How a Sense of Purpose Changes Your Brain, Body, and Future

Many people feel caught in worry, fear, and constant striving—chasing achievements yet never feeling truly fulfilled. The restless “monkey mind” jumps from one thing to the next, amplifying stress and turning setbacks into heavy burdens. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. You can move from mindless tasks to a mindful purpose. The shift begins by setting a clear, heartfelt intention rooted in something bigger. When the focus moves from self-gain to contribution, the right people, resources, and opportunities often begin to flow toward you. In this episode, Reverend Michael Beckwith, Lynne Twist, Jay Shetty, and I talk about how shifting from fear and self-focus to living with intention, surrender, daily spiritual practices, and a purpose larger than oneself can transform challenges into growth, bring deeper fulfillment, and open unexpected opportunities. For over 30 years now, Reverend Michael Beckwith has embraced a practical approach to spirituality and has helped people see the benefits of meditation, affirmative prayer, and life visioning, a process he originated. He has spoken at the United Nations, hosted conferences featuring some of the top thinkers and leaders in a variety of industries, and he is also the founder of the Global Association for New Thought. He is a teacher, a speaker, and the author of several books. He has shared his insights on a number of well-known television programs, such as Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, Dr. Oz, Larry King Live, CNN, Tavis Smiley, and others. Lynne Twist has spent over 40 years working with more than 100,000 people in 50 countries in the realms of fundraising with integrity, conscious philanthropy, strategic visioning, and cultivating a healthy relationship with money. A renowned author and speaker, she has presented at the United Nations Beijing Women’s Conference, State of the World Forum, Synthesis Dialogues with Dalai Lama, and the Governor’s Conference on California Women. Recognized as a global visionary, Lynne has advised the Desmond Tutu Foundation and the Nobel Women’s Initiative. She co-founded the Pachamama Alliance, a nonprofit empowering Indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest to preserve their lands and culture. From serving with Mother Teresa in Calcutta to aiding refugee camps in Ethiopia and protecting the Amazon, her on-the-ground work has given her profound insight into the social fabric of the world and the defining challenges of our time. Jay Shetty is a storyteller, podcaster, and former monk. Jay’s vision is to Make Wisdom Go Viral. He is on a mission to share the timeless wisdom of the world in an accessible, relevant, and practical way. Jay has created over 400 viral videos with over 7.5 billion views, and hosts the #1 Health and Wellness podcast in the world, On Purpose. This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN to save 15%. Full-length episodes can be found here: The Doctor's Farmacy: Episode 9 with Reverend Michael Beckwith The Power Of Finding A Purpose Bigger Than Yourself Finding Peace And Purpose By Thinking Like A Monk

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  If you think about life as given to you, like a gift you receive, then you want to give that life as a gift to something that's bigger than yourself. And when we do that, it's so amazing because we think that's sacrificial and, you know, giving things up. It's kind of the opposite.

• 0:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day. So I've built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, The Hyman Hive, for live Q and As, exclusive content, and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor-trusted supplements and health products at drhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget, you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad-free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial.

• 1:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When you focus on the big self, everything gets taken care of for the little self. Yes. So you don't have to worry about that. No. And matter of fact, if you worry, it repels it. Yeah. Worry repels. Worry is like... If you're grabbing and craving and hungering, instead of asking what you can give and what you can be that contributes to a better world. Yeah. I found that. You know, you sort of connected this to another interesting conversation, which is something you call intention deficit disorder. Yes. Which is lack of clear intention. But it can't be an intention like, you know, I want a Bentley, right? Or, you know, I want a jet, right? Because that doesn't work out. I've had that intention. I want a private jet. It's not working out so well.

• 1:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Saving you from something. But when I have an intention that's not for me, small self, but is for the bigger world, like I really am working at Cleveland Clinic and had this, you know, have a desire to really... Change the world through bringing the gift of functional medicine to more and more people, which is, I believe, the way we're going to create a solution for chronic disease. And without even trying, we raised over fifteen million dollars.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Wow, congratulations.

• 2:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I decided, you know, I really want to help solve the brain problem, this epidemic of dementia. And I said, we need a lot of money. And I set the intention, it's not for me, it doesn't have to be my name on it, it doesn't go to me, it goes to this mission.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And someone reached out to me the other day and says, well, I have a donor who has fifty million dollars who wants to donate. And I'm like, well, wow, you know, like, and it was, it's all coming from that space of manifestation.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it sounds weird and corny and strange, but it actually works if it's not for your own personal self-centered needs.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Well, if you didn't have an intention, it wouldn't have happened.

• 2:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  It's not just going to happen by accident. Things don't just happen, they happen just. And that intentionality that you're living with brought in something beyond what you could plan for. And so many people do not have intention. They have a reaction to circumstances. And they live by the fight-flight reactionary mode, and they don't stop and establish an intention for their life.

• 3:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  You just grab a higher quality. It can be love, it can be beauty, it can be intelligence, it could be generosity, compassion, kindness. You know, I have an intention today to grow in this area, or to share in this area, doors open.

• 3:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  That you didn't even know were there.

• 3:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you have to walk through them.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  And you have to walk through.

• 3:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Unlike the guy who was drowning.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Right, right. You have to, oh, there's a door. Why is it open? No, you gotta walk through the door.

• 3:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So let's unpack this concept of intention and surrender.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Because they seem contradictory, right?

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do you have an intention and manifest and have a desire to make something happen? And also completely let go and surrender.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  But the intention is like a rudder that your life is going in a direction. I want my life to go in a direction of service, of love, of generosity, of prosperity, of health, of wellness. Now, surrender is not giving up, acquiescing to a circumstance. Surrender is allowing that which is within you already to emerge. So the acorn is surrendering to the oak tree. The apple seed is surrendering to an orchard of apples. It's not giving up. It's actually dying to its littleness so that that which is loaded and coated within it can come forward. So when you're living a surrendered life, you're always on the verge of the more of you coming forward.

• 4:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  And what appears-

• 4:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You're surrendered to what the outcome is.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yes, and you're surrendering the outcome to something that's bigger than your imagination. So there's no attachment. It's like being in the flow without an attachment to the outcome, but you're being in the flow.

• 4:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  So now the outcome forms itself based on your intention, based on your willingness. And many people are afraid to surrender because they have a misguided notion that they've probably inherited from religion, saying that, well, maybe God's will for me is to be poor, or to be separated, or to be lonely. And they have to fire that God and actually embrace the presence where you become aware that God's will and your heart's desire are the same thing.

• 5:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  They're the exact same thing. Your heart's desire and the will of God is the exact same thing. This presence wants to express through you. It wants to give through you, wants to love through you. And so you're surrendering to that, and only as you can do it. It's like, I can't do Mark, Mike can't do Michael. You know, Mark can't do Michael. I can do me, you can do you. So we have to surrender to what wants to come through us without comparison or competition, but collaboration and support and community.

• 5:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In some sense, what you're sort of suggesting is we have to let go of fear and choose love.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I remember when I was 22, walking back, I was in New York City, I was working in a hospital, trying to get some street cred for going to medical school. And I, you know, took the bus back and was walking back to the house. And I just had this like moment of an epiphany, which was-

• 6:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I could choose to be in fear and control of my life, or I could just trust in the unfolding of things. And choose love and trust as opposed to fear and control. And in that moment, like, everything began to shift for me in my life. And it wasn't that I didn't encounter trauma, or disease, or loss, or divorce, or-

• 6:43Speaker 02

  No one gets away without-

• 6:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, all that happened. But it allowed me to be in it without being destroyed by it.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, you know, a friend of mine once said to me, "Mark, I don't think most people know how many hard things you've been through in your life, or what you're actually dealing with, or the stresses in your family," or whatever it was. Because you always seem like, awesome. I'm like, well, I just have this belief that it is what it is. And I'm here to just understand and learn from it. And it sounds kind of weird, but it's really worked for me. And I almost died last year. I was in this state of complete collapse. I had complicated illness of mold poisoning. I had intestinal infection from an antibiotic. I lost 30 pounds. I was in bed for five months. And I had no physical self. I had no emotional self. I had no mental self. None of that was working. All I had was my spiritual core. And in the middle of it, I had this great sense of peace.

• 7:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I was even surrendered to dying. And I didn't know why this was happening. I didn't know if I was going to come out of it. I didn't know what would happen to me. But I just sort of surrendered into it. And as it sort of turned out, it allowed me to discover a whole new way of healing, to kind of resurrect myself. And now I'm stronger, better than ever. And I'm using what I learned to heal my patients. So I wouldn't have chosen that.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  But you got the gift from it.

• 8:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I got the gift.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  You got the great gift.

• 8:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  I often define fear as misdirected interest, that where we become more interested in the worst-case scenarios that could possibly happen, rather than the love and the faith of what the best-case scenarios could possibly be. What we can learn from this, what we can give from this. So yeah, fear, worry. Worry is like paying interest on money you haven't borrowed. There's no, there's no dividend out of worry.

• 8:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I thought worrying works 99% of the time, what you worry about never happens, right?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  It never happens, you know?

• 8:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Must work.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  But the body temple doesn't know. The body temple is like producing those toxic chemicals around things that never happened. You prematurely, you know this better than me. Prematurely age yourself, shrink your immune system.

• 8:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Shrink your brain.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Everything, so yeah, it's a worry and fear, you know, are the real demons.

• 8:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, you know, it's easy to say, just don't be afraid and let go of your sense of fear about life. And for many, it's kind of hardwired in them. When you look at the epigenetic tags, and we know about science now, there's tags that happen in your genes that affect your stress response. There are traumas that get literally encoded in your DNA that are hard to erase, or that in your brain, and whether people have PTSD or, and how, how do, sort of you work with that? You know, there are people talking about using psychedelics. Michael Pollan just wrote a book about this, where they're using it for PTSD, for depression, for trauma, all sorts of things.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Well, when you, when you deal with this kind of fear of trauma, the first thing is, I always encourage a spiritual practice. Something that you're doing deliberately, intentionally, on a daily basis, even if it's for a few minutes a day. So you develop a different behavior, you develop a different pattern in life. Many people are doing hit and miss in reacting to circumstances. But if you can devote to whatever the practice that feels good to you, and you do it a little bit every day, then you start to change the trajectory of your life. The, the, the chemicals change in your body, the thoughts change. You start to see life differently, you have a different perception, even if it's for, even if it's for a small period of time every day.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  And then as that perception slowly changes, then your life experience changes. So I do know of people who do the psychedelics, ayahuasca, and things of this particular nature. And I always say, if you go, if that, if that becomes your path. For a while, then make sure that the individuals that you're walking with actually know what they're doing.

• 10:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  They actually come from a lineage. This is a thousand year old lineage of ayahuasca or whatever. You don't want to go do a fly by night. Somebody went to Peru for two weeks and came back and says, I did this.

• 10:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Got their certificate.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, got their certificate.

• 10:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm my shaman.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  I was a shaman in the mountains for a month. No, you want to do it with somebody who actually comes from that lineage to the best that you can, somebody that's really trained to understand all the nuances of what's happening. So just because now, you know, in America, Americans love excitement and sensations and the quick fix. But I think what we're talking about is a way of life, not just a temporary lifestyle.

• 11:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  But a way of life that becomes, you become.

• 11:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Beginning to be able to rewire some of these.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 11:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Actually, I just read a study. I get a little feed every morning on my computer of scientific research. And this study just came out that men who used psychedelics in the past were less likely to be violent to their spouses, which I thought was fascinating.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  They've seen something.

• 11:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They've seen some.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  I know, I went to college.

• 11:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. The doors of perception, right?

• 11:43Speaker 02

  I went to college. I mean, I had acid. I did that back in the day.

• 11:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And those were, and those were, you know, traditions that go back thousands of years, whether it's ayahuasca or peyote from the Americans or whether it's mushrooms in this South America.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Ram Dass helped make a lot of that very, very popular. I've had opportunity to do co-workshops with him.

• 12:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  But yeah, I can remember meeting Dr. Howard Thurman, a great theologian, great mystic on acid.

• 12:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  One night. And I can remember being in his field.

• 12:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  And it was, I was so present. And then when he left, I, you know, I got a little.

• 12:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Disoriented.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Got disoriented, but in his presence, it was like.

• 12:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You need a guide, right?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  It was totally, totally coherent.

• 12:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I've walked that path when I was in college.

• 12:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you talk about daily practice. So could you share with us what you do to help you?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  When I, when I. First start to become conscious when I'm waking up in the morning. I just, I'm aware that, oh, I'm awake in this dimension. I always say, thank you, I'm grateful. And then when I get out of bed, I stand and I open myself up and I say, I'm grateful for my life. And then I say, I surrendered to life. And then I say, what's my assignment for today? That's how I wake up. And then I, you know, go to the restroom, do all that.

• 13:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Do you get a text from God? He says, here's your, here's your job for the day?

• 13:05Speaker 02

  I used to get a fax, now I get a text.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  And then, um, cause I want to be prepared for whatever comes in my direction. That whatever comes in my direction is my, my assignment for the day. Then I, then I go, I have a place where I meditate and I, I do a short meditation. And then I get ready, I go to the gym. I work out, physically work out, uh, four days a week, Tuesday through Friday.

• 13:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's why I saw you, when you did your lecture, you could do a mean kick and dance.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  I do, I do all of that. I do yoga three days, three days a week. I do gym four days. And then when I come back home from the gym, I shower, I get ready to go into the office. But then I have a more extended meditation. I'll actually sit and 22 minutes will be my minimal time. And if I can, depending on where my first appointment is, I can, I can go longer. And so then I go into the office. There's generally a, um, when the staff comes together, we have a moment of coherence together where we align ourselves with the intention for the day to be servants to life and of life. And that may happen into, into, you know, throughout the course of the day, depending on who I'm meeting with. And then at the end of the day, I go back to the same place that I began and, and, um,

• 14:15Speaker 02

  you know, turn it over and I try to go to bed with not a to-do list. But I try to go to-

• 14:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A to-be list.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go. You know, it's like, thank you. And then I ask to be taught even as I sleep.

• 14:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it's powerful, these simple, daily rituals.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Very simple.

• 14:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Seem like, kind of insignificant, but they're profound and they have resonance throughout your life and they build over time.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  They build, you know, as the example, if you pour a little bit of water, and muddy water, every single day, eventually, there's clarity with the water. So if you do something every day, just a little bit, then you become more and more clear.

• 15:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's true. I remember, you know, when I went to college, I didn't major in biology, I majored in Buddhism.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Did you?

• 15:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I did.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  You had a Buddha call, huh?

• 15:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I did. I got a call from the Buddha. He says, "Yeah, check out this class." And I, you know, just followed the doorway open. Actually, I remember sitting in Cornell in the dining room, and it was the first week of class, I was a freshman, and I was sitting against this guy, and he's like, "Oh my God, you should take this class by this professor at Grapart. He's from Paris, he's crazy, he's a Buddhist, he's like, it's amazing." I'm like, "All right." So like, I canceled one of my classes and I switched over. And I literally just took every class he taught, and I took all the Buddhist classes. And I didn't intend to be a Buddhist major, but that's what all my classes were. And I also started meditating, and was a yoga teacher before I was a doctor, and was profoundly interested in this space. And of course, then I ended up going to medical

• 15:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  school and getting kind of sidetracked, working 100 hours a week, and all that kind of fell away, and got married and had kids. And, you know, I remember having really profound experience back then, but I'm almost like, I was young and I didn't have a way to contextualize them. And the last few years, I've sort of reconnected with meditation, and 20 minutes twice a day is sort of like, religious for me. And it's, it's simple, it's easy, I can do it on a plane, I can do it in the back of a car, I can do it, not while I'm driving, but...

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 16:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it's profound.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  You can drive while meditate. You can meditate while driving.

• 16:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No. And I, and I, I can tell you that in, the amount, I didn't think I was anxious, I didn't think I was stressed, I thought I was happy. And the truth is that all of those things became amplified.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Nothing bothers me anymore. I don't react emotionally. I feel much happier and joyful. And it's just a simple, simple practice.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 16:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Every day, and it's profound. And unless I think you have something to anchor you in the world, the spirit, it's very hard to sort of make progress in your life.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  It is. The turbulence in the world, the thought forms, the opinions, the news, all the things that we're bombarded with. I mean, we have more stimulation in one day, as you know, than previous generations had in a year or five years. All one day, we get all of this information. We have to have some kind of grounding into the spirit to stay sane. Or you're just pulled emotionally.

• 17:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Digital detox.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Every single day, you have to, you know. Like you said at the beginning of the conference, you have a box. You put your phone in the box so you can just be with yourself and your wife.

• 17:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, my wife, you know, the best gift you can give anybody is your presence.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And now, you know, you're with your friends, they're on their phone, they're texting. It's like, we're all disconnected, and all we want is to connect. So they're on their phones to connect, but they don't connect with the person right in front of them. It's like, pretty crazy.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  These young people have a much harder situation because sometimes I'll look at them. They're talking to each other, and they're sitting right next to each other. Why don't you just talk to them? There he is. Just say hello. You don't have to text it.

• 18:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's true. It's true. And so, you know, the gift of presence is powerful. And I literally bought my wife this box for her anniversary. And I gave her the box. She's like, that's a nice little box. And I'm like, no, that's not the present. The present is, I put my phone in the box for the weekend.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And she just started crying because all she wanted was my presents.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then I thought, it was for her. But I actually had this extraordinary experience over that weekend where I just was able to be. I wasn't constantly looking for my phone, seeing what messages were there, checking the news.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  It's amazing.

• 18:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Looking at my Facebook, Instagram.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  It's amazing. Recently, I left my phone at home as I went off to the office. I had a bunch of things to do. And I was on my way. I said, I'm not going to go back and get it.

• 18:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  And it was such freedom.

• 18:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  I still got all the information I needed to get.

• 18:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, right.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  It just came through different sources.

• 18:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Anything happens in the world you need to know about, somebody will find you.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  It's somebody with the staff member, "Did you know so and so's coming? You need to..." I said, "Oh, thank you."

• 19:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you mentioned something I think is something that affects all of us. We live and are bombarded by hostile messages all the time. School shootings.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  "North Korea's gonna kill us." You know, "Iran is ready to blow up the world." You know, there's violence everywhere, there's murder everywhere. We don't hear the hopeful, joyful stories, although there are many of those.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  They're in the majority, actually.

• 19:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And how do we navigate that onslaught? How do we sort of build a way of dealing with that for us?

• 19:32Speaker 02

  What I've done over the years and what I've trained my practitioners to do and bring this to the congregation is that when the news, when you're watching the news, you frame it that this is actually a prayer request from our society. So instead of like, "Oh, this happened, this happened." What if somebody came to you and said, "I have a diagnosis." You know, how would you respond? You know, there'd be compassion, there'd be kindness. If you were a praying person, you might pray for them. So I teach that when all that's coming at you, that's actually a prayer request from our society. In that you'd breathe, become still, and kind of look and see what's missing there. And you add that. You add that in your prayer.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  So that you're not at the effect of it. That news that's coming at you is actually making you go deeper in your spiritual practice. So with every bad news you get, it's taking you deeper into a contact with the presence, rather than being, you know, overwhelmed by it. So and that's kind of how we approach it. So we say we move from the headlines to heartlines. Hear the headlines, it takes us to our heart. What is the world asking for? The world's asking for peace. The world's asking for clarity. The world's asking for connection. The world's asking for a global community, rather than egocentric nations warring against each other. What's really being called for is a sense of global community.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  So that's kind of how I approach it.

• 21:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you know, I'm sure people may hear that and go, "Well, you know, that's nice. It's seemed like it's great to pray and be positive and try to bring goodness into the world, and that's great, but is it gonna really change anything?" And I just recall this research that was a number of years ago where, and it was really well done scientifically controlled study, where they had groups of people praying for other people at a distance, someone's in a hospital, or someone's sick, and they were able to measure the response of the people who are sick, even though they didn't know anybody was praying for them.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 21:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it had profound effects on their outcomes.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the results in terms of their hospital stay, and their medication use, all these really hard metrics.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  It was true.

• 21:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it's like, wow, that's like, interesting. What does that mean? If you can pray for someone, somewhere in China, and they don't even know you're praying for them, and it has an impact?

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Right. It's a non-local event.

• 21:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do you explain that?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  It's a non-local event. You know, that's what prayer is, is it's a, you know, we're tapping into the quantum reality. I remember-

• 22:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Sort of like Einstein's world, right? Time and space are not what we think they are.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  They're, they're, they can be transcended. The, I remember another study by the Spindrift Foundation, and they took three, was it three? Yeah, three groups of seeds. The first group of seeds, they did nothing. Second group of seeds, they had people actually visualize every day that the seeds would grow into strong plants. So this second group-

• 22:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Pray for vegetables, I love that.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, vegetables and fruits. And so this second group grew twice as fast and was stronger than the first group. But then there was a third group that grew twice as fast as the second group. And that prayer was the people, it didn't matter what religion they were. They sat and they prayed, "Thy will be done."

• 22:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh huh.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  And that grew faster than the visualization group.

• 22:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Really?

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, that-

• 22:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So the surrender-

• 22:51Speaker 02

  The surrender went beyond imagination. Here, I'm imagining the seeds growing strong, but beyond my imagination, when I surrender, and, and this, it's called the Spindrift Foundation, and they do experiments like that every year.

• 23:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's incredible.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  But that's one they repeat.

• 23:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's pretty-

• 23:07Speaker 02

  And they always get the same results regardless of a person's religion, their background, their age, whatever the case may be. Visualization twice as, that's intention, and the visualization, seeds grow twice as fast as nothing. And then the surrender group goes twice as fast as the visualization group.

• 23:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's pretty stunning.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right. So what does that mean about the nature of reality?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  You know, one of my favorite affirmations is I'm available to more good or whatever quality you want to put in there than I can even imagine. So I'm not limiting myself by my own imagination, even though the imagination is great. And I call it an angel of God that takes us beyond where we are now. But there's always something beyond what we can imagine, the unknown. I want, I want something that I don't even know about yet. That's great. That's wonderful to take over, you know?

• 23:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's amazing. So, so, you know, many people listening struggle with life. You know, they struggle with their health. They struggle with their relationships. They struggle with work. They struggle with getting the life they want. And you're the head of this great, extraordinary church. And there's people from all walks of life who struggle with all sorts of things, probably more than most churches because it's so cross-sectional.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do you guide people to sort of break from that cycle and, and become empowered and, and be in their lives in a different way?

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Well, one of the things I do is, is bring them into, bringing their attention to anything in their life that's working. Because most of the time, our attention is on the areas that, what we believe aren't working. So I have them describe to me, what's working in your life? Is your heart beating, you know?

• 24:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Focus on what's right.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then take that as a feeling. Okay, this is working in your life. How does that make you feel? You know, so now we're coming into the feeling. And so then I say, okay, take that and then move it over to this area that's not working. Take this feeling with your mind and move it to this area that's incoherent. And begin to allow that feeling to be in that area, even before you see inner results. And do that a little bit every day. And since everything is energy, back to Einstein, everything is energy. It's not like hard, cold facts. Eventually, the energy in this area that doesn't appear to be working will speed up and begin to match the feeling that you're bringing to it.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  So I have people do that on a regular basis. Sometimes they have to search because they've taken for granted certain things in their life that are working and have to coax it out. You know, you love your grandchild? Wow, how does that feel when they come over and play with you, you know? Whatever the case may be, until that feeling is able to be in another area. So that's how we begin. And it bears really rich fruit.

• 26:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So can you share a story or two of someone in your church you work with that helped them kind of break through and get from being at the effect of their life to being at the cause of their life and the results of what happened?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Sure. The first thing that popped in my mind was this man named Stuart, who came up to me after a service. He was mad and he was crying at the same time. And he said, "Michael, Reverend Michael, I just came back from the doctor last week. I got stage four colon cancer. And they said I would be dead in six months." I said, "Stuart, a doctor can give you a diagnosis. The prognosis is between you and God."

• 26:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I love that.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  And he was shocked. I didn't give him... He thought I didn't give him any compassion. I just had to break it, had to shock him. I said, "Diagnosis from the doctor, prognosis, you and God." And he stopped. He went on exploration of diet. He was overweight. Diet, exercise, changing his mind about some things. So every year for 17 years, he would stand up at the Thanksgiving service and tell that story.

• 27:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Amazing.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  You know, so he did eventually pass, but he passed like 80 something years old, you know? But he was... So he went from six months to a number of years later by helping to reframe.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Another woman, I'm trying to think of her name. Debbie. Debbie had just graduated from a class with me. At the end of the class, I had the class. I asked anybody, "Does anybody have any intention? You want us to hold any prayer?" So Debbie raises her hand. She says, "Reverend Michael..."

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Kidneys aren't working. I need a kidney transplant. I want you to pray that my name goes to the top of the list.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  I don't think it works like that. I said, first of all. I could buy you one in China, but I can't. Yeah, can't do it. I said, so why don't we work with the kidneys that you have? And she said, no, no, no, the doctor says very rare disease. They've never seen any kind of remission in this. I need you to help me move up the list. I said, Debbie, let's work with the kidneys that you have. She said, no. So all of a sudden, this Alan Watts story came into my mind. He's a Buddhist teacher. Yeah. So Alan Watts told this story about how his wife was always late. And in his surface mind would say, she doesn't respect my time and blah, blah, blah. All the meaning. All the meaning. So he's in New York. He's asked his wife to meet him for lunch, but he tells her, listen, I have a meeting,

• 28:32Speaker 02

  so you gotta be on time so we can have some time to eat together before I go to this meeting. Inevitably, she's late again. So he's sitting there, he's stewing. Oh, she doesn't. She doesn't love me, she doesn't care. So all of a sudden, he becomes aware of the mind that's complaining. And he says, my wife respects me. She loves me. She just has a casual relationship with time. And then he said, she's giving me more time to meditate. So he reframed it to, while I wait, I can meditate. So she gave him a lot of opportunities to meditate. I bet. So he reframed it. So that story came into my mind. So I said, Debbie, while we're waiting for your kidney, why don't we try something? She said, okay. So I said, this is what I want you to do.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  So I said to the class, how many of you today woke up and gave thanks that your kidneys were working and you could pee? Like nobody. No one raised a hand. I said, this is what I want you to do. Every time you go to the restroom, you give thanks and you pray for Debbie. We call it the pee-pee prayer, the praying while peeing. And I said, Debbie, this is what I want you to do. I gave her a book, and in there it had accounts of healings. And there were some accounts of healing of kidneys. I said, I want you to read this every single day. I want your mind to be prepared for the possibility while we're waiting for the kidney transplant. So anyway, three months later, we come back, they're taking their oral exams, and she shares her kidney spontaneously started working. Oh.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  So what does it mean to have a purpose larger than yourself?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Well, I think we get a little bit bamboozled by this wanting more of everything, more, more, more, more, more. We kind of translate that into consumerism. When what we want is more fulfillment in our heart and soul, and it just doesn't get filled up by buying more stuff, or having a bigger house, or making more money, or trying to, you know, raise your status, even though that's kind of what the culture we live in points us toward. But what we actually, you know, Howard Thurman's quote is so great, because really what we want is we want our hearts to sing. We want to feel great about ourselves. We want to be filled with joy. And that comes from making a big difference with your life.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  It comes from living the way you live. I mean, it comes from realizing, like when you were in Haiti, that this opportunity of the life we've been given, that if you think about life as given to you, like a gift you received, then you want to give that life as a gift to something that's bigger than yourself. And when we do that, it's so amazing, because we think that's sacrificial and, you know, giving things up. It's kind of the opposite. I've found that when you make a commitment that's larger than your own life, it gets you out of this life-starring me. And the life-starring me is never fulfilling, because you're always worried about, am I too young,

• 31:32Speaker 01

  or too old, or too fat, or am I pretty enough, or am I smart enough? A life-starring me is all about, you know, measuring up or trying to fit in. But when you realize that you can dedicate your life to something larger than yourself, something you probably can't even accomplish in your own lifetime, it starts to shape you into the person you need to be to fulfill that. And so, an ordinary person, you know, people ask me...

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Gandhi was so extraordinary, probably when he was born. Mother Teresa was probably extraordinary when she was born. Jane Goodall was probably extraordinary when she was born. Mark Hyman was probably extraordinary when he was born. I can't live up to that. But the truth is, I think we're all born, the way we're born with gifts and treasures and talents, of course. But what's made, what made those people, including you, extraordinary is creating a purpose larger than themselves, which reaches back into your life and shapes you into someone capable of fulfilling it. So when you were in Haiti, for example, the situation, the circumstances being so dire, shaped you into someone who could move quickly and respond accurately

• 32:44Speaker 01

  and be of service rather than try to fix or help, but really be of service to the people that were there and use the wholeness of yourself to make a difference. So it's incredible how it, it's sort of backwards from what we think. But it really works.

• 33:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's totally true. And I think, you know, we all come to who we are in different ways. And you share a story about how when you were 14, your, your, the night before your 14th birthday, actually, your father died of a heart attack in the middle of the night. And when that die, that death happened, it was, it was like something stopped in your life. The music stopped and you thought your life was over. But in a sense, it, it catalyzed something in you. It, it, you know, it changed the way you viewed your life. And, and how did it inform the rest of your life? What did it do to inspire you to live differently than you would have as a normal 14 year old kid, just being a teenager?

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Well, the circumstances of my dad's death, first of all, he, he died very suddenly with no warning. So he died in his sleep with a heart attack, but he was aged 50. So he was really young. And he was a musician and he was a bandleader and our life was filled with music. He had an orchestra of 36 pieces, 36 men and a girl singer and it was in the big band days. And when my dad died, my mother, there were four of us, four children. She was overwhelmed because she was forty six. There was no warning. Suddenly, her fifty year old husband was dead with four kids. She had press and, you know, she didn't know where the insurance papers were and she didn't know where the trust

• 34:18Speaker 01

  was and the safe deposit box, you know, she was just completely overwhelmed. So she couldn't really do a lot of caring for us because she was overwhelmed with the public persona of my dad. And so I turned to my Sunday school teacher, a nun named Sister Benjamin. And it was so incredible because she was like a container for me to realize that I could go within, that I had an inner life. Because at age fourteen, young girls are often kind of in love with their dad. I mean, you know, that's when you're starting to, you know, feel those, those changes in your body and your dad is your, is your be all and all. And it was like my, my world ended. And I was also coming into

• 35:02Speaker 01

  high school and I was a, you know, popular kid. I was a cheerleader. I was, you know, I was on all the different teams and stuff. So I had a very rich and kind of visible outer life, but very little inner life. And when my father died, I kind of thought it was my fault, as children do often when a parent dies. So I went into a kind of, I was, at that time, we were Catholic, so I would call it, I thought it was religious. I thought I was being religious, which maybe I was, that was the context I lived in. But I think what I was doing was developing my inner life, my inner strengths, my inner self, my inner knowing, my soul. And that has served me so well that I, you know,

• 35:46Speaker 01

  as much as I love my father and the loss of him was this huge trauma in my life. The the outcome, the way that breakdown turned into what I'll call a breakthrough was I became aware of the inner life. I became aware of of the deepest part of who I was. And and in that way, it was a gift. And then I wanted to succeed in his name almost. It was almost in tribute to him. So it gave me a a kind of a motivation, a catalytic moment that I don't know if I would have had. It ignited me. Where high school sometimes can take you off into all kinds of directions. I was really in high school. I was, I continue

• 36:29Speaker 01

  to be, you know, I was homecoming queen. I was president of everything. I was that kind of a kid. But at the same time, I wasn't doing it. It wasn't about me. It was about earning the right to have a a life that was worthy of my dad. And so I think that's where it all kind of started. And I was so fortunate with with the counseling of this wonderful nun, Sister Benjamin. She even, I loved her so much, I thought, oh, maybe I should be a nun, except that it didn't work out because my boyfriend was the high school football, you know, star, and I was homecoming queen. Being a nun didn't fit. But but she gave me a lot of the gifts that that world, that world, that world has.

• 37:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's amazing. It's like an anchor in a very tough time. But it seems to have sort of led you to live a life that's quite unusual and has led you to be in the inner circles of people like Buckminster Fuller, who was a revolutionary thinker about how we live in the in the world quite differently. Mother Teresa, who was, you know, many think was a saint, Oprah Winfrey, who, you know, is a real cultural leader. And you have you raised hundreds of millions of dollars for all kinds of causes, environmental, social causes. You're full of wisdom and you do all sorts of things to make the world a better place. So can you just talk about a little bit about?

• 37:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Your experience as an activist from ending world hunger to protect the Amazon to empower women to trying to make the world a better place and how did you how did you find your way on that path?

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Well, I was very fortunate as a young woman, a young mother, I had three little kids and my husband Bill was very involved in he went to business school and then he started working for a big company and also he was all about succeeding and I was kind of caught in the being the wife that looked good and wore the right stuff and tried to learn about wine and art because he was starting to be successful and I thought I gotta know about these things and then I took the EST training, the old EST training, which is now it's antecedent or what do you call it?

• 38:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Landmark.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's now landmark and the EST training was a little bit more harsh, well probably a lot harsher than landmark is, but I guess we all needed it. That was in the seventies. It was like being hit by a two by four of your head. It woke me up to living a different kind of life because I was all about what I looked like and what I whether people liked me, I was all caught in all that and the EST training really, you know, people, a lot of people have their thing. It's either meditation or it's a religious experience or something happens like the death of a person or divorce, but for me, the EST training was a huge wake up call that I could actually take this life and make a difference with it.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  And then I met Buckminster Fuller and Buckminster Fuller was like the be all and all.

• 39:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Can you just say like who he was in context, as many people listening may not know who he was. He was an influential figure for me, but he's been dead a long time, so people forget.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of people don't even know he was, younger people than me. So Buckminster Fuller lived in the 20th century. He was a he was trained as an architect and an engineer and when he was 27, he contemplated suicide because he thought he was a failure as a father, as a as a producer of financial resources for his family and instead of taking his life, he made a commitment.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  To make his life an experiment, he said, if this is a throwaway life, if I can throw this away, maybe I can take it, this throwaway life, and see if one little ordinary human being can make a difference with their life that would impact all humanity. And that commitment, he made, instead of killing himself, he made that commitment to have his life make a difference. And he coined the phrase, "A little individual can make a difference that impacts all humanity" by living that way. And Bucky became just an extraordinary, he was often called the grandfather of the future. He invented the geodesic dome, he invented an electric car in 1949. He saw the end of fossil fuels. He was just way ahead of his time.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  And I heard about Bucky and went, and I couldn't really understand his books, they were way over my head. But I went to see him speak. And when I saw him standing on the stage, he was in his 80s. He did a tour of the world called The Integrity Days when he's 80 years old. When I saw him standing on the stage, he was bald, thick glasses, little short man, like kind of a grandpa type. I just, I just loved him. And I remember, there's a wonderful quote from Emerson that says, "Who you are speaks so loudly, I can't hear the words you're saying." And that was my experience of Buckminster Fuller. I did not understand anything he was talking about.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  But who he was spoke so loudly, his love for the universe. The talk he was giving was how the intellectual, how to tap into the intellectual integrity of the universe, which is grounded in love. And I just, I just loved this guy. And I ended up being able to know him and have him come to our home and meet my kids. And he was my mentor to me. So he coined the phrase, "A little individual can make a difference that impacts all humanity." And that's when it really kicked in for me. I'm gonna make a difference with my life. And then the kind of key thing that happened next is that I was instrumental in introducing Buckminster Fuller.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  To Werner Erhard, who was the founder of the Astin Landmark Movement. And when these two characters met, I knew a miracle would occur and it did. That was the founding of the Hunger Project, a commitment to end world hunger. And then I got totally engaged and involved in that. So that's kind of the background story.

• 42:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Amazing, amazing, amazing. And you also work with Mother Teresa. How did that happen?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Well, when you work on hunger and poverty and you end up, you end up in India. And I spent a lot of time, 25 years, going back and forth to Sub-Saharan Africa and India, Bangladesh, places like that. And when I was first in India, 1981, a long time ago, I, I remember thinking, my God, I'm in India. And as a, as a raised as a Catholic, I wasn't Catholic anymore, exactly. But, um, uh, you know, that kind of deep Catholic upbringing, I, I'd always really admired her and loved her like anybody. You know, she was so extraordinary. I thought to myself, I'm, I'm working on hunger. I'm in India, maybe I'll meet Mother Teresa. And I mentioned to a friend, her name is Indira Coitra.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  I owe her so much. And I mentioned that to her and she said, oh, I know Mother Teresa. I said, you do? My God, you know, Mother Teresa? She said, I'd love to introduce you. She'd love to meet you. I thought, you're kidding. And, um, then it was two years before I was back in Delhi where that conversation took place. And I called Indira and said, I'm back in Delhi. I was working in other parts of the country at the time. Um, and she said, perfect, Mother Teresa's here at her orphanage in Delhi. And, um, and so I, I was immediately, I went to confession. I practically bathed myself in holy water. I had been to church in like 20 years. I thought I'm going to see Mother Teresa, my God.

• 43:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  So I had to recover my, um, my Catholicism, Catholicism, at least for the moment.

• 44:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Cancelled everything and got myself ready and, and went to see her. And, and it was an extraordinary first meeting. Um, I'll never, ever, ever, ever forget it. And, um, I cried the whole time. I, I, I just, I had no agenda. It was just to be in her presence, which was life-changing for me. And then I became engaged with her. I went to visit her whenever I could. I went to, with her to the leprosy center. I would accompany her to, um, at Kaligat, where it's the home of the death and dying. I, I just couldn't get enough of her. And she was everything you would want her to be. She, she was a humble servant of God. And, um, she never talked about herself and she didn't talk much, uh, but she was her work.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  And, um, and that really, really impacted my life. I'm so privileged to have known her.

• 44:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then how was your life different afterwards? What were the things that you changed about how you live? And how you thought about the world and yourself?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Well, can I tell you a story about that?

• 45:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Well, when I first went to see her, I, um, oh God, probably cry here. So I, I, I went to her orphanage in Delhi, which was a home for girls under two. And in India at that time, many, uh, many girls, baby girls were given up just because they were girls. But often if they had a missing finger or they were blind or there was something wrong with them, they were for sure given up. And when I arrived at the orphanage in, in Old Delhi, I was walking up the, the steps to the door and there was a crumpled newspaper on the step. And I picked it up, you know, because I'm a sort of a trash picker-upper. And when I picked it up, uh, to, to throw it away,

• 45:45Speaker 01

  there was a baby inside. And the baby was a little girl, the size, this is the size of my hand. She was so, so small. She was like a puppy. She was so tiny. She was very, very premature. And she was alive and breathing. And so I grabbed her up in a shawl and, uh, knocked on the door. And, uh, a nun opened the door and I, I presented this, this little, little being. And they took her right away. And I said, she was on the doorstep. And I said, I'm here for my appointment with Mother Teresa. And the woman who answered the door, she said, well, Mother Teresa's not here. She's at the She's at the jail bailing out prostitutes because we need so much help here. We have so many children. And so she said, can you help us while you're waiting?

• 46:30Speaker 01

  And so I said, okay. So they put me to work. I put on an apron. There were thirty nine little girls under two little babies. And they put me to work in a series of sinks, bathing deformed little, little girls, blind little girls, little babies, just. And I don't remember, I know this is impossible to believe, but I do not remember anybody crying, any child crying. And that's impossible. But it was so beautiful. And I remember thinking, this is my meeting with Mother Teresa. If she never comes back, this is it. I was in absolute bliss with these little babies and the nuns and the, and the scene and the love. And then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, she's here.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  And I went, went and met with her in, in a, in a, in a dark little hall, a wooden table and two chairs. And, you know, I cried all the way through. But here's the thing I want to tell you, in a certain moment in the meeting, there was a scuffle behind me and a loud series of voices, sort of angry, loud, demanding voices and a, a, a strong aroma. And, um, and then this huge, I mean, huge Indian couple arrived in our hallway, in our meeting. The woman was very large, very tall, and also very, very wide. And she had a very opulent sari, lots of bangles and a diamond in her nose and diamonds that went all the way to her ear.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  She, they were extremely opulent looking and kind of over the top people and over perfumed, over made up, overweight, over everything. And her husband was even bigger. He was this giant Sikh and he had a big topaz on his, his, uh, What do you call those things?

• 48:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Turban.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Turban. He had, he had rings on every finger, including his thumb. And they came bursting in and they said to Mother Teresa, "We didn't get a picture. We didn't get the picture." And I, I didn't understand what they were doing, but she stood up and they handed me an Instamatic camera, if you remember those little Instamatic things.

• 48:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  And they stood on the other side of the wall and they put her in the middle and demanded in a kind of boisterous and bully-ish way, "Take the picture, take the picture." So I took a picture and then the woman did, they were huge. So this man over here and this woman over here and little Mother Teresa in the middle and you know, she had osteoporosis, she was all bent over. Then the woman did this, what I thought was unforgivable thing. She, she went like this, "Mother Teresa, put your chin up." And she went, and pulled up her chin and held it up for the picture. And then she demanded I take another picture.

• 49:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh my God.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  And I did. And then they grabbed the camera and they left. They didn't thank us, they didn't kiss her.

• 49:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh wow.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  They didn't do anything. They just left and they were awful, rich, ugly, entitled, bad people. And I sat down again, and Mother Teresa sat down, we continued our meeting, but my blood was boiling. I hated these people. How could they treat her that way? How could they interrupt my meeting? And, um, but I tried to calm myself down. And Mother Teresa was totally fine, but I was not. We completed our meeting and then I rode back to my hotel in Delhi, which took 45 minutes. And during the time, I realized, oh my God. I felt the most profound love I've ever felt in my life, sitting with her. And then this enormous search of hate for these wealthy, entitled,

• 49:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  boisterous, rude people.

• 49:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hmm.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  And she was fine. I was not fine.

• 50:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  So when I got back to the hotel, I wrote a letter to her, thanking her for this profound teaching. And here's what she told me, and this is what changed my life. She wrote me back.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  And she said, you will, you are, will always be drawn, you will always be drawn, Lynn, to the underprivileged, the less fortunate, the people who are marginalized and need, need your support and your love. But you need to expand your circle of love and compassion to include the rich, the entitled, the wealthy, the

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Everybody's suffering.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  righteous. And she said, she said this incredible thing. She said, the vicious cycle of wealth can be as intractable and as painful as the vicious cycle of poverty.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  And your karma is to open your heart to the wealthy and expand your circle of compassion to include them. And after that, I, I really, my fundraising, which I was doing anyway, came, became completely transformed. And I started to see people caught in the climbing of the ladder, the trying to accumulate more, another plane, another helicopter, another island, as, as people that were part of what my Dharma was, my karma was.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  And, and it was, it, it has been incredible ever since then. That's really how I could write the book, The Soul of Money.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Because I started to see, we're all suffering, and many of us in our relationship with money, whether we have it or we don't have it. We, we, it's, it's a place where we're not ourselves all, often, where we're, where we become somebody we don't want to be, where we could become greedy, where we become entitled, where we become righteous, where we become victims. And so that's when I really started to working with, work with people of money. And that was that meeting with Mother Teresa.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  My whole goal in any of my work is always to give people the stories, the studies and the strategies to make change in their life. And I, and I really believe that those are the three things that we need. You need the stories that inspire you and give you hope and motivate you and help you realize that this can happen for you. The science, and, and I talk about a lot of science in the book. I mean, the studies that have been done on monks' brains show that monks have the happiest, calmest brains on the planet. You know, when you, when you're looking inside a monk's brain and seeing that they have a high set of Response for seeing physical pain, but their brain will not measure any emotional pain to that physical pain. Ah.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  So a lot of us are in pain twice. We, we feel a piece of pain on our fingers. But then our mind goes, oh no, I might lose my finger. And now you're having pain in two places. Whereas inside a monk's mind that has meditated for a significant amount of time, you'll find that they only see the physical pain. But they don't have a mental pain or emotion attached to that. Now just think about that for a moment. If you are able to create space between events you went through in your life that were painful and emotionally painful. But you are able to separate pain from that situation. So you can actually navigate it almost like as if you were helping a friend. Hmm. And when you start thinking about that, when you can approach your own life, just like you would approach a friend. You become much more objective.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  You become much more thoughtful. You become much more kind. It's in, it's incredible what happens when you become an observer uh of the changes that are needed on your own life. If you think about it, Mark, like it's always easier to create change in someone else than it is in yourself. And so sometimes you have to see your mind as a separate part. And so in the book, I talk about the difference between the monkey mind and the monk mind. Yeah. Monkey mind is the mind we all experience. Jumping from thought to thought to thought, like branch to branch to branch. It's comparing, complaining and criticizing. The monkey mind is always looking just for its next banana. Like if you gave a monkey a diamond

• 54:12Speaker 03

  or you gave it a, a stock certificate in a big company, a monkey wouldn't care. The monkey wouldn't understand the value of it. It would just want that next banana. Right? The monkey is just looking for that instant gratification. So that's the mind that we all very much are aware of, we experienced on a day to day basis. The monk mind, which is the antidote. Is the mind that comes at it from a different position. So if the monkey mind is swooping from branch to branch, the monk mind is going to the root of the issue. And I know when you came on my podcast, we talked about this, that the only way we solve our issues in life is going to the root. And one of the biggest roots of our challenges and issues

• 54:55Speaker 03

  is that we have not allowed ourselves to learn about our talents, our skills, our gifts. And in chapter six in Think Like a Monk, I speak about how we can discover our natural inclinations and propensities and our natural gifts. And one of my favorite thoughts, which I believe is attributed to Albert Einstein, is where he says that, you know, everyone's a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it's stupid. And that is such a real experience for so many of us. And when I was studying these ancient literatures and the Vedas and the Babagita,

• 55:38Speaker 03

  I was exposed to this concept and this truth of Dharma. So Dharma is the ancient Indian word for purpose. It can also mean eternal beauty. It can also mean real duty. But it can also be equated to purpose and eternal purpose. And what it's suggesting is that inside of all of us, we are born with a natural set of gifts, talents and instincts. But it's being buried under everything we think we need to know. So excavating that truth is what allows us. And in the book, I give a full thirty-three question personality test that I'd love for people to take, which allows you to discover their Dharma type. But the more interesting thing about Dharma

• 56:23Speaker 03

  is that the Manu Smriti, which is the book that talks about Dharma, talks about how if you protect your Dharma, if you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you. And what I love about that is that your purpose is something you have to protect. Because everything in the world will constantly try and take you away from your purpose, whether it's money or fame or success or whatever it may be. There'll be something in your life that is taken away. And we have to protect our purpose like a rare jewel. Because it's constantly being trying to be stolen.

• 56:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So this is a beautiful gift you're giving us to think about, actually, what is our purpose? What is our Dharma? What is our work in the world? What is our natural gift that we can bring out? And most of us never get asked that question. We never think about it. Nobody talks to us about it. And it's such a powerful thing. And in your life, you clearly found that. You found your Dharma, which is being in service of wisdom and helping others connect to that in very accessible ways that are not esoteric or weird or strange, but that are in play language that translate these very ancient techniques and philosophies and wise teachings into stuff that actually helps us feel better now.

• 57:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it's really a powerful thing. And so what came to me as you were talking is, in your life, I imagine, even after you did the monk thing, you got out, that you faced obstacles and challenges and difficulties. And maybe you can share a little bit about what some of those were and how this monk mind that you developed, this brain training, this mind training that you did, helped you navigate it in a different way than you might have before.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that happened when I left the monastery is I realized that I had to make money to survive in the world. And my parents are not well off, so I couldn't live off of them for too long. And I started applying to corporate companies because that's where I thought I would have worked and I had to pay the bills. And I was rejected by forty companies. And those forty companies that I applied for were tailored job specs. And surprise, surprise, no one wanted to hire a monk. Like, you know, what are your, a former monk, what are your transferable skills? Sitting quiet and, you know, meditating for eight hours? Like, how's that gonna help a company? And so I could see that there were companies that weren't giving me an opportunity.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  And the way when monk training came into that was recognizing that the reason I was being rejected from a lot of these companies is actually because I was trying to apply for a role. That wasn't aligned with my purpose or my passion. I was I was trying to apply for a role that I was materially qualified to do based on my qualification. But not necessarily that I was that passionate or excited about. And so often we we get rejected for two reasons. We get rejected either because we're not aligned. And if someone telling is telling you you're not aligned, they're probably right. Because if they're seeing that you're out of alignment for this opportunity, there is some truth in that.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  The second thing that's being said is you need to develop a different expertise. And you need to develop a different skill set to be ready for this. And actually, if you can face rejection time and time after again and adapt and try again. It's proof that there is passion and purpose in that. If you give up after the first two times. You're basically accepting that this is not really something that I'm that passionate about. And so it's a great indicator, it's a great signal for how you feel about something. So I started to realize that I wasn't really looking. I was looking to pay the bills, I wasn't really looking for my passion and my purpose. The other time that I've really experienced a great failure and rejection, which the monk training really helped me in.

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  Was when I first realized that I wanted to start making content to spread messages. And before even ever making a video, I approached three media companies. And and I applied, sorry, I applied to ten media companies in London. And they all rejected me before interview because they said you don't have communication background. You don't have a media background and you don't have a presenting background. So then I went and networked with three executives in London who are well known. As execs that are behind, you know, media companies. And so I would network with them, I'd find a way to meet them at a event. I was like, look, I will work for you for free. I just want to help create a shift in the world through media, please give me an opportunity, almost begging them. Yeah. And I got three responses. You're too old to be in media. It's safer where you are, just stay there.

• 1:01:10Speaker 03

  And you're too underqualified to be in media. And those are the three responses to go, you're too old. You're in a safer place, you're too. You're too you're too old at twenty six or seven? Twenty eight, I was twenty eight at the time and I was too old, I was told I was too old to be in media. And do you know what the amazing thing is, Mark? And this is where my monk training really helped. I gratefully received and accepted each of those statements. And now in hindsight, I'm even more grateful to them because if they didn't say no, I would be working as a trainee video journalist in a media company in London. And I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  And so we look at rejection as a bitterness or to prove people wrong or to have revenge. And the Mark training says, no, actually be really grateful for those people who may have diverted your path or redirected your path because they're actually redirecting you closer towards you finding your own self-worth and your own self-confidence. And so for me, I kept going and finally I ended up at a ethnic minority TV training day run by the BBC. So I walk into this room, there are six people in the room and everyone's brown or black and we're in this room. And we're being trained and being TV presenters by the BBC. And I went there to just test. I was like, maybe I don't have the skills. Let me find out. They were like, no, Jay, you've got the ability. This is great. I was like, amazing. Give me a job.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  And they said, well, there aren't any jobs in media at the moment. And I was like, you brought me here to train me to tell me that there are no jobs in media. That's great. And then they said to me, well, why don't you start a YouTube channel? And this is in 2016, end of 2015, beginning of 2016. And so they said, why don't you start a YouTube channel? And I was like, that works for like one in a billion people. I was like, that works for Justin Bieber. Like that does not work for Jay Shetty. And that is a very genuine limiting belief I had.

• 1:03:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Speaker 03

  Very honest limiting belief. And I was like, this does not work for people like me. And I remember the quote that I'd read from Edison at the time where he said that when you feel you've exhausted all options, remember this, you haven't.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  And I think that maybe that's a that's partly a monk mindset, more an Edison mindset. I'll give Edison the full credit for that. But that mindset really helped me at that time where I realized that until you had really tried to seek, and that comes from the monk mindset, unless you had really tried to seek the good of everything, until you had really tried to seek the opportunity in something that you would never really, you could never truly say that you tried everything. And so I started a YouTube channel and, you know, three months in, my global HR leader at Accenture saw the videos. So Accenture is a 500,000 person organization I've worked inside.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  I was one of the top social media people at Accenture globally. And our global HR leader sees this video and she, her name's Ellen Shook, and she shows it to Arianna Huffington.

• 1:04:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  At Davos. And Arianna Huffington really appreciates the video and that, long story short, that that becomes a tipping point in my career.

• 1:04:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And it was just because you you you trusted your your heart and you trusted what was being pointed to you, which wasn't really necessarily the thing you thought was good for you at the moment. You were hearing things that were rejection and hurt and pain. And it's almost like you said, the example of hurting your finger, cutting your finger, is the physical experience, right? And then there's your perception and the layering that you put on that experience with your mind and the meaning you put on it. And and you can take rejection as a bad thing or potentially a good thing. And I think it's very hard for us to do. And I I found in my own life that the more I've been able to to look at the bad things that happen,

• 1:05:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  the quote, bad things, as gifts.

• 1:05:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And trust that there is a bigger story unfolding that I can't always understand. That's guiding me to what actually I should be doing. I can kind of relax a little bit and not have to feel that emotional pain, which is connected to the the meaning that I put on the experiences, which which are just fabrications of my mind, right?

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  Exactly. We all become fiction writers in our mind. And you almost, you know, you you become like you start writing a TV show. We've all watched too many movies and read too many fiction books and we start finishing the chapter in our minds before we've even experienced it in our lives. And that is such a challenging way to live, where you are writing what you're not yet living. And what we don't realize is when you start completing the chapter in your mind, that is the reality you start living in your life. And so allowing life to move at the pace that you're living it rather than to write ahead is so important.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  And one of the biggest challenges that arises is our training as a monk, one of the things we would repeat is called, don't judge the moment.

• 1:06:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 03

  That we were trained to repeat. What you just said now, that if you judge a moment, if you label a moment as good or bad, then it will only ever be what you label. It's like if you label a jar in your in your in your pantry or in your cupboard as sugar, you will only ever find sugar in it because not only have you labeled it, now you will put sugar back into that jar. But if you don't label life in the moment, you allow it to evolve into what it can truly become. And we've all experienced how a curse can turn into a gift, and how a gift can turn into a curse. There's a beautiful story that I repeat in the book. It's a well-known story told through time and a Zen story

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  around how there's a young boy and his and his teacher. And the young boy is sent out to fetch water every single day. And so every single day, he goes down with two buckets that are held on a bamboo rod. And he goes and picks up water and he brings it back up to the home that's at the top of the hill. And one day, the boy recognizes that there's a big crack or a crack inside one of the buckets. And he tells he tells the teacher, he says, look, there's a there's a bucket, there's a crack in this bucket, like we're gonna lose water this whole time. And and the teacher says, look, you know what? I just want you to continue what you've been doing. I just want you to continue what you've been doing. And the boy says, okay, let's continue what I'm doing. He continues to go down, continues to get water, comes back up every day. A month later,

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  he sees on the path upwards from the water to the mountain where where the home is, that on one side, the side where the bucket's been broken, there's a beautiful row of flowers and plants and all this beautiful vegetation. And he realizes and he goes to the teacher, he says, wow, I'm seeing all this. How did that happen? And the teacher's like, well, when you told me this bucket was broken, I went and planted some seeds. And I did it to show you that even something that seems broken can still be used for to create beauty.

• 1:08:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  And and I think sometimes we start thinking we have to fix ourselves and we have to start, like, we have to make ourselves whole again, and we we can't be broken or have blemishes, or we can't have wounds, and we can't heal. And the truth is that when we engage even our pain in helping others, that's where we truly heal it. And that's your story. I mean, you went through pain, you were a personal challenge, and you used that not only to heal yourself, but heal others.

• 1:09:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Speaker 03

  You've turned something that was broken into beauty.

• 1:09:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Speaker 03

  And when you look at it, when you just change your way, you just go, oh, I don't need to throw away parts of me that are broken. I just need to engage them. I just need to use them and heal them. I don't need to suddenly think that I need to throw away this experience.

• 1:09:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's it's so beautiful. And I think we we uh we get so stuck in the patterns of our mind that creates suffering through putting all this meaning on things. And you never know, right? And I this this blessing curse thing, it reminds me of a different version of that story, which is there was a young man who, you know, went out and, you know, found this beautiful black stallion and brought it back and into his land. And the father's like, how great that is, you know, you got this wonderful horse. He says, well, it seems like a blessing could be a curse. It seems like a curse could be a blessing. And then, you know, he rides the horse and he falls off the horse and he breaks his leg and. Everybody's like, oh, you broke your leg. How terrible. It seems like a blessing could be a curse. And it seems like a curse could be a blessing. And then the war starts and they recruit all the young men to go fight and they all die and he can't go because he's got a broken leg.

• 1:10:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it just, the story goes on, but it's really the same thing that, you know, we, we, we, we suffer mostly because of our minds, not because of what's happening in our lives. And there is for sure a real suffering and there is lack and there is poverty and there is, but, but most of the stuff that most of us are suffering with today, especially in America, is really driven by what's happening in our minds.

• 1:10:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 1:11:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.

• 1:11:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 1:12:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

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