the time to define this for themselves and see, you know, what does this really mean for me and how can I play this out in my life? And I saw that same conversation go from self-love to then a lot of people talking about letting go because the moment you start talking about self-love, you start seeing, you turn that lens inward and you start coming in contact with your personal emotional history, right? You start, if I really love myself, how can I live a better life?

21:52 Okay, I have to see what’s happening inside of me and once I see what’s happening inside of me, right? There’s a long history of intense emotions that I felt and actually they’re all accumulated inside me, right? In a very real way, they’re still in there and they’re not only just in there but they’re They’re predisposing me to feel the same way I felt in the past over and over again, in a big way they’re impacting my daily behavior. So now the conversation switched, and I think especially 2017 it was, what is letting go?

22:23 Can you actually let go? What can I do to release the past? And now I’m seeing the conversation sort of switch more into people taking their meditation practices very seriously or actually having the bravery to go out and see a psychologist or healing each other through collective circles or just actually looking for a real modality that can help you get into the subconscious of your mind and release all these things that have been accumulated in there over time so that you can start making different decisions so that you can be a lot happier, be a lot freer and it’s been amazing to watch this and it’s really no one individual person.

23:02 I think the work that I try to create as young Pueblo is just another drop in the bucket of humanity maturing itself, but it really is. It’s humanity having a conversation with itself, and there are a lot of different conversations happening, but this whole conversation around wellness is people really trying to figure out what is the key to happiness, and I think we’re getting closer and closer. Yeah, I’ve got to witness this right on the front lines because we’ve been putting out these two-hour conversations with people of influence that can kind of tell their stories and their lessons.

23:33 And I get to literally see what gets the most interest from basically humanity, because it’s three billion users on YouTube. And so, when like a Dr. Joe Dispenza comes in or a Bruce Lipton comes in and says, okay, there’s your genetics, but there’s epigenetics, you know, there’s the way you think about things can affect your physiology. There’s a craving for that message out there that I can’t explain. And when I went to MIT and the MIT professors would say, no, that cannot be proven in the lab, that’s wrong.

24:01 You know, and my brain from MIT says that’s wrong, but humanity is saying, no, no, we wanna learn more about this. We’re feeling a need, we’re feeling a void. And literally YouTube metrics show that, or your popularity on Instagram kinda show that there’s this desire, this need to learn, or explore these things. And you’re like, you said it’s maturing every year. I mean, meditation was new seven years ago, five years ago.

24:28 And now, like you said, It’s like different. It’s how long do you meditate every day? Yeah, or what kind of meditation do you do? What kind of meditation do you do? Breath work as well, do you do this?

24:36 Do you do Vipassana and all the stuff you do, which I wanna talk about. So yeah, it’s like people are really getting into it and now most people know about these things. I had Jordan Peterson in here who has a great book called 12 Rules for Life and I saw him at the O2 Arena the night before he came here. And it was 7,000 people there for a debate between him and Sam Harris about religion. And it was incredible.

24:58 I mean, I’d previously seen Beyonce perform there. And Jordan said, he said, if it wasn’t for these long-form podcasts and videos, he said it would have never filled up the stadium. And he said, we’re learning that people aren’t as stupid as we thought they were. And that’s a really crass way of saying that everyone is really smart, we have nuanced opinions and views, and everyone’s really curious. We never had that as an option before.

25:25 No, and I think we, exactly, I think the key word there is options. And now that more people are empowered to actually go out there and talk about the thing that they’re most excited about, we’re starting to see those connections happen so that, you know, if you were bored in high school and math didn’t do it for you, you know, this particular sort of rigid form of science didn’t do it for you, but you’re actually like really interested in this interconnection between psychology and history or, you know, meditation and atheism or, you know, you find people like Sam Harris, like Joe Rogan, like, you know, There’s so many wonderful people out there and I think where that frontier is really being pushed forward where human beings can actually learn things that they’re excited about and it’s a fantastic time to really be alive.

26:06 Yeah, and have options. I mean, back in the day, like you said, if you weren’t good at math and science or history, then you were no good and you never learned anything else and now you got to work this job because you’re not educated and that’s it. There’s one thing that you’re making me think in that’s new to this era that isn’t new to human history, right? Ever since there have been meditators, they’ve understood that there is such a thing as objective, direct experience, right?

26:32 Even though I may not have a lab, even though this is before the scientific method, for thousands of years, humans who have gone deeply inward, they were able to understand physics, they were able to understand psychology, and they were able to figure out ways to profoundly liberate themselves from suffering and to me this is that sort of ancient knowledge is coming back alive and we’re starting to really trust actual objective direct experience because there are ways that we can cultivate the mind to actually have equanimity, a real balance so that I’m not projecting onto you and I’m not projecting any sort of emotion but I’m actually just observing what is actually happening in the moment and when you do that The stream of information that comes alive inside of you, you’re functioning within…

27:18 You have a little speck of the entire universe is your body and that’s sort of your school and your temple. And when you start working and observing within that realm, everything opens up to you, right? It’s like the library of Alexandria, like everything is inside there and the information just pours out. And the sort of the real wisdom comes out when we’re able to share that information without then throwing our old forms of conditioning or ego, right?

27:43 Because these moments of real equanimity and sort of sharp mental clarity are momentary and then comes the old ego, then comes the old conditioning. But to be able to share that clearly, it’s a big boon to humanity. No, it is. And I think we’re also learning to like look into the past and not to treat these people as these kind of antiquated backwards visions. And like it’s interesting, I had a guy named Dr. Rupert Sheldrake in here and he has a book called Science and Spiritual Practices.

28:09 And he just goes back to religious practices and he says, remove however you feel about religion, but just look at what it used to do. It would bring us together, we would sing together, we would go on pilgrimages together, we would fast, we would do all these things. He said, these are kind of part of the human experience and they found that out and it was wrapped up in this thing called religion, but there’s a lot of practices we’ve been doing for a long time that’s brought us together that I think maybe in the last hundred years we kind of threw out the window or were questioning.

28:38 Oh, absolutely. I think my meditation teacher, S. N. Goenka, he talks about the Buddha as being the scientist of the mind, right? The same way that you have your Galileo’s and other people who have been so important throughout human history, the Buddha just fully understood the mind and how to liberate yourself from suffering.

28:57 But over time, I think especially the Western world has trivialized that. And we’re like, oh, right, because we don’t understand it, we don’t respect it. And now that more and more people are practicing these different forms of meditation and actually finding a lot of success in them, it’s like, oh, wait, there’s actually something there and there’s actually something that we should really respect. Yeah. Yeah.

29:18 Rupert also wrote a book called The Science Delusion, which, like, he can go too far sometimes because I think science is important, but also science did kind of become the new religion about 100 years ago and it was like, okay, now that replaces things. And I think now we’re just starting to say, you know what, there’s a place for that, but there’s also a place for human intuition going inwards. exploring the experience. So look, we got a lot of stuff to talk about today.

29:38 I wanna also talk about your experience, but you know, you got some really interesting ideas in the book that come up a lot, and I just wanted to cover a few of those and just get your thoughts. So something you touched on earlier, which is emotional history. And I’ll probably read you back some of your quotes, maybe to get us into place, because you mentioned earlier, you know, if you’re angry for a certain amount of time, that can actually stay with you for a long time.

29:59 And you said before, your emotional history affects your daily behavior. Letting go of these patterns allows you to think and act in new ways. And here’s another quote, which takes me a little while to get around my head, but this is very young Pueblo, where you have to, it’s called The Way Homer, maybe you get it on the way home, The Way Home Tomorrow. This is one of your quotes, “‘Though you may have felt something a long time ago, “‘the mind works in a way where it really accumulates “‘patterns and those patterns being “‘towards a particular emotion.'” Tell me about this idea about kind of our emotional history and how to kind of think of it and process it.

30:33 Yeah, so this idea, just like anything else that we’ve been talking about, it’s been known for thousands of years, and it’s something that becomes very, very clear when you take your meditation practice, especially a meditation practice from the different areas of Buddhism. It becomes very clear that there are things that you’ve accumulated over time, and they’re actually forcing themselves into your present and really making you behave in a very particular a way where you don’t even have the space to feel like you can decide to do things differently. So when you think back and through the giant spectrum of emotions, human beings are actually quite similar.

31:15 We’ve all felt sadness, grief, craving, jealousy, but what we don’t realize is especially in these moments where we feel them very intensely, they actually accumulate in our minds and When a similar situation happens, our minds will remember, we’re like, oh, right. We remember a similar scenario, and in the scenario, I respond with jealousy. In the scenario, I respond with anger, because it functions almost, and the first attempt of the human mind is to be a defense mechanism, and it doesn’t like to necessarily do things in a different way.

31:49 But the same way that we can accumulate things inside of us, we can let them go. And I think this is key, and this is the moment that we’re in now in human history, is that we are figuring out and sort of reviving these old ancient practices, or even, you know, the newer practices that, you know, the psychology that’s developed in the Western world, to figure out how to connect with ourselves introspectively in a way where not only are we becoming aware of the different traumas that we’ve experienced or different conditioning that we have, but we’re figuring out how to, not only that that’s malleable, but that we can release these things. And you can do that through a variety of different ways.

32:23 I mean, my personal favorite, you know, I practice vipassana meditation, but really coming in contact with my emotional history and seeing that I can release these things has really helped me reclaim my power in a big way. And I’ve seen it happen with so many other people because once you know that you actually do have an option and when you start doing these sort of practices that release everything that’s been bundled up inside of you, your mind starts having a lot more space inside of it so that when the intense moment happens again or there’s a difficult scenario and you see, okay, right, I feel the anger inside me, but I’m actually gonna pause. Right now is my opportunity to try to do something in a different way.

33:06 And in those moments, that’s when you literally break away from the past and you start really creating a new future for yourself. Right, but you have to be able to recognize it as opposed to let it consume. It takes cultivation. And this is why people continually maybe have the same bad relationship over and over again, right? We’ve heard that, it’s like the same woman, but different faces or the same guy, different behaviors or you just have this pattern of self-sabotaging your life.

33:32 This is you getting to that emotional point and then your brain says, oh, this is what we did last time. And it kind of saves, it’s kind of protecting the ego or protecting you from pain and then it repeats and repeats, and the idea is to try to recognize it and break the pattern, right? Absolutely, and I think it’s, I love that you brought an ego to it because it’s important to understand the ego, right? You’re not, you shouldn’t hate it, you should understand it.

33:57 And I think from what I’ve observed inside myself, ego is really a defense mechanism. It’s something that we’ve developed evolutionarily to protect us, right? Save us. In the moments of very intense trauma or war or danger or something horrible that’s happening, It’s your ego that literally picks you up off the ground and keeps you going, right? This is the thing that is helping you survive.

34:20 Yeah, me first. Exhave me now. Exhave me, or whatever. Everything was destroyed around me and I’m still gonna get up and I’m gonna keep going. But their ego is not there to help you thrive.

34:33 Its job is not to make you happy, right? When you understand that, then you can sort of see the difference between human habit, which is your ego, your total conditioning, and human nature, because once you start peeling back those layers and you start undoing all of that sort of dense, cloudy, repeated patterns, you are able to see that inside a human being, there’s actually love, there’s actually compassion, there’s this really powerful ability to be creative. And there’s an energy that you have for life where you’re no longer afraid to problem solve.

35:09 And to me, it’s so interesting that so many different people who have had different practices but have had that same honesty and courage to go inward and really do that inner work, they come back with very similar results where not only do they seem filled with information but they just have so much love inside of them and they don’t longer feel the need to live from fear, greed, or any other pieces of real sort of human habit but they can live from real human nature and they can live lovingly. Inner work, people are probably wondering, okay, what do I have to do? Now for you, meditation’s a choice.

35:46 You meditate two hours every day? Two hours every day. One hour in the morning, one hour in the evening? Yeah, exactly. It’s quite a commitment.

35:52 Yeah. And then the vipassanas, you go longer, right? These are like 10 days. Yeah, 10 days, I’ve done courses longer, like 20, 30 days. And that’s no talking.

36:05 No talking, you’re meditating 10 hours a day. No writing. No writing, no reading, no contact with the outside world. The first thing you do when you get in there is you give them your phone and they lock it up for you to keep it safe and you’ll get it back at the end of the course so that you really get to spend time with yourself. You’re separated from your loved ones.

36:27 It cultivates an environment where you, just like a monk for basically 10 days or 20 days or however long you’re there, so that you can not only learn the practice that the Buddha taught, but you can use it to your benefit because it takes time. It’s one thing to try meditation, but it’s another thing to really give yourself a long extended period to really do that inner work and release whatever has been troubling you your whole life. I’ve never done one of those.

36:58 We just had a guest named Mimi Aikon who tried it the first time and ran away from the center, which I guess happens a lot, Tim Ferriss, who is no stranger to plant medicines, did one recently and said it was more difficult than an ayahuasca ceremony. He said around day four or five it was just counterintuitively a really, really hard place to go without chemicals or anything, and he went to some really dark places. What’s going on there? Yeah, it’s actually, I mean, it’s different for every individual, right?

37:30 Every individual has a very different history, a very different set of accumulated patterns, so I don’t particularly know what Tim Ferriss’s story is, but we all go through different things. I remember when I did my first one, one of the main things I felt was such intense anxiety, and I was not really aware how often I was feeling anxiety throughout my life, but it was so accumulated where when I got there and I did my first course, I would just feel I’d just be flip-flopping between fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety.

38:05 And it literally was just because I had settled my mind just enough, all these things that were bundled up inside of there had the opportunity to come up. And that practice is worthwhile because it actually gives you the tools to not only not reinforce them or get caught up in that storm, but really just create that space within yourself so that you can release all these things. And when you get out at the other end, you know, I remember my first one, I was thinking about leaving between day one to day seven.

38:36 I was like, how am I going to get out of here? And luckily, I actually didn’t leave because I was in the middle of Washington State, a state that I had never been in before, and I had gotten a ride there from some, and this was before the time of Uber, so I literally had no way of getting home. And I was like, well, I’m stuck, so I got to stay. And I’m so glad that the situation worked out that way and I stayed. The amount of people who actually do leave during their first course is very, very small.

39:06 So it’s like over-hyped. Most people stay, most people finish it, and they feel fantastic at the end. But it does bring up a lot of deep things that we have to sort of have the courage to face and then let go. At the end of it, I felt like I lost like 100 pounds. I probably lost like five pounds.

39:22 I felt completely, it was just surreal how much better I felt. I remember calling my friends and not only was I so much happier, but I told them, I was like, guys, I learned more in 10 days than I did in four years of college. That’s like the only way that I could describe it. You know, we were talking about the author, is it Yuval Hari that did sapiens? Yeah, yeah.

39:45 He goes on these 30-day meditations. Yeah, he does one 60-day course a year. We meditate in the same tradition. Okay. And it was just fascinating, like he was going to talk at Google and he’s like, nope, I’m going for 60 days away and then I’ll come back with some ideas for my book.

40:00 And it was just amazing that an author would just go in there and that’s where his knowledge comes from. From himself, not from Google. It is so counterintuitive. He’s brilliant, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yuval is incredible.

40:12 And I guess some of the thought behind this is that, for example, anxiety, you were probably experiencing it in the past, but every time you did, you could check Instagram, eat a donut, smoke a joint, watch a Netflix movie. Something to distract. So you would distract it, but it was still accumulating. And then when you’re on your own with no other distractions, then you have to finally face and process that stuff, right? Yeah, and in a big way, it just felt like it was just gushing out.

40:41 And I’m glad, you know, because you think about when you actually get a wound, right, don’t they need to clean it before they wrap it up? And it’s the same thing, I feel like often times we’re wounded so much throughout life and we never do that work to actually clean up that wound, process it well so that it can actually heal. What are some other methods of processing? There’s so much out there. I think for a lot of people, they’re a little daunted by meditation and that’s absolutely fine.

41:08 I mean, there’s, Vipassana is one end of things. If you feel like going away for 10 days and being silent, fantastic, go ahead and sign up and try it out. but there’s lighter forms of meditation, things like Headspace, different apps. But then I think going to a psychologist is like a big one. If you can, if you have access to that, I think that can do phenomenal things in terms of improving your quality of life.

41:34 Or different healing modalities. I’ve heard of tapping. There’s different sort of trauma-informed healing modalities that are out there. Breathing, sounds. Sound, different forms of yoga.

41:46 Asanas that have really helped people, oftentimes I like to ask on Instagram, you know, what has actually helped you let go? And I’ll get hundreds of comments of people, just, you know, all these different methods that are either very old or recently developed that are actually helping people. And to me it’s shocking because I don’t even know half of them. You know, I know they’re out there, I know they’re, you know, different people will connect to different methods.

42:10 So I always like to ask that question. So hopefully someone who’s new to this and is actually feeling that building up of courage to actually try something new, hopefully see something that they can then research and sign up for. Yeah. The other thing I noticed, I did this Ironman last year and we’ll talk about it later, but that long endurance training was also a weird form of meditation slash pain, pushing through pain thresholds. You’re building a lot of strong determination.

42:37 And there was a lot, I was processing a lot of stuff. I mean, I had tears driven down my face while I’m running. It was crazy. Yeah, and a lot of people in Iron Man They do it for that reason like they’re really processed in a lot of old things There’s a lot of recovering addicts there and that’s definitely their form of Connection to the soul for sure. What about plant medicines?

42:55 You know, this is something people a lot of people are going to these days ayahuasca ceremonies that kind of thing Is that an option? Do you know much about that stuff? I actually don’t I mean, I’ve I’ve tried LSD. I’ve tried mushrooms and And they definitely expanded my mind a bit, but for me personally, it just compares. It’s nothing compared to meditation, right?

43:19 I can’t even quite explain, well, how much more you would get out of something like that. I think I’ve had friends who’ve done ayahuasca, who’ve also done vipassana, and they benefited from both. But I don’t know if it’s things that you can actually compare, Or if one is better than the other or whatnot, right? They have different goals, I believe. I think that’s one thing that a lot of people forget.

43:43 I think one common saying is that all paths lead to the same place. But actually, if you really explore the different paths out there, the different paths actually have different goals. So if you’re very mindful of what’s happening, you want to find something that connects with your personal aspirations and do it. See how deeply you can go, and especially within a safe environment, right? You want to be in a good incubator where when you start feeling that inner turbulence, those who have had more experience than you can hold space for you.

44:12 Yeah, no for sure. I was in Costa Rica a year ago and had three ceremonies, one of them really intense, the most intense experience of my whole life. And it was great because what happens is you’re confronting pain and emotion that you would normally run away from. And for two or three hours, which can feel like two or three years or a hundred years, You are forced to be there and that way you have to process, process, process, be with it. I’m reliving it right now.

44:40 But to be honest, the people that get the most out of the ayahuasca experiences come back and meditate on that stuff for a year. And so I find that the people that really get a lot of value out of it come back and then they try to really incorporate into their life through usually a lot of meditation. Interesting. So we can kind of go hand in hand. stuff on the emotional history, you know, or have we covered a lot of stuff there as far as the, you know, contents of the mind, anything else that we can talk about to help people kind of understand this?

45:09 There’s certain emotions that come up a lot. There’s something that I think is pretty important, right, a little bit of myth-busting. I think when people think of wellness and of yoga and meditation, they think of bliss, right? Immediately, like, I’m going to go to a yoga class, I’m going to pay you 20 bucks, I better get my bliss, like I better leave there and feel great.” But it’s not a transactional relationship like that. It actually is something that when you take these things seriously, when you’re actually doing a real introspective practice that can give you results, there are going to be moments where you don’t feel great, right?

45:47 You’re almost intentionally opening yourself up, right? You want to get on a scale where your happiness is increasing, but on the road there, there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs because a lot of that is actually the processing, is actually the releasing, the letting go, and a lot of times, most of the time the letting go is very quiet, it happens in moments of deep silence, but there are other moments where you will feel that old intense emotion that you’ve sort of been running away from so viscerally, almost like it’s happening for the first time, and we hopefully will have a type of practice that will equip us to be able to handle that and to really basically end up holding space for yourself. Have that calmness, witness what’s actually going on and just allow it the space it needs to leave.

46:37 Yeah, I totally agree. I always tell people like don’t judge your meditation because you’re not supposed to be the Buddha, you’re not supposed to find nirvana. It’s like honestly, if you just do it, it’s a win and a lot of people think, oh, but But all I thought about was the cat food and my shopping list and my boss. But did you do your 15 minutes or your 30 minutes, then that’s a win because I agree. I think people are like, yeah, where’s my bliss?

46:59 Where’s my bliss? That’s what I paid for. But that’s not what’s happening. That comes later. I think you do end up building a lot of wisdom.

47:09 You develop that ability to pause. I feel anger and now I’m actually going to stop before I say something really rude or really mean because the me that I’m trying to develop does not treat people in a way that I wouldn’t treat myself or I wouldn’t wanna be treated. But I think these are things that we develop over time and it’s absolutely amazing to see how much we can really grow but we have to accept that there are gonna be a lot of difficult moments on the way there because there’s just a lot to release.

47:41 Yeah, I always think that meditation just allows you to observe yourself, which sounds simple, but most people aren’t. And when I actually first started meditating, I was a banker still, and I was in this banking job, and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, but I felt horrible. I was making lots of money, and the money wasn’t making me happy, which didn’t make any sense, because for all my life I was told, especially going up in America, that money is happiness.

48:08 And I couldn’t figure it out, and I’m a smart guy. And I couldn’t figure it out, and I took a Transcendental Meditation class. They charged me like $2,000. There was no other options. There was no YouTube at the time.

48:19 This is like an 08 or something, or an 09. And I took it, and 30 days later, I walked in and resigned from my job. Wow. So, but I couldn’t have done that before because I couldn’t, I said, oh, look at you. You’re miserable.

48:32 You’re doing something that doesn’t make you happy. This is so obvious, but I couldn’t see it before I meditated. Right. And that’s incredible. Yeah, I think it’s amazing.

48:42 And I think a lot of people find difficulty like what you were mentioning before about your friend, thinking about cat food or whatnot, because the mind really doesn’t like the present moment, right? Even when it’s interacting with the present moment, it’s seeing the present through the lens of the past. It doesn’t even want to actually see it as it is. And if you notice when you start going away to meditate, your mind is immediately jumping into the future, jumping into the past.

49:07 It’s doing anything to avoid it. So those moments of difficult meditation where you’re actually constantly bringing yourself back into the present moment, you know, it makes sense because you’ve literally spent your whole life, thousands and thousands of hours, avoiding the present moment. So of course, the few minutes and hours when you start trying to observe it, of course it’s gonna be difficult. Yeah, you know, I have two young boys, they’re two and three years old, and like, I watch them, and what they do all day is they play, they fantasize, they solve problems, and they’re constantly like, I just never realized that toys got so much action later, constantly.

49:43 As soon as they wake up, it’s like techa techa techa techa techa techa, and it’s like watching them and their reflections of us, and I’m like, the human being loves to solve problems, doesn’t it? It’s like that’s what gives us this purpose and this all this stuff, but solving problems doesn’t solve your own problems, does it? No, no, it takes a lot of courage to be able to really go in there and figure out what is your personal key to happiness. Yeah, it can be a little scary too.

50:09 I want to get on to a couple of your ideas, and then I want to get into your story. Goals versus craving, I’ve never really heard this put in the way that you put it, and I think it’s really fascinating. And again, I’ll quote you, I’ve never quoted a guest so much as today. And this is something you’ve said before, if the mind is craving, then the mind is suffering. And if the mind is suffering, then that means we are not quite free.

50:31 Tell me about craving. This was one, I mean, this was probably one of the biggest moments, most important moments in my life was When I did my first Vipassana course, there was a teacher there, and he was amazing. He, I asked him a question, because I wanted to know, you know, the Buddha put so much energy into trying to become free, trying to become fully liberated. And I asked the teacher, I was like, wasn’t the Buddha craving? You know, if craving is, you know, that’s what’s causing our suffering.

51:05 And he looks at me, and he says the simplest thing. He just says, there’s a difference between having a goal and having a craving. And that subtlety, to me, was never illuminated. And literally the moment, in years since, to this day, I still think about that often because I wanna be able to work in a detached manner because I think that’s actually the most efficient way to work, where yes, I have goals, yes, I have aspirations, yes, I have preferences, but I’m trying not to turn them into attachments, right?

51:34 Because it’s cravings that create our attachments. When a craving becomes strong enough, it causes this mental attachment that will then lead us into further misery. But when you can understand that if I make my happiness dependent on accomplishing this future goal, then that means that I eliminate my ability to be happy now. But what happens when you actually accomplish it, right? Even though you’re craving it, you may eventually get there and you accomplish your goal and you’re still not happy.

52:07 I think that really illuminated the fact that I need to figure out how to be happy right now, right? Even though I have goals, even though I have preferences, how can I be happy right now so that yes, one day when I achieve them, okay, I will be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor, but I will still have that happiness that I had then and I have now. And to me, that was critical because if you’re not working in a detached manner, then that That means automatically that your mind is cloudy.

52:38 That means that you don’t have that mental clarity to be able to make optimal decisions to really do your best and I think that slows down all the work. So understanding that subtlety, having a goal is not the same as having a craving. Really if your goal, if you don’t accomplish it in the time span that you want to accomplish it in and you start feeling that intense misery, then you know that that actually It wasn’t a goal, it was a craving. And being able to take yourself back and really sort of analyze where is all this energy coming from?

53:12 Is it coming from an intelligent place or am I just sort of directing myself into further misery? I think it’s critical. Yeah, this is something I meditate on all the time and it’s, again, easier said than done. Oh, yeah, all this stuff is easier said than done. I’m so goal-oriented, my whole life has been goal-oriented.

53:27 It’s just like, get an MIT, get the grade point average, get the job on Wall Street, make your first million dollars, do the show, get the show to this and it’s just like all that stuff, but when I actually think to myself, this is a great exercise for anybody listening. If you ever say to yourself, consciously or subconsciously, when this happens, then I’ll be happy. Oh, you’re done. That’s the sign that you, if you believe that, that means you’ll never be happy.

53:51 You already lost, yeah, you already lost. I think that’s the key is if I can’t be happy right now, I’m not gonna be happy later. I have to figure out what are the ways that I can not only be able to appreciate the present moment because we forget the most essential parts of our life. We’re so busy craving for more things, craving for the million dollars, craving the degrees, the social prestige, that we forget that we have air, we have water, we have food, we have these essential things that we’re blessed to have and not everybody has them.

54:23 There’s still about 60,000 people a day who die from hunger and to not, you know, to sort of skip that gratitude that shows that, you know, we’re lost, we’re lost in the future and we’re lost in the past. So we can be, practice gratitude is a great way to try to be happy in the present. But what if that doesn’t work? That means you probably need to go in deep on the meditation and deep inside. Because you can say, we’ll do a gratitude practice and someone will, okay, I’ll try this every single day, but that isn’t necessarily gonna do it for everyone, right?

54:53 No, no, I think having a gratitude practice does sort of, you know, you’re trying to realign yourself, realign your character in a particular way, but you have to understand that a lot of that is happening on the conscious level of the mind. And the real work, the real inner work, you need a practice that will take you into the subconscious of the mind because that’s where all the patterns are rapidly moving that are sort of, you know, forcing your present moment to be in a very particular way that actually mirrors the past. And when you’re able to go into that subconscious and release those patterns, and you’re actually, you give yourself the breathing room to decide, oh right, that’s how I used to behave, but now I’m gonna act a different way because I think this is actually a bit smarter.

55:35 That’s when the real work is happening. So, you know, I think in a very real way, gratitude is the opposite of craving, but to be able to fulfill the most profound forms of gratitude, it takes that inner work to really like dig out those roots of craving from inside you. Yeah, I agree, and I love gratitude practices. And I teach a lot of this stuff in our academy and just trying to get people to start a meditation practice, which is don’t judge it, just do it.

55:59 And then gratitude, I’m a big fan of, I’d rather you do a gratitude practice than not. But I- Something’s better than nothing. Yeah, and I think over time, it can do wonders for you, but I agree there’s this deep level in your subconscious that’s, in chess terms, it’s four moves ahead of your conscious, right? I mean, and it’s already got the narrative, and it’s based on your past, and it’ll outsmart your conscious mind a lot of times. One metaphor that really sticks with me is it’s really important to understand that the same way, right, we’re in this building right now, we’re very safe, this building was made with really good tools.

56:32 The same way that those who created this place had good tools, we need to find tools for ourselves to build a palace of peace inside of us. And over time, we realized that, okay, these tools that I had, right, they did give me some benefit, but now I might actually need sharper tools and go out there and find something that will take me a little deeper, Because when you feel like, yes, the practice has given me a certain degree of success, but then you start kind of plateauing, or you feel like, oh, I can go a little deeper. I have a little more courage than I had before.

57:05 I can do this. Then that’s fine. Go out there. Find the tools. Because people are making amazing strides in their freedom.

57:13 I have a lot of people that I look up to in the meditation practice that I’m a part of that are incredibly, incredibly advanced and it’s so inspiring. But realizing where you are, finding the tools that meet you where you’re at. So the advice I like to give people is the tool that’s for you is something that’s challenging but not overwhelming. You want to find that sweet spot for yourself because if it’s challenging enough, it will make you stronger. But if it’s way too overwhelming and it brings up too many things too fast for you, then you’re just going to stop, right?

57:47 You’re not gonna be able to do that work to really move forward. But that sweet spot is really important, finding something that’s challenging and not overwhelming. Yeah, and all the tools are out there. I mean, there’s no real excuse these days to not have these practices in your life. Especially if you live in a major city, it’s out there.

58:02 Yeah, it’s out there. And I think, again, back to Tim Ferriss, I think he interviewed all of these top level people in one of his books, Tribe of Mentors, and it was something like 70-some percent had a meditation practice. It’s like, I mean, how much more information do you need? I still force myself every day to meditate, no matter what. And like some days I really wanna get up and mess with my little boys and I don’t have much time in the morning, but I literally, I wake up, I brush my teeth, I go back to bed and I sit up right in the bed and I meditate like every day.

58:30 And the reason I do it is because I know if I stop, even for two weeks, I’m gonna turn into Brian that I don’t like. And I don’t like that guy and he’s got bad habits and he’s gonna start behaving in ways that I can’t control. But if I do this every day, I can control that, I think. I think so, too. I mean, I do it for the same reason, right?

58:48 I put a lot of time into meditating, and it’s interesting, because I think when people hear it two hours a day, it sounds like, well, it’s too much. Like, you know, there’s a very sort of like a verse reaction I get from some people, not everyone, but to be really honest with you, my level of productivity was nothing compared to what it is now. I can do so much more because I give myself those two hours a day. And it doesn’t subtract anything from my life. Actually, when you really start analyzing how you live in any particular day, there’s a lot of time being wasted.

59:23 So I’m much more optimally using my time. And when I sit down, I work on actually releasing old patterns, really supporting that mental calmness, having a real, trying to support an equanimous mind so that when I turn around and go to work, It’s, you know, it all flows so much better. And I really, you know, myself, my wife is a scientist. She meditates too. She does the same thing, you know, two hours a day.

59:47 And her work life, before she started meditating and where she is now, I mean, she’s had an incredible success. Yeah, I mean, if it’s changing the quality of your life and everything else, then it’s a great investment. Right, you come up with solutions. So much one thing I’d like to tell people is like, oftentimes when I go away to these courses, I’ll go and I’ll have all these problems in my life, The mind gets cloudy even over time even if you’re meditating and then you come out and you’re like You just have tons of solutions because there actually was no problem to begin with. Yeah Yeah, and I was just thinking about the goal versus craving like so for me with London Real I mean we have big goals like I wanted to create this mass scale transformation of humanity we want to people make people more conscious more cooperative and and We really want to make that change and that’s our goal But it’s like is that a craving what I try to make sure is that every day I’m enjoying what I’m doing so I’m having this awesome conversation with you if we never been able to do that I’m still loving this right so I just try to remember that so be grateful enjoy the work every day I really want to get there, but if I don’t I Enjoyed I died trying you know I enjoyed myself while I was doing it and I think one thing that really supports right actually being grateful for what’s happening in this present moment is that

1:00:59 You can set the goal, but don’t set such a rigid time scale like I’m gonna. You know So, have X amount of whatever at this set time, I’m going to give myself six months. It’s like, that’s a tough way to live. You’re setting yourself up for pretty big struggles and misery there. So the way, I have goals too, for my own meditation practice, for writing, for different aspects of my life, but one thing I’ve learned is to just move at my own pace.

1:01:27 Like yes, put in effort, put in energy, but okay, yeah, if it doesn’t happen within in a year, it doesn’t happen in two years, totally fine. Keep it going, you’re going to see results one way or another, especially if you have that strong determination to continue putting energy into it, but it doesn’t need to be so rigid. Yeah, one of my guests named Grant Cardone, who travels around the world in his own private jet, and most people don’t think he’s one type of guy, but he always says, he says, you have a goal.

1:01:54 He said, it’s never a failure if you don’t quit. He’s like, so just keep working at the goal. Keep going, and as long as you keep going, it’s still a possibility and it’s still something you can achieve. Yeah, I think one of the most beautiful moments are when you don’t get the goal and you feel okay. That’s when you really know that it was a goal, that it was a real goal and not a craving, is like, okay, I failed or I didn’t quite get there yet, absolutely fine, I’m gonna go back to the drawing board, I’m gonna keep going, and that’s when you know that you’re actually working very intelligently.

1:02:25 Yeah, you’re also working a whole process at the same time, I’m gonna keep going here, but I just thought one thing, you know, we talked about pleasure and happiness and then I’ve also heard people say back to Jordan Peterson said and said that said you shouldn’t pursue happiness you should pursue meaning because happiness can be fleeting how do you feel about those three words oh it’s interesting I am happiness you know can have so many different definitions I think to me happiness is living without misery so anytime I’m decreasing my misery I’m increasing my happiness. And I also think of happiness as being synonymous with freedom. So when I like to talk a lot about freedom, and I define it just as that.

1:03:11 When you decrease the mental tension that’s happening in your mind, you’re actually increasing your freedom. But what I sort of live off of more so is, and sort of measure myself, is how calmly and how gently I’m living. Because I think when I think of myself in the past, I was really rough to be around, you know? I didn’t really, you know, I wasn’t like an evil person, but I was definitely mean, definitely a jerk. You?

1:03:41 Yeah, oh, absolutely. Definitely, definitely a jerk. And a lot of things I’m not proud of, but one thing I’ve noticed is that what I’m trying to cultivate is how gentle I am with my words, with my delivery, with the people around me. And to me, that’s really important. And it’s that measurement, for me personally, that shows me the success if I’m actually moving forward or not.

1:04:02 Yeah, you’ve got another line that I don’t know if I have it here, but it’s about how, well, I think I actually have it later, about calmness, about when I’m calm, then you’re making the right decisions that I know that the more calm I am, the more I guess free you are as well, right? Absolutely. When the mind is actually calm, that’s when you’re most creative, that’s when you’re going to produce the best decisions when you’re really there and ready to problem solve.

1:04:34 And I’ve found that within my own work, and I think a lot of people have found the same thing. I know when we think of artists, painters and writers, we think of them as really struggling a lot, but I think this is a new time in history now where a lot of people are actually doing that inner work and the explosion and creativity, it’s going to be something to watch. It’s going to be very interesting because we’ve seen a lot of art come from anxiety, sadness and depression, but art coming from happiness, art coming from wisdom, art coming from real sort of universal understanding, that’s new and more and more people are doing it.

1:05:11 So I think it’s pretty exciting. The museums are going to look very different 40 years from now. It’s going to be interesting. I’m still divided. Great art does come from pain somehow, but maybe it’s also the processing of that pain into an acceptance of that.

1:05:24 Yeah, and it’s not taking away from the artists of the past. I think people have made incredible things, but this is a new phenomenon. Yeah, it’s gonna be interesting to watch, for sure. All right, I wanna go on and talk about human habit versus human nature. And a couple quotes that you’ve said, first of all, you’ve said the ego wraps itself around our consciousness just like a cloud, and it’s a cloud covering the sun.

1:05:44 That’s an interesting one. And then another thing you said is, at the root level of your mind is consciousness and that consciousness is pure, it’s pure love. Thoughts on that quote and then habit versus nature. Yeah, I think it helps me to see the mind, especially the conditioning that we have, the conditioning being our ego, right? Our total accumulation of all the things that we’ve learned, the things that we’ve sort of really hold is true, whether it’s good for us or not.

1:06:15 It functions like a cloud that really hovers around your consciousness. And that thick cloud, I like to think of that cloud as your human habit. And now this is important, if you examine history and you see that so many times people talk about human nature as being greedy, being fearful, even hateful. And that is true in the sense of the cloud that’s hovering around the mind, around our consciousness. But that’s really human habit, it’s not our nature because the moment that we start addressing that cloud and we start peeling back those layers, that like the very bright luminescent stream of clarity starts coming forward from our consciousness and it’s quite powerful and it carries love, it carries creativity, it carries an ability to problem solve, it carries a new energy for life because we actually spend a lot of our energy worrying, a lot of our energy really like literally making up stories in our minds and just burning so much energy away, but when we sort of tame that aspect of ourselves and not only tame it but heal it and release it, that gives you a whole new opportunity to live in a brand new way.

1:07:31 So it’s interesting to, you know, the way I see human habit is it’s fear and human nature. It’s really love, and it’s so beautiful to me that so many different human beings have shown that throughout so many different religions, so many different practices. When they go inward, they come out with a message of love. Yeah, and if you look at our art and our movies and stuff, we all celebrate that, right? We’re all looking for that.

1:07:58 The movies we love is we’re looking for the sun, right? In all the cloud, in the darkness, and like you said, the bad parts of human nature. We all want to celebrate it and we want to find it and the great stories are about that. That’s why I made the cover of N-word, this very minimalistic sun, because it’s literally the hope is to allow your consciousness to just shine forward so that the problems of your life, the things that you saw as hurdles, as difficulties, you can just steamroll them with your clarity.

1:08:31 It’s also really empowering just to think of it as a cloud. So it’s not like this is written in stone or these are your deep emotional scars. You just get the cloud to rise and the sun’s there anyways. So it’s shining. It’s trying to shine through.

1:08:43 It just can’t get there. Right. Yeah. I had a guest in here named Marisa Peer and she has this expression. She likes people to repeat by saying, I am enough.

1:08:52 I am enough. I am enough. And I think she’s trying to get people to get rid of that cloud because deep inside there’s all this joy and love and all that stuff. But we built around this whole thing of I’m not enough. So I worry and I judge and I’m anxious and I la la la la and that ends up being this whole negative experience for you personally and then everyone around you.

1:09:12 Interesting. So you think human nature by definition is love and beauty and greatness. Absolutely. And creativity. I think when we look at the world we see so many massive problems and just to touch on it, I think it’s so interesting, right?

1:09:29 I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not but it’s interesting the way things have played out in a way where this century, this 21st century that’s in front of us that we’re inside of right now, it’s going to be the biggest, most massive challenges humanity has ever faced. But isn’t it interesting that at the same time that we have to face these challenges, all the tools that we need for radical personal transformation have appeared globally? They’re widely available now.

1:09:56 And right now, especially as the decades move forward, people are now activating these tools, using them, and transforming themselves. And so when 2030 comes around, 2040, a lot of us, the quality of the collective human mind is going to be totally different. How do you feel about the future? I just had an AI professional in here, Dr. Ben Gertzel, and he’s talking about the singularity happening in 2045, Rick Kurzweil is the same thing, where basically all these AI machines are going to be developing Nobel Prize winning things every five seconds.

1:10:34 It’s going to be such a massive development, we’re going to be integrated with these computers. We see political climates around the world right now, very divisive, people fighting against each other, treating our environment in probably not a very intelligent way. How do you feel about this century? Yeah, my greatest concern is probably around climate change and around global poverty. I think I really hope that the world doesn’t split into two, because even now it’s almost like two different worlds, right?

1:11:05 We have a world that has abundance and a world that lacks abundance. And I can definitely see a scenario where technology becomes so powerful that we start creating so many solutions, but is it really a solution if it’s too expensive and people can’t really access it? And to me, that’s one of the challenges that I hope to really try to hone in on in future books and to help individuals develop a value system so that if something is actually harmful, then I’m not going to support that.

1:11:36 I’m going to support things that are not harmful, because if we’re objectively not harmful, then that’s going to create a more loving environment. But that’s one of the things that I really am concerned about. Sometimes people ask me, you know, what am I reading? And I’m always reading history books, because that’s just where my mind is at often, is trying to examine the past to see what’s going to happen in the future. But I do have a sense of hope.

1:12:02 I think the secret to a global peace is in the transformation of the individual. Because all throughout history, there have been groups of people who’ve tried to change the world for the better. that oftentimes we either mess up that job or we ourselves become the evil people that we once fought because they never even had the opportunity to do that internal work. And now is a time where not only do our mass movements for a better world, they’re still happening, but people are integrating not just their global ideals, but they’re seeing that right, I should simultaneously build my happiness, build my inner peace because not only will it support the movement that I’m a part of, but it will hopefully help me not exhaust myself or burn out, it will help me treat people better, it will help me not reproduce the things that I actually, you know, the things that I find harmful or the things that I don’t want to bring into a future world.

1:13:05 So to me, it’s pretty hopeful that so many people are finding their way into these tools that could really transform their lives because I really believe that once more and more individuals actually experience and not intellectually, like we’ve been talking a lot about how a lot of these ideas aren’t new, but one of the oldest ideas in human history is to harm another is to harm oneself. We’ve all heard it, right? We all know it intellectually. But to be able to profoundly experience that within yourself, to feel that it is to my benefit to not harm you, that idea alone is going to radically, radically change the world.

1:13:47 So we just need to be open to change. We need to be open to redesigning and reorganizing the world in a better way, in a way that supports the freedom of the individual, but also understands that, hey, we’re a collective human world. We have to work together to solve these problems. There are going to be more and more solutions. There’s a lot of ideas. You just hit on there Our tagline here at London Real is transform yourself Yeah So we’ve been thinking a lot about this and you know I mean Gandhi always said like be the change you want to see and like you said there’s a history on this planet of groups wanting To change the world and change other people Stink like this and then it’s gonna we’re gonna be okay, but it’s the onus is all on us individually But it’s so hard because again, it’s down to the ego the egos thinking no, no, no It’s not my change isn’t gonna change anything but but it will and that is the solution isn’t it all of us embracing our own Our own internal struggles and then coming to this kind of collective I don’t know if it’s a consciousness or this realization that like we are all one and When I go into my ayahuasca ceremonies I get this big thing that we are this human species that used to rely on each other for survival, you know Yeah, it was this tribe and we have to pass this knowledge on to others and it’s just so important I get this and yet when they look around the world, it’s just like, you know, you know, I don’t care about anybody else

1:15:06 You know, really I don’t care. I care about my family, but of us people world. I don’t care. They can die I will fight with them blah blah blah but All the intelligent people that have sat in that chair have said what you’ve just said, you know We are all one when you’re hurting someone else you’re hurting yourself And until we start really embracing that and looking after each other This is always gonna be a problem, but we have the capability to do it. Don’t we?

1:15:28 Absolutely, and I think I remember reading a study and I’m sorry that I’m forgetting the exact data and all of that and where it came from, but I remember reading something along the lines that this social media age has coincided with the biggest sort of expansiveness of empathy and compassion. People are much more compassionate than they were before because now, though someone may be thousands of miles away, you can see a tiny bit of their story and you can see that the same way that you feel struggles, they feel struggles too. And I think that’s something that I think Noah Yuval Harari touches on this too, where at first we only cared about our tribes, then we would care about our towns, then we cared about our cities, and it just keeps growing onward and onward.

1:16:21 And eventually it’s going to reach a point where we’re all going to care about ourselves globally because we’re going to realize that our happiness and our success is interconnected. I think that’s one of the things that we didn’t realize in the 19th and 20th century when we were building and industrializing the world. We didn’t realize that, oh, if I dump all this waste, as long as it’s out of sight, out of mind, but actually that’s going to come back and bite you because we live in this one united system.

1:16:47 Why are we headed the other way, Diego? Actually, I think it’s interesting because you may look at it from, if you look at it from a micro view, it may look like you’re headed the other way, but I think if you step back and look at it from a macro view and you examine history with it, I think the world is far less violent than it used to be. We’ve made immense advances in health and I think globally we have less wars than we used to. So I think there’s a lot of hopeful signs if you really take a big step back.

1:17:18 Yeah, we’ve had Steven Pinker in here and he’s got some great books about that, so that’s true. think of politics and environment, but also the news plays a big part in trying to tell us that we’re not where we wanna be, which is sometimes just trying to get our mind share, which leads me to the next point, which is anxiety. And you have some great things you’ve said about anxiety, and this is the quote I was looking for earlier, I am my strongest when I am calm.

1:17:43 That right there is something everyone needs to just think about for the rest of the day. The other one you said is dealing with anxiety and depression are habitual patterns that can be healed, can be released and you can build new patterns that help you live in the present moment. And then one more, I knew I was on the right path when I started feeling peace in situations where I would normally feel tension. I felt that recently, actually. And I’m like, wow, normally this would really freak me out and I’d be micromanaging and angry and I’m actually not.

1:18:10 Wow. That’s the big one. That’s when you really know that you’re growing up. When you are in a situation that used to just like rile you up and make you feel so much mental tension and then you’re in there and you’re like, Oh, right, I remember this, but I feel cool. I’m okay right now.

1:18:25 That’s when you know you’re really winning. To me, that’s real wealth. And that’s because of the work you’ve been doing. Oh yeah, it doesn’t just happen overnight. I mean, we touched on that earlier, but the same way that you’ve been developing these patterns that haven’t really been supporting your happiness your whole entire life.

1:18:43 You spend your whole entire life reacting, reacting, reacting, and just now we’re learning that okay, wait, we can actually pause and take the time to respond, right? Response meaning that you’re actually taking the time to be much more intelligent, much more thoughtful about what action you try to put forward out into the world. And why are we more anxious these days than ever before? There’s just so much happening. I think it’s simple.

1:19:08 I mean, we still have the mind of a hunter-gatherer with much more information to process. We also live in like concrete cities. There’s just so many factors. I think that this is one of the reasons why having internal practices have become so popular is because there’s been these sort of massive issues with mental health, with just general happiness, and we’re so not only disconnected from ourselves and our communities and real life communities that we have to build social media to replace that, but there’s just so, so, so much change happening around us that if we don’t deal with our fear of change, then we’re just gonna struggle and be miserable.

1:19:49 And social media makes us less happy and more anxious, typically, and our friends on Facebook make us feel less connected. Right, right, but depending on who you follow, depending on what you wanna cultivate, it can also be a place that supports who you wanna be in the future. Yeah, I think the real message is here is you’re in charge, you need to design your life and take an active part in it. And you have to reclaim your power. If you don’t reclaim your power, then the world, you’re just gonna be going through the moves, and you’re gonna be living from your past, you’re gonna be living from your traumas, and you won’t have that ability to just be the real decisive factor in your own life.

1:20:27 Because why would you wanna let your past make all the decisions for you? Like, are you really living if you’re doing that? Yeah, and we’re in this attention economy right now as well, where the new currency is your attention. So, and everyone wants a piece, and it’s literally a value to a lot of people. So if you don’t claim it back, it will just be taken from you.

1:20:47 Right. and you won’t really have your life and you’ll be kind of living another narrative, right, that won’t be of your own choosing. Yeah, no, I don’t want algorithms to decide for me how, you know, what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. I’d rather decide that for myself. Yeah, talk to me about this, the past, being the lens that you see a lot of things through.

1:21:08 I just something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and maybe people listening are like, well, I don’t know if that applies to me. How do you like to try to convey that thought to people that everything they look at because we all have eyes and we all assume we’re seeing the same thing and yet two people can watch an interaction and bring completely different things away from it. Exactly, so you know that you’re not optimally observing the present when your primary emotion is completely clouding the way you’re perceiving things.

1:21:42 So if you’re looking at something and your emotion, whether you’re feeling jealousy or anger towards something, it reminds you of something in the past. Though that reminding doesn’t, it’s not always happening on the conscious level, it’s usually happening on the subconscious. So sometimes you’ll be feeling jealousy before you even decide that you want to feel jealousy. Most people don’t want to feel jealousy, but it starts happening so quickly that already your emotion is driving your perception.

1:22:10 And no longer are you observing, you’re simply just projecting, you’re just throwing your emotion onto everything else. And I think when you start analyzing how you’re projecting onto it and you’re analyzing how, oh right, those moments where I, you know, when all of my friends enjoyed a movie but I couldn’t enjoy it because I had a really bad day that day, right, it’s my emotion that was clouding my perception of that. If it was just another day where I felt fine, great, you know, mild mannered, then I would have enjoyed it just as much as they have.

1:22:44 Literally, whatever primary emotion you’re feeling in that moment is going to completely cloud your perception. And when you start realizing that whatever emotion that’s clouding you in that moment, that’s actually coming from this sort of giant bucket of past accumulated emotions, then you start saying, oh, right, that’s my past reacting to whatever’s happening in the present. And then what can I do about it? I mean, what I would personally recommend is meditate.

1:23:13 I think that’s one of the biggest things that we can do for ourselves, for other people. And if you’re not there yet, I would recommend a psychologist or a practice of yoga, Sanas, something to get you in touch with your mind and body and start building that relationship with yourself. And over time, but I really say, I think meditation is probably the most powerful tool out there right now. And I think it’s gonna be a big driver for hopefully a global peace in the future.

1:23:41 And while we’re on meditation, how do you suggest people to start? If they really are, you know, I can never do that. I can’t even do one minute on my own. Like, what do you usually say to people to get them? Usually, you’re a lot stronger than you think you are.

1:23:53 If you survive life up until this point, that means you’ve gone through a lot of stuff. And if you’re here and you’re okay and you’re, you know, still looking forward to a future day, then you probably have the power to try some form of meditation or another. And I would say listen to your intuition, right? see what practice really connects with you. So I remember I heard about meditation for years, but it was only when I started hearing about Vipassana that something inside me just clicked.

1:24:22 And I was like, oh yeah, that’s the one I wanna do. Even though I remember before I went to the first 10 day course that I did, I had only meditated once for 20 minutes and had no idea what I was doing. So I say that only because when you go in there, you probably are even gonna benefit from not having any real experience. And if, you know, sounding like, if it sounds to you, you know, it doesn’t scare you too much that, you know, you’re not talking, you’re spending time by yourself for 10 days, right?

1:24:51 Obviously it’s gonna sound difficult, but if you think you can do it, you can probably do it. But I think we really don’t realize how strong we really are as individuals. And I would agree, first of all, take an action no matter what you do, but go to what draws you. Right. Same with plant medicines.

1:25:06 Everyone always asks me about ayahuasca. Like, look, if you’re drawn to it, you’ll go find it. But I don’t ever try to tell anyone to do it. So it’s like, if you’re asking a lot of questions about it, well, that means you’re probably. Right, you’re probably interested.

1:25:16 And to me, honestly, like, just find something that works for you. That’s my thing. Like, I tell people, right, I meditate Vipassana, but, you know, what you, what may work for you may be something totally different. So to me, whatever it is that you need to do for you to be a happier, gentler, a less harmful person, that’s all we need from you. Because we actually don’t realize that it doesn’t take to be a fully liberated, unconditionally loving human being, we’re talking about Jesus, the Buddha, right?

1:25:45 That takes a lot of effort. It is possible for the regular human being, but it takes a lot of effort. But to get ourselves to a point where we realize that it doesn’t benefit me to harm you, that actually doesn’t take that much work. It takes some introspection. A lot of people have had these experiences with a bit of work, and then you realize, like, oh, right, you know, in those moments where I’m, you know, before I can even hit you, I have to build so much mental animosity that that is already imprinted in my mind so that I’m just gonna feel that angst and I’m just gonna carry that forward.

1:26:19 So I, before I even hit you, I already hurt myself. Yeah, yeah, that’s really strong. Let’s talk about drugs, shall we? Sure, sure. Let’s talk about drugs and drug addictions cause we both had our share of that stuff.

1:26:34 Absolutely. Maybe before we get into details, how do you look at addictions? Cause that all comes down to conscious and subconscious, like what’s happening there? Yeah, I think for me personally, I mean, I wrote a piece that’s in the very beginning of the book, I was never addicted to one thing. I was addicted to doing things that kept me away from loving myself, something along those lines, right?

1:27:01 That I didn’t realize that I was actually addicted to just whatever sort of filled up that hole that my self-love was supposed to fill, that’s what I would strive for. That’s what I would try to gather and basically became addicted to pleasure. But I think it’s really different for different people. I think some people, right, they could have a disease, they could have a very serious mental illness or whatnot. But for me personally, I think my lack of self-love transformed into an abuse of drugs that easily could have ended my life very early.

1:27:37 Okay, can you talk more about that? Yeah, sure, I mean, so what I didn’t quite realize until I actually stopped was that I was pretty sad my whole life. I didn’t, right, and just didn’t really, I think I so quickly would cover up that sadness with either busying myself with TV or the internet later on with friends or girlfriends or drinking, smoking weed, doing different types of drugs. The main one I did was cocaine when I was in college that when I would run to these things, one, I didn’t realize why I was running, that I was even running, and it would so quickly cover it up and then I thought I was having fun when really it was just consuming as much pleasure as possible.

1:28:27 And to me that, it hid that sadness away. I didn’t really see it. And it wasn’t until, so I think I started doing drugs when I was about 18, 18, 19, and it really quickly became very serious. I was partying way too much from Wednesday to Monday, especially in that time period when I was in college, just really consuming as much as possible. And it got to a point where I think a year, a year and a half after I graduated, I reached a breaking point the summer of 2011 where I had done a bunch of drugs and it was never like, you know, one particular thing.

1:29:08 I think the cocaine was like the drug of choice in particular, but it got to a point this one night where I used so much that the next morning When I woke up, I lit a joint, and the moment I lit that joint, I felt like it was that one little extra thing that my body just … It’s a massive mountain that created that huge snowball effect, and I could feel all the drugs just surging through my body, and my heart just started freaking out. Later, actually, when I talked to a doctor, she explained it to me in scientific terms, but she was like, yeah, it was basically a very mild form of heart attack.

1:29:49 I was on the floor basically willing myself to stay alive because I was like, I feel like I’m dying. I literally was on the floor crying and just feeling like this was it. I messed up my chance. I messed up my chance at life. My mother’s going to be so upset.

1:30:09 Don’t even call the ambulance. Let me just really trying to, probably stupidly trying to fix it on my own by just laying on the floor and staying calm, or as calm as I could be because I was a mess. For about two and a half hours, I just stayed on that floor and the moment when I realized that it was subsiding, that my heart started gaining some form of regularity again, I just got up and I grabbed that last bag of cocaine that I had, flushed it down the toilet and I was like, that’s it, I’m done.

1:30:42 I’m not trying to die like this and I wrote another piece about this, that those moments when we hit rock bottom, especially for me, it was in that moment when I hit rock bottom that I could see who I wanted to be. I didn’t have a clear idea. I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer or anything like that, but I just knew that I wanted to be someone that would make my mother happy, that would make me feel like I actually lived a life that was worth living, that I didn’t waste my time here on earth.

1:31:11 When that all clicked, I knew the first thing was I need to get in touch with my body. the gym again, hadn’t been to the gym in like five years because I was incredibly, incredibly unhealthy at the time, so overweight, so miserable, so depressed. So I started going to the gym, that was the time when super foods first became popular. I bought some spirulina, bought some barley grass, started taking in these high nutritional foods and started just getting fitter and about a year after that was when I did my first vipassana course and that’s when the real healing started happening.

1:31:46 I almost felt like I was getting myself stronger and just kind of out of sheer will decided to stop doing the really hard drugs. I remember I kept smoking weed and kept drinking alcohol at smaller doses for a while, but it took a lot of my will to not do the hard drugs and not do the ecstasy, the cocaine and all that stuff again. But when I started meditating the Vipassana, that craving to actually do those things started going away. And now, it’s not even … A friend of mine actually asked me the other day, because now I don’t drink alcohol, I haven’t taken a single intoxicant for … I don’t really keep count, but I think it’s a little over four years.

1:32:32 And a friend asked me, you don’t miss it? And I’m like, nah, dude. I honestly can’t say that I do. It’s literally whatever it was that wanted it does not exist in me any longer because I just kept going back in there, trying to find what it was, that anxiety, that depression, that sadness, and just doing the work to release that stuff, to actually let it go. And don’t get me wrong, to this day I still feel anxiety, I still feel sadness, but But the thing is that it’s nowhere to the same intensity as it was before.

1:33:09 Like before, it used to be such a strong sadness that, you know, it would control my actions. But now, I would feel it and I’m like, all right, I feel sad now. Let me just, you know, watch how I live today and just be mindful that it’ll pass. Yeah. Wow, man, 23 years old, thinking that it might all be over.

1:33:28 Oh, it was going to be over, man. It was bad. It was bad. It’s hard to even stress how bad it was, but I was like, this is it. and I just power through it.

1:33:38 You know, it’s funny how you say that, lack of self-love, you know, because it’s great that you, I hear you talk about that, because if I look at my addictions, it was the same kind of thing. I was always really hard on myself. So it was never good enough, never good enough. And maybe that’s because of childhood trauma, or parents getting divorced, and me feeling I was alone in this world, or maybe I had to prove my worth. I don’t know, I was still trying to figure out a lot of that stuff now, but for me, it was just never good enough, never good enough.

1:34:03 So kind of, I don’t know if it’s goal setting craving or just like, it’s just not good enough. So I was constantly in this dialogue with my head and also when I would get to an emotion like anger, I found out quickly I could medicate it and then alcohol was there and it was the one time where I could be away from my internal dialogue and I actually felt some peace. You know, maybe the sun shone for a second and I was like, oh, Brian can be happy without being critical of himself.

1:34:28 And so that was my go-to. So if I’m angry or problems with this, it was alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. And that just went on for a long time. And then when I got to New York City, and again, I don’t blame it on the city, but again, an amazing place. I’m so glad I went there.

1:34:43 But we were talking earlier, I lived in the East Village. It’s just back then, there was no talk of meditation. There was no talk of mindfulness. And it’s such an intense city that you also don’t realize there’s no downtime there. There’s no parks, there’s no quietness.

1:34:57 And you get wrapped up to where There’s intensity and medication. And then as I continued going that path, then the drugs came out. And for me, all my banker buddies were doing cocaine, but that didn’t really appeal to me because my brain was already maybe racing too much and really hard on me. But the heroin was really nice. So that came out and I was of this, I can do anything and I’m gonna push the envelope anyway.

1:35:21 So that was the drug that again allowed me to just kind of put a big warm blanket around myself and I could just have some peace for a while. I think that’s what it was. And then that of course got really dangerous because that’s a drug that it just messes with you. And then it gets to a point where, you know, I took too much one night and I stopped breathing. That’s kind of what happens.

1:35:43 People always think like a heroin overdose is like something from Pulp Fiction where you’re like coughing up like white substances. What happens is you’re just, it slows down your body, slows down your digestion as well. So you just don’t go to the bathroom and then it just, you just stop breathing. And that’s what I did one night. And luckily, I had just made it to my girlfriend’s house and I climbed up a six foot walkway and I got there and I crashed on her bed and literally stopped breathing right in front of her.

1:36:07 Before that, it could have happened in a cab, or it couldn’t have happened in my house alone, but I happened to be there. Of course, she freaks out, calls the ambulance, they inject me with the Nax alone, whatever the hell it is. And I woke up in the hospital thinking again, my parents could have got the phone call. Your 30-year-old MIT graduate, Wall Street banker’s son is now dead from heroin overdose. Can you imagine my mom in La Jolla, California getting that call?

1:36:30 That’s the same thing I was thinking about was immediately I was thinking about my parents and my parents are immigrants. They worked so hard, I was born in Ecuador, they brought us over when I was four and to let them down, I’m glad that we can connect on that experience because to me it was just so real. It was like, did I really waste their time? Yeah, yeah, it’s such a great, yeah, the immigrant story is even more intense. And yet for me, I didn’t stop And you hear this a lot with certain drug go there.

1:36:57 Because now, of course, I didn’t stop. I was just like, it wasn’t enough of a wake-up call. So then I had to lose my girlfriend. I had to get sacked from my job, from my best friend at MIT. And I had to really lose everything to where I really hit that rock bottom.

1:37:10 And then that was, again, finally a refreshing thing. And I actually got out of New York City and came to London and took my last bit of heroin, threw up on the way to the airport right in front of a bunch of armed guys with M16s because they were on 9-11 duty, and I threw up right in front of them on the curb and they were looking at me like, who is this pathetic guy? And then I got on a plane to London and I never touched it again. So it was like new behaviors, new group.

1:37:38 I think I finally, they say that you can’t kick a drug like that way, but I think I went so far down that my subconscious was just like, we just can’t do anything anymore. You lost everyone in your life. And when I did my Ironman race last year, I went back to New York City, which is a place I always hated going because I saw failure on every single corner. And John Joseph, one of my mentors, he was in the East Village and through a training session, I just started crying and it all came up and I ended up processing it through these long training sessions.

1:38:09 And I actually ended up speaking with a bunch of people in New York City I hadn’t spoke to in 16 years and my ex-girlfriend, my buddy from school, and then I told my wife about it. I hadn’t told anybody in 16 years. So that was big. So a lot of processing to do and that was a powerful experience, but I was holding all that inside me thinking I was okay yeah, but I wasn’t and Admitting it was really hard and really emotional and I was really worried about sending an email to a couple hundred thousand people saying My hair went overdose But um, but it was powerful and it’s been able it’s been helpful to get me to kind of understand like myself and what’s going on And all of that, you know, cuz it’s all wrapped up Wow. Thank you for sharing that with me It’s like, I remember, I’m sure you felt similarly where you just keep the story to yourself for so long and figuring out what’s the right way to tell it, should I tell it.

1:39:02 I also don’t want to make people feel who haven’t been able to get out of it, right? Because some were the fortunate ones. And a lot of people, they lose themselves in that and that’s it. That’s how their life went. But I think it’s really powerful to tell people.

1:39:17 And thank you for sharing that with me. And I try to occasionally share my own story, I think I share it once a year, just to let people know that I’m not perfect. I’m not this perfect dude. I haven’t had this perfect life. And it’s also possible to really reclaim your power at that level, a level where you’re about to lose your life, where everything’s going wrong.

1:39:41 You’re so wildly depressed or so upset that you don’t have control over yourself. you can regain it and with a bit of courage, with a bit of, you know, just like putting your foot down because I felt like that’s really what I did was and in the beginning I white knuckled it and just put my foot down and then over time that became the new pattern not in a sense where it was always difficult but it became easier. It was like, alright, I’m spending more and more and more days just not doing that and obviously feel a temptation occasionally, but then to me, I was lucky that I was able to enter that world of Vipassana because I think in a way, I probably would still have some of those cravings if I hadn’t addressed that inner craving inside me, and I’m lucky.

1:40:30 And I’ve heard similar things about people who do ayahuasca or people who do mushrooms and stuff like that, that it really helps sort of like wipe that out. So I think it’s fortunate that we even have access to these things. Yeah, it helps to just understand that narrative inside that might have dealt with it, that might have led you to that behavior. That can help a lot. And yeah, the realization to me that was crazy is that all of this darkness that I thought would never have anything positive about it, right?

1:40:58 Turned out to be a source of light for so many people that were like, oh wow, I didn’t know, I’m so glad you talked about it. My aunt, my friend, me suffers from this. And just to see that the mind is the most powerful tool out there, and it just takes a different mindset. And yes, sometimes you’ve got to force it and white knuckle it and act as if before you do it, but it’s doable. It really is doable.

1:41:21 Yeah, and if you really commit, things fall into place, which I think is what I found. Because I remember spending that one year really committing to not going back and doing those things again, eventually I was ready, and then I found another tool that could would take me even further and I’m grateful to be here and I’m grateful also to have even had the opportunity to actually live in a new way. Yeah, yeah, I’m actually grateful to have seen that side too because every day, every day’s a good day.

1:41:52 That’s a lot better than those days. I’m not gonna mess with that stuff. Tell us about why you called this young Pueblo and tell me what does this thing look like five years from now? Yeah, so Yung Pueblo is a name that just came to me. So to spell it out, Y-U-N-G space P-U-E-B-L-O.

1:42:11 So there’s two main reasons. One is Pueblo, it’s a word that we use often in Ecuador, like where I was born. And I like to be reminded of my roots and reconnected with my roots, and I like that every time I sign the word or anything, you know, I’m just reminded of home or where I came from, I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and when I see that word, Pueblo is a word that’s used all over the Americas, and it has multiple meanings. For me, and for where I come from, it means the masses of people.

1:42:47 It means especially of impoverished people. That’s where I come from, a very poor background. We were poor in Ecuador, when we moved to America, we grew up in Boston, we were poor in Boston, and especially the younger part of my life, it was a struggle. So remembering that to me is really important, is understanding that a lot of people, though I may not be struggling in that way anymore, a lot of people live that, and having that external pressure of poverty not only creates so many mental health issues, but it pushes against the individual, it pushes against the family, and it’s quite a traumatizing experience. But I like to be reminded of that, and when I started meditating, it hit me that not only am I maturing, but the whole world is really maturing. This feels like a very special time in human history, and it reminds me of those moments when, think back to when we first started going to school, right, and you had your first teachers, and what were Or are they trying to teach you just the most basic things to tell the truth, to not hit each other, to clean up after yourself, and generally just to be kind to one another.

1:44:03 These are fundamental things that some of us may be able to do those things as individuals, but if you examine us collectively as a human collective, we don’t know how to do those things at all. So to me, Yung Pueblo is a project where I am trying to understand myself and trying to find some universals, right? Some things that we share as different human beings, it’s part of the human experience. And in the hopes that as this collective maturing is happening, that it can be a little piece of that, you know, that we can, you know, that other people around the world who are reading these things can also find themselves in these words and be able to do some of that intellectual processing, to be able to behave in different ways that really supports their happiness.

1:44:52 But to me, yeah, young Pueblo is really, it literally means young people. And I think in particular in this century, this 21st century, there’s going to be a lot of maturing and we’re going to have a lot of opportunities to mature. And it’s, you know, as you’ve seen yourself, I’m sure in your own life, in those moments of great difficulty, those are the moments where we can have expansive, great leaps forward. And that’s what’s happening right now. I think so.

1:45:17 And we are acting young right now, as a collective. Oh yeah, I mean, the world’s a mess. Yeah, we’re hitting each other. We’re not cleaning up after ourselves. We’re doing all the things that our kindergarten teachers told us not to do.

1:45:27 Never heard that analogy, it’s pretty good. And what does this look like five years from now? Five years from now, that’s funny. I think, to be really honest, When I think about five years from now, my primary thing is my personal practice, right? All the writing that I do is sort of secondary to that.

1:45:46 I write in the hopes that it serves people, that they find some use in the words. I hope that inward in the books that I write in the future are actually useful to other people. Not just enjoyable, but useful, you know? And I hope to write more things that are useful, but the primary thing is to meditate a lot more to keep my daily practice, to keep going to courses and to keep sort of analyzing my life and seeing the areas where there’s still a bit of roughness that I can still sort of mature and grow up and let go of more cravings, let go of more attachments and just keep cultivating that freedom.

1:46:29 To me, that’s the number one thing is keep cultivating my happiness and freedom, keep Keep cultivating my gentleness and then everything else is going to fall into place. That’s a pretty gangster way of looking at it. I guess it was worked up until now. You told me you made some conscious decisions, like you left Boston to go to New York City, and that was something you knew was important for your own creativity and to mature. Is that right?

1:46:54 Yeah, and I think that really comes from, that’s one of my life rules, just do not ignore your intuition. You have to. I think right after I graduated from college when I was about 22, 23, and then I had that experience in the summer of 2011 where I almost died. And then I came back to Boston after, so that year of healing happened there. And once I felt like I was really on my feet and I felt stronger, that’s when I decided to move to New York City.

1:47:30 But I just felt something in me, it was like now I’m ready. I felt that even if I would be around people who may still be doing those things, I wouldn’t feel like just the social pressure to do the same things as everyone else was doing. I felt like I had the strength to just live my own life. And I just felt the call to go there and it was a good move. I mean, New York City is an incredible place and it’s been wonderful just being around creative people and just being in the energy of that place it really makes for special things to occur.

1:48:06 And your growth has been kind of weirdly organic, like people hear about you and then they want to promote you to other people. Yeah, I’m all about organic growth, like I don’t pay for advertisements or anything like that. I respect people who do, but that’s just not my thing. I don’t ask people to like post for me or post about me. If you like it, be my guest, share it.

1:48:27 If you don’t like it, totally fine. Have a good day. But yeah, to me, if it’s good, it’ll naturally grow. And it’s grown pretty fast. Yeah, yeah, it’s gone pretty well.

1:48:40 Your Instagram is blowing up. I see that as just a great thing. I see that as a win. The fact that half a million people can care what you’re doing every day with these messages In a flux of a platform that has all sorts of other craziness on there. Yeah, like that gives me hope, you know Yeah, no, it’s it’s it’s been incredible. And honestly, like I I thank all the people too. They’ve changed my life They’ve they’ve helped me just they’ve actually the young pueblo stuff has just given me even more space To you know, since because i’m my own boss, I get to decide when I go away to meditate I get to go to longer courses multiple courses a year So in a way, it’s like a mutually beneficial relationship, you know I support people with different thoughts.

1:49:24 They support me with feedback and if they buy my book, I get to keep living like this. Right, so they give you the power to create more and go deeper into yourself. Yeah, and it’s a simple thing. I know Instagram is full of advertisements. I know sometimes it’s a hard place to be, so I like to make the page that I’m on to be basically an ad-free zone.

1:49:46 The only things that I will tell you about that you would potentially have to spend money on is if I have an event, and usually my events will cost $20 or be free. And, or I’ll tell you about my book, that you can buy my book wherever, or on Amazon, or in bookstores. But other than that, I’m not trying to sell you anything. Because to me, it’s like, we’re already so inundated with advertisements that I wanna create some sort of safe space from that. Yeah, and it’s working for sure.

1:50:17 Tell me a bit more about you. What is a daily practice besides meditation that is non-negotiable for you every single day? What is something you try to make sure you do? Well, I mean, right now, man, actually, I missed today, but I’ve been really serious on my celery juice. My wife and I just got a juicer.

1:50:40 I’ve been going to Los Angeles a lot, especially this year. And I’ve been realizing that, doing different events and whatnot. And I’ve been realizing, I’m like, I like Los Angeles a lot, but what is it that I like it? It’s that when I go there, they have the most amazing fresh vegetable juice spots where it’s not like something, you know, on the East Coast, they’ll sell you these free juices. I mean, these juices, but they’ll basically be mostly apple.

1:51:07 They won’t have that strong, gingery, you know, strong, really vegetable taste. And I was like, man, I was like, I like Los Angeles. And my wife was like, we’re not gonna move there. So I was like, okay, instead, we got a juicer. And I was like, because that’s what I like about that place.

1:51:21 And by drinking these vegetable juices has been amazing, to the point where it almost feels like I’m drinking coffee because I have so much more energy. Just like having that dense nutrient, you know, hit in the morning feels incredible. Okay. So celery and other vegetable juices. And other vegetable juices every day.

1:51:37 I read every day. I make sure to keep my… So I do a lot of my actual Instagram work in the morning. I try to spend about an hour and a half in the morning. and I try to put my phone down for hours.

1:51:53 I do a lot of reading and then a lot of emailing, a lot of administrative work, and the most creative times are definitely in the morning or before I go to bed. Okay. Yeah, but it’s a simple day. I live a simple life. Okay. Yeah.

1:52:08 If I would ask five of your friends, what is your superpower? How are you able to do all the things you do? What would they say it is? My friends. I like my friends because they’re not impressed by me.

1:52:21 Like, I like, they, they, they, they, they’re like. But if they were to say, to observe you objectively, and say, okay, well, it’s because he does this, like, what are, I think I, I think I, they would probably say that I’d really commit. Like, when I really wanna get something done, I’m gonna make sure that I get it done even if no one believes in me. Like, I remember when I told my friends that I wanted to do this writing thing and I wanted to put it all up on Instagram, they thought I was crazy.

1:52:45 And I thought I was a little crazy too, but I just, my intuition was like, Just do it, just do it. And you just started with these quotes on Instagram. Yeah, actually, I actually, yeah, way before the book. I would even say the book was written on Instagram and I was able to pull a lot of my best work from the past three years to make that book happen. But yeah, I spent years writing and figuring out my voice by literally just giving myself the space to do that.

1:53:16 It was a determination because I moved to New York City, I thought I was going to get a 50K job, just do whatever my friends who lived there were doing, but then I realized I was like, this is my chance. I’m in a great relationship with my now wife. We don’t have any kids. We just have to take care of the two of us. If I’m going to take a big risk and see if I’m going to become a writer or not, I have to do it now.

1:53:40 If I fail, fine. My plan was if I failed, then I would become a high school history teacher because I love history but so far, so good. Maybe I’ll be a history teacher in the future. Who knows? Yeah.

1:53:56 What was the best day of your life and the worst day of your life? Best day of my life, I think probably definitely the day when I told when I was young, when When I was 19 and my wife was 18, I told her that I liked her and we were friends for three months and she didn’t want to ruin our friendship, so when I told her I liked her, she literally had nothing to say. And I left her room and she texted me three hours later to come back. And when she texted me, the first thing, sorry, when we gathered together again three Three hours later, the first thing she said to me was, what are you planning long term?

1:54:45 What are you thinking long term? And I was like, what? I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, do you even like me? And she was like, yeah, no, I do.

1:54:51 But what are you thinking long term? Because she only wanted to be with me if it was going to be a very serious relationship. And to me, that was the happiest day of my life because it feels like it’s a love so strong that we’ve been doing this for lifetimes. We’re both really serious meditators and we want to keep living as long as life lasts. But we support each other so much and to me, like her support, like literally like Yung Pueblo, all this stuff, none of this would have been possible without her.

1:55:18 She literally gave me, she let me live without working for three years so that I can make that book happen. And then she just supported the both of us. So she’s just been so essential and instrumental to everything at the moment that she was like, Yes, I will let you live alongside me, that was just the best day of my life for sure. The worst day was definitely though when I almost died, that was like the hardest. Just like realizing how much I had let myself down, how much I was running away from myself and how everyone around me thought I had potential and I was just not doing anything good with that besides just thinking that I was having fun that sort of reckoning with all of that was very difficult but I was I’m very grateful that I lived through that. Yeah big shout out to Mrs. Pueblo for that stuff. She’s the boss. And yeah that’s the funny thing I was having a conversation with a hunter that was here on Monday and he said you know he said some of my worst hunts where I’m out in the wilderness with a hundred mile an hour wind and it’s raining I say to myself I I will never do this again and he said those are the things that a year later I think maybe I’ll go do that again and he said and the times where I’m like this is so awesome and I’m thinking this is the peak of happiness and pleasure is like a year later I think I don’t even actually want to do that again and it’s weird how as humans were kind of in these weird counter it

1:56:45 Counterintuitive places no it’s funny cuz things are always changing things are just you know I think being accustomed and developing a healthy relationship with change, not being averse to it, not craving it, just understanding that all the bad things, they’re eventually going to change and go away, and all the good things like cherish what you have now, right? Cherish it in an intelligent way, but they’re also going to be gone. Even the most beautiful relationships, they eventually end, right?

1:57:12 Someone passes away. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a big thing to try to understand. What scares you?

1:57:18 I don’t know. That’s a good question. I don’t know, it’s a good question. I guess just not doing my best. I think I really want to do my best with whatever I’m doing and I want to put more and more energy.

1:57:42 I think one of the things that I noticed about myself growing up was that I may have had a knack for things, but because I had a knack for things, I wouldn’t try very hard. So now one of the things that I’m doing is actively just putting more and more energy into whatever it is that I’m doing, either work or being more kind to my parents or my brother and sister or just being even more present and putting a lot of energy into everything. But not succeeding in that.

1:58:13 I think that’s definitely a bit of fear there because I just want to do a good job, want to be a good person and be okay with that. But that’s also something I got to work on because I shouldn’t have fear around that. I should just try my best and let it be. Yeah, well, at least you’re human, so that’s nice to know. What would we be surprised to learn about Diego, something you do that might surprise us that we wouldn’t expect?

1:58:38 Oh, that’s really funny. Someone the other day, my wife’s sister, it was either her or her friend. We were all hanging out for Passover. My wife is Jewish and we were hanging out And she asked me, what are the top three things that you think about? And I go, the first one is post-capitalism, right?

1:59:05 I’m always thinking about the future, like what’s gonna come next? The second one is nothingness. I’m always thinking about nothingness because I really believe everything is one, but it’s also a none. It’s a one and none. And the third is Love Island.

1:59:18 I’ve been spending so much time watching Love Island. And that’s probably the one thing that people don’t know. And it’s so funny because my wife and I are pretty serious people. We’re always having these discussions and we enjoy ourselves, but that’s one of the ways that we sort of just relax and just do nothing by just watching some Love Island. So like Love Island is new for us and living in New York City, like my friends, they just told me about it.

1:59:43 We just, it’s become a phenomenon for like 30-year-olds in the United States. I think we- Because it’s like a British thing, right? It’s totally, yes. But now they’re watching. It’s it’s um, but we just got it through Hulu and now yeah, everybody’s watching it over there I appreciate your honesty. Yeah, I think there was an article in New York Times recently They said like guilty pleasures are actually good for you You know, it’s like saying it’s fine some of this stuff in doses is actually you know It fulfills some kind of a need to just unplug and I think it’s really important I think people ask me when I when you know when I do events like, you know What should you do when you feel really tense or you know?

2:00:20 You’re going through some serious like releasing and you know, you feel all this whatever from the past coming up I’m like just chill out like relax go watch a funny movie like just be cool You know, like it’ll pass and sometimes you just need like a funny distraction and you’ll be okay. Yeah Yeah, all right. Good to know. I’m staying clear of Love Island every time I see it on the YouTube suggestions I’m like, I’m not going down there What keeps you awake at night?

2:00:45 I’ve actually been sleeping really good, to be honest. I’ve been sleeping well, and I think the other night I wasn’t able to sleep. I don’t know exactly why, but it was a good moment of practice, and I was able to really practice just being calm. There’s one thing our Vipassana teacher talks about, and he says that if you can’t fall asleep, you know, that’s fine. Just stay calm.

2:01:15 Calm you’re still gonna get a lot of rest if you just relax your body or meditate a little bit while you’re laying down and then you’ll wake up but if you start worrying then you’re just gonna wake up sick so I was using that as an opportunity to let me see if I really can stay calm right now even though I want to be sleeping but I’m not but that to be honest now there’s no like there’s not like particular thing. Do you worry about the future? Yeah you know I worry about my parents like my you know I want to make sure that I’m able to take care of them to make sure that my brother and sister are doing as best as they can and really switching up from like I didn’t realize how much my love had attachments to them.

2:01:54 You know, wanting my brother’s life to be a particular way, wanting my sister’s life to be a particular way and then I’m realizing way, way, way. I have no control over them nor should I be trying to control them. Let me just support them and the decisions that they’re making as long as they’re healthy decisions and let me just, you know, love them and just, you know, give them what they need. So that’s something that two things like worrying about their happiness in the future and also just making sure that I’m checking in with myself and I’m loving them well and that I’m not trying to make them or push them into a way that I want them to be and just letting them live, you know, letting them live their life because they’re not going to make the same choices that I’m going to make and nor are the choices that I’ve made the best choices for them. They need to figure it out on their own.

2:02:42 Yeah, it’s a good observation. Diego, I always ask everyone a few questions at the end. I’m going to ask you, if you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Diego and give that young man some advice, what would you tell him? Oh man, that was like really deep when I was so lost. I’d probably tell him that it’s It’s just what you think is fun right now is just a long stream of misery.

2:03:14 What you actually think, you think you’re enjoying yourself, you think you’re being cool. What you’re actually doing is just replicating all this sadness that you have inside you and making it more and more dense. And I think you need to get some help, like either go see a psychologist or start meditating if you’re ready, but be careful because you may lose your life. Strong advice, man. On that same note, best advice you ever received could come from your meditation instructor or a parent or something you read or anything.

2:03:46 Yeah, I think the best advice I received was probably the one that stuck with me recently is just let the fruit ripen. Put in the work, plant the seeds, and do what you’re supposed to be doing. I think especially in terms of like the meditation practice, like, you know, you don’t want to be craving particular results. The following success secrets are only available inside the London Real Tribe, where you get exclusive access and insights from our high performance guests on wealth creation, productivity, leadership, morning routines, health, and wellbeing.

2:04:24 To join our tribe community, go to londonreal.tv forward slash tribe. Now, let’s continue with the show. Be happy, you can be happy, but it takes effort to cultivate and undo those past patterns. But if you really commit to it, you can do some marvelous things. Really, our capacity is quite limitless.

2:04:45 Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s hard to see that sometimes, but it’s all in there, isn’t it? There’s so much in there, it’s incredible. I think everyone needs to follow you on Instagram right now, because it’s a great idea, and there’s some great stuff there. The book is inward, they get it on Amazon, I think.

2:05:00 Amazon bookstores everywhere. Bookstores, all that stuff. And yeah, I just really enjoy your stuff because it’s like a little bit of peace in the day and I can think about it. And, you know, it’s like, there’s always something there and some things resonate more depending on where I am in my journey, you know? But just really appreciate what you’re doing.

2:05:20 And I mean, I don’t think people realize you spent three years working on this stuff and I know, you went out on a limb to create this content you know, when it literally sounds insane. If you say, I’m gonna start posting quotes on Instagram and that’s what I’m gonna do with my life, I mean, that sounds crazy, you know? Yeah, it was a big, big risk. I don’t know if I really advise it to people, but if that’s what your intuition is telling you, then can you really ignore it?

2:05:46 And that’s good advice to anybody out there, you know? It’s like, and also, are you creating something that’s for the greater good? I think that’s always a good question. Is it useful? That’s my thing, is it useful?

2:05:57 Yeah, is it useful? And I mean, sometimes I look at my journey with London Real and like I wasn’t doing that in banking and I was miserable. And I think you’ve said this before, it’s also like, or maybe I’ve heard this somewhere, when you go to create something that’s useful, you have to do it selflessly. But when you do it selflessly, it actually makes you into this amazing person and you can have this incredible life. You know, I think you’re feeling that through everything you’re doing here and the feedback you get and the support allows you to go in deeper with what you’re doing.

2:06:29 So I’m really curious to see what you’re gonna do in the next five or 10 years, no pressure. But you know, you’re 31 now, and it’s just, I’d really be curious where this kind of goes organically, and I’m just super excited about it. So thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for doing what you’re doing, and stay in touch with us, and all the best, man.

2:06:47 Absolutely, thank you for such a genuine conversation. I really enjoyed it, that was amazing. My pleasure. Really grateful. It’s what we do here.

2:06:54 All right, brother, thank you. Thank you so much.