You look at people standing at the bus stop for 10 mins waiting for the bus. They get
uncomfortable with being with themselves so they pull out their phone they start engaging
with something. Cause to actually be with you, is probably one of the most challenging
things that you can face in life. Cause if you’re not feeling well what do you do you
go online right? And the whole purpose of the monastery is to strip everything and everyone
away from a person and they’re only left with themselves. You give them 2 sets of robes
put them in a little hut and you go like here live with yourself. And it becomes extremely
painful because there’s no escape. So what did you start to learn about yourself? Everything.
You see all the beautiful things about yourself and you see all the ugly things about yourself
and the way to survive right off the bat is to learn to accept you for who you are. And
if you don’t accept yourself for who you are you’ll never make it in the monastery.
You just really have to put 2 arms around yourself and go this is me. Accepting doesn’t
mean condoning. It’s just acknowledging that this is where you are right now. You’re
made up of good things and not so good things and it’s okay. I’ve always looked at myself
as a building under construction there’s still work going on. There’s scaffolding
there are tools lying around there are nails but it’s a work in progress. And that’s
the first thing you have to do as a monk is accept yourself for who you are. Because as
soon as you go in you’re going to see everything. And if you don’t accept yourself for who
you are you’ll wanna leave. Simplify your life. Everybody is so busy. Everybody’s
got a lot of things to do. We don’t actually have a lot of things to do. We don’t have
priorities in life. Most people don’t have clear priorities in life. You know for me
my goal is to simplify my life, simplify the number of people in my life, and simplify
the number of things in my life. We only have a finite amount of energy each day. But every
year we have more people in our lives. Is that a fair statement? More Facebook friends
more people that you’ve connected with but your energy stays the same. So it’s not
a proportionate growth. If your energy is increasing every year proportionately with
the number of things and people in your life, then we don’t have to talk about this. But
your energy level is the same but the amount of people and things in your life are growing
almost exponentially. So where’s that doesn’t work. So for me it’s always about simplifying
first the people and things into your life into who and what’s most important, taking
that finite energy that you have each day and focusing. The second step is learning
how to focus and concentrate that finite amount of energy into the people and things that
truly matter. Now you start to create a lifestyle that you actually love because you invested
into people and things that matter. And the by product of that is happiness. Happiness
is not a goal. And if you ask most people what do you want in life they say I want to
be happy. I always say you should never pursue happiness. Don’t pursue happiness, pursue
a lifestyle where the by product of that lifestyle is happiness. Happiness comes as a by product.
I spend time with the people that I love what is my by product? I’m happy. I spend time
with people I don’t like I’m not happy. So don’t pursue happiness pursue a lifestyle
that gives happiness. But in order to then pursue that lifestyle we need to be clear
of what you want in life. What’s your purpose in life? And people don’t know this because
they don’t spend any time with themselves. There you go. Simple question. What’s your
purpose in life? No idea. What colour is your tie Brian? I think it’s red. It’s red
right? I mean not very difficult to answer. But people don’t know because they never
spend any time with themselves I always say you know people, people make time for everything
and everyone else in their life, but they never make time for themselves. If you go
up to someone who you know and say like would you like to catch up for coffee? Let’s do
coffee. I can’t this week. But I can next week. How about Thursday 7pm? Perfect. I’ll
see you at this place. When was the last time someone’s willing to take time out of their
life to spend time with themselves? So if you want to get to know yourself you need
to spend time with yourself. But in a way that you can enquire right? So people say
to me things like I walk my dog in the park that’s my time with myself. And I’m like
no it’s not. That’s you walking the dog. People go like oh you know they go for a jog.
That’s my alone time. No that’s you jogging avoiding traffic. Watching where you’re
stepping so you don’t trip and fall over. Spending time with yourself is sitting down
and closing your eyes not interacting with the outside world and actually going inside
and having that conversation. The same conversation I would have with you like hey Brian where
did you grow up? If you said California do you like to surf? No? Hate the water love
the water? Tell me. And people don’t have that conversation because they don’t have
that conversation with themselves. They don’t end up knowing what they want in life. Because
they don’t know what they want in life they can’t focus that finite amount of energy
and then they don’t live a lifestyle that brings them happiness, and they wind up being
unhappy.