How To Raise A Conscious Child With Guru Singh

Welcome to another edition Guru Corner — a spiritual version of my popular Coach's Corner series featuring my favorite teacher on all things mystic and metaphysical, Guru Singh. Fusing Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism, Guru Singh is a celebrated third-generation Sikh yogi and master spiritual teacher who has been studying and teaching Kundalini Yoga for more than 40 years. He is the author of several books, a powerful lecturer and behind-the-scenes guide to many a luminary, including Fortune 500 CEOs, athletes, and artists. A peer of rock legends like Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, Guru Singh is also a supremely talented musician who began his recording career on Warner Bros’ Reprise label in the 1960s. When he isn’t recording tracks with people like Seal, he’s bringing down the house on the daily at Yoga West, his Los Angeles home base. Over the last couple years, I have grown quite close with Guru Singh, a beautiful and highly relatable consciousness I’m proud to call friend, family and mentor. It’s a privilege to share more of his powerful wisdom with you today. A companion piece to my recent podcast with author and parenting expert KJ Dell'Antonia (RRP #396), today's conversation is an intimate exploration into the art of parenting through the lens of child rearing as spiritual practice. We discuss the challenges of raising a generation required to face problems created preceding generations. We pit the perils of social media against the importance of digital fluency. We explore the importance of cultivating a healthy sense of self amidst the chaos of family life; how to reframe failure as opportunity; and the importance of balancing discipline while encouraging daydreaming. Communication is paramount, so we dissect strategies for keeping it open and honest. None of us parent perfectly. But the way forward is to better master ourselves, our actions and reactions. My hope is that this exchange will empower you with some tools to do just that. Like my conversation with KJ, there is plenty of wisdom here for everyone, irrespective of your child rearing status. So even if you don't have children and never plan to, I encourage you to listen or watch with an open mind. Note: If you missed our initial conversations, start with episode 267 and then enjoy episodes 332,368 and 393. Final Note: The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube HERE (just make sure to subscribe!) Let the master class resume. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually gonna make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Guru Singh?

  Don't always be the authority. Be flexible in the positioning. Buy the space that gives you time to be able to have more of a contemplative relationship with the information that's sometimes being dealt to you in a very disrespectful or seemingly disrespectful way. If we don't allow ourselves to be imperfect, we'll never get good. In the raising of children, there is no expert. But there are those who are more open, who are more vulnerable, who will allow more sovereignty. They'll be more skilled, but nobody's expert.

• 1:46Rich Roll?

  That's Guru Singh, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. What's the word? How you doing? What's going on? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to episode 400 of the podcast. 400 episodes. That is so unreal. What it means essentially is that there's about somewhere between 800 and 900 hours of conversations over the last six years, recorded and freely available to everybody. I just can't even imagine that I've spent that much time with so many people. It's extraordinary. And this is kind of an unreal benchmark, and it's left me reflecting

• 2:41Rich Roll?

  back to episode one, which I recorded in November of 2012. And at that time, I could have never imagined that what began essentially as an experiment would mature into what has become today. And I think what I take from that is the power of just beginning something, of following a thread, of trusting a gut feeling, of resisting the urge to have everything mapped out, the willingness to be imperfect, to fail in public. Because when you just engage in the process of doing something you love, or that you slowly fall in love with over time, I really believe that magical things can happen. And I'm definitely the

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  product of this. So many guests I've had on the show over the years are great examples of this as well. And I think it speaks to the power that we all have to more deeply express that which is truly authentic in service of something greater than ourselves. And the magic that can transpire as a direct result of engaging that impulse, of working hard and being unwavering and steadfast in your commitment. Anyway, I just wanted to take this benchmark, this landmark, to thank you. I'm deeply grateful that I get to do this thing and that you are deriving value from it. It's really a dream. Speaking of a dream and gratitude, if you listened to my podcast with Scott Harrison from a few

• 4:09Rich Roll?

  days ago, then you know I'm celebrating my 52nd birthday with a goal of raising $100,000 by four years end to help Charity Water bring clean water to those in need. We raised over $10,000 in the first 24 hours, which is amazing. Right now, we're hovering around, I think it's like $18,000 as of today. Just a couple of days in, we're still in the first week. So that is extraordinary. Thank you. You guys are amazing, but we still have a long way to go. $100,000 is a very ambitious goal, but I think it's totally doable with your help. So please help me to learn more about this mission. Listen to my podcast with Scott, that's episode 399. And to donate, go to my.cheritywater.org/ritual

• 4:54Rich Roll?

  and I'll put a link in the show notes to that. Okay, so today is yet another installment of Guru Corner, featuring my favorite magical, mystical, brilliant being Guru Singh, my friend, my advisor on many things, and truly one of my favorite people. At this point, the vast majority of you are already quite familiar with this man and his work. So I'm going to dispense with the long bio, the long introduction. For those of you that are new, I encourage you to listen to our previous conversations. Those are episodes 267, 332, and 368. And I just want to say he's a very wise soul. He's a celebrated master, spiritual teacher, and author, a musician, a father,

• 5:37Rich Roll?

  and really a gift to humanity, who has been teaching and studying Kundalini Yoga for the past 40-plus years. And today's conversation is all about parenting. And it stands as sort of a companion piece to my recent podcast with author and parenting expert KJ Delantonia, and the specifics of which I'm going to get into in a moment. But first.

• 6:09Rich Roll?

  Okay. Guru Corner, Guru Singh, parenting.

• 6:14Rich Roll?

  You know, in so many ways, parenting is very analogous to running an ultra marathon. It's super frickin hard. It will test you well beyond your perceived limits. It's grueling. It challenges you to, to reach deep, deep inside your soul and then keep digging. And then when you're feeling scared or over challenged or at the very end of your rope, you gotta keep your head on straight. You gotta make sure that you continue to make decisions that are moving you forward in a healthy way and, and really keep your family moving forward in a healthy way. And you gotta take your personal crap out of the equation. But for me, parenting has also been incredibly rewarding, gratifying, absolutely, totally worth it. And today, we're going to explore all of it. Just like

• 6:59Rich Roll?

  my conversation with KJ, there is plenty of wisdom here for everybody, irrespective of your child rearing status. So please stay tuned, even if you're not a parent or don't want kids. And what do we talk about? Well, we talk about what it's like to raise a generation to face and tackle the problems created by us and the generations that preceded us. It's about the power and perils of, of social media and the currency of digital media fluency. Talk about the importance of cultivating a healthy sense of self, a healthy set of boundaries, balancing discipline with daydreaming. We talk about reframing failure and mistakes as opportunities, the importance of open and honest communication, and, and understanding

• 7:43Rich Roll?

  and accepting and embracing that none of us really have it completely figured out. Again, these are lessons appropriate for all, whether you're a parent of 10 kids, an aunt, or a 21-year-old college student who never wants kids. So let us explore.

• 8:05Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, we're back. We're back for another Guru Corner. I feel like I just talked to you.

• 8:12Guru Singh?

  That was a no.

• 8:14Rich Roll?

  And you're wearing the same thing.

• 8:16Guru Singh?

  Yeah, well, you know, you know, one, one time somebody said, how do you choose what to wear? And I said, that's a joke, right?

• 8:26Rich Roll?

  But you do have, you have some variety.

• 8:29Guru Singh?

  Yeah, I go either, I go either with blues or oranges or maroons on top of white.

• 8:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you got it dialed in, my friend. Because you know how to rock it. You're looking good.

• 8:41Guru Singh?

  So, as we were, as we were talking before coming on to the desk here, one of your technicians said that Yogi Bajin considered me his favorite musician.

• 8:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Guru Singh?

  I had never, ever heard that in my entire life.

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, come on.

• 9:01Guru Singh?

  He wasn't one to be, you know, describing someone as his favorite, you know, because that was a little too narrow. But hey, if he told somebody that I was, I'll take it.

• 9:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so that, you like how that landed.

• 9:14Guru Singh?

  I do.

• 9:17Rich Roll?

  Well, there couldn't have been, I mean, how many, were there a lot of musicians around him?

• 9:20Guru Singh?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  I mean, you were rocking it back then, so.

• 9:22Guru Singh?

  For sure.

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, I'm surprised that you're surprised by that.

• 9:26Guru Singh?

  Well, only in that, you know, the idea of, they say in spirituality, you should be egoless and ego-free. And I completely disregard that. I think that if you, if you polish and cut your ego to be brilliant, you should use it. And so when I hear those things, it just, it just helps me polish and cut my ego.

• 9:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, we all like to hear nice things about ourselves out in the world, from, especially from people that we respect.

• 9:56Guru Singh?

  Yeah, like those most intimate with us, you know.

• 10:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:00Guru Singh?

  Like our 14-year-olds or.

• 10:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so that's what we're going to talk about today. We're gonna, we're gonna kind of zone this in, focus it on, on parenting. And I guess I have self-serving reasons for that on some level. I mean, we have a 14-year-old daughter.

• 10:18Rich Roll?

  She just started a brand-new high school. High school in general. It's her first year of high school. But instead of going to school near our house, she spent the majority of last year putting together a portfolio of visual art to try to get into the performing arts high school here in Los Angeles. It's a public institution, but it's very prestigious, very difficult to get into. You have to apply. You have to go and defend your portfolio. It's a whole thing. A lot of people are trying to get in, and she got in, which is fantastic. We couldn't be happier or more proud of her. But this school happens to be a two-hour drive from our house.

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  We live way out in Malibu Canyon, near Calabasas. This school is east of downtown. So for those of you who know Los Angeles and think about LA as just an octopus of freeways, I want you to even expand your concept of that even further. Wow. Because to get from where we live to this school, which is on the 10 freeway after you pass downtown on the way to, like, San Bernardino. It's just past downtown. After you pass through the gridlock. Exactly. Right when you get to the other side of it, and then you're there. And it's too far to do a daily commute. I mean, you could. You'll be in the car for four hours every day. It's not conducive to Mathis's development. It's certainly not advisable.

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  It's not something I want to do or my wife wants to do. So we're trying to figure out. She just started two weeks ago. We're trying to figure out, how are we going to manage this and create a sustainable solution that works for, not just Mathis, but our entire family? We've kind of settled on the realization that there's no way around the fact that we're going to have to rent an apartment near the school. We found a place that I think is probably going to work that's in downtown. It's like 10 minutes from the school. But this means that we're upending our entire family life. My two older boys, who are 22 and 23, moved out this past year. So it's just my wife and I and our two daughters. But we have a younger daughter who goes to school right near our home. So now, this is going to mean that Julie and I

• 12:29Rich Roll?

  are going to have to both be single parents, taking turns being downtown with our older daughter while the other one is tending to our younger daughter, and then switching. So, life is getting interesting, it's changing. And what's beautiful about it is that we are in this privileged position to be able to support Mathis in the furtherance of her dream. Because I feel like my family has done so much to support me that allows me to do what I get to do today. And it's her turn now.

• 13:07Rich Roll?

  And it's a privilege as a parent to be able to be able to show up for her in that way. But it's gonna be hard, it's gonna be a lot. And also, at 14, it's a very interesting age, you know, where she's trying to differentiate. If it was up to her, she would just get an apartment by herself and like manage it, and she doesn't need us. She's already got the whole world figured out, and we're just in her way. And trying to figure out how to parent through that in a responsible way and, you know, be a voice of reason for this developing young adult is a tricky equation to solve.

• 13:50Guru Singh?

  Well, this is a beautiful picture. Because you and Srimati, you and your wife Julie are... I won't use the word resigning, because that's got a negative connotation. You're committing your lives to the future. And sustaining your lives in the present at the same time. Imagine if you were to be a normal, whatever that means, parent, and you felt that this idea was unreasonable,

• 14:34Guru Singh?

  that it was too much disruption. And then Mathis would grow up with an unfulfilled dream.

• 14:47Guru Singh?

  And have to live with that lack of that fulfilling three, four years of this incredible high school for the rest of her entire life, which is, you know, what, 100 years, 110, 120 years, whatever, because we're in longevity mode.

• 15:02Rich Roll?

  150 years?

• 15:03Guru Singh?

  Absolutely.

• 15:04Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah.

• 15:05Guru Singh?

  And so you're accommodating while still sustaining, you're accommodating the future while sustaining the present. What's more, what's more reasonable than that?

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:16Guru Singh?

  And it's crazy.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  It is crazy. I would say we're attempting to accommodate the situation. It's uncertain, the sustainability aspect of it is unclear at this point. And it is unreasonable in many ways. You can easily make a logical argument as to why this is totally unreasonable, but that's why it's so awesome, because it is unreasonable. It's unreasonable for us to say, our daughter's going to go to this school that's two hours away that completely disrupts our lives and makes it challenging for Julie and I to even do what we need to do professionally throughout the day, let alone attend to our marriage. It's going to push us, it's going to challenge us, but that's what makes it super cool.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  And I can't be somebody who turns on a microphone and sits here and tells people to pursue their dreams if I'm not going to show up for my daughter and do everything that's in my power to, to support her in the furtherance of, of her own dream.

• 16:17Guru Singh?

  Well, let's also think of that in terms of the culture. The culture and society of our world right now, in this modern version, is that it is so important for our children to have the tools that they're going to need to make this future sustainable, because science, and particularly deep science, but even, you know, even, you know, the layman's science right now is talking about, you know, humanity doesn't make it through to the end of the century. But then you have, you know, this, this idea of if we keep producing children

• 17:02Guru Singh?

  as we have been, we're going to continue to make the mistakes that we've been making. We start producing children that are exceptional and extraordinary because we supported them in their dreams. Because these dreams are not dreams that they've found in a magazine somewhere. These, in many instances, these dreams like Mathis, your daughter, these dreams are these deep, deep intuitive dreams. Something that comes from way, way back in their evolution. And if we can allow those things to take place, if we can support those things in not only the children that are biologically related to us, but in children in general,

• 17:44Guru Singh?

  and do the things with the social structure, do the things with the cultures, like provide better education, create these schools, create a school exactly like that, reproduce it out here, closer to home. Put five of them in every major city. Some that deal with science, some that deal with technology, some that deal with the arts, some that deal with athletics, whatever it is. And really start addressing children not as all the same, but as very unique individuals.

• 18:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it would be beautiful if we could accomplish that. I mean, I think that...

• 18:23Guru Singh?

  It would save you a big drive time.

• 18:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, right? If we could have this here. But, but I feel like this particular school is a good example of that because every kid who's there had to apply and had to jump through a lot of hoops to get there, much like a child who's trying to get into a college. So every, I said to my daughter, you know, a couple of days into it, I said, "What's the biggest difference between this school and the school you were going to last year?" And she said... Everybody is so happy to be there. They all want to be there.

• 18:55Guru Singh?

  Wow.

• 18:56Rich Roll?

  And isn't that a beautiful thing? Like, kids who are 14, 15, all the way up to high school, who are there because that's where they want to be, not because that's where they're told they have to be.

• 19:07Guru Singh?

  And the dropout rate in today's world of education is understandable because the kids aren't going to a school that serves their passions. This school serves your daughter's passion. If we could enable schools to serve passions and know that children are being born on earth, it happens everywhere. When your body is starting to break down, your body starts to produce cells that are going to help it to save it from breaking down further. The same thing is true in this world. As this world becomes less and less sustainable,

• 19:51Guru Singh?

  the universe is providing children through soul bodies and physical bodies that are capable of turning this thing around. In other words, the children that are going to live deeply into the future are capable of preparing us to sustain the future. And if we allow them to go after their passions, that's where the message that they're trying to follow is located. So wow, this is incredible. But we need to be very clear that the society in general needs to be encouraged to provide more of these kinds of facilities.

• 20:30Rich Roll?

  Right. I feel like when this young generation comes of age, they're capable of making that change, but I would like to see it a lot sooner.

• 20:39Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 20:40Rich Roll?

  You know, we were talking a little bit earlier off the mics about... The millennials and the Generation Z and how they really are qualitatively different from my generation, from your generation, and how they navigate and perceive the world. Like, this is a group of people that, in many ways, gets a bad rap. Oh, they're entitled. Oh, they're, you know, they don't understand.

• 21:08Guru Singh?

  Well, they get a bad rap from our generation.

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. But this is the way it always is, right? You know? This is a sign that we're just getting older. But they get a bad rap for being entitled babies, or whatever it is. But ultimately, you know, I have incredible relationships with young people. And it's one of the great things about what I get to do is I get to be around a lot of people who are much younger than me. And I see a group of people who are incredibly engaged, who are committed to working towards a better future, a better planet, a better country, who truly believe that when they spend their dollar, that they are voting for something. They're either voting for the world that they want to see, or they're voting against that. Like, they make that connection in

• 21:53Rich Roll?

  a way that we just never thought about, really. And that gives me great hope, and it makes me optimistic for the future. But I think we have a lot of work in the meantime while those generations are still in gestation mode, and we're still at the helm. I heard a comedian, who was it the other day, tell a joke. Can't remember who it was. But basically, the joke went something like, you know, when I pull out of my car, and I get behind a school bus, and all the kids in the back of the school bus look out the back window and give me the finger?

• 22:28Guru Singh?

  Finger.

• 22:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I'm like, why you give me the finger? I didn't do anything. And then I go, oh, yeah, never mind. You know, like, we created the world that they're saying, we're inheriting this world that you have, you know, screwed up in so many ways, and now we gotta fix it for you.

• 22:44Guru Singh?

  Yeah, you know, that was actually Bill Maher.

• 22:46Rich Roll?

  Oh, it was Bill Maher. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:49Guru Singh?

  It was that monologue he does at the end.

• 22:51Rich Roll?

  Yes, I just heard that.

• 22:51Guru Singh?

  What is it called?

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  Uh, New Rules.

• 22:55Guru Singh?

  New Rules.

• 22:55Rich Roll?

  New Rules, yeah.

• 22:56Guru Singh?

  Yeah. So, the idea that you said, you know, we have to redefine terms in many ways. One of the terms that you used was entitled. And a lot of people will use that word as a negative in a derogatory statement. But I look at it as an opportunist, an opportunity in an opportunistic moment. If a child is entitled and they're not having to struggle, then they have the opportunity to sit back and go, okay, what is it that I'm actually motivated to do? Rather than, I don't have time to think about my motivation because I just have to take care of what's going on.

• 23:40Guru Singh?

  And so throughout history, there's been this constant struggle. And all of a sudden, kids aren't struggling anymore. They may be struggling emotionally, and we'll deal with that in a moment. But, and they may be struggling in other ways. But there's a lot of, there's a lot of things out there that they're physically not having to struggle with any longer, which gives them an opportunity to sit and contemplate. And when they sit and contemplate, sometimes, you know, when they're sitting and daydreaming in school, that's a good opportunity for new ideas to come through. And they'll be reprimanded for that. I always remember the old saying, you know, you spend the first five years of your life learning how to walk and talk,

• 24:25Guru Singh?

  and then go into school and be told to sit down and shut up. Right? But the idea of being able to daydream in a school, being able to contemplate, rather than always having to look busy, always having to look like you're applying yourself.

• 24:50Rich Roll?

  Those moments of contemplation are fewer and far between and are becoming more and more compromised with the encroachment of this little device we carry around in our pockets that is begging for our attention 24 hours a day.

• 25:05Guru Singh?

  The social media instrument?

• 25:06Rich Roll?

  Right. So the days of daydreaming under a tree or, you know, kicking a can down the road or going to build a dam in the, in the, you know, in the creek in the backyard have all been supplanted with technology and very addictive technology at that. So one of the things that I struggle with, and, look, you know, I- I'm as guilty of this as anybody, but it's particularly noticeable in younger people with minds that are still in formation and still developing. And when you notice that the head, you know, the neck is always craned and it's facing the device at all times, it leaves me to wonder, where is that quiet time? Where is that contemplation happening?

• 25:50Rich Roll?

  Where is that space that's required for really trying to figure out, you know, what your voice is and how to express it? I feel like that's really being compromised in a substantial way.

• 26:03Guru Singh?

  Well, that is an advice to parenting, isn't it? That you do have to be able to enforce some discipline. I know now that I'm not parenting, I'm already done that. My wife and I have two children, and now they have children. And so now we're grandparenting. And we're watching parenting by millennials, you know, and we're watching the children that are growing up under them. And there's screen time.

• 26:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Guru Singh?

  And then there's not screen time. When they got back to, from a summer vacation, you know, they had been in so many locations where there were big screens, that the kids were just basically, you know, where's the big screen? You know, and so they took the TV and they said, it's out for repair. And they just removed the television. And the children now are getting into books and things, and they're getting back into their routine. And as soon as that routine is reestablished, they'll, you know, reintroduce the screen. But it's a, it's a challenge, and it's a, and it's a challenge that parents must take on.

• 27:14Guru Singh?

  And because to be fixated on that is a couple of things. Physically, it's too much blue light in the system because, you know, it's, it's noon time sun all day, all night. Which is disruptive to the, you know, to the attitudes in the psychoemotional balance, but it's also very much involved in the moment in a bad way, as opposed to being in the moment in a good way, in the now. And the moment is, was I recognized in this moment? Did I get a friend in this moment? Was I liked in this moment?

• 27:58Rich Roll?

  That speech doesn't land with the average 14-year-old.

• 28:04Guru Singh?

  I'm not talking to the 14-year-old.

• 28:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, you're talking to the parent, right?

• 28:07Guru Singh?

  I'm talking to the parent of the 14-year-old.

• 28:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because the moment can't compete with the stimulus provided by the latest post. And a book has a hard time standing up to the allure of whatever's going on on YouTube or Instagram. It's hard. And as a parent, I struggle with this. And I struggle with it personally. I'm as addicted as anybody, you know, I'm the first to admit that. So finding a way to parent through that is challenging, because I realize like my job is not to be my children's best friend, it's to guide them and to erect healthy boundaries and try

• 28:52Rich Roll?

  to sort of, you know, help them understand how to develop in a healthy and appropriate way. But this is something I'm doing highly imperfectly. And I'm always, you know, especially as my older daughter gets older, and she's, like I said, differentiating, she didn't want to hear about it.

• 29:13Guru Singh?

  Well, I think that, I think that what you just said is very, very important for everyone to understand, that we're going to be experimenting at this. These things have only been around for a decade. And

• 29:28Guru Singh?

  We will all be doing it imperfectly. And if we can't do things imperfectly, we will never find out how to do them correctly. Because the learning curve in anything that we do, whether it's training for a triathlon, whether it's working in meditation and yoga, if we don't allow ourselves to be imperfect, we'll never get good. And I like the idea of, you know, to equate this to another part of what we talk about sometimes is that going on a fast, going on a no-screen time, going on an adventure just to come back and have a different relationship and a different perspective of the screen.

• 30:12Guru Singh?

  And finding out that, geez, you know, I missed five days of the screen and, you know, I'm just as good as I would have been otherwise. I used to do that with my guitar because, as a matter of fact, I was gonna bring my guitar today, but I'll do it next time.

• 30:28Rich Roll?

  I got one right behind me. I should have had you play the last one there.

• 30:31Guru Singh?

  Okay, Ray, that's good. I can...

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  You know who sent me that guitar? Jolene and Michael.

• 30:37Guru Singh?

  Really? Those people that introduced us?

• 30:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Guru Singh?

  So if it's in tune, I'll play it.

• 30:42Rich Roll?

  It's probably not in tune, but you can tune it.

• 30:44Guru Singh?

  So I used to go on a guitar fast because I was obsessive. I was, you know, OCA. I call it...I never call it OCD. I don't consider it a disorder. It's obsessive-compulsive advantage.

• 30:56Rich Roll?

  I like that. I'm gonna use that.

• 30:58Guru Singh?

  Yes. I encourage it to be used. But I was OCA about playing my guitar. I was always, if I had a moment, I would play my guitar. If I had a moment, I would play my guitar. And then I realized that my growth was very linear and was very last moment based. You know, and linear growth is last moment based is, I'm learning this because I just learned this. So it's fulfilling the prerequisite to something that you're going to eventually learn. And I saw that what was happening if I went on these guitar fasts, which meant that I laid the guitar aside, went and did other things for a week or two weeks. I once went on a guitar fast, which is what my book, Buried Treasures, is about, for

• 31:43Guru Singh?

  11 months, you know. And my style, when I come back to the guitar after these periods without it... Is not based on what I've been doing. It's based on the imagination of what I could be doing. And all of a sudden, I find after a fast of such of a guitar playing, that all of a sudden, my ideas are much different. And I'm trying to now develop those ideas through practice. So it's really an accelerant. Same thing could hold true for all of the social media. And how do I respond? How do I experience the likes and the dislikes, the thumbs up, the thumbs down?

• 32:23Guru Singh?

  All these things about all of these social media apps that are on those devices. Being able to actually get the child to understand a different perspective, a different relation in their own, not just trying to dictate. No time for that. That's bad all the time. Let's get our children to begin to comprehend the difference between going continuously and having breaks.

• 32:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's so important. I mean, removal altogether is not the solution because this is the this is the language with which they communicate. And being fluent in that language, I think, is important for success long term. I mean, I just just observationally watching young people and the way they communicate. It's completely different to how we learned how to communicate. It's it's literally a different language. So I think understanding that and respecting that that's not going away is important. But it is so important to take those breaks. I think it's actually it's absolutely critical. And I think it's even more crucial when you consider the fact that, you know, a pre adolescent, an adolescent, a teenager,

• 33:37Rich Roll?

  these are developing brains and emotional bodies who are trying to figure out who they are, how they fit in the world. I mean, can you imagine being that age and being assessed?

• 33:50Rich Roll?

  On an app, you could look at your phone and find out what all your friends think about you, how you're being qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated throughout the day. And if you become ostracized, you can use those apps to then follow the people who have ostracized you, enjoying themselves in your absence. What is this, what is the impact of this on the psyche of a young person? It has the potential to be unbelievably damaging. And so, outside of just saying, "Screen time, no screen time", I think it's imperative for the parent to shoulder the responsibility of instilling a sense of self and a sense of self-confidence in their kids

• 34:33Rich Roll?

  by helping them develop sovereignty and a strong understanding of who they are, independent of the evaluation of their peers.

• 34:45Guru Singh?

  Self-evaluation, really to encourage self-evaluation. You used another phrase a moment ago that I really relate to, and that's the imperative that comes with recognition that this is not going away. I would equate it back to 30 years ago, when hip-hop was just coming out. And people just thought, "Okay, it's gonna go away, it's a fad and all that." But the thing about hip-hop was that it was telling a story in a way that stories had been told by indigenous communities for a long time, by poets for a long time, stories with rhythm, stories with beat.

• 35:28Guru Singh?

  Now, almost, well, not almost everything. Now, a lot of things are sold commercially, on media, with hip-hop beats, with hip-hop structures, attitudes, the dancing, the ways and work. It is not going away. Nothing is going to go away. It's only going to increase. And so, if parents recognize that these are things that are, it's really essential that you begin to discipline them, because they're not, not only not going away, but they're gonna become more powerful. Just like music becomes more powerful over the decades, these apparatus are gonna become not only more powerful, but more intimate.

• 36:13Guru Singh?

  I mean, now it's on a watch. Wait until it's available in anything. It's just a little chip that you can attach anywhere.

• 36:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it will be a chip implanted. You know, by the time my 14-year-old is 40, you know, what is this gonna look like? We're in this bizarre adolescent phase with all of this, where it's coming at us so quickly. We haven't really adapted to it. We don't really understand the long-term impact of it. And it's being iterated upon with such an accelerated pace that we can't keep up with it. And I think we're all just stumbling very haphazardly and imperfectly through our attempt to try to understand and contextualize what this all means. I mean, this is the biggest advancement in human history. The fact that we have these things

• 37:06Rich Roll?

  that are really moving us towards a collective consciousness, where all of our consciousness is merged. Right now, we're yelling at each other and we're getting in arguments.

• 37:19Guru Singh?

  In all caps.

• 37:20Rich Roll?

  But this is the, yeah, we're in the infant stage of trying to figure out how this consciousness is all gonna congeal and coalesce in this cyber environment.

• 37:32Guru Singh?

  I like what you just said, you used the term stumbling. Because in another session that you and I shared, we talked about depression and grief and sadness. We talked about the difference between just sort of being on the surface of it, and it's a continuous chronic condition, and then the people that were the super-dupers that are just living on the surface of life and always just in the mask of, "Super, how you feeling? Great, how you doing? Super." And this is the same opportunity. And that is that if we just are forced to ride the surface of this event called social media and devices and screens

• 38:17Guru Singh?

  and all of those things, then we're never gonna get a good hold on it. What we have to be able to do as parents is we've gotta be able to dive down into this and really understand what are the underpinnings? What are the causes? Why is my child or my children... Or if I don't have children, why are children in general so obsessed with this external valuation of their latest moment? And how can they be inclined, in a deeper dive, to be encouraged towards self-evaluation? And, you know, just to heck with all of the evaluation from the outside.

• 39:02Guru Singh?

  I can remember as a young child, and this was back in the days when, growing up as a yogi, you know, in a Judeo-Christian neighborhood, you know, I would get a lot of flack because I was different, you know? My family was different, everything was different, and I was different. And one of the things that it gave me, because I was getting a lot of unlikes, if you were thinking of it.

• 39:24Rich Roll?

  In the real world, unlikes.

• 39:26Guru Singh?

  In the real world of social media, right? In the social structure. And I went to my mom one day and I was crying, I think I must have been like six or seven. And because we were yogis and because we believed in, you know, in the church of all religions, rather than just being of a specific religion, because Paramehansayogananda was, you know, deep in our families, in our families' biome, I came home and she said, "What's matter?" I said, "Everybody is saying I'm a heathen." Right? She said, "Well, do you know what that means?" "No, but they don't like me because that's what I am." Right? So it was a big unlike, right?

• 40:09Guru Singh?

  A big, a big evaluation by my friends. She said, "Well, let's find out what that means." Right? So she, she said, "Go get the dictionary." And, you know, the families had the big dictionary in those days. And so I brought the dictionary and we looked under H-E-A, right? We looked under heathen. And she looked at it and she read it, she said, "Yeah, you are. And now I want you to go out there and be the best damn heathen that ever existed. Excel as a heathen and show that this word is not a condemnation, it's just a description."

• 40:50Guru Singh?

  And so I went back out, I got my basketball and I went back out to the court and I was dribbling and doing my shots and doing all the things that I knew how to do very well. And all of a sudden, people started to forget the fact that they had gone through this cycle. And social media in today's world is giving parents that same opportunity, but the parent, as you said, can't be stumbling across the surface of this dilemma. They've got to be showing their children that they're diving deep into it, even if they look stupid. You know, like a, like a 50-year-old with teenage jeans on, you know, with big cuffs

• 41:33Guru Singh?

  rolled up, trying to look cool. No, just be yourself and dive deep into the dilemma and let's figure this out together because it's on top of all of us.

• 41:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I, as somebody who, I essentially make my living on the internet and I'm very versed in the art and science of social media. I'm omnipresent on many channels and have been for a long time. And I think in the, in the realm of, you know, 50-plus-year-old people, I am much more fluent in this language than most of my peers, I would say. I feel like I have a better grip on it, grasp and understanding of how it works and its importance and, and what's good and what's not so good about it.

• 42:23Rich Roll?

  So what's great about that is it allows me to have more productive conversations with my kids about, about it. But one of the things you said was, you know, ah, you know, teenagers, they're, they're obsessed with social media. The first thing I think that's important to recognize is that if there is an obsession that's, that's... In place, it's not the kid's fault. These things are specifically designed to create obsession, to addict you. They're very powerful and potent. Like even the most disciplined person has a challenge trying to resist its urge and its pull.

• 43:00Guru Singh?

  There you go.

• 43:01Rich Roll?

  So first of all, acknowledge that.

• 43:02Guru Singh?

  Yep.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  And I think if you can do that, then it will remove you from the inclination to aggressively come after your kid, or shame them, or say like, "You gotta get off that. You're obsessed, you're addicted." You know, because it's not about that. It's like, okay, let's understand this. How can we create some healthy boundaries around this to make it productive? Understanding that this is how you communicate with your friends, and this is how you interface with the world, and that that indeed is not going to change. If anything, it's going to increase. But to erect healthy boundaries so that you can carve out that contemplative time, so

• 43:40Rich Roll?

  that you can craft a sense of self, and that you can cultivate enough self-awareness to have a healthy sense of yourself that is independent of how many likes you get, how many subscribers do you have, how many people are following you, all of that nonsense.

• 44:00Guru Singh?

  You used healthy boundaries. And the fact that you are very skilled in social media, you in your 50s, and I in mine, that we have that skill in social media makes us a better spokesperson for the idea of healthy boundaries, because we're not a hypocrite saying something about something we don't understand, or something that we don't participate in. We both participate fully in social media, and we both have to have that same kind of discipline. And so it gives us an opportunity, and I say to other parents, take the opportunity to begin to understand what it is to instill discipline in a child.

• 44:41Guru Singh?

  Because if they're just in the stimulus response, because that's what social media is so good at, all you have to do is tap and click.

• 44:50Guru Singh?

  If they're just in that stimulus and response mode, they're not going to get ahead, they're not going to fulfill their destiny, they're not going to fulfill their passions and their inclinations in life, because they're going to be trapped in the cycle. So if we can train them and say, "Look, I'm in your game, I'm in social media, I'm also on these apps. It's part of my life, it is my life, it's my world, it's how I make my living. But I'm going to show you, and we're going to explore together, what it's like to have some abstinence, what it's like to have some discipline, what it's like to get sober, right?

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Guru Singh?

  To get sober on social media, to use it, but not be used by it. I think that would be an important expression.

• 45:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, on that idea of using it versus being used by it, there's an important differentiator or demarcation line that I don't think gets adequately addressed or discussed, which is the distinction between passively scrolling, you know, sort of just checking out because you're an audience member, versus creation. If you're using YouTube, or Instagram, or any of these other platforms to express your creative voice, to share a point of view, to make a video, to write a blog post, to create, to emote, to express yourself, that's something to be encouraged. And that's very different from just blindly, like, "Oh, I'm checking,

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  I don't want to be with myself and my emotions right now, so I'm just going to see what everyone else is doing." And I think the more, at least the way that I've kind of approached this with my kids is, "Look, I have no problem with you being on these platforms. If you're out taking amazing photos and editing them and have something interesting to say and you're sharing that, that's fantastic, like, I love that. You know, let's do more of that and less of the absorption and more of the creation."

• 46:52Guru Singh?

  Good point, because what we have is we've got these different sections, just like times of day. There's a time to eat, there's a time to digest, there's a time to rest, there's a time to be a bit passive, there's a time to be very active. And we would not be condemning, I love your balance there, we would not be condemning any of these properties if somebody just wants to kind of, you know, scroll and... Be kind of oblivious to the world and just see what other people are doing. That's an opportunity to absorb some new ideas perhaps. Or get some laughs out of some, you know, idiotic videos or jokes or what have you.

• 47:35Guru Singh?

  But if that's a constant diet, then that's a, something that needs to be repaired and replaced.

• 47:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'd agree with that.

• 47:44Guru Singh?

  But it can be a part of the overall structure. So, you know, scrolling through, see what other people are doing, what's, what's happening out there. Having time to be without the device, to be able to get new ideas that have nothing to do with the devices. Another part of your day, another part of your day, be actively taking this, creating that, thinking this, posting that. It's another part of the day, literally being a fully, a fully active member of this internet society. Contributing in many ways and allowing it to contribute to you in many ways.

• 48:27Guru Singh?

  And as a parent, having what you said before, you're not just a good buddy, but you're also a guide. You have to also be a good buddy at times. And especially as your children get, you know, to be like the know-it-all 14, you know, that, that we all experience and we've all experienced when we've had children. We've got to be able to know what is that spectrum of relationship. There's got to be, it's almost like a recipe, there's got to be some good buddy. There's got to be some guide and there's got to be some just correlation. Just a, just a sense of the self with another self.

• 49:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and trying to figure out how all those pieces fit together is the, is the trick, right?

• 49:13Guru Singh?

  Well, you're in the middle of it and I'm... Observing it from having been through it.

• 49:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you know, I would say with respect to my daughter, you know, I'd said earlier, she's ready, she's, you know, doesn't want to have it, that she, you know, she's, she's ready to move out and all of that. And I say that in jest, but at the same time, like, what I am most proud of with her is that she does have a very strong sense of herself. She's very self-sufficient. She knows what she wants. She doesn't equivocate in her language, like she's very direct. She's very unapologetic for who she is. Like, these are all amazing qualities of a very strong person, which are fantastic. But she still is just 14, so you gotta like, you know, definitely guide that person. And that's

• 49:59Rich Roll?

  kind of where I'm at right now. But I want to get back to that idea of taking an intermittent fast. And you'd use the example of taking a break from guitar that allowed you to go from a place of linear progression to one of like quantum progression. And I think that's really

• 50:17Guru Singh?

  Good word.

• 50:17Rich Roll?

  powerful. I was listening to a podcast by my friend, Rob Bell. Do you know Rob Bell?

• 50:27Guru Singh?

  I've heard the name.

• 50:28Rich Roll?

  He's really cool, interesting thinker. And he, he calls this idea of the, what you're kind of coining a fast as manuha, which is a word from scripture that I can't remember what he said in his podcast, how it, where it exactly derives from. But essentially, this idea, manuha, meaning the importance of, of rest, you know, of like taking a break and reframing how we think about this as, as sort of indulgent or lazy and understanding that It's perhaps the most powerful Archimedes lever that you have,

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  that it is the white space, the in-between space, that defines the hard lines.

• 51:17Guru Singh?

  Beautiful.

• 51:17Rich Roll?

  And without that break, without that respite, without that fast or rest, you are preventing yourself from ultimately developing to your potential as a voice, as a creative, and whatever it is that you're seeking to express.

• 51:35Guru Singh?

  Well, that brings up, in my psyche, the manuha, is that it?

• 51:40Rich Roll?

  Manuha. Manuha.

• 51:41Guru Singh?

  Manuha. Is the manuha of parenting, what if you were to, as a parent out there, what if you were to set up a time where you actually just take a break, and it would have to be on your own time and in your own schedule, but you take a break from being a parent, take a break from being the person who has to know what to do, take a break from the person that has the answers, and just come up with the idea that you don't know what the heck you're doing, and you have no answers in this moment, and see what can fill that space, that empty space. You talked about the white space, or the... what was it?

• 52:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the white space.

• 52:25Guru Singh?

  See what fills that empty space, and allow yourself to come up with ideas that you've never thought of before, by taking that fast from parenting, like fast from guitar, fast from this, fast from that, and allowing, just like when you take a fast, the body restores it. It says, "Wow, I'm sure glad we don't have to digest food today, because now we can do all those repair jobs that we've been putting off, because we've been spending all of our energy in digestion, and now we can take some work to do some of the needed tasks." And all of a sudden, if you take a break and a fast from being the parent, being the one who knows everything,

• 53:09Guru Singh?

  and suddenly just say, "You know what? At this point in my child's development..." I need to learn. I need to be a student.

• 53:16Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 53:16Guru Singh?

  I need to listen.

• 53:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's important. I, I, you know, I don't have a problem telling my kids I don't know. Like if they say, you know, what, they ask a question.

• 53:26Guru Singh?

  But you're unusual in that way.

• 53:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's a, it's a, you know, it's something the generation that preceded me wouldn't have ever thought of, like, cause you're, you're trained to always have the answer. And, and, and part of that comes, I think, from a laudable instinct of protectionism. Like you want to protect your kids, so you're, you want to make them feel safe and secure. So you're the person who always knows the answer to the question.

• 53:50Guru Singh?

  Safe and secure rather than fulfilled.

• 53:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but I'll be like, I don't know, I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one, you know? And I think, and I think, I think the, one of the reasons that I think that's, that's beneficial is it breeds trust in your child. Like, I think, you know, kids are much more intuitive than, than we give them credit for. And if you're BSing them with some answer and they, they, they know that you don't really know, they see through that thing. And I think they appreciate the honesty and I think ultimately they're more likely to trust you. If, you know, you're, you, you cop to the occasional, I don't know. Or you screw up and you say, hey, you know what, I just really handled that situation poorly.

• 54:36Rich Roll?

  You know, here's what I tried to do, here's where I screwed up and I'm gonna do better next time.

• 54:41Guru Singh?

  I was, uh, yeah, I do that now and, and it's very rewarding. I was, uh, our, our children both, uh, live in the Pacific Northwest. And, um, as do our grandchildren. And I was, uh, we were up there the other day and, um, I was checking in with them. I said, you know, I just wanted to, I just wanted to know, what did I look like? And I didn't mean, what did I physically look like? But what did I parentally look like, um, at different sections of your life? I mean, what's the earliest memory that you have of me? And I think both of them said, you're really strict. And, um, and then you got to be okay with certain things. And I was thinking, okay, so that's their view.

• 55:25Guru Singh?

  Of who I was, I would have been much wealthier, not in money, but in experience, if I'd have been asking them that along the way. And so I would highly encourage, you know, parents out there to get into that stance that I can tell you do a lot. But, you know, just to be able to sit down there as if you're one of them, get on the same side of this, and I don't mean the physical screen, but get on the same side of the relational screen and say, you know, what do I look like up there on that screen?

• 56:03Rich Roll?

  In other words, like a performance review? All right, we're gonna sit down.

• 56:06Guru Singh?

  Yes. Yes. Because they have an insight that nobody else does. They don't always have to be an audience member. They could be a critic.

• 56:19Rich Roll?

  It must have been tricky raising your kids.

• 56:22Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Rich Roll?

  Being Sikh and everything like that. Like, I can't imagine that was without its traumas and challenges.

• 56:30Guru Singh?

  Right. And I would say, if I had it all to do over again, the knots would have been tied much looser. Because, like I was saying earlier, the children have an inborn knowledge. They have an inborn wisdom. Because they are the ones that are gonna have to live with the future much further out than we will. And we've got to hear from that more. Thank God I was a musician and had a lot of, you know, I had a lot of relationships in which you had to be a band member rather than, you know, a lead singer all the time. And in that metaphor, you have to be able to play off of other people.

• 57:14Guru Singh?

  So, you know, once the, you know, once the complete, you know, I don't know what I'm doing, so I better show that I do know what I'm doing, I got over that phase. Then I started correlating with our children so that we could be more of a team rather than just a, you know, a coach, you know, telling the players what to do.

• 57:44Rich Roll?

  One of the struggles that I have, the challenges that I have, and I think this is relatable for anyone who's listening or watching, is I struggle to not project some past experience of my own, or some past trauma, onto my kids. In other words, it's very difficult to have the wherewithal or awareness to step outside whatever cycle or pattern you've habituated yourself to because of the way that you were raised, and then repeat that pattern with respect to how you're parenting your kids, because that's just what you know. Even if you're trying to do things differently, I've found

• 58:29Rich Roll?

  that I'll automatically default to something that, you know, some scenario that, you know, which is the way that I was raised, that I was trying to do a little bit differently. So, you know, having awareness of that is one thing, but it's a very different thing to prevent myself from falling into that trap, or perpetuating that habit.

• 58:52Guru Singh?

  And I say that that's what these fasts, manuha?

• 59:00Rich Roll?

  Manuha.

• 59:02Guru Singh?

  Could, can give us, that in playing the guitar, when I wasn't playing the guitar obsessively, I would discover ways that were not, things that I had learned in my past. You used a beautiful phrase, you said, you know, you quantum, you use the quantum effect of the manuha, of the fasting.

• 59:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because I know you love that word.

• 59:30Guru Singh?

  I do. It's one of my passions. But the fact is, is that yes, we can do the same thing in those pause moments, where we're not saying that we know everything, let me just say that I know nothing, and I'm in a situation, you know, it's almost like a moment of prayer, you know, like the prayer that's being used in recovery, you know, God give me the grace, God me the strength, you know, the courage, et cetera. That... Show me the way, you know, show me the way through this. Let me learn some new, let me learn some new chords. Let me learn some new riffs.

• 1:00:12Guru Singh?

  Let me learn some new ways of addressing my children. Because I wasn't schooled. No one was. This is not a statement just of me personally, but no one was. The one thing that we didn't get in high school and college was parenting 101, parenting 102, parenting 103. We never got even relationship. We got, you know, the three Rs, but we certainly didn't get all of these other things. We got psych, you know, psychology 101 and sociology. But that's how to look at the thing. How do we get how to be the thing?

• 1:00:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're not taught. We know the way we were raised. What you, what I see a lot of is people who are raised a certain way, and then suddenly their parents, and they're like, I'm gonna do it totally the opposite because of whatever trauma they suffered. So they'll swing, swing that pendulum all the way in the other direction. And then, of course, that's always fraught with its own, it's fraught with all its own, you know, issues and problems. But I think that's beautifully put in.

• 1:01:16Guru Singh?

  There's an old saying of wisdom, use pendulum. There's an old saying of wisdom that, when is the pendulum at its best? When it's still.

• 1:01:24Rich Roll?

  It's still in the middle. Yeah. It's never, it's never still in the middle, though. You know, that's the thing, there wouldn't be a pendulum then. Right?

• 1:01:33Guru Singh?

  It's just a dangling event. But that is the case, what you talk about in that pause, in that fast, in that period of time of the white space, being able to bring in. So point is encouraging not only parents, but also children to respect the white space.

• 1:01:57Guru Singh?

  And to respect the time when let's all just kind of be here, not in our roles, but let's just take a break from our roles for this moment. And let's try to be in this place of of being able to accept each other with our flaws and our and our talents. Good example, our our, one of our children was seven years old. Teacher caught her not being able to read yet. She had been perfectly faking it. Teachers come to me and my wife.

• 1:02:38Guru Singh?

  They say, we'd like to get her some serious tutoring. And I think about it and I think about my daughter's incredible skills. She had huge athletic skills. She had huge musical skills. She had incredible skills of communication. But she had not latched on to this one skill of being able to read yet. And I said, well, that's okay. But I said, I don't want you to disrupt that, you know, to improve this skill. But I don't want you to disrupt these other skills by inserting something that's, you know, magnificent and but making it more important than the other skills that she does have or making her feel any kind of shame or any kind of thing.

• 1:03:22Guru Singh?

  And they looked at me and how strongly I was feeling. And they said, well, maybe we should just let you work with this and we'll we'll see how we how we can progress. So I sat with it and I went into this space and I sat with with our daughter. And I went into this space of, I'm not the dad. I'm a mirror. Let me hear what's going on. And so she and I just kind of hung out.

• 1:03:54Guru Singh?

  For a little while, for quite a while. And in the process, I recognized, and she recognized, because she kind of brought it out to me, that she had sort of missed catching on until she was so far behind that she was afraid to admit that she hadn't caught on. Yeah, that's what happens. And so I said, oh, wow. I said, well, let's, let's show that being behind and making mistakes is just as valuable as being ahead and getting it right. And so the four of us, our two children and my wife and I,

• 1:04:39Guru Singh?

  spent a weekend doing things wrong. We went to the, probably the only still existing bowling alley in the area, and we had to throw gutter balls. But we had to win the game. We had to see who could get the ball the furthest down the alley before it went into the gutter. Uh huh. And so, and the winner of the game had to have zeros all across the board by the end of the game, but have gotten it as far down the alley. Well, eventually, we were laughing so hard that they kicked us out. So we went to a public swimming pool that still had a diving board, and we had to do belly flops.

• 1:05:21Guru Singh?

  And we had to see how high we could go before the sting of the belly flop was prohibitive. So we had to do all these things wrong, and we were hilariously laughing. And then we started to spell words wrong. You know, we started to spell words phonetically, like enough, E N U F, and rather than E N O U G H, right? And we started to realize how much of the, that you should be able to or you should be doings were completely controlling the mindset. She ended up... You know, being on a dean's list, being, you know, head of her class, she graduated top

• 1:06:05Guru Singh?

  her, you know, because she realized making mistakes was okay. Education needs to honor the mistakes. And you were talking before, we try to protect our children, we try to help them get the, get things right. We try to do all these things, well, we may be partially contributing to the dilemma.

• 1:06:26Rich Roll?

  What I read into that is that the crisis, if you want to call it a crisis, that's not really the right word, it's a little too severe, but the, the sort of problem that needed to be addressed was less about the fact that she couldn't read. That's easily rectified through some pretty, you know, simple, basic, you know, tutoring. The real issue was her fear of speaking up in the wake of getting passed by. And the redress of that is to reframe this whole idea of failure, doing things wrong by making it fun. And this is something I talk about all the time, like, I wish the word failure didn't exist.

• 1:07:07Rich Roll?

  There should be a different word, a more permissive word, that makes people feel encouraged by trying things, even if they're not going to work out. But it's that fear, you know, and with that fear is like the shame, the shame, like, oh my goodness, I'm behind, you know, these kids are ahead of me, I can't speak up because then I'll be judged. And getting out ahead of that is ultimately much more important than just dealing with the reading part of it.

• 1:07:33Guru Singh?

  Think of it in parenting. Parents, I mean, there's, there's, there's a, there's a metric for when you can't read. But there's no metric for when you don't know how to parent in this moment. And to be able to fail from time to time in parenting and admit it is in the same category. We need to be able to say, hey, I need help here. We need to be able to go to the child and say, hey, I need your help here. You're doing this, I see an end result.

• 1:08:20Guru Singh?

  That vision of your end result may be from my past. Help me, show me that you've thought this through, that you don't see that same end result. That if you do see an end result, let's compare our views of the end results of your behavior. Having that kind of a relationship with a child is, after a lot of failing in my world, that's what I ultimately have with my children now. You know, you know, one of them's 40 and the other one's 34.

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  Right, it's easier to have that conversation now.

• 1:08:58Guru Singh?

  Yeah. But I'm encouraging people to have that conversation much earlier.

• 1:09:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and what I read into that is, is a respect for their own sovereignty. Like, hey, it's not me telling you what to do.

• 1:09:10Guru Singh?

  Great word.

• 1:09:11Rich Roll?

  Like, we're in some kind of partnership here, where I'm still in charge, you know, but, like, let's have some productive feedback, let's make it a two-way street. How are you, am I projecting this onto you, or are you seeing this the same way? You know, I think that's, that's interesting.

• 1:09:28Guru Singh?

  Because that would start a conversation that demonstrates a willingness, and will and willingness are part of the heart center. You know, it's part of that vulnerability that you and I have spoken about from time to time. The vulnerability of being, I don't have the answers. I don't have, I have some answers, they may not apply here.

• 1:09:48Rich Roll?

  Right, and I think the fear as a parent is that the kid, you think the kid's gonna go, man, they're just asleep at the wheel, like, this thing's out of control.

• 1:09:56Guru Singh?

  They're supposed to know everything.

• 1:09:57Rich Roll?

  I gotta, I gotta take control of this situation.

• 1:09:59Guru Singh?

  And it's the exact opposite. Ultimately, if you give the child a sense of, parents were never trained to be that, children were never trained to be children, let's do this together. Yes, I do have, you know, it's like an 18-wheeler has a better view than a Porsche down the roadway. I do have the altitude that gives me a better view of the roadway. But some of my view of the roadway is, in using your terms, may be based on my history, may be based on the way I was parented, may not be based on your roadway. So let's get together in this dialogue, in this communication. I remember one time, um...

• 1:10:46Guru Singh?

  I was having a conversation with one of our children. And in the midst of the conversation, the child goes, Papa, time out. I've been listening really, this is like 10 minutes in. I've been listening really carefully. They were very respectful. I've been hearing every word you've said. What's your point?

• 1:11:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What is your point?

• 1:11:11Guru Singh?

  That moment changed my world because I realized that not only in that parenting role, but also in my teaching role, that I would come into a class with so many perspectives and so many points that I was so enthusiastic and inspired about getting across that it was just way too much information.

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, your job is a communicator. She's saying, you're not communicating very well.

• 1:11:38Guru Singh?

  Yes.

• 1:11:40Rich Roll?

  So, in your experience as a parent and now as a grandparent, like if you had to distill down to a couple nuggets, what are the most important things for a parent to bear in mind in raising a conscious child in a healthy way? That we haven't already covered. I mean, we're talking about this stuff.

• 1:12:03Guru Singh?

  Yeah. Be flexible in positioning, number one. Don't always be the authority. Be flexible in the positioning. Number two, gain perspective from your audience. Every product that's ever been sold successfully has had customer feedback. So let's just put it into that role. Your child is your audience, your child is your customer. You're trying to sell yourself as a parent. You're trying to sell them on your ideas. Get some feedback.

• 1:12:40Guru Singh?

  Maybe your guidance is great, except for, and you'll find where the exceptions are. And number three, Be in what you've said you're able to do a lot of, and that is admit to the fact that you, there is no training. There's only experience that's then applied to a new experience. So the experience of a child being parented by a parent gets applied by the parent that's parenting a child. And those things don't always have a growth perspective. They sometimes, they're not necessarily evolving.

• 1:13:25Guru Singh?

  Sometimes they're devolving.

• 1:13:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because I think what happens, and something I've had to be very attuned to, is the fact that, that, that I or we as parent, and we all have our woundings and our, you know, our, our, our triggers. And if our child says something that, that pushes one of those buttons that's been within us, you know, that was installed 50 years ago, 40 years ago, you're going to react in some old unhealthy pattern and you're not even consciously aware of what you're doing.

• 1:13:58Guru Singh?

  It's in the blood.

• 1:13:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like, and that perpetuates some unhealthy pattern that, you know, that comes from who knows where, right? But developing the, the awareness to understand that these, there are patterns that are in place. Like, we all have these grooves and it's easy to stay in a groove and it's hard to get out of that groove. We all have past traumas and woundings and these are easily triggered and, and produce results that are, that are reactive, that don't come with conscious thought and awareness, that aren't, that aren't consciously thought through. And without developing some awareness and some, some...

• 1:14:43Rich Roll?

  Prophylactic behavior patterns to kind of insulate yourself against falling into those traps, you are going to perpetuate, you know, some old pattern that you're, that you're so desperately trying to, to, you know, transcend and overcome.

• 1:14:57Guru Singh?

  As the child gives you feedback, because the child is always giving feedback, that's one of the things that, because I work with a lot of people, you know, teenagers, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, the ones that are the most, perhaps the most honest, because they haven't been trained in the dishonesty of masking as much, are the ones that are in the teenage, the adolescent category. And I find that the feedback loop from them can be very, you know, very chaotic and, and sometimes hurtful because they haven't

• 1:15:39Guru Singh?

  masked it, they haven't, they haven't polished it. And so rather than correcting the way in which the feedback is coming, I would let, I would advise parents to, you know, take that feedback and take it into a white space, a personal white space, where you kind of like extract the messaging from it. Just like I had to with our, our daughter, and I had to another time with our son, is extract the messaging from their description of what they were experiencing. And in doing so, I won't have to have the answer now. I can also say to them, let me get back to you, which is something that buys you the

• 1:16:24Guru Singh?

  white space, buys you that, that pause that fast. That would be an important component also. That would be a fourth advice that I would give is, you know, buy the space that gives you time to be able to have more of a contemplative relationship with the information that's sometimes being dealt to you in a very disrespectful or seemingly disrespectful way. Really what it is, is just very emotional, very honest, very overwhelmed way.

• 1:16:54Rich Roll?

  But it's usually very, it's direct.

• 1:16:56Guru Singh?

  Yes.

• 1:16:57Rich Roll?

  And it's honest.

• 1:16:57Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Rich Roll?

  Generally.

• 1:16:59Guru Singh?

  Yes.

• 1:16:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:01Guru Singh?

  And maybe they are like your daughter Mathis, absolutely certain that they know everything that they need to know. And then you're saying, which you said to me earlier off mic.

• 1:17:13Guru Singh?

  She doesn't know what she doesn't know. And so it's up to us to then sort of like be a hover, you know, kind of a hovercraft, not in an obsessive way, but to be able to give the child that, because sometimes they come off with this in a very kind of like aggressive languaging, but give the child the ability to follow that trajectory and just be there in case it sort of runs off the rail.

• 1:17:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, just nudge it here and there. I think that goes back to the sovereignty piece.

• 1:17:49Guru Singh?

  Say that word again, because I love that word. We use it in so many ways, but sovereignty of a child, God bless you for using that.

• 1:17:57Rich Roll?

  I mean, the more sense of sovereignty that a developing adolescent has, or child, I think that that contributes to cultivating that sense of self that we all want in our kids. And that's coming from me, who is no expert and not doing anything.

• 1:18:18Guru Singh?

  And that is going to all of us who are no expert. You know, I would say that in the raising of children, there is no expert, but there are those who are more open, who are more vulnerable, who will allow more sovereignty. They'll be more skilled, but nobody's expert.

• 1:18:45Rich Roll?

  Manuha, my friend. I think we did it.

• 1:18:49Guru Singh?

  Blessings.

• 1:18:50Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 1:18:51Guru Singh?

  I feel great.

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  Feel good?

• 1:18:53Guru Singh?

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:18:53Rich Roll?

  All right. Will you come back and share more with me?

• 1:18:56Guru Singh?

  Oh, man, this is a joy.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  Right on.

• 1:18:59Guru Singh?

  Right on.

• 1:19:00Rich Roll?

  Cool. Oh, you know what? Grab that guitar behind you.

• 1:19:03Guru Singh?

  Let's see if it's tuned.

• 1:19:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm sure it's not. No one's picked it up in a little while. But, oh, is it tuned? Let's see if we could do, you know, like, get that mic up to that.

• 1:19:21Guru Singh?

  So this is actually as.

• 1:19:33Guru Singh?

  This is a song that Seal and I recorded together. I was actually in a... it was written by myself and a bunch of kids in India years and years ago, but it was to... To be confident that the internet

• 1:19:54Guru Singh?

  will take care of it. We're so fortunate, oh. And to be confident that the internet, and the kids would all start singing it. To be confident that the internet will take care of it. We're so fortunate, oh. To be confident that the internet will take care of it. We're so fortunate.

• 1:20:31Guru Singh?

  And that, in parenting, is extremely important. To know that there's some force greater than us that is taking care of and trusting that we can take care of these children. That is so important for us to remember that we are being entrusted. We're not being hired, we're being entrusted, not because we're experts, but because we're foolish enough to be willing enough

• 1:21:02Guru Singh?

  to be correlating enough and coordinating enough.

• 1:21:07Rich Roll?

  Beautifully put, my friend.

• 1:21:08Guru Singh?

  Love you.

• 1:21:09Rich Roll?

  Much love.

• 1:21:10Guru Singh?

  Love you.

• 1:21:11Rich Roll?

  Love you too.

• 1:21:11Guru Singh?

  And love to all of those that put up with us for this time.

• 1:21:15Rich Roll?

  Very good, man. Until next time. Peace.

• 1:21:20Guru Singh?

  Peace. Plants. Forever.

• 1:21:26Rich Roll?

  I don't know about you guys, I can only speak for myself, but I know that I am always a better human being after spending time with Guru Singh. Hope you guys agree. Hope you enjoyed that conversation. To learn more about him, go to gurusing.com. You can find him on Instagram @gurusingyogi and on Twitter @gurusing. And give him a shout out. Let him know what you thought of today's conversation. Once again, help me help Charity Water bring clean water to those in need. The goal is $100,000 by year's end. It's ambitious, but it's worthy, and it will help bring clean water to over 3,300 people and generations to come. I'm so excited about this campaign. To learn more and to donate, visit my.cheritywater.org/richroll.

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  If you're looking for additional nutritional guidance, check out our meal planner at meals.richroll.com. There you will find thousands of plant-based recipes, totally customized, based on your personal preferences, with unlimited grocery lists, grocery delivery in most metropolitan areas, amazing customer support and service, and it's all just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. To learn more, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. And if you would like to support our work here, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this content. YouTube, we're now on Spotify, which is exciting. All of this helps the show's visibility, extending reach, expanding the audience. But the best thing you can do is just share it with your friends

• 1:22:53Rich Roll?

  and on social media. I want to thank everybody helping on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for graphics, video and editing. My man DK for sponsor relationships. Reese Robinson for portraits and theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple days with, let me check the calendar, who's coming up next. We have, oops, I gotta go back to October. Uh, who do we have? We have James Clear. He's an amazing author. He wrote a new book called Atomic Habits. That one is packed with very practical, implementable gems that I think can really

• 1:23:38Rich Roll?

  benefit our lives and our productivity. So you have that to look forward to. Until then, treat yourselves well, treat others well with grace and dignity and love. Eat lots of plants, move your body, and try to connect with your gratitude. Peace. Plants. Namaste.