Podcast Interview With Meditation Teacher Brian Simmons

Today’s interview is a special one for me. As I will have the opportunity to speak with a fellow meditator and learn more about his journey through mindfulness. My guest today is Brian Simmons. A former award-winning Writer/Producer for Comedy Central and currently Dean of Students in NYC, where he has pioneered the use of Mindfulness in diverse educational environments from high school to college. Brian has vigorously maintained an intensive daily Mindfulness practice since the 1990s and a studio.

Transcript

Welcome to the Turning Point podcast.

I am your host,

Marita Espada.

If you are already a fan of the podcast,

Thank you for your support and welcome back.

If you're new to the podcast,

I speak with top creators and entrepreneurs as we discuss business creativity,

Mental health,

And how those may interconnect with each other.

We never think about how living in autopilot can affect our path in life,

Our personal and professional goals,

Our health,

And even our relationships.

Mental health often takes a back seat in our lives,

But it's about time we prioritize it as we should.

Today's interview is a special one for me,

As I will have the opportunity to speak with a fellow meditator and learn more about his journey through mindfulness.

My guest today is Brian Simmons,

A former award-winning writer,

Producer for Comedy Central,

And currently the Dean of Students in New York City,

Where he has pioneered the use of mindfulness in diverse educational environments from high school to college.

He is also in the Teachers Council of New York Inside Meditation Center,

And you may also know him from the 10% Happier app,

Where he shares several talks.

He completed his teacher training at the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical College,

As well as the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California.

If you are enjoying the podcast,

I would really appreciate it if you would follow,

Subscribe,

Share it with a friend,

And maybe even leave a rating and a review.

It would mean the world to me.

Now,

My interview with Brian.

Hi,

Brian.

Thank you so much for being part of the podcast today.

I appreciate you being here.

Thank you very much,

Marit.

It's great to be here.

We were talking a little bit before starting the podcast,

But just for the sake of the listeners,

I want to unpack a bit more about your journey,

How you became interested in meditation,

What it means for you,

Anything that you want to share.

Well,

That is a huge,

Huge question.

And what I've noticed is that the biggest lesson or one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that why you meditate is as important and more important than how you meditate.

And in my 22 plus years of meditating on a daily basis,

Why I do it has dramatically changed.

Probably on a yearly basis,

It changes.

When I first began meditating in the nineties,

I had had anxiety attacks,

Panic attacks after I graduated college for a couple of years.

And I really was searching for something to stop them.

And along the way,

Mindfulness is not what ultimately cured it.

But I found something called mindfulness,

Which was not as popular as it is now.

And I kind of read about it and never really practiced it till a couple of years later,

I ended up getting a career in network television,

Being a writer,

Producer for Comedy Central.

And I had no training for this.

And I was thrown into this kind of stressful,

Exciting career.

And I leaned on the one thing that I believe might give me creativity,

Which was a mindfulness meditation practice.

And I have not looked back for decades.

So it's been the North Star for my life,

Really,

For many,

Many,

Many years.

Yeah.

And I meditate as well.

I've been probably doing it for,

I want to say four years,

But it's become a daily practice probably a year and a half ago where I was consistently making into a habit where I either do it really early in the morning or I do it in the morning and I do it at night.

And it's usually 10 to 15 minutes like it always.

And I'm to the point where if I do not do it,

I can feel the effects of not having taken that break and sitting in the cushion and just meditating.

And it works wonders for me.

Like,

You know,

I have a short fuse.

When I was younger,

I would kind of like self medicate with like drinking and just adrenaline packed adventures,

Packing my week and she's doing the stupidest thing.

So with meditation,

It's been able to help and other things that I've implemented in my life,

Too.

I'm actually writing a book called The Journey to Stillness and Ex-Adrenaline Seekers' Path to Resiliency.

And it's because I feel like there's a lot of people who might be in the same path.

You had mentioned that you were working for Comedy Central and that it's a very intense,

I feel like,

And anxiety and just I think like you have to go 100 miles per hour probably in that in that position that you were in.

Was there a point in time where you were like,

I'm going to maybe steer away from that job and go maybe into being more of a mindfulness teacher,

More into this other path?

Like,

How did that look like?

Well,

Ultimately,

That is what happened.

But it was not as definitive and precise as me saying,

Let me become a meditation teacher.

In fact,

That was not my ambition at all.

Sometimes life takes over.

And this is really one of the profound benefits of mindfulness practice is that when you're centered and you're in the present moment,

You can kind of see the tea leaves.

And when life changes,

Which it will for everybody,

You're able to be you can adapt in a way that's nimble.

So that's exactly what happened to me after almost a decade of a career,

A very successful career in network television,

Where I won multiple awards went to different networks,

It was really like a dream come true,

I suddenly fell sick.

I got ill.

And it lasted for many years without a clear diagnosis.

And under the heavy urging of physicians,

They said,

You need to find perhaps a career where you're pushing yourself less.

And I had the brilliant idea to think that if I became a New York City public school teacher,

I might have less stress.

How do you think that worked out?

At least I had my summers off so I could go on meditation retreats.

But I still did not think that I would be a mindfulness teacher.

However,

Years into that career,

When I could see how much stress was in public education,

And specifically the kids,

I mean,

These were all inner city kids that I was teaching,

I could see the standardized testing,

An insane amount of politics weighing down right down onto the kids,

And certainly the teachers scrambling to meet these needs.

It occurred to me that kind of everybody needed something.

And I didn't know what that something was.

And it turns out that that thing was literally and figuratively right beneath my nose.

And what I did was I began,

I created a mindfulness class for for high school kids,

I called it mindful fitness.

And it's been profiled in different documentaries and stuff.

And what it did was it really dramatically changed these kids lives.

We you know,

I had a school psychologist to measure them before and after,

And really to get hard data to show that their anxiety levels dropped,

Their ability to focus attention increased.

And from that point forward,

Really,

It changed my whole understanding of of education.

So I went knee deep into it.

And I began,

You know,

Training the kids.

Later I became the dean of the school in charge of discipline for New York City High School to also kind of a stressful gig,

Took it all from a mindfulness point of view.

So I began teaching mindfulness in the public education setting.

And outside of that my own,

You know,

Retreat practice and intense daily mindfulness practice,

I began teaching mindfulness to adults in Dharma centers and mindfulness centers.

So it's a funny thing,

Because when you practice in this way,

And you kind of yield to life,

It will take you in strange ways.

So I never set out to become a meditation teacher,

But it kind of Yeah,

And this is a beautiful thing,

Because I think I told you,

But I learned about you from the 10% happier app,

There was a talk that you did,

Probably was like 10 minutes or so,

Where you were explaining what you had done with with the kids of this particular school in New York.

And it really made me think,

Are we doing enough as as adults as a society to help younger generations maybe embrace this?

Because I think there's,

I don't know if you've heard it,

But I've heard it from some people that are that say,

Well,

Meditation doesn't work for me.

And for me,

That's really hard to really agree with it,

Because maybe not the whole idea of meditation,

And maybe not one particular one.

Maybe it's really hard for people.

And I've heard this a lot.

And maybe even for me,

When I first started,

Really hard for people to do like meta,

Because kind of loving kindness and giving loving kindness to yourself and others.

And I think a lot of people are like,

Oh,

No,

That's too corny.

I don't want to do that.

So they struggle with that one.

But maybe there's another type of meditation that you can do that you really find something that helps you.

So for me,

It's hard to,

To see how it might not help a particular person,

I think anyone can find benefit from it.

Well,

As you correctly point out,

There are many different kinds of meditation.

And you know,

As you say,

Loving kindness is one kind of meditation,

Which has profound effects,

But there can be an aversion to it.

I had an aversion to it for many years,

Because it kind of feels a little forced and a little sentimental.

And I'm going to be sending out good wishes to myself and the world and it felt very cheesy,

And kind of nauseated me a little bit at first.

Yeah,

After after many,

Many years now that I see the benefits,

I'm like,

Oh,

It actually works.

But yeah,

You kind of have to know your audience.

And that may not be right for each individual at each point in time.

But if I had someone in front of me here right now,

And they said what you said,

It doesn't work for me.

I would really,

Really be curious about,

Well,

What would it look like if it did work?

What do you think it should be doing?

What is your conception of mindfulness?

And what's possible?

And what often happens when I go through this inquiry with students,

Sometimes elderly students,

What you find is that there's many layers of expectation,

That kind of society has about it,

There are these kind of cartoonish notions of floating on a mountain top,

And you're never going to be upset again.

It's like,

Give me a break.

That's not life.

Forget about life in 2021.

Forget about life in any year.

That's just not how life rolls.

Life is a full contact sport.

It's challenging.

It will test you physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally.

Yes,

Every one of us will die at some point.

These are facts on the ground.

And no one just has an easy pass through all of that.

Mindfulness is not for that.

But what mindfulness has to offer is a way to relate to the changing nature of life in a way that is more centered,

Wise and balanced.

And if you can see life as it happens clearly,

That is a huge,

Huge advantage right there.

Yeah,

And a lot of beginners that start meditating,

I think,

You probably heard this too.

A lot of them think that they're going to see the changes of meditation while they're like meditating,

Like there's going to be like this light or something that shows up or something in particular where they have their eyes closed or maybe they're like,

You know,

Slowly like lacing down to the floor or their eyes open or however they're meditating.

And it's in the in the day to day.

And for me,

I've seen been trying to do more meta because I've been struggling to with like,

Oh,

This is so corny.

Like,

Let me see if I embrace it in another way.

What do I do?

And I've noticed that my empathy has really gone up to a point where I'm like,

Oh,

My God,

Like,

I can feel it.

I had a friend who lost her dog this week to due to terminal cancer and the dog was like four years old.

She didn't get to spend too much time with him.

And I've been feeling it like I've been thinking a lot about her and I've been feeling it because I love I love my dog like my own kid.

And she felt that way with her dog.

And I feel for her.

And I was like,

I don't know if in another point in time,

Maybe a year or two ago,

I would have felt this amount of empathy for what she's going through.

It's hard to know,

But it is valuable to reflect on those changes because you said that you've been practicing for four years.

I really wish that in the early days I had journaled about the changes that I was noticing in my life because it's so absent to me at this point.

It's so part of my life.

I don't know what it was like.

However,

I do have a memory.

This is when I was at Comedy Central and I was practicing maybe for a month or two months.

And I remember like walking down the hallway of Comedy Central and it occurring to me two o'clock on Tuesday.

Like I think prior to that,

My life was a blur.

Everything blended into each other and I was just going and going and going and going.

But I could identify that moment and it stood out to me.

I'm like,

Wow,

It felt like profound to see that.

And so yeah,

There are what look like small changes that can be very profound changes.

And to get caught up in this expectation candy of,

Yeah,

I heard about this guy who had lights and saw this and had this really hallucinatory experience.

That's all I'm not going to curse on your podcast,

Although that's unnecessary.

Let's put it that way.

What is necessary is to look squarely at what is happening when you feel like crap,

When your body feels like crap and you look directly at it,

You can breathe with it,

You can move forward anyway,

And you know what's happening in the mind.

These thoughts are coming up in the mind,

Right?

You're telling me things.

I don't have to believe them.

This is more profound than seeing lights or levitating or anything else you could imagine.

What good is that in real life?

But to be able to know what's happening,

This is huge.

Like these small things that look like they're small.

Well,

If you have a ship and you change the trajectory by one degree,

It's going to take it to the other side of the planet.

That's kind of the gains you're looking at from mindfulness.

Yeah.

And it's funny that you said that that one time in Comedy Center where you were looking,

You're like,

It's two p.

M.

On a Tuesday.

That happened to me because the way that I'm doing,

You know,

I've been meditating for a while,

But keeping it as a habit.

I have my cushions and I have a little like a candle in my symbols,

But I have a little notebook too.

And when there's things that I want to keep in mind after my meditation,

Not during,

But after,

I'll journal about it so that I see progress as well in what I'm doing rather than just noticing on my own.

But one day,

A couple of weeks ago,

Maybe a month ago,

I have no sense of time lately,

I was driving and I'm like,

I am never going to be as young as I am today.

And I don't know where and I'm like,

Where did this even come from?

That's encouraging.

Yeah,

I'm never going to be as young as I am today.

But that has been motivating me to be like,

Well,

If there's something that I want to do with my life,

Then I really have to do it.

And I don't know why I never,

Those thoughts would never cross my mind until like lately it's been more apparent.

So I was on a meditation retreat for about three weeks.

This is prior to COVID.

This is like summer of 2018 or something.

And then in the last seven days,

Teachers that two of my teachers that I know that you know,

Steve Armstrong and Kamala Masters,

Who I practiced with in Maui,

Where they live,

And they're just incredible.

I was on a retreat with them.

And we were practicing this particular technique.

It's called the Mahasi technique.

Without going into it,

The long and short of it is,

Whatever sensations,

Thoughts,

Whatever phenomena is arising in the moment,

You're kind of labeling it and you're saying,

Okay,

Itching,

Shifting,

Rising and falling or the breathing,

You're kind of identifying these things.

And it can really take you to a very concentrated place.

And it was maybe the five,

It was the final day of I think a three or four week retreat.

And the insight as I was sitting there,

I mean,

It was an hour before the thing finished and it occurred to me,

Huh,

This awareness that's aware of the pain in the knee or the thought or the sensations of the breath coming in and out,

That awareness is effervescent.

It has no age,

It's timeless.

And the more I identify with the awareness as opposed to the body,

My awareness,

I'm living in timelessness.

And what occurred to me was if I'm practicing in this way and I'm 92 years old in a nursing home with a failing body,

In a wheelchair,

In pain,

I will be young,

Timeless,

Effervescent because the awareness doesn't age.

Now people might be listening to this and be like,

Okay,

Woo woo,

Whatever,

You lost me on that.

And I'm not here to convince anyone of anything.

This was an insight that shifted my whole perception of time and age and what's possible.

And they're beautiful people.

I did a similar one,

Well now we're in COVID,

But I did a similar one that they have that they were doing online.

Cause what I'm trying to do now,

If I want to do a retreat because we can't really just like meet all together,

They're doing them online,

But I'm trying to get like an Airbnb just to like have a new place and keep the flow and just be away from my family so that I can actually concentrate on doing the retreat and follow the process of like,

I don't want to have cable or like my TV or any of those distractions.

It's just me doing the retreat.

And I did one with them.

I think it's the same one,

But a shorter version of it.

Cause I think it was only a weekend.

And it was great.

And I think Kamala has said something at one point where she was explaining a bit more about mindfulness and noting.

And she was like,

And the moment we're always right here.

So we make space for it.

And I'm always like,

Oh my God,

Like it's,

It seems so simple,

But at the same time,

It is so powerful what she said that every time that I feel overwhelmed,

I'm like,

You know,

It's kind of like this right now.

I'm going to make space for it.

This is not going to be permanent.

Yeah.

This idea of time is necessary.

This is what keeps us on schedules and functioning at jobs and we need this,

But it also can wreak havoc on our mind because we're constantly chasing a deadline,

Which in the relative sense is true.

Of course there's time.

That's why we have clocks.

We have to count calendars and we have to plan vacations and all this,

But from a more fundamental absolute point of view,

There is no time.

There's just here and now.

So if you can kind of work with both of this absolute in the relative,

You can honor the relative nature of time.

You and I met at that certain time today to do this.

I'll set an alarm clock tonight or hopefully I will not have to,

But we need to do these things and while I'm following the schedule or not following the schedule,

Can I just be here with this moment and allow myself to fully be present with feeling my bottom touching the seat that I'm sitting on right now,

Feeling my fingers,

Feeling that the air coming in and out as I'm breathing right now.

Even for people who are listening to this right now,

See if you can do it as you continue to listen.

Can you be where you are and can you be free of time in that way and just give yourself the gift of just presence right here,

Right now.

And that is really good advice and making just a note,

I have a lot of listeners that are creatives and some entrepreneurs that are trying to hustle and do their job and trying to put food on the table and do everything that they need to do simultaneously.

For someone that might tell you that they're too busy,

Like these people,

Like creators and entrepreneurs that are busy,

I have my schedule is packed,

But meditation can really impact their lives.

What advice would you give them?

There's so much out there,

But I'm curious what you would say.

I've even addressed this before myself.

You know,

I said earlier that I won awards at Comedy Central.

Three of them in particular were ideas,

Were campaigns where I wrote and produced an on-air campaign for Comedy Central.

And the idea that ultimately won the award came to me during meditation in three examples.

It was not in a moment where I was like,

I have a deadline.

This has to be good.

It's got to be great.

All of this.

I was just sitting for my normal meditation and the mind is very,

Very intelligent.

It processes things at levels that we can't even comprehend.

And my intention was not to kind of like abuse my meditation practice to give me a creative idea.

I wasn't even thinking in those terms.

Let me sit half hour meditation and like,

All this creative idea,

Eureka,

Just right in front of me,

Like someone handed me the secret to the universe.

Entrepreneurs,

Creative people know this.

You would not be a creative if you did not understand the power of presence.

What meditation and mindfulness is doing is cultivating it in a strategic kind of way rather than hoping it just arises.

This is a way to develop it.

And if you go back to these wisdom traditions,

You know,

Twenty six hundred years,

There's a lot to be said about how you can purposely build this.

So it's not an accident.

So it's not I'm busy versus my mindfulness practice.

Rather,

How can I be mindful as I create,

As I'm an entrepreneur?

Because it's not just about sitting on a cushion.

It's about changing how you live,

Walking down the street.

Can you feel your feet touching the ground driving?

Can you feel your hands on the steering wheel?

Or do you just want to magically appear at your destination and kind of forget how you got there,

Which is usually how most people kind of roll through life?

This is about weaving in awareness into our day to day.

It's not about becoming great meditators.

It's not even about going on retreats.

It's about living more consciously and purposely.

Mindfulness can help us do that.

Yeah.

And I like how you explain it,

Because I think a lot of people see meditation and hear about meditation and they think it's like this like mystical thing.

And again,

With the colors and this and maybe like the energy and they don't understand that it is much more than that.

And I try to explain it to people thinking about a particular meditation teacher and I hope I'm getting his last name correct.

George Mumford.

He used to teach meditation,

Or I think he still does.

He's very focused on meditation specifically to help your performance,

Specifically for sports.

And he worked with Kobe Bryant,

With Michael Jordan,

Phil Jackson,

And he helped them to embrace meditation.

And by that,

You can see they won multiple championships.

And he's like,

They would they would meditate and he made it very simple and showed them with meditation,

We can find ways to improve your performance.

And they embraced it because these are players that,

You know,

Want their performance to be top notch.

And so it's different for everyone.

Not only did they want their performance to be top notch,

But they inherently understood it.

George Mumford probably found the correct language to reach a Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan.

But those kind of superior athletes,

Anybody who's an artist,

Who's a dancer,

Who's a musician,

An actor,

An athlete,

They understand this intuitively.

There are pictures of Michael Jordan,

Go to Google,

Where you see Jordan Duncan,

Dunking the ball with his tongue out.

And he looks like a Zen monk.

He is in that moment.

I mean,

I played sports as a kid,

When you really have these like moments of high performance,

Time slows down.

It does what we said earlier.

Time disappears.

There is no time.

There's me and the ball or the net.

And life becomes very,

Very simple.

So what a good meditation teacher does is find a way to unpack all of this extra that you're talking about,

These expectations that are cartoonish,

They're not accurate and really get to the source.

So reaching these superior athletes,

They know this,

You just have to find the right way to speak to them.

Yeah,

That's right.

And something very simple too,

Is that I explained,

We talked a little bit about this before starting the podcast,

But I consider myself a meditation coach rather than a meditation teacher because I don't really have years of experience.

And so I can lead meditations,

But you know,

I don't have the wisdom and the experience that these people do.

But I do share with people when they're like,

I don't know how to make it a habit.

I don't know how to get it started.

I'm too busy.

I'm too this.

And I'm like,

For me,

I have two ways of doing it.

Like I have my cushions and everything in one corner.

I have a lamp that's very dim,

Very light.

And it's very welcoming for me to be like,

I really need to go to my space and meditate today.

And if I'm busy,

Then I do like the three simple breaths meditation,

Which I can do it in the car.

I can do it while I'm walking,

Just with my eyes open.

So I pay attention.

And so there's different ways.

It's just understanding how big of a difference this might make in your day to day and seeing today,

How does my schedule look like?

But where am I going to fit that meditation?

Is it going to be in my corner where I feel welcome and I'm going to do 50 minutes or is it going to be the quick three breaths?

So like,

How do I manage that through my day to day?

But embracing it and using it,

At least for me,

Is very important.

Well,

There are two things to that.

One,

I've personally noticed in myself and many others that the more people do this,

The more they tend to find the motivation in of themselves.

Like years ago,

If you had said,

OK,

Well,

You know,

You're going to go on a meditation retreat for five out of five weeks with your eyes closed,

Not talking to say who must be someone who doesn't have a life.

The only way you'll find the motivation to do something like that is if you know the benefits.

And most people,

When they practice,

They begin to see over time,

Oh,

This is good.

In fact,

One of my meditation teacher who had an impact when I was becoming a teacher,

Eugene Cash was his name,

And he's still a meditation teacher on the West Coast and Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

And he had a horrific bicycle accident where he was he almost died.

He had severe brain trauma.

They didn't know if he would have a normal life again.

And it took him years and years of recovery.

And he shared that when he came out of the hospital after months and he went home,

He saw his meditation cushion in the corner,

Didn't know what it was,

But instinctively walked up to it,

Sat on it,

Had no idea how to meditate or what it was for.

But there was the thought in his head.

This is good.

When your brain begins to practice this,

It will begin to realize over time this is good and your brain will find ways to come up with the time to do it.

In the beginning,

It can be difficult because you're just seeing the pain and there was a lot of pain in meditation.

You sit there,

Your knee falls asleep,

Your foot's on fire,

Your brain is screaming at you.

It can be very challenging.

So we have to kind of find ways to just get through it at certain points.

But over time we begin to see its value.

That's formal meditation,

Right?

When we're sitting down on a cushion.

But again,

What's really,

Really important,

Critical is the informal meditation.

So on the days where you don't have time to go to the corner of your room and schedule it in,

It's not a catastrophe.

You can still,

While we're talking right now,

I'm meditating now.

Do I look like the guy who's meditating?

No,

Not at all.

Right?

I'm not sitting there in the stereotype of like a meditator.

My eyes aren't closed,

All of this,

But I'm feeling the contact points of my body.

I'm hearing the words,

I'm seeing the visuals and I'm present with these arisings.

That's meditation.

The key is to live our lives like that.

Moment to moment,

Like right now,

Wherever you are right now,

What does it feel like?

What's the temperature?

What's the temperature in your left foot?

Is it warmer or cooler than your right foot?

All right.

What's the attitude of the mind right now?

Is it agitated,

Pressured,

Relaxed,

Ambivalent?

Checking in with these things galvanizes awareness.

It pulls us into the present moment.

So over time,

What we're doing is we're doing these strategic little check ins that have the effect of putting our attention back in the body.

And I think,

You know,

I was thinking about this the other day,

But I think when we're little and we're growing up,

We,

You know,

We're taught Monday through Friday,

You go to school and then the weekends is to have fun.

And that just keeps with you as you become a teenager,

A young adult.

And so we live in autopilot waiting for that Friday at 5 p.

M.

To then enjoy two days to then go back to five days of routine and maybe being upset because you don't like your 9 to 5 or whatever it is,

Or maybe you're having problems with your family or a friend or whatever.

So you're looking for that escape over the weekend.

And it's like we need to somehow kind of like reverse engineer maybe that mindset and not keep thinking that way and just keep in the moment like that Sunday night when people are like,

Oh,

Tomorrow's Monday.

So you don't enjoy your Sunday dinner.

You don't enjoy what you're doing Sunday night because you're thinking about tomorrow.

Yeah.

And it's like,

That's exactly what we're doing is we're reverse engineering our conditioning.

We're deep conditioning and reconditioning.

So like years and years ago,

I used to have this,

But well,

Are we trying to become like a,

Like a two year old again or an infant?

Cause an infant or two year old has no concept of time.

They're just in the now concept.

So are we trying to become a two year old?

But that's not exactly right because a two year old or an infant is completely overtaken by their emotions.

They're completely thrown sideways left and right.

So we don't want to aspire to that.

So what we need is really,

Again,

Like I was saying earlier,

This balance between the absolute view and the relative view.

The relative view is I have a job.

I have a mortgage,

Right?

I can't just bliss out and I'm going to sit there and follow my own nose and nothing matters.

Michael Jordan couldn't have done that.

You know,

He wouldn't have won championships,

All of this.

There are things to be done.

So we need to honor that,

But how are we doing them?

Is it possible to be fully engaged,

Fully intimate with our activities as we're doing it,

As we're doing them?

So that's how we kind of reverse engineer.

We have the presence,

The timelessness of the three year old,

But we have the wisdom of a fully cooked adult.

Yeah,

And I couldn't have said that better myself.

And I really enjoyed this conversation.

It's been fascinating.

I really like to speak with people that are like minded,

At least in this particular thing.

We can share so many things and your journey and my journey and advice that we can give people.

I really enjoy it.

But before we wrap up,

I like to ask two fun questions to my guests and I would love to ask you and give me your answers.

The first one is if you could have dinner with anyone from history,

Who would it be and why?

Well,

Before I answer that one,

I just want to point out in case anyone's itching to hear at the school where I did this work at in New York City was Food and Finance High School.

Just want to put that out there.

But to answer your question,

It's a tough one because I'm kind of caught between Jesus and Buddha.

But based on the nature of this conversation,

I'm going to go with Buddha because Buddha was the prince of re-engineering,

Re-engineering what the mind is capable of,

Re-engineering how we engage with our notions of ourselves,

Others and really tapping like human potential in a way that I don't see any other parallel.

I know a few years back there was a movie with Bradley Cooper,

Limitless.

When I see the Buddha,

I'm like,

That's real limitless.

Like a mind that has no boundaries has exceeded that.

Living this relative and absolute at a level that I can't even fathom.

I would love to sit across from that table and just bathe in that experience.

So I'm going with Siddhartha Gautama,

The Buddha.

Lovely,

Lovely.

And I like that movie,

Too.

They try to do a show or a spinoff or something,

But it did not come out as nice as that first movie.

So it had limits.

Yeah,

It had limits.

The other question is what show,

Documentary or book have you watched or read lately that you would recommend to folks?

I just finished a book by a Navy SEAL named David Goggins.

And the name of it is called Can't Hurt Me.

It's been out for a few years,

So people might have read this.

And it was phenomenal.

If you're familiar with this man's work,

He pushed his physical body to unbelievable extremes.

And what he reveals along the way,

He doesn't appear to be a meditator or anything like that,

But he kind of is without knowing it because he pushed his body in order to test his mind.

And what he found was on the other end of suffering,

He found freedom.

It almost sounds like he's talking in classical Buddhist type language,

But that's not his intent.

So he uses this militaristic type language.

And he says that your mind has a tactical advantage over you.

And you have to basically run a counterinsurgency against the tactical advantage your mind has on you.

And I'm like,

Man,

He's right.

That's exactly what mindfulness is,

What these ancient Buddhists were telling us,

That the mind has capacities for,

Like greed,

Hatred,

Ignorance,

Delusion.

And it really has a tactical advantage over us.

And to go back to the last question,

Buddhism,

Buddha,

Or even if you're not into Buddhism or any kind of religion,

Just mindfulness itself is finding a way to reverse engineer the tactical advantage over the mind,

Which sounds kind of clunky,

But let's just simplify to what we were talking about before.

My mind is chewed up.

What am I going to do?

Am I going to lose my job?

Is this going to happen?

Is that going to happen?

All of these things that could happen,

I'm not saying that they're unrealistic and that we shouldn't realistically look at them,

But when they dominate our mental stream,

Can we be in this moment?

Can I feel myself sitting here?

Can I take a breath and can I regain the tactical advantage?

Yeah.

And I haven't read the book.

It's in my list to read,

But I have watched videos of him and I know part,

A little bit of his story because of those videos.

And I know that he was overweight and then he pushed his body to another level and got really fit.

And it was,

Even seeing the pictures,

It's just mind blowing.

It looks like a completely different person and it must have taken a lot of effort just mentally to get from A to B.

And so I'm very interested in reading that book.

So for other folks that are interested,

I have it to your list too.

So beautiful.

Ryan,

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Thank you,

Marita.

When I launched the podcast,

It was primarily about business and creative ventures.

But as time passed,

I realized that the balance between those ventures and mental health is not something that we talk about often.

It's a bit taboo,

But it shouldn't.

It makes the difference between performing better and living a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

We asked top entrepreneurs what their workout routine to keep their body sharp is,

But we don't ask how they keep up with their mental health and how they keep their mind sharp.

Don't get me wrong.

It's proven scientifically that working out does help our mind as well,

But we need to do more.

Stress,

Depression,

Anxiety among adults is rising every year.

So we need to do better for ourselves and for our society.

I hope this episode helps you in finding ways to do that,

But for now,

Peace out and see you next time.

Reviews

This was an education in collaboration as well as meditation, thank you for this fresh motivation