Pod Insights On Purpose with Jay Shetty Yuval Harari: ON Why Boredom is Good For You About this episode In this weeks episode I sat down with international bestselling author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Harari. We covered so many interesting topics like how to manage expectations, the importance of boredom and what he believes the future of artificial intelligence is. He also shares with us his equation for happiness and he reveals why so many of us are addicted to being on our phones. We also dove into education and where he believes the job market will be 30 years from now. This episode is sure to challenge your perspective on certain topics!
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Transcript 11,711 words · 3 speakers
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1:29 Jay Shetty? AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.
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3:09 Speaker 01 Even if you believe that free will is possible theoretically in some situations, you should at least acknowledge that 99% of decisions don't reflect your free will.
3:27 Jay Shetty? Thank you, everyone, for coming back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the whole world. Thank you for making us the number one podcast in the world. It means so much to me. I'm so grateful for all your love, all your engagement, and most importantly, for choosing education, for choosing enlightenment, for choosing empowerment over everything else in the world. You're taking out your time right now, whether you're walking your dog, you're at the gym, you're commuting to and from work. Thank you for taking this time to invest in yourself. Now, today's guest is someone that I've been looking forward to for such a long time. So I'm so happy, I'm so excited that he's finally here. His name is Yuval Harari. You've probably seen it in every bookstore in the world.
4:12 Jay Shetty? If you travel at all, or if you ever walk into a shop, you will have seen it. His amazing international bestselling books, Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. He's also a two-time winner of the Polanski Prize, which he won in 2009 and 2012 for his originality and creativity. And today, we get to dive into his incredible mind and find all of these insights that he shared. Yuval, thank you so much for being here today.
4:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm grateful that you allowed me the opportunity.
4:46 Jay Shetty? No, I'm so excited. I genuinely was so looking forward to this discussion. It's not only about the success of your books, what you've been speaking about in your books, have dipped into so many different parts of mainstream culture. And I love that how a thinker like you has been able to do that in today's incredible world. So congratulations for everything that you've done. And I'm hoping this is the start of a new relationship for us as well.
5:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:11 Jay Shetty? But I'm gonna get straight into it.
5:13 Speaker 01 Okay.
5:13 Jay Shetty? And I wanna start off talking a bit about happiness, because happiness is a big theme for my audience. It's something that my audience cares a lot about. And I picked out something that I wanted to read that you say in your book. And you say, one of the chapters in your 21 Lessons for 21st Century is, "Happiness equals reality minus expectations." Right? Happiness equals reality minus expectations. And I wanna dive into that, because I wanna ask you, how should we set expectations? We all have expectations. I have expectations. During this podcast, I have expectations. When I'm thinking about, when you think about anyone investing in their job, they have expectations. When someone starts a relationship, they have expectations.
5:54 Jay Shetty? What is your take on how we should form, set, and create our expectations for happiness?
6:01 Speaker 01 Oh, that's a big one to start with.
6:04 Jay Shetty? Yeah, definitely.
6:05 Speaker 01 We need to relax control a bit, not to say to ourselves, these should be my expectations. The first step is actually to familiarize yourself with what you already expect and with the internal processes that have generated these expectations. Because usually, we know, almost most of us, know extremely little about really what's going on inside us and about what forms our opinions, our desires, our expectations. There is a general tendency to identify with whatever pops up in your mind. And we are encouraged a lot by our culture and by the key ideologies of the age, whether it's liberal democracy, whether it's capitalism, consumerism, to just identify.
6:52 Speaker 01 With our inner voice, with our, you know, all these slogans that just, just do what feels good, just connect to your heart and all these things. And people mistake it to mean just identify, just look inside you and the first thing that comes up, identify with that. And my advice would be to really take the time to explore what is happening inside you and where do all these things really come from. So much of our expectations and our desires, they don't reflect any inner true self. They reflect a million manipulations
7:33 Speaker 01 done on us either by external forces or even by internal forces that we know so little about. So before we reach the point when like we, we write ourselves the list of items, this is my agenda for life, this is my expectation for life, take, take time, a long time to first of all, familiarize yourself with what is actually happening inside.
7:58 Jay Shetty? Yeah, absolutely. I, I think you're spot on. I completely agree with you. I was sharing with you earlier that I was training to become an investment banker and work in business growing up. And then I got to a point where I looked at that and I was like, is that even me? Like, why do I even want to do that? And I realized because in the part of society that I grew up in, that was the most glorified role. So the people that I was surrounded by had made that seem as the peak role or job that someone in our society could attain. And so actually it wasn't my goal or dream, it was just the dreams and goals of people around me.
8:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:32 Jay Shetty? Is that what you're referring to about how we, there are a million ways in which we're forming our dreams and goals?
8:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's part of it.
8:38 Jay Shetty? Yeah.
8:39 Speaker 01 And you know, that, that's, that's a very old story. Throughout human history, you're always influenced by your friends, your family, the culture around, and much of what people took to be their innermost desires and expectations, it's, it actually came from outside. Today, it's even more extreme because we are increasingly acquiring technologies that enable external agents, whether corporations or governments or whatnot, to really hack the, the human mind and hack the human brain and manipulate us in ways which were never possible before. Which makes it even more urgent than ever to really get to know yourself.
9:23 Speaker 01 You know, the advice, know yourself, it's the oldest advice in the book. You go back thousands of years, you meet Socrates, or Buddha, or Confucius. This is what it'll tell you, get to know yourself, it's the most important thing in life. But there is something new today. What's new today is that for the first time in history, you have real competition. If in the time of Buddha, you didn't make the effort to know yourself, nah, I'm too busy. So you missed enlightenment. But you didn't face any competition out there because the kings and the aristocracy and the merchants in the time of Buddha, they couldn't get in your head. But today you have real competition. You may not have the time to get to know yourself because you're too busy.
10:08 Speaker 01 I'm too busy with the family, with the work, with whatever. But there are people who have the time and the money to get to know you. That's their business, to really get to know you. Their entire business model is based on that, or their entire political model is based on that. So you now really have competition from these corporations and governments. And it's a very simple equation, or a very simple idea. If they get to know you a little better than you know yourself, game over. They can manipulate and control you, and you will not even realize it. Because the easiest people to manipulate are the people who believe in free will.
10:52 Speaker 01 The people who believe that their thoughts and desires and expectations, they reflect some authentic inner self, and they don't question, is this really the case?
11:03 Jay Shetty? Right, right, right. So how much, how much do you think a person does have free will?
11:07 Speaker 01 I would say, as a first approximation, extremely little. I mean, I don't want to delve too deeply into the argument about the theoretical possibility of free will. If you, if you want, we can go there.
11:20 Jay Shetty? I want to go wherever you want to go.
11:22 Speaker 01 But, but as a first approximation, I would say that even if you believe... That free will is possible theoretically in some situations. You should at least acknowledge that 99% of decisions don't reflect your free will. They reflect something else. So I don't mind even conceding the philosophical point. Let's say that there is free will. But free will is not something you have. Free will is something you need to struggle for. And the wrong idea about free will is that I have free will. Any thought that pops in my mind, any desire that I have, this is my free will.
12:02 Speaker 01 So it is sacred and it represents something sublime. And this is nonsense. That is, this is not the case. Maybe if you work really very hard, you would reach a point when at least some of the decisions in your life will reflect freedom. But it's not something you can just take for granted. Now, there are a lot of forces in the world which encourage us to have this simplistic idea that anything that pops in the mind is the reflection of my free will. It comes, most notably in the economic sphere, from the whole consumerist and capitalist system,
12:44 Speaker 01 which it's built on the premise that the customer is always right. I mean, you know, when you talk to the big corporations or to some business magnates and you ask them about their practices and about problematic things they do, their final line of defense is always "the customer is always right." Yes, we are doing these things, but the customers are buying it. And the customers are the number one authority. This is their free will. If the customers want it, who are we or who is you to tell the customers that they are wrong? Are you some big brother that knows better than them? So this is like the final line of defense. The customer is always right.
13:28 Speaker 01 And this is based in a way on the idea of free will, that the will of the customer represents this sublime, I don't know, force.
13:39 Speaker 01 That manifests itself through your desires like I want this brand of conflicts. Ah, amazing. That's human free will in action. And it's the mystery of the universe manifests itself. Like in that moment in the supermarket that I stand and I see these two brands and how to choose. I choose this brand, the mystery of the universe. It isn't the mystery of the universe. We know today a lot about what's really happening in your brain, in your mind. When you make this choice and it's increasingly becoming easier and easier to manipulate these choices. And again, the easiest people to manipulate are those who think that when they choose this brand in the supermarket, they are exercising their free will.
14:24 Jay Shetty? Absolutely, absolutely. And it's interesting you say that. Before I go into the question, I'm taking off a tangent was how some of the biggest creators and inventors in the world have not thought customer first. So when you think of people like Steve Jobs or even Henry Ford, and I think it was Henry Ford who said that if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, right? And, and so he said, I didn't ask people what they wanted. And Steve Jobs would often say that too as well, that you are creating because the audience doesn't actually know what they want. But so some of the most powerful inventors have actually gone the opposite way. But in regards to that point that you're making there at the end, then what does one do? And I agree with you, you're saying that the person who becomes the most fooled or deluded is the one who believes that they have the most choice and free will.
15:07 Speaker 01 Yes.
15:07 Jay Shetty? So what do we do? What does an individual do in that scenario in this crazy information filled world? Where I was saying that the other day that, you know, before we were targeted by billboards, which was only if you drove and then it was the television, which again, you had to own one and you only spent a few hours a day. And then it was the internet, which you still needed a computer and a dial up connection. And now it's all the time, right? So what does one do when they're being bombarded with all of that information?
15:37 Speaker 01 Take time off is the best advice I can give you. You know, the first, take time off. It's extremely important during the day, during the month, during the year. I don't believe in, I mean, I don't think we can or should completely disconnect. I mean, we are now having this conversation where you hope that millions of people will see it. I have nothing against, you know, social media on the internet. They have done wonderful things for humankind. I don't know, I met my husband online in a dating site. That's awesome. So, yeah, so I've, some of my best friends are applications. So, I have nothing like inherently against them, but not all the time. The first thing is just take time off.
16:22 Speaker 01 Then you ask yourself, what do I do in this time off? So, I would say different things probably work best for different people. Like, I meditate, I do Vipassana meditation. Other people, they do different kinds of meditations. Some people find that out is much more, is a much more effective way for them to explore the inner reality. For some people, it could be sports or going hiking, in nature, many things. But I would say two things in general about all these things. Whatever works for you, do it quickly, because you don't have much time. I mean, there is this race going on. As we now talk, there are these corporations and governments that are busy trying to hack you.
17:07 Speaker 01 And you need to stay a few steps ahead of them. So, that's one thing, which was never the case before, or was less the case before. And the other thing is, it won't be so much fun. And some people have this idea that a journey of inner exploration is a fun journey. Oh, I'll discover all these amazing things about myself and what a good person I am, and I will have these wonderful experiences of bliss and peacefulness and oneness with the universe. And sometimes it happens. I don't say it never happens, but a lot of that... Is painful experiences, it's boring experiences,
17:51 Speaker 01 like you have like to go through a desert of boredom. And one of the, I think, biggest obstacles for people today in the world of the 21st century, I don't know how it was, you know, 2000 years ago. But today, I would say that the inability to deal with boredom is one of our greatest weaknesses. And in almost any meaningful journey, you have to go through boredom.
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20:25 Speaker 01 Whether it's you're traveling to another country and you have to spend some time in the airport, or whether it's you're having a conversation with somebody, I find from my experience that if you're in a conversation that doesn't allow space for boredom, it will never reach anywhere.
20:44 Jay Shetty? Interesting.
20:44 Speaker 01 Like if you meet... I now travel around the world and I meet these very powerful and famous and influential people. And the problem with powerful and famous and influential people, they don't have time. So if you get an hour with this person, then every minute should count. And boredom is the scariest thing, because if the conversation becomes boring, it's over. I don't have time for this nonsense. I have to run this company. I have to run this country. Boredom, you go bore somebody else with that.
21:18 Jay Shetty? So true. I love that.
21:19 Speaker 01 And then what you find is that you're forced all the time to all the time think, what's the most interesting and important thing I can say? And then you usually reach out for the things you've already said a million times before, and you know they're effective. And both of you find yourself just exchanging these slogans.
21:41 Speaker 01 And you never reach anywhere new. And to reach someplace new in a conversation, like you need to go somewhere and and and nobody really knows what they're talking about. And you're wandering around and you realize, oh, it's not going anywhere. And you come back and you wasted twenty minutes on on something, which was in the end, it was nothing. And you you can't do it when you meet the president or whatever. But the most interesting conversations I had in life, it was like this long conversation when much of it was was quite boring.
22:12 Jay Shetty? Yeah.
22:13 Speaker 01 So and it's the same when you go to explore yourself, like, I don't know, eh eh eh, not necessarily in meditation even, like you you want to, you you go to use sport. So, OK, you say, I'll go on a hike. And you start going and after three hours, you feel thirsty and it's hot and it's inconvenient and there is nothing to see. And you say, oh, forget that, I'll go back and watch some some some movies. And you'll never reach the interesting parts of the journey, either the geographical journey or the kind of inner journey of exploration, if you don't allow yourself, if you don't have the the discipline to go through these boring and sometimes painful and sometimes scary bits.
22:58 Jay Shetty? I love that. I'm so glad you brought that up. I think it's such a brilliant point. I think you're so right, because as soon as you put the pressure of performance on, whether that's the pressure of performance through time, like when we know we have a time limit, like you were saying, when you're meeting influential people and you've got like thirty minutes to say something profound.
23:18 Speaker 01 Yes.
23:19 Jay Shetty? Or you've got like forty minutes to prove that you have more knowledge or wisdom or whatever it is. And so sometimes time's a pressure. Sometimes the pressure is not time, but the pressure is the people at the table. It's like you know that everyone's powerful at the table, and so the pressure is, oh, my God, I know he's smart and she's smart, so what do I have to say? And and I think you're spot on, that in those times, our lateral brain completely switches off, the logical brain switches on, and we just say stuff we already know. And and you don't have moments of brilliance and you don't have a moment that that sparks unique thought. You don't get into flow state, for example. You can't you can't generate anything new. I think that's so true. And I have to say, in my training as a monk, which I loved and was an incredible part of my life,
24:03 Jay Shetty? a lot of it was just discipline and doing the same thing over and over and over again in the beginning. And what you said, walking across that desert of boredom to then find a breakthrough.
24:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:15 Jay Shetty? And it's almost just like that painful 99% to experience that 1% of bliss.
24:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, like in the movie, it always gets condensed into this fast track, one minute or two minutes. Like, I don't know, you have Yoda training Luke Skywalker. So in the movie, it just got condensed into these two minutes. You get the point, let's move on, nothing. And it was probably very, I don't know, it's fiction, of course. But probably a lot of it was just, you know, this tedious thing that you have to go through with.
24:45 Jay Shetty? Mm hmm. Absolutely. Are you bored right now?
24:47 Speaker 01 Uh, right now, no.
24:48 Jay Shetty? No? All right. We've got to get bored for a bit, guys. We've got to get bored for a bit so that you, you know, get some space. No, I think that's a great point. I think becoming okay with boredom is such a useful skill. And I think you're spot on that in the journey of self-exploration, or any journey.
25:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, I just came now from Silicon Valley. And what we, what we just said is the greatest heresy possible in California in 2019, in LA in 2019, in San Francisco in 2019, to say, let's just give some space to boredom. There is nothing more radical and, and subversive than I just, I just saw that Reed Hastings some time ago said that Netflix's biggest enemy, like he was asked, who is the biggest competitor of Netflix? And the answer was sleep.
25:38 Jay Shetty? Hmm, so true.
25:40 Speaker 01 It's not Hulu, it's not any of the other, it's sleep. That's our biggest competitor. So, you know, boredom, if people could get along with boredom, you know, entire industries will crash.
25:51 Jay Shetty? Which is collapse. Yeah, no, it's so true. And the instant gratification industry, the instant excitement industry is thriving off that. We know that. That's obvious. There's a
26:01 Speaker 01 Let's start here, the boring movement.
26:04 Jay Shetty? Yeah, let's start the boring movement here. I love it. This is the boring podcast. We're gonna call it that. I love it. No, and it's true. I read a study that 80% of us pull out our phone. In a crowd, just to not feel lonely, right? Like, not even to do anything. Just when we're walking through a crowd, we pull out our phone just so that we feel like we're doing something. And that pressure of always wanting to do something, it's just so high. No, I love that. I think that's such great advice. Find time this weekend to be bored, right? Be okay with boredom. Do you have, have you, and this, I don't expect you to have an answer. I'm just exploring it because I love the point you brought up. Do you have any ways of becoming more okay with boredom? Or letting there be moments in a conversation? Like, I'm sure when you went out on your first date with your husband,
26:49 Jay Shetty? when you met through online dating, I mean, was there any boredom there? Or were you like, having to say stuff? Was it, did you allow space for boredom? Because it's such pressure when you date someone, right?
26:58 Speaker 01 I don't remember that it was boring. But yeah, there is definitely a lot of pressure in those situations.
27:06 Jay Shetty? To be charismatic, to be, you know, to be attractive, to...
27:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, not to bore the other person. It's the worst thing you can do. It was so boring. It's, it's difficult. Again, I mean, I don't want to give like a single recipe.
27:22 Jay Shetty? No, no, no.
27:23 Speaker 01 I do it, you know, with my meditation practice. So you really familiarize. I mean, boredom is, it's an abstract idea. What does it actually mean?
27:31 Jay Shetty? Yeah.
27:31 Speaker 01 What it actually means is our particular sensations in the body. It's not an abstract. And when you actually observe, I mean, you see that they are extremely unpleasant. Like, when you're bored, we tend to think about boredom as something like, nothing happens. But actually, a lot of things are happening. There is a lot, it's not, you know, it's not like severe pain. It's actually a more subtle kind of pain in, throughout your body, which many people find far more intolerable than the heroic, severe pain. That, you know, again, I'll take an example just for meditation because, because I'm more familiar with it.
28:15 Speaker 01 But I know that a lot of people, when they sit for meditation and there is a strong pain... It's quite easy for them to deal with that. They're actually even enjoying it in a way because they feel, "I'm doing something very important now. I'm getting over this pain. No pain, no gain. Wonderful. Pain is good." And then when boredom comes, it immediately breaks them. They can't deal with it because it's, again, it's a very unpleasant feeling in the body. It's not abstract. But part of it, you don't feel heroic. You don't feel your business is important. You feel that you're wasting your time, that you're so little and insignificant. And especially people who say, "Come to whatever practice it is."
28:59 Speaker 01 Again, it could even be art. Like you're learning to paint. And, "Ah, now I'm Picasso. I'm doing this great work of art and I'm having this artistic crisis. That's wonderful." But if you're just bored, you don't know how to deal with it. For most people, I think it's actually more difficult to deal with this subtle pain of boredom than with the heroic pain of some great crisis.
29:25 Jay Shetty? Absolutely. I think you're spot on. That's, yeah, for me, when I'm bored, I find, I use it as space to breathe properly. That's kind of what I do. When I'm just in a gap or I'm in a moment where I'm like, "Ugh, I'm a bit bored right now," you know? And it's so easy to do the habit of just picking out my phone. And I know that, and I've noticed myself do that over and over again, that whenever I'm bored or there's a gap, I just take out my phone without any purpose, without any intention, without any goal. And so for me, I've stopped doing that and using that as a moment to breathe.
29:57 Speaker 01 There is actually something, when you pick up the phone, what actually happens in your body is that there is a little excitement. "Ah, maybe I get some email. Maybe I got some like to my Facebook, whatever." And so the moment you pick up the phone, there is a rush, a small rush of excitement in the body. And actually, this is what makes it so addictive. People are addicted, not actually to the phone. People are addicted to the small rushes of excitement that they can get dozens of times a day. Every time they pick up the phone to see what's there.
30:33 Jay Shetty? Yep, and those pleasure centers keep decreasing.
30:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, so we have to do it again and again.
30:37 Jay Shetty? Again and again and again. We have to accelerate to keep up because that pleasure center is depleting every time. And I think that's what we don't realize is that the more you do it, the harder it becomes to experience that feeling again.
30:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:47 Jay Shetty? Because you've just dropped it lower and lower and lower. Amazing. Okay, we started the boredom movement today on this day. I think it's what 25th April, 26th April, 26th April, 2019, Yuval and Jay, the boredom movement, the boredom podcast. Okay, the second thing I really wanted to dive into apart from happiness with you, which which leads nicely to this because I think this boredom experience also slightly links to what I wanted to go to, which is education. You speak a lot about education. I've made a ton of videos about education and the education system and my challenges to it. Just yesterday, I was talking to people about how like when we were educated, we were taught to believe we had to be good at everything. We were taught that you had to get an average grade at this and an average grade at that and an average grade at that.
31:32 Jay Shetty? And you had to be equally good. It's history and science and math and English. And a lot of the videos that I've made on these topics have have been shared a lot. So one of the videos I made on this topic has three hundred and sixty seven million views on one video. It's been shared like eight million times or something crazy like that. And it's because we feel this pressure through our education. Now, I believe that the ideal education system should have a head, a heart and a hand. A head for critical thinking, a heart to understand, to experience, and then a hand to give, to serve, to make a difference. And you talk in your chapter about the four Cs of critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.
32:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's not my my idea. And it's like the the experts in the field are increasingly talking about these four Cs.
32:19 Jay Shetty? Absolutely. So tell me about your thoughts on the education system and and why you got fascinated with that and how you think that's impacted some of our mistakes we make now.
32:29 Speaker 01 My interest with the education system comes, I mean, I am in the education system. I am a professor at the university, so it's part of my life. But now it's mostly from thinking about the coming revolutions, especially in the job market, that, again, we're in a unique situation in human history when, for the first time, we have no idea how the job market would look like in 20 or 30 years. That was never before the case in history. I mean, there are always things you couldn't predict about the world 30 years from now. You know, political revolutions, wars, plagues, economic crisis, nobody could ever predict that.
33:11 Speaker 01 But at least about the basic skills that humans will need in 30 years in order to get a good job and in order to support themselves and get along in life, we always had quite a good understanding of that. So if you lived 1,000 years ago in the Middle Ages in some small village, and so people didn't know who would be the king in 30 years. People didn't know there might be a plague or an earthquake, who knows? But they knew what they needed to teach their kids. If they were to have a reasonable life in 30 years, you need to know how to plant rice and how to take the goats herding and how to make cheese and how to make bread and how to build a house and all these.
33:55 Speaker 01 And today, we just have no idea what people will, what skills will people will need in the job market in 2050. Anybody who tells you, "I know how the job market would look like in 2050 and what skills will be needed," is deluding either you or also themselves. The only thing we know is that it will be a completely different job market because of the amazing advances in AI and machine learning and also in bioengineering.
34:29 Speaker 01 So more and more jobs will be replaced by machines and computers and robots. Some jobs will be transformed and new jobs will appear. Now, I don't think we are facing a situation, no more jobs in the world. There will be new jobs. The big question is going, I mean, actually, two big questions. One big question is about training and retraining. There will be new jobs. Will people have the skills necessary for these kinds of jobs? Previously, when machines replaced humans, for instance, in agriculture. So machines replaced humans in low-skill jobs in farms. But a lot of new low-skill jobs were created in factories.
35:13 Speaker 01 Like the tractor replaced you on the farm. So you moved to Detroit to work in Ford's Corporation to build a tractor. And the new job was usually a relatively low-skill job. So within a couple of weeks, perhaps two, three months, you could transform a farm worker into a worker in a tractor factory. But today, when you look to the future, so people say, yes, there will not be any more jobs for truck drivers, because you have surviving trucks. And there will not be a lot of jobs for people producing shirts in textile factories and things like that. But there will be new jobs in the creative industries,
35:54 Speaker 01 whether in art or whether in science or in interacting with people. But the problem is, these new kind of jobs require high skills. So it won't be so easy to take an unemployed textile worker at age 40 and transform her into a software engineer that creates virtual reality games. And what makes it even worse is the huge gap between different countries. I think that in a country like the US, which is bound to reap much of the benefits of the coming AI revolution, because California, along with China, is one of the centers of this revolution.
36:39 Speaker 01 There will be immense new wealth created, at least in some parts of the United States. So I don't worry for the Americans. But when I look at other parts of the world, countries which depend almost entirely on cheap manual labor, say just south of the border, you go to Mexico, you go to El Salvador, to Honduras, to South America. What will happen there? I mean, we are not educating the young people today in Honduras or in Colombia to be software engineers. So even if there are a lot of new jobs in California for software engineers, this is not going to help. The kids who are growing up today in Honduras or Colombia, so what will they do?
37:23 Speaker 01 And we have no answer. And that's actually my biggest worry about the education system now is from a global perspective, the huge gap that is opening between different countries in the face of the coming AI revolution.
37:40 Jay Shetty? If you were in charge of the education system south of the border, what were the things you'd be thinking about at least?
37:46 Speaker 01 I need money.
37:46 Jay Shetty? Okay. But if you had the money, if you had the money, what would you be thinking about? Because money is not never an issue, really.
37:52 Speaker 01 Oh, it is. North of the border, even north of the border, it's an issue. But south of the border, it's, you know, you go to Brazil, and we are just going to Brazil in a few months. And you have people coming to Brazil with all these ideas about, we should teach kids this, and we should teach the kids that. And the local people come and say, we don't even have schools. I mean, where do you want us to put the kids?
38:14 Jay Shetty? In that sense, money, right, right, right.
38:16 Speaker 01 You know, I mean, in some places, you have the schools run in a shift system. Like, because you just don't have the facilities. So some kids learn from 8 o'clock in the morning to 2:00 in the afternoon. They go home, and other shifts come. And another shifts come at night. Because they just don't, and you know, this is... Some things, you can't just throw money at. You need more than that. But the basic infrastructure, basically, the first thing you need is money.
38:50 Jay Shetty? Okay. And but then, yeah. So looking at it from that perspective, my hope is that there are people who believe in those communities and want to invest in them.
39:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I hope so. And again, the main thing is that we need a global thinking on this. Because in the last few decades, what we've seen is a reduction in global inequality. Global inequality was extremely high in the early 20th century, when you had a few industrial powers colonizing the rest of the world. So say, Britain dominating India and much of Africa and much of the Middle East. And the disparity was enormous. And then in the last few decades, the gap wasn't completely closed, but India and Britain are now far, far closer than they were 50 years ago or 100 years ago.
39:46 Speaker 01 So we have seen a reduction in global inequality. But now we are on the verge of a new burst of growing inequality. Just like the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, this is what created initially the gap between Britain and India. So now you have the AI revolution concentrated in just a few countries. The USA and China are leading the race. You have a few other countries which join the race. Most countries are far behind. And the economic consequences will be enormous. So the danger is that what we've seen a century ago will come back. And then it's not just a question, say, of people in Brazil, rich people in Brazil, caring about poor people in Brazil
40:31 Speaker 01 and investing in their education and healthcare and so forth. There won't be enough resources in Brazil, or maybe not Brazil, but some other countries. So we need global thinking on that. Otherwise, it will be a rerun of the Industrial Revolution with these enormous gaps between a few countries that dominate the world and most of humanity, which is far, far behind.
40:55 Jay Shetty? Absolutely. No, I agree. And I guess my thinking, from where I'm always coming from, is just... To me, the global thinking always needs to be towards how we create more meaningful careers, how we create more meaningful jobs, how we create opportunities for people to be better engaged.
41:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:12 Jay Shetty? Because that's what's going to create a happier, more peaceful, more cohesive world. It's almost like, otherwise, there's a rerun in culture of you slot people in to jobs they don't want to do, that aren't good for their health, mentally or physically. That then leads to another repercussion of that person being dissatisfied, and then that reruns.
41:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
41:30 Jay Shetty? Like, do you think that, where you, do you think, having met some of the most influential people on the planet, do you feel that that's the dial, that's the compass that we're trying to get to? Or do you think that's just far off?
41:41 Speaker 01 Well, the most influential people?
41:42 Jay Shetty? Yeah.
41:43 Speaker 01 They are, most of them are too busy with the immediate crisis.
41:46 Jay Shetty? Right.
41:47 Speaker 01 I mean, part of the problem, and this a little goes back to what we discussed earlier about boredom and things like that, that they are overexcited. And, I mean, I can understand them. I mean, I, I, I'm lucky, I don't have a country to run. I don't have a multi-billion corporation to run.
42:02 Jay Shetty? Yeah.
42:02 Speaker 01 So I can allow myself the time to, you know, just read a book, or just go for a walk, or go for a, take a meditation retreat. They can't. And part of the issue-
42:12 Jay Shetty? They can't or they won't?
42:14 Speaker 01 They really can't. I mean, they have so much on their plate. They have all these immediate crises. And like, we had just the, the case in, in, in France with the protests against Emmanuel Macron. And one of the things that the protestors, protestors told him, and I'm not judging who is right, who is wrong, I don't understand French politics well enough. I was just struck by what they said, that, because he, the, the, the initial cause was that he wanted to impose a new tax on, on fuel, in order to, partly in order to combat climate change. And this caused a huge backlash. And some of the protestors told the president,
42:56 Speaker 01 "You're thinking about what will happen 20 years from now. We are thinking about the end of the month. We don't have money for the end of the month. We don't care about 20 years from now." And that's a real issue. It's easy and I talk a lot about the need to, we need to do something about climate change. But then a simplistic answer, okay, let's just put money on a tax on fuel. And if this tax hurts disproportionately poorer people, then this is not a good solution. So now he has this crisis on his hands and he can't just, okay, okay, I'll just go on this long two-month retreat
43:37 Speaker 01 and I'll do meditation, I'll hike in the Alps and I'll inform myself about climate change. And he doesn't have the time. He has that, he has Brexit, he has the EU elections, he has the crisis in Libya, he has the relations with China. And by the time you reach this influential place, you really don't have the luxury to think slow and broad. And that's a huge, huge problem for the system. And again, I too, I don't have like these easy solutions.
44:20 Speaker 01 Part of the idea of, you know, addressing the general public, like what we were doing here, and not just going and talking with a few presidents and CEOs, is to realize that, yes, they are very influential people, but they are also extremely limited by their position of power and by the enormous pressures on them from different directions. So even for the influential people, it would be easier to do something on climate change if you have tens of millions of people saying that this is their number one priority and that they are willing to make some painful sacrifices for that.
45:02 Speaker 01 And it's the same with the kind of global educational crisis that I hope that more and more people around the world understand that, you know, the consequences of this crisis, we will see them only in 20 years. When the people today in Indonesia and Nigeria and Brazil, who are now in kindergarten. When they will be thirty and forty, this is when the full force of the crisis will hit. But if we wait until they are forty to do something about it, it's too late. We need to think what we are teaching youngsters today
45:47 Speaker 01 in order to solve the coming crisis of 2050.
45:53 Jay Shetty? Absolutely.
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47:29 Jay Shetty? Yeah, and I think those... I think that's a very good analysis of this situation because I appreciate that there is no quick solution, there is no easy recipe. And when I'm listening to you talk, there's parts of me that are thinking, like, it's the way we've constructed these roles of influence that these people don't have the time and space and the boredom to be able to actually do their jobs properly. Like, we've not created these roles efficiently and effectively. And at the same time, the responsibility on each and every one of us listening and watching right now, to actually become change makers ourself, to be someone who takes responsibility for action, to be a part of the solution, to actually step up and say, no, this is a priority and we need to go in that direction. I think that
48:12 Jay Shetty? is, even though it's not a quick recipe, I think it's a good wake-up call. I think it's a good wake-up call that can make us all aware that we can't just wait for this to be solved from the top.
48:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:22 Jay Shetty? Because that's not really gonna happen.
48:25 Speaker 01 Especially assuming that a lot of our viewers and listeners are in the United States, then America is still the most powerful country in the world, economically, militarily, politically. So Americans can do more than the citizens of any other country. And there is still, you know, this expectation that America will be the leader of the world. In recent years, it's been going in the opposite direction, that it's really, I think that's very unfortunate, abdicating, willingly abdicating its role as leader of the world. For decades, you know, both from the right and left, Republicans, Democrats, what was
49:07 Speaker 01 common to all the spectrum of American political system was that they intentionally saw themselves as the leaders of at least the free world. And then in the last few years, America comes and says, no, we don't want this job anymore. For us, America first. We need to, first of all, think about ourselves and our own interests. And nobody wants to follow a leader whose motto is "me first."
49:39 Speaker 01 So the rest of the world, I mean, is now, you know, some countries are trying to step up and fill the vacuum. So in climate change, now China is becoming kind of, or tries to depict itself as the leader of the world in trying to combat climate change. But then in other areas, it's definitely not like that. So we, in this moment of real crisis in human history, we find the world without a leader. And this, again, this is something that people in the US can do more about than in any other place, because still, the US is kind of the, almost natural leader
50:21 Speaker 01 for humanity, because it is still the most powerful country in the world. Other countries, of course, have to step in. And it would be good to have a world which is less unipolar, when we can't just trust a single country to do everything all the time.
50:38 Jay Shetty? Yeah, definitely.
50:39 Speaker 01 But there is still a huge disparity in powers between the different parts of the world. That's still the case.
50:47 Jay Shetty? Yeah, definitely. But I do like that point you made there, even though it's a subtle point, is that ultimately, if we live in that belief that this country is the most powerful and they're going to solve everything, then we also kind of just debilitate ourselves.
51:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:01 Jay Shetty? And we just go, oh, well, if they're not going in the right direction, or wait for them to go in the right direction. And actually, what we all need to do, in my opinion, is pull our socks up and get stuck in, because there's no... I'm not a big fan of the victim mentality or the mentality of waiting for someone else to solve a crisis. It's like if you're, you know, if your house is on fire, you don't wait for your mom or your dad to fix it. You get involved too, right? And so if we believe that there's a crisis, or even if we don't believe there's a crisis, but we believe things are not going in the right direction, I would want everyone from every country, whether it's India, whether it's Australia, whether it's across Europe, to step in. And take action.
51:40 Speaker 01 And in that sense, actually, the one good thing that comes out or could come out of the current retreat of the United States from the position as leader of the world is that it it kind of forces other countries and other people to step in.
51:57 Jay Shetty? Yes.
51:58 Speaker 01 And I hope that this will happen.
52:00 Jay Shetty? Yeah, good. We have the same hope. We have the same hope. I love this. Okay, great. So we've kind of gone from happiness and insight to global macro viewpoints. I want to go back inwards again, and this is actually from a couple of days ago. I read somewhere that when Tim Cook was speaking at the Time 100 summit, an event that happened this week, he was speaking about how if you're spending more time looking at a screen than in someone else's eyes, then
52:26 Speaker 01 You have a problem.
52:27 Jay Shetty? You have a problem.
52:27 Speaker 01 And we have a problem.
52:28 Jay Shetty? You're getting things wrong.
52:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a good line.
52:31 Jay Shetty? Yeah, it's a very good line. And you also said that, you know, you said that it's so much easier now to connect with your cousin in Switzerland than it is with your husband because he's always looking at his phone at breakfast. You did write that down. It is out there. You did say it. So walk me through that addiction. We spoke a bit about the excitement we get from the phone, the addiction we have from the phone. But how have you seen people overcome that?
52:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, part of it is also that when you connect with somebody through a phone or through a screen, again, it's easier to deal with the problematic stuff because you can just shut the phone once it becomes problematic. And with a real person, you can't do that. So it like real relationships forces you. Again, it's like the Borden thing. They force you to deal with the difficult issues. And part of the attraction of all these online communities and online relationships and virtual relationships is that once a
53:38 Speaker 01 difficulty arises, you can just immediately disappear. Like, you can unfriend your Facebook friends in a way that you can't unneighbor your real neighbors. If you live in a house and there's this annoying family just moved in and the kids are making a lot of noise in the middle of the night, and you can't just say, okay, I'll press a button and they'll disappear from my life.
54:03 Jay Shetty? Can you imagine that? Eject, delete, yeah.
54:06 Speaker 01 Unneighbor. It doesn't work like that. So you have, so you need to develop these social skills. Okay, what do I do? Okay, I'll go there and I knock on their door with a cake or something and I'll try to have a nice conversation. And then somehow make them understand that I need to sleep and they should keep their kids more quiet, something. But it forces you to develop these social skills. And that's extremely important and we are losing these skills. I mean, the more time, again, you spend watching screens than watching eyes is you are, in this sense, kind of downgrading some of our human abilities. I've just seen this wonderful presentation by Tristan Harris, who is this tech philosopher from Silicon Valley.
54:50 Speaker 01 And he just had this wonderful presentation about how technology is basically downgrading humans, downgrading human skills, like what to do when you have a problem with your neighbors.
55:05 Jay Shetty? Right. So actually, instead of technology upgrading us, it's downgrading our human skills.
55:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, we upgrade our phones all the time, but inadvertently, it downgrades a lot of our social and personal skills.
55:19 Jay Shetty? Yeah. And which ones do you think are the biggest ones that we're losing? So one of them is, you know, deleting our neighbors. And yeah, I completely agree with you. What are the other ones that we're losing out on that we can be aware of? So anyone who's listening and watching right now, how can they become more aware of the types of skills we're losing? Because sometimes I don't think it's as obvious to us because everyone's on their phone. Our careers are now digital. We just talked about AI and the rise of technology in every area of our lives, whether it's work, health. Like your dentist now wants to use a toothbrush that can notify them when something goes wrong in your tooth, right? So it's like all parts of our lives are becoming automated and systemic. So how can we become more aware of the skills we're losing? Or which ones are those top skills that we're losing?
56:02 Speaker 01 Well, many of the top skills are social, of dealing with other people. So another example, which is now gets a lot of attention, and there is a lot of talk about this, is all the issue of filter bubbles. That people kind of lock them, or even inadvertently.
56:19 Speaker 01 The algorithms, the Facebook algorithms, the Twitter algorithms, the YouTube algorithm that gets to know us increasingly show us videos or articles or opinions which are aligned with our own opinions. And we think that the entire world thinks like me. Like, I don't know, I'm a Democrat and I don't know any Republicans and I never see any Republican videos and then when Trump wins the election, I can't understand, how could it be? There are no Republicans. So who voted for him? It's all the people not in your filter bubble voted for him. And what we are losing is the ability to engage with opinions, with people who think differently from us.
57:02 Speaker 01 Now, one crude way of trying to fix that, that at least some corporations like Facebook tried to do, is every now and then show you an article from the different side of the political spectrum. But this didn't work because it only made people even more angry because it wasn't in a situation when you can really engage with the people behind it. Like you have this, your view on the world and you read something from another perspective and you become very angry, who are these stupid people who think like that? And it actually made things even worse. Now again, a century ago, if you lived in some small town, then the situation was such
57:46 Speaker 01 that you all the time encountered people who think differently from you. Because the community was made of, you know, of different viewpoints and you had to develop these skills of how to engage with and how to cooperate. And part of what technology is doing is that it downgrades these skills and it makes life easier.
58:14 Jay Shetty? Yeah.
58:15 Speaker 01 And it's all these things which are difficult and uncomfortable to do, like having a real conversation with somebody who thinks differently. And it's, you know, it's just so much easier just to talk with the people who think like me.
58:30 Jay Shetty? Totally. Absolutely, yeah. And it's that principle of like non-judgment, being able to view. Observe and entertain a thought without judging it.
58:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:40 Jay Shetty? And that becomes extremely hard right now. There was a great study by MIT where they showed two people's networks. And it was looking at their online network and saying which one is more creative and impactful and innovative. And it was employee A and it was employee B and their Twitter networks. And they found that when you know the same people who know the same people who know you back, you end up being less creative, less innovative and come up with less interesting ideas because you don't have that challenging of thoughts. And so I love that one of your solutions to that, or one of your recommendations, at least that I gained from the book, was this beautiful quality of humility, of being the openness that we have towards other people's views and not this kind of
59:24 Jay Shetty? deep religious belief about the truth of our views and how we're always right. I love that. Let's dive into humility. First of all, I'm fascinated that you brought up humility because humility is probably my favorite quality in the world. I find it the most endearing thing in the world when I meet someone who has it, especially someone who's very accomplished. And my favorite story about humility, and I'm sure you know this, but I'm sharing it for anyone who's listening and watching right now, is from Benjamin Franklin and his 13 precepts. So Benjamin Franklin had 12 precepts, 12 things that he wanted to live during his life that he wanted to aspire for. And once one of his friends said that, "You're getting a bit egotistic about these things. You're pretty good at it." So he added the 13th one.
1:00:06 Jay Shetty? And then when he was dying, supposedly the story goes that he was asked which one he didn't achieve. And he said it was the 13th one. And they said, "Which one was the 13th one?" He said humility. He said that was the one that he didn't achieve in his lifetime. So humility.
1:00:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, another saying that what I think about monks in the Buddhist tradition or Hindu tradition, whatever the monk cuts from his other vices, he adds to his ego, to his pride. "I overcome this. I overcome that."
1:00:34 Jay Shetty? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, as soon as we feel we've achieved something, yeah, it becomes a step on the other side of ego. Absolutely. I completely agree. So I love humility. I'm fascinated by it. What's your definition of humility? And how do we start increasing humility in our lives in a positive way?
1:00:52 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, in the book, it's more, again, in the more political and historical context. And the idea is, don't think you're the center of the world. And this is actually, again, in the book, it's more about collective humility. The humility of groups, of political parties, of nations, of religions. One of the curious things to see as a historian is that everybody thinks they are the most important thing in the world. Even you wouldn't believe, these tiny tribes or insignificant nations, they somehow manage to kind of turn the whole history around, so they turn out to be the most important thing.
1:01:33 Speaker 01 Anyway, if you think that, I don't know, if the Chinese think they are the most important in the world, then okay, I can understand it to some extent. But then, then you go, say, to Israel, and you find this tiny nation utterly convinced that we are the most important thing in the world, the entire world revolves just around us. And it was always like that. That we invented everything. And I use the example of Israel as in Jews, because it's, you know, it's not so nice to criticize other nations and other people, it's easier when you criticize your own. But this is not meant as a kind of anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli thing. Whatever your nationality or religion is, now, after you finish watching this, do this exercise on your group.
1:02:18 Speaker 01 Almost any invention you would mention, they would say, "Ah, we invented it first." There is even a story that Jews invented yoga. Would you believe that? Really? Yeah. Oh, wow, okay. The posters of yoga. I, in Jerusalem, when I was a student, I went to... That was definitely India.
1:02:36 Speaker 01 I went to study yoga with this teacher in Jerusalem. And on the first class, he explained to the students, "You know that lots of people think that yoga comes from India, but no, no, no, no, no. Actually, yoga was invented by Abraham."
1:02:51 Speaker 01 And the posters of yoga actually reflect the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The aleph, the be, the gimel, the... And, and people, and you know, I quit after this first class. This is not the person I would be studying yoga from. But you have people seriously believing that. And when you look at the, at the great span of human history, it should be obvious that nobody is at the center. Yes, almost every nation or religion contributed something. But most things, if you had to live your, your life based only on the inventions and creations of people from your nation,
1:03:36 Speaker 01 you would have a very miserable life. You'll probably be dead. I mean, if you have to eat only the things that were domesticated by your direct ancestors, like, I don't know, Italians, you must now stop eating tomatoes because tomatoes were domesticated in Mexico and not by Italians. And Indians, forget about these chili peppers. No more chili peppers for you. Chili peppers were also domesticated by Mexicans. And Mexicans don't put yourself too, too high because you like your steaks and hamburgers. They, there were no cows in America before Columbus and no horses. They came from the Old World and so forth and so on and so on. And it's just, not just food, it's everything.
1:04:21 Speaker 01 So really understanding how interconnected the whole humanity is. And that, yes, your people contributed something, but it's a small thing. It's not the whole thing. And it's most important, I think, in the field of morality. Because again, I mean, in, in Israel, there is this very strong belief, we invented morality. Before the Jews, there was no ethics in the world. We invented it, and the entire world owes us this huge debt of gratitude, because all the morality in the world came from the Jews. And this, you know, this is absolute nonsense. I mean, even monkeys have morality, even animals. It goes, it's millions of years ago, it's in evolution.
1:05:06 Speaker 01 Some at least, social rules of do and don't do. And hunter-gatherers, tens of thousands of years ago, had ethics long before they knew anything about the Bible. People in India, in China, in Australia, had extremely wonderful ethical systems, in many ways, much better than anything that came out of the Judeo-Christian tradition, long before they knew anything about the Bible. So yes, Jews contributed some things, but don't let it go to your head. You are not so important.
1:05:38 Jay Shetty? What a beautiful message to end on, on that message. I love that message. I think it's incredible. If we all looked at our wardrobes, our kitchens, our refrigerators, our homes, our cars, we'd notice that it was inspired by the globe. It was never one or the other. It was never just one place, or one country, or one region. I think it's such a beautiful message. I have so many more questions I want to ask you. I hope we're gonna do this again on nationalism, competition, and a billion other things. But we end every interview with what we call the final five quick-fire, rapid-fire questions.
1:06:09 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:06:09 Jay Shetty? So these are one- to three-word answers.
1:06:11 Speaker 01 One to three words?
1:06:12 Jay Shetty? Yeah, or one sentence maximum.
1:06:15 Speaker 01 One sentence.
1:06:15 Jay Shetty? So this is number one. What is the biggest mistake we make as humans? One word, three words, one sentence, max.
1:06:23 Speaker 01 Underestimate our stupidity.
1:06:25 Jay Shetty? Nice, I love it. Okay, question number two. What is the best advice you've ever received?
1:06:31 Speaker 01 Observe your breath.
1:06:33 Jay Shetty? Nice. Number three. What is the worst advice you've ever received?
1:06:36 Speaker 01 Just follow your heart.
1:06:38 Jay Shetty? Nice, okay. Number four. What's the one thing you want to learn this year? Or you're trying to learn this year?
1:06:49 Speaker 01 How the other side is thinking?
1:06:52 Jay Shetty? Nice, I like that. Awesome. And number five: If you could get everyone in the world to practice one thing for 30 days, what would it be?
1:07:01 Speaker 01 I won't say meditation, because it's not going to work.
1:07:07 Speaker 01 Well, humility.
1:07:09 Jay Shetty? I love it. Yuval, you are incredible. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really enjoyed it. I didn't... I'm hoping I got...
1:07:16 Speaker 01 We failed on the boring stuff.
1:07:18 Jay Shetty? I'm hoping I got bored at one point, because otherwise this won't live up to your standards. But we started the Boredom Movement today. I hope we're going to keep in touch. I hope we're going to be friends. And I'm just so grateful that you took the time to do this. Thank you so much. All the best for all the incredible work you're doing. I'm excited to see how your incredible mind and thoughts seep its way into our entertainment world as well and continue to help us make education more accessible and relevant. So, thank you so much.
1:07:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, thank you.
1:07:43 Jay Shetty? Yeah, thank you so much. Great. Thank you, everyone, for watching. Make sure you subscribe to the show if you haven't already. Share this on Instagram as well. Remember, I'm always looking for your insights, the quotes that you took away. Feel free to share them on Instagram as well. Thank you so much for being here and being an incredible audience. See you guys soon.
1:08:06 Jay Shetty? Thank you so much for listening through to the end of that episode. I hope you're going to share this all across social media. Let people know that you're subscribed to On Purpose. Let me know. Post it. Tell me what a difference it's making in your life. I would love to see your thoughts. I can't wait for this incredibly conscious community we're creating of purposeful people. You're now a part of the tribe, a part of the squad. Thank you for being here. I can't wait to share the next episode with you.
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