I think one of the first things that I'd suggest and explain to people is
that when I lived as a monk, a lot of the wisdom that we studied
and the eastern literatures that we spent time excavating,
those were not aimed at monks, those were just aimed at humanity.
The Vedas are 5000-year-old texts that literally talk about everything from
Ayurveda, which is the science of health.
So Veda means "wisdom" or "science of"
and so Ayurveda is the science of life, the science of health.
You have their own version of Vastu Veda, which is closest to Feng shui.
So how to design your home, how to set up different things around your home
for purposeful aesthetics.
You have the science of warfare in the Vedas.
So there's a whole text dedicated to that.
You reconcile that in the sense of there's
knowledge and wisdom on how to properly do each aspect
with integrity, with purpose, from a point of protection.
Recognising, I think me and you can probably vibe with this,
the idea that we all want a world, I think we'd all like a world that has no war.
But if we live in a world pretending that there is none of that,
and then we're not prepared for it, that sets us up worse.
And I think whether you look at that on the macro of war
or you look out on the micro of anxiety or stress or pressure...
if we pretend that stress doesn't exist,
it doesn't make it go away, it doesn't make it better.
But being prepared for it, actually allows us to potentially avoid it,
potentially navigate it with more integrity and authenticity
and today I feel like when you don't have codes for difficult things in society,
you see people make really bad mistakes.
You see people not having a code book or a rule book on leadership.
And that's what it leads to. You see people not having a code book or rulebook
on how to navigate war, and therefore, people do what they feel like.
And so I find that, what the Vedas were trying to do
was give you a set of code, and a set of rules, and a set of limits
so that you would be more controlled and more greedless, more negative desireless
in those situations so that you wouldn't be pulled into something by your ego,
but you could actually go back to something that would help you get there to
get the best result for people and humanity.
And I think that's what's so special about the Vedas,
that ultimately, it's dedicated to uplifting humanity
through each of these different things that we experience in life.
I think one of the first things that I'd suggest and explain to people is
that when I lived as a monk, a lot of the wisdom that we studied
and the eastern literatures that we spent time excavating,
those were not aimed at monks, those were just aimed at humanity.
So I think the first thing I'd say is 10 minutes alone every week
where you sit and you just observe your thoughts.
And write down every thought that comes up.
"This is weird."
"I hate this. It's boring."
"I can't believe Jay and Tom told me to do this."
Like whatever else is coming up, and write it down.
And just become comfortable becoming aware of your thoughts.
And what you'll find is that the first time you do this,
it is just going to be random noise like that.
"What shall I eat tonight? What's going on?" It's just going to be that stuff.
It might be: "I hate this. I'm uncomfortable.
This is not fun. I'm. I'm bored..." it will just be natural dialogue like that.
What you'll find is, the next time you do it,
or in the next after a couple of times that you do it,
you now might start asking interesting questions.
You might now start noticing a pattern of thoughts that repeats itself.
Like, "I've just been thinking for a week about what that person said to me
about how I look..."
or, "I've been thinking about what that person said to me about
something I did online and it's just been in my mind and it keeps repeating itself..."
Now you're going to start to find what you spend most of your time on.
So studies show we have 60,000-80,000 thoughts per day
and 80% of them are negative, and 80% of them are repetitive.
So if our life is not transforming our thoughts,
now if I asked you what are you thinking about, you're a self-aware person,
I'm pretty sure you could tell me on any given moment what you're thinking about,
you ask most people what they're thinking about
the reaction will be an emotion. Like, "I'm just stressed.
I've got too much on at the moment..." but we can't be really clear.
So what this is giving you is a clarity of what are those repeating negative thoughts
and how do we want to change them.
So that's step one is A) even becoming aware of the thoughts.
So if I ask an average person, when you wake up in the morning,
what's the first thought you have?
"Oh, I'm tired." That's the first thought for most people.
You finally made it to coffee, you had your morning coffee and you're thinking,
"God, I hope this coffee gets through me through the day because I'm so tired."
Second time you've had that thought.
You get to lunchtime, you're like, "God, is it only lunchtime?"
"And I can't even eat lunch because I'm busy working. God, I'm so tired."
You get the 6 PM, maybe you've got to work an extra hour,
because no one finishes work at 6 anymore. 7 PM, you finish, you go,
"I'm exhausted. I can't wait to get home."
You get home
and somehow at 11:37 PM, you get the courage to watch another episode
and you repeat the cycle. That's six thoughts in the same day.
Yes. So we want to disrupt that algorithm, that pattern that's been developed.
No, so we're not going to do that.
What we're going to do is we're going to say "I am tired..."
we're going to take that thought, we're going to accept it.
We're okay with that. We're good with that.
And, "I'm going to sleep early tonight."
So it's I'm accepting the thought that I'm feeling,
I'm not going to wake up and never feel I'm tired.
I mean, I wake up and feel I'm tired sometimes.
But I'll literally go, "I'm tired. I'm going to cancel my plans for the weekend."
I've done that so many times where I've had the busiest week at work.
I'm tired, I can feel that I'm stressed. I'm even getting a bit snappy with my wife.
Like I can feel all those things.
And I look at my weekend and my weekend is decked with social events
and I go to Radhi, I'm like,
"I'm about to cancel everything this weekend
because I don't think I have the resilience to get through."
But if I didn't give myself that, and all I keep saying all week is I'm tired,
then it gets to the weekend, my friends are coming and I'm like,
"God, I wish they weren't coming today."
Then they leave and I'm like, "oh God, I'm so relieved that they left."
"I wish they would have left earlier..." it's like all negativity, just brewing.
And so, what I'm saying is accept the feeling.
And what are you gonna do about?