What Everyone Gets Wrong About Personal Growth - Robin Sharma

Robin Sharma is a leadership expert, motivational speaker and an author. Often we tell ourselves, ‘Once I make X amount of money then I’ll be free to enjoy my life. However, when we reach that milestone, the fulfilment we hoped for isn’t always there. So what is the key to finding happiness in life while also achieving material success? Expect to learn the types of wealth that money can't buy and how to cultivate them, what true wealth looks like, how to ensure you are choosing the path that’s best for you personally and financially, if you actually have to become rich before changing your focus to other leisure activities, what you should be auditing every day to make sure you are aligned in life and much more... - 00:00 What Does True Wealth Look Like? 08:26 Biggest Misconceptions on Personal Growth 13:48 The Messiness of Deep Growth 17:16 Best Strategies for Wellness 26:13 Healthy Relationships With Partner & Family 35:01 Finding Pleasure in Your Craft 51:31 The Howard Hughes Money Trap 1:01:01 Building a Community of Friends 1:06:05 The Importance of Mentors & Adventures 1:16:29 Where to Find Robin - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  What does true wealth look like to you?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Rich family life.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Pursuing my craft, even if there's no applause. Serenity, I think the new luxury good.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Treating my readers with respect and honoring what I call the sacred bond.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Enjoying my portfolio of enthusiasms is a form of wealth. And doing whatever I can do to make the world a better place as as idealistic as that might sound, it's a great source of joy. Great source of happiness to do whatever I can to make the lives of people better.

• 0:46Chris Williamson?

  I like the idea of a portfolio of enthusiasms as opposed to a portfolio of investments.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  It's really what the wealth money can't buy is about. I don't, I'm not saying a portfolio of investments financially is not important. But what's the point of worldly success with a empty heart? So I think if you can make money and if you can be productive and achieve worldly success, but also do it in a way that sustains you and doesn't have the costs of getting to a mountaintop and then realizing you missed the most important things, I think that's the way to go.

• 1:21Chris Williamson?

  You work with a lot of very successful, well-known people. How common is it for those individuals at the top of their industry to have got to the top of the mountain and then hated it all the way up and realized it was the wrong one when they got there? Is that just a meme or is that something that actually shows up in practice?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely true. I had one client on his way home from work. Things were so unsatisfying, even though he had all the money in the world, he would pick up a a case of beer and medicate himself every evening.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  There's one chapter in the book, the multi-billionaire in the very empty mansion, which is, we received a call to mentor a very famous billionaire who you would know. I decided to accept the engagement. I showed up in his country, showed up in his city, went to this area that was populated by lots of embassies.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Got into his driveway, biggest house I've ever seen. Met by one of his aides, escorted past his art collection, amazing.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Walked past his car collection with a glass wall, led down a set of stairs. I heard Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls Playing," I could smell cigar smoke, something out of a movie. And I walked down this hallway and in the room is this mogul. We spent two hours, he talked about the businesses he built, the money he'd made, the beautiful toys he'd accumulated. And then, of course, I asked him, well, who'd he get to share this with? And he said, a long pause, and then he said, "I'm all alone."

• 3:05Speaker 01

  And so I think it's more common than we could imagine, people who we think have everything, who they're cash-rich and their life-poor. And it makes me think of what Jim Carrey said, he said, "I wish everyone could be rich and famous to realize it won't make a difference."

• 3:20Chris Williamson?

  There's another quote, I think it's from Tim O'Reilly, who said, "Try getting rich first and realize if you still need to become famous." I think that's another, another level down that, that a lot of people think that they want adoration, but what they really wanted was financial security. And that there's a lot of prizes that come with fame. Do you think, this is something I've been thinking about an awful lot, do you think that that is a lesson? That lots and lots of wealth won't fix internal deficiencies or a need for validation? Or your mental pathologies, or your sense of aloneness, or the texture of your own mind being unhappy when you fall asleep on a nighttime? Is that a lesson that people can learn without closing the loop of achieving some degree of financial success first?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, you just offered a great quote on wealth and success, and I'd love to reply with something I once heard. Someone once said, "The ultimate amount of, the perfect amount of fame is getting a great table in a good restaurant."

• 4:23Speaker 01

  And I think there's something wise in that, in that statement. So, yeah, I think the lesson is, don't numb your productivity. I'm a huge believer in creativity and productivity. I think it's a great source of joy. I don't know about you, but when I'm getting, when I'm pursuing my Mount Everest, and when I feel I'm being creative and productive and pushing whatever magic I can make into the world and helping people. It's inspiring and it's it fills me with a great amount of happiness. I never want to retire. Having said that, nothing on the outside is ever going to fill the holes that we have on the inside. And I think that's one of the great drugs of wealth and overachievement.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  We have these internal wounds. I mean, I can't tell you how many billionaires and celebrity tycoons that I've worked with. Their father or their mother never told them they were any good. And so this world in many ways has been built with people by people with chips on their shoulder. And

• 5:28Speaker 01

  unaware and subconsciously they're accumulating and striving and gathering all these things. Because they really don't feel they have enough and they don't feel very good about themselves. And so I think the real key is still achieve and accumulate and build and achieve worldly success. But

• 5:49Speaker 01

  question your root intention. Is the building an accumulation because you're overcompensating and you have these holes within? Or is the building because you want to build monuments and you want to see how far you can go? And you want to realize your primal genius and you want to make the world a better place?

• 6:06Chris Williamson?

  It's almost like when you see someone that has outlier results in life, whether that be with success or failure, you know, the person who is permanently chasing gambling losses, always in and out of jail. Or the other end of the spectrum, the person that's got accolades and is adored by millions and lots and lots of money. There is something non-typical about that person's makeup that's made them get to that particular place. Their composition has made their production very non-typical. And you have to ask yourself the question, well, do I want that? Like, what is the price that you have to pay? To be that person? What's the price that you have to pay to be the gambling addict criminal?

• 6:49Chris Williamson?

  Kind of plain. No one looks at that, but nobody ever questions, okay, and what is it that's driving the person that went to the opposite end of the spectrum as well?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  I call that the upsides of your downsides. What I mean by that is

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Our curses are blessings and our blessings are curses. So a lot of these super rich tycoons, they're perfectionists. Nothing's ever enough. They're selfish.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  They, et cetera, et cetera. But they wouldn't be who they are but for these curses. So what's often unhealthy, let's say, in our personal lives and in personal relationships, often serves people very well in business.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  So I think what's the solution? This, that, that's why I've created this eight forms of wealth model. I've been teaching to my clients for 15 years with really strong results. Money is one of the eight forms of wealth, but the first form of wealth, most people don't think about it. Personal growth, the first form of wealth, I call it growth. You wouldn't think that someone who each day is meditating and journaling, healing through insecurity, becoming wiser, stronger, more disciplined, more loving, has a currency worth celebrating, but that is absolutely a, a form of richness that's worth noticing. I mean, if we are each day incrementally and steadily materializing more of our primal

• 8:19Speaker 01

  genius, what's a greater, I think that's worth more than all the money in the bank, even if no one knows about it.

• 8:26Chris Williamson?

  What do you think most people get wrong when it comes to thinking about their own personal growth?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people think that they will develop themselves once they're successful in the world without realizing that your income and impact always reflects your self-identity. Your relationship in the world is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  One of my clients, he said he had his best year financially when he spent four hours every morning on his morning routine. Your relationship with your family, your relationship with your neighbors, your relationship with strangers, your relationship with your money, your relationship with your craft, your relationship with the world, it all reflects your relationship with yourself. There is where the...

• 9:14Speaker 01

  I'm channeling Mahatma Gandhi, but he said, you know, the real devils live inside of us. That's where the work is to be done. So I think our society has caused us to forget that the doorway to success opens inward, not outward. And if we develop what I call the four interior empires, everyone talks about mindset. Mindset's important. I don't think that's everything, as many pundits say, and I say that with a lot of respect. I believe our mindset is our psychology, but there's also the second interior empire, which I call heart set, our emotionality. We have to emotionalize. And then there's our health set, which is our physicality and our soul set, which is our spirituality. And all four of those are important.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  And someone, I know a lot of business builders and entrepreneurs will follow you from across the planet, Chris. They might be saying, how is soul set relevant to me? Soul set is not mystical. It's not religious. Soul set is simply your relationship with your higher or heroic self versus your egoic self. Your heroic self is the true part of you that you were intimate with before the world taught you to disbelieve in who you truly are. Your heroic self is good. It's brave. It's resilient. It's natural. It's loving. It's decent. It's generous. And as we go through life, we're, we get hurt and we forget who we truly are and we start to contract and feel the world as a unsafe place. So as we work on our four interior empires, we go out there in the world and we have

• 10:42Speaker 01

  this bravery and this, this true power versus fake power that creates all the outer results.

• 10:51Chris Williamson?

  Well, ultimately, presumably what people are trying to do when they achieve worldly success is give themselves a good enough reason to be happy and satisfied and peaceful. So if you can shortcut it and actually get to the root of the problem, which is the inner work, this is something I'm hugely working on myself at the moment and thinking, is there a, is there a quicker route to the outcome that I want, the way that I feel? Now, all it is, is vibes and values, right? It's just how, how are you feeling in the moment? And I genuinely believe that, yeah, focusing inward is probably a good place to start. You've got this idea about not becoming a resentment collector. What's that?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  That's in the the first form of wealth of the book, the first form of wealth is growth. And the chapter you're right, don't be a resentment collector. How many of us go through life and we get hurt? And rather than processing through it and metabolizing it and releasing it. We don't forgive the people who have hurt us in business or in our personal lives. And metaphorically speaking, it's almost as if we carry are carrying those people with us on our back. It affects our creativity, affects our productivity, affects our energy, creates inflammation, affects our longevity. So don't be a resentment collector is basically understanding that

• 12:15Speaker 01

  everyone who hurt you did the best they could do based on the level of consciousness they were at. And as Maya Angelou, the great American poet said, if they knew better, they would have done better. It's also remembering that the people who hurt you are the very people who would introduce you to your strengths and your creativity. I mean, I was once on an airplane, sitting next to a painter. And he said, I picked relationship partners who break my heart.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  And I said, why would you do that? And he said, well, when I'm suffering, I do my best work. And so just, I think we should remember that pain is a purifier and difficulty, a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. Difficulty actually serves our rise incredibly well, not just by making us kinder and gentler and wiser. I found the tragedies in my life caused me to

• 13:12Speaker 01

  help my craft enormously. Uh, so don't be a resentment collector, go through life, let go of the people. Don't, don't, and don't suffer from toxic optimism. It doesn't mean that if someone hurts you, betrays you, you don't process through the anger or sadness. Do that part of it, but then a time will come where you need to let that person go. Because our past is a, not a prison to be chained in. Our past is a school to be learned from. Let's exploit the past for the sake of a more beautiful, brighter future.

• 13:47Chris Williamson?

  Why is deep growth meant to feel weird?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Well, one of my brain tattoos is all change is hard at first, messy in the middle, gorgeous at the end. And if change, whether it was joining the 5am club, launching a new business, finding the love of your life, starting a new spiritual enterprise, if it was easy at the beginning, it wouldn't be valuable change.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  So any form of change causes you to almost experience a little death, Chris.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  I think a great life is a series of little deaths. Why do I say a little death? Because who you were yesterday must experience a crucifixion for the best part of you tomorrow to experience a resurrection. So whether it's a new habit personally, whether it's a new business innovation, whether it's a new way of operating out in the world, you need to, who you were yesterday needs to die so the better part of you can emerge. It's not easy, but I believe hard is easy and easy is hard. I think it's a great principle to live by. Our society has said to us, choose the easy life, read the easy books, watch the easy videos, have the easy conversations, launch the easy business, take the easy workout.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  It's when we do difficult things that we grow the first form of wealth. But if you do those difficult things, have the difficult conversation, read the difficult books, do the difficult workout, launch the difficult project and stay with it until you've pushed your project X out in the world, you end up having a much easier life.

• 15:26Chris Williamson?

  But also a strange one because it's so non-typical and it's going to be increasingly hard for you to find other people that are doing that as well. It's the same as we said at the very beginning, you know, someone that has outlier outcomes has had outlier inputs and it means that it's going to be more difficult for them to resonate and find someone that is like them. I also think when it comes to personal growth, there is a risk of this never being done mentality, this sort of never being good enough. And I think that you you think about this too with not letting self-care ruining your self-worth.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yes, I think it's like a lot of things in this world, things have gone extreme. So that chapter, I mean, hard work is a dirty word right now. You know, there's mastery is getting a bad rap right now. So I think self-care may be going to an extreme. I think I believe balance Aristotle called it the golden mean, and I think it's a very wise way to live. I believe I'm not a subscriber to the hustle and grind culture at all. I've been writing about rest as a necessity, not a luxury for many years. Having said that, too much rest

• 16:41Speaker 01

  is just as out of balance as too much hustle and grind. And so I really believe that self-care is incredibly important, but I don't think it should come at the expense of creating something beautiful in the world. Pushing your Taj Mahal, your Sistine Chapel ceiling, that takes work, it takes drive, it takes bravery, and that's just as important as taking time to put on your mud mask and meditate at 5:00 AM in the morning. Nothing against mud masks, but both are, but both are, both of those things are important.

• 17:16Chris Williamson?

  Speaking of that, obviously, you've spent a lot of time deconstructing morning routines, coming up with wellness practices. What are the, what are the most impactful strategies that you find yourself relying on the most when it comes to a wellness perspective?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Great question. MVP incredibly powerful. MVP, as you know, in sports, I think you used to be a cricket player early on when you were in the UK. And so you know what an MVP is, an MVP is the most valuable player. Well, in my methodology, MVP is meditation, visualization, and prayer. And for years, I was, you know, I wrote a book, The 5 AM Club, 5 AM was the time I'd wake up and I created that 202020 formula that I wrote about. These days, for the past eight or nine months, I'll be getting up at 4:00 AM. And I open my window and I listen to the roosters crow in this old farmhouse I live

• 18:13Speaker 01

  in in Tuscany. I listen to the dogs bark and I do forty-five minutes of MVP. I meditate, I visualize, and I pray. And all I can tell you, and I say this with a lot of sincerity for you, Chris, and all your millions of followers and watchers from around the world, we're all looking for ways to become more truly powerful. We're all looking for ways to do beautiful work. We're all looking for ways to move through insecurity. We're all looking for ways to become wiser in this world of poly crisis and to be more loving people. MVP, forty-five minutes of meditation, visualization, and prayer, every morning or even five days a week, is so incredibly powerful to reprogram your mindset, heartset, healthset, and soulset. So that's a very powerful way to do it.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Second question, part of my morning routine is journaling. We hear a lot about journaling. I'd love to offer you five journal prompts that are helpful for me. Number one, what am I grateful for? We know gratitude is the antidote to fear. We know from the work of positive psychologists like Sonia Lubomirsky that the happiest people in the world practice deliberate gratitude, not once a year on New Year's Day, because what you do each day is so much more important than what you do once a year. So I ask myself what I'm grateful for. That reprograms the human brain's tendency towards a negativity bias that served us well thousands of years ago. The negativity bias causes us to scan our environment today and look for threats, but gratitude causes us to look for the blessings. Second

• 19:42Speaker 01

  journal prompt is, where am I winning? So if you can notice the micro wins every day, that will fuel your hope, it will protect your inspiration, and it will give you energy. Third question, powerful one, what will I let go of today? You don't want to be a resentment collector. So asking yourself today, like three or four lines, what will I let go of today? Oh, this person hurt me. Oh, I'm frustrated that this person doesn't get my vision. Oh, I will let go of what you said, not feeling like I'm enough.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  You start to process through and metabolize that and you release a little bit of the resentment or frustration that you're holding. Fourth question, what does my ideal day ahead look like? One paragraph, clarity breeds mastery. One paragraph on what your ideal day looks like. It gives you so much more focus than being reactive and chasing your day. Fifth and final journal prompt question, based on the importance of remembering the shortness of life. I mean, the fact of the matter is you and I, no matter how long we get to live before we know it, we will be dust and I won't matter very much. I will be a bunch of dust on a urn above a fireplace next to some Little League trophies and maybe a few pictures.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  And so asking yourself this final journal prompt every single morning, what needs to be said at the end? By the people you love, by the people you care about, you fast forward to your last day. You write one paragraph. What that's going to do is going to allow you to live to the point, focus on your priorities and actually not to hold back. Because if you knew you only had seven days or 30 days left to live, you wouldn't care about rejection and you wouldn't be busy being busy. You'd get what's most important done.

• 21:30Chris Williamson?

  Can you just go back through your meditation, visualization and prayer process? Someone that maybe hasn't spent a ton of time on visualization or prayer. What does that look like for you? Are you, is this a guided practice? Is there an app that you use? Is there a book that you've learned from?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Sure. When I meditate, so 45 minutes, four o'clock to 4:45, do it whenever you want. Forty-five minutes, 20 minutes might be the meditation. The meditation, I often focus on my breathing. It might be inhale, peace, exhale, fear. Inhale, generosity, exhale, scarcity.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Inhale humility. Exhale whatever. That'll be one way. Second thing, it might be a body scan. So mindset is not everything. Mindset without heart set is an empty victory. Heart set is your emotional life. So 20 minutes of your meditation could be you scan your body and notice and you you build fluency the more you do it, like any practice. So I might scan my body and Chris, I might notice there's a tension in my solar plexus, which for me would be fear. You know, I'm on this big book tour. I have this new book that's come out, a lot of expectations on my shoulder. It's been a year of my life on a devotion, almost boarding on an obsession to try to get it right. Now I'm finding what people think.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  So maybe if there's a contraction here, I notice, okay, that's a little bit of fear about what's what's going on in my life. By breathing into it, you release it. By when you take a shadow and bring it into the sunlight, it starts to dissolve. Carl Jung, the great eminent psychologist called it your dark side. We all have a dark side. By bringing light to it by awareness, we start to move through that suppressed emotion. And then part of my visualization, then after the meditation, the visualization, I have this concept, your four beautiful projects, every quarter set four beautiful projects. So for a few minutes, I'll see myself on my four beautiful projects as if they were done beautifully, everything working out well.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  And I'll just spend time in that future image and then prayer, I pray for my family. I pray pray for strength. I pray for my 87 year old father, my mother. I pray for the world. I pray to be a humble servant as much as possible. So I just pray. And if you don't believe in religious prayer, absolutely fine, then practice scientific prayer and you can go to the science and see the power of visualization and the power of prayer. So MVP really works extraordinarily well.

• 24:11Chris Williamson?

  What is OMAD? That was another acronym that I wasn't familiar with before I read your book.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  OMAD, one meal a day. So what I encourage, this is the second form of wealth, which is wellness. I mean, come on, we have, we have to, this world has programmed us into measuring wealth by how much money is in the bank or stock portfolio or their, or our portfolio of houses and real estate. Yet in one wisdom tradition, they say, when we are young, we would sacrifice all of our health for wealth. And when we get old and figure out what life is all about, we'd sacrifice all of our wealth for one day of health. I was in Qatar once and someone handed me a piece of paper and it said, health is the crown on the well person's head that only the ill person can see.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  So that second form of wealth is so precious and it's wellness. So what is OMAD? Well, that's a chapter where I talk about the power of fasting, the power of autophagy. We know from science, the, the mystics have fasted for years. In Siddhartha, one of my favorite books, he said, you know, the person who can fast cannot be beaten. So we don't have to fast every day. There's good science talking about caloric restriction and putting yourself into the state of autophagy, which is cellular cleaning. In that chapter, I'm recommending OMAD, one meal a day, once a week. And take the money you would have spent on the other two meals and go out there and

• 25:38Speaker 01

  give it to someone who needs some food. So you benefit physically and the person need benefits as well.

• 25:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's fasting appears to be going in and out of fashion very quickly at the moment. It was and then it wasn't. And I feel like it's coming back in again. So yeah, I have to say, I feel fantastic when I do fast mentally mostly physically. I don't want to try and lift something too heavy if I'm on a one meal a day, day. But if it's a time when I need to be dialed in mentally, it is something that really, really helps. Talking about family, again, one of the problems I imagine of the high performers that you deal with is the sacrifices they've had to make personally to achieve the successes that they've wanted professionally. What have you learned about?

• 26:30Chris Williamson?

  Choosing, developing and maintaining a healthy relationship with your significant other.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  First thing I would say is a red flag is a red flag. And if you think it's a green flag, you might spend 20 years of your life dealing with the mess.

• 26:44Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean by that?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Well, how many of us have entered into a relationship where we saw the red flags right at the beginning?

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Intimately, as well as in business, they were right there. But we're nice people.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  And we hope for the best. I think hoping for the best without paying attention to reality is a recipe for misery. And I didn't mean that to rhyme. But I think it's, but I think it's true. So when a red flag shows itself in a relationship, pay attention to it. And wish that person well, love them from afar. But remember, one of the chapters in Wealth Money Can't Buy, your choice of mate is 90% of your joy.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  And I think that is so true. And when our home life is doing well and stable and peaceful, and we're not full of drama, watch what happens to, you know this, watch what happens to your mental focus, your creativity, your productivity, your relationships at work. So I would say a red flag is a red flag. Don't think it's green. I'd say your choice of mate is 90% of your joy. And then one of the chapters is, ask the 10,000 dinners question. I know you're from the UK and Ayesha Vardag is the UK, one of the UK's top divorce lawyers. She represents a lot of the footballers and movie stars and multi billionaires. And

• 28:18Speaker 01

  she was asked in the Financial Times, Chris, you know, you've seen a lot of relationships fall apart. What are your relationship lessons for a good relationship? And number one, she said, separate bedrooms seems to work very well. And the second thing, and the second thing she said was, second thing she said was, 10,000 dinners.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  And the interviewer said, "10,000 dinners, what do you mean by that?" And she said, "Well, looks fade, lust dissolves. But if you see yourself having 10,000 dinners with that person, hold them close and fight for the love, because great love is hard to find." So what I'm saying there is find someone, I don't believe opposites attract. Why?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know, there's this, again, there's many ways to do this, but in my experience,

• 29:12Speaker 01

  I find when someone has different values and is, and there's incompatibilities because they're opposite, then there's a lot of negotiating. You've got to do what they want to do and then you... Right now, my life partner, L., we just love so many of the same things. So, a great evening for us is home chatting and reading.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  We see the world through a similar set of lenses. There's very little drama. So there's not a lot of negotiating. We just love living life with one another. Doesn't mean it's perfect, but it's really, it's really very wonderful. So, I don't think opposites attract, and I would, you know, there's this idea, you know, universes collide. Find someone where universes collide. I'd rather have universes collide in the most serene, stable, loving, loving, loving way. You know, that's how, that's how I'd like universes collide. So, I, I think, find someone who sees the world the way you see the world, and it creates a lot less drama.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  And, you know, that brings me to another through line in the book, which is, you can change the world or be around toxic people, but you don't get to do both. And I want to go to some science here from...

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Nicholas Christakis at Harvard University. And what he's realized is we are influenced not only by our friends, but by the friends of our friends and the friends of our friends' friends. And we could get into the science on that. It's mirror neurons, which cause us to mimic the people around us. And emotional contagion, which is the phenomenon where subconsciously we adopt the dominant emotions of the people we spend most of our time with. And so if we allow energy vampires and dream stealers into our days, into our companies, into our home lives, over time, it dramatically degrades our creativity, our productivity, our happiness and our serenity.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  So doing an energy vampire detox, let's call it, is really extraordinarily powerful. And then I always hear people say, well, you know, that person is my mother or whoever, I would say, well, then practice selective association. Maybe don't text them three times a day, do it once a week. But in some cases, maybe it's a personal relationship. Maybe it's a friend. You talked about it. If you're on a path of growth, very few people are on a path of growth. Friends who were your friends a few years ago might not vibe with you anymore. They might be bringing you down. You've got to let them go or you could let them go. I would say, love them from afar.

• 31:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's difficult with the family thing. I guess I'm, maybe in some ways I'm blessed. I'm an only child and I've got mom and dad. So for me, the number of dice rolls that could have potentially thrown up a grenade in my life, I only had two. As long as mom and dad were great, which they were and are, I don't have that. But I understand that for people with bigger families, you know, you've got five brothers and sisters and a ton of close aunties and uncles. And you know, Uncle Jim is always causing havoc. And it's a nightmare at Christmas and it's a nightmare at Thanksgiving. And you always need, there's phone calls and there's police calls and all the rest of it. That's, that's tough. You know, I, in some ways, wish that family was a bigger part of my life.

• 32:36Chris Williamson?

  But in other ways, I can see how it can be a total curse as well as a blessing for people.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  I totally agree with you. One thing, I mean, my father is going to be eighty seven in a few weeks. And as I put more years under my belt,

• 32:56Speaker 01

  you know, I do realize how powerful family is. And um, yeah, your parent, I've got great parents. You realize your parents and your family does their best. And I think it brings you an absolutely great source of joy. And that's why it's the third form of wealth. And if it's not family, it's friends. You know, we live in a world right now where we chase twenty thousand digital friends. But I believe if you have three great friends, you're a very rich person indeed. Three friends where when you see them after a few years, you start on the last sentence after you saw them last time. Three friends where you can be yourself and they still love you. Three friends where you're down on your knees and they're there for you.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Three friends where you're in trouble in a foreign country and you call them at three a.m. And they say, hey, hang on for a second, Chris, I'm going to be on the next plane. You know, that's a currency, I think, that money can't buy.

• 33:52Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about this confusion between attachment and love.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Well, I just think there's, I think there's a huge difference. I think attachment is born of fear. I think attachment is coming from a place where you don't love yourself enough. So you can't be alone. Blaise Pascal said most, the French mathematician, said most of a human being's miseries derived from their inability to sit quietly in a room with themselves.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  If you haven't done the inner work required to be comfortable in your own skin, then you're going to be attached to feeling your life, not only with relationship partners that make you feel better about yourself, but other drugs of choice, whether it's alcohol, whether it's digital toys, whether it's material things. So attachment, I believe, is coming from a place of fear. Love is very different. Love is not needy. Love is truly wanting the best for the other person. Love is secure. Love is stable. Love is grounding.

• 35:01Chris Williamson?

  One of the things that I think both of us have spent a good bit of time thinking about is craft and paying attention and doing things well and sort of finding joy in the work for its own sake. And I think craft is kind of, it's definitely a missing word. Taste is another one I think that's missing from a lot of people's lexicons. And the reason that craft is missing, I think, is work or the offering that you have to give to the world is seen as it's optimal to get it to the point at which you can get the transaction for it from the market or from the other person and no further. There is no reason to over deliver. There is no reason to take any

• 35:42Chris Williamson?

  more time than is required to deliver the minimum viable product to be able to get it to the market and ship it and make the money. Talk to me about how craft has sort of played a role in your life and how you advise it for other people.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Well, two words come to mind. Van Gogh. Vincent Van Gogh, a great movie to watch. I'm guessing you love film, but please watch At Eternity's Gate with Willem Dafoe. And he's playing Vincent Van Gogh. And you'll see the troubles and the suffering Vincent Van Gogh went through. And no one understood his art. There's actually one scene in the movie where Vincent Van Gogh is in an insane asylum. And the manager of the insane asylum has one of Vincent Van Gogh's drawings and shows it to him and says, Vincent, do you actually think this is beautiful? And Vincent Van Gogh looks at it and goes, yes, I really think it is. And Vincent Van Gogh only sold two paintings in

• 36:37Speaker 01

  his entire lifetime. Lived his life in anonymity, deep poverty, and yet he pursued his craft not for the applause and the fame and the fortune, but he did it because he wanted to push beauty into the world. So I have all sorts of thoughts on the fourth form of wealth of craft. You know, even if no one sees your work, you're creating an app, you're writing a book, you're doing a screenplay, or you're launching a social justice movement, even if you do it not for the applause you get, but for the person you're becoming in hot pursuit of what lights you up.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Do it for doing hard, difficult work, creating what I call in the book your project X, your Taj Mahal, your Great Pyramid of Giza, your Sistine Chapel ceiling. Don't only do it for the fame and fortune. Do it for what talents and strengths it introduces you to within you. Isn't that a priceless treasure? On mastery, I would also say generosity beats scarcity every day after week. You're right. You go to most, get on most airplanes. I've been on so many airplanes on this book tour. You can't believe the food they're serving you. Can't believe the user experience. Can't believe how many people are checked out.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Generosity is a deep value. Generosity is saying, how may I deliver outrageous value to as many people as possible? It's so rare. But in your work, in your mastery, whether you're writing a book, doing a podcast, creating a business, running a team, ask yourself, how may I distribute magic? How may I push extraordinary quality out into the world? And so many people, what they do is they push minimum viable product out in the marketplace. But I have this idea, I call it the 10x value obsession. Give your customers 10 times the value they have any right to expect.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  And that's a formula for building a global base of fanatical followers. And then another thing, if I may, I'd say about mastery is genius loves solitude. There's a chapter which is find your personal golden eye. We live in a world right now where we don't get in a flow state. We don't do our best work because we are constantly in the world. But if you look at the great athletes, they had practice rooms. You look at the great scientists, they all had labs. You look at great artists, they all had studios. Winston Churchill had checkers and Chartwell. Andrew Wyatt had Chad's Ford Pennsylvania, this barn he would paint in.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  And Cushing, Maine, where he would retreat to from the world to create his masterpieces. One of my favorite artists is Jean-Michel Basquiat. He said, "All medicine men live in caves." And so that chapter, find your own, find your personal Goldeneye, comes from Ian Fleming, who created the James Bond novel. He found this cottage by the sea in Jamaica and he called it Goldeneye. And he would get away there and he would retreat to do his most beautiful work. And he was so monomonoically focused on creating what I call a tight bubble of total focus, free of distraction. The gardeners, when they would walk across his line of sight on the Atlantic Ocean, he would say, please don't ever do that. And so if you want to

• 40:11Speaker 01

  create, I think you can play with your phone or change the world, you can't do both. And I think spending time each day alone is incredibly essential.

• 40:23Chris Williamson?

  We both agree that the no one will notice it statement that people have about craft is a lie. I think that, sure, maybe not everyone will notice it. Not everyone will notice the extra steps that you go to, to try and add beauty or, or value or, or effort to the work that you put out into the world. But some people will, and for the people that do, I think it's worth so much more. Um, I, I was, I used to have an existential crisis at about two o'clock in the morning when I was coming back from nightclubs. So I ran nightclubs for a long time. And on my way home, I'd realize I don't have any milk for tomorrow. I don't have any bread for tomorrow, whatever. And then stop off at a 24 hour supermarket on

• 41:05Chris Williamson?

  the way home. And every time that I was in there, I would always regularly think, God, what am I doing? It's 2:30 in the morning and I'm buying bread and it's all quiet and you're on your own. And I spoke to a friend and he said, next time that you're in there, when you see the people that are stacking shelves that you're having to navigate around, just do something really nice. Wish them a good day or hope that they're okay or ask how their, their morning's going or whatever. Uh, because that's an opportunity for you to do something that's meaningful. And that's like, I guess it's a little bit interpersonal, but it's also kind of like the craft of being a human, right? Like that, that degree of effort is something that someone else will take pleasure in. And I've seen this in reverse.

• 41:47Chris Williamson?

  The reason I brought it up about the, um, supermarket is that in reverse, there's, everyone's had that one. Checkout assistant that's just been fired up to be there and they don't need to. I don't expect you to sing and dance and you know, put a performance on for me. The goal is to get the stuff into the bags and for me to get back to my car. But someone's there asking how your day is going and being bubbly and just fired up about what's going on. You think, I actually feel better leaving and that's craft. They didn't need to. It's over delivering what they needed to in order to get the job done. But I've left feeling uplifted. So how is that an effort that's wasted?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Oh, well, we're singing from the same songbook.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  A few, a few replies to that. So J K Rowling said, for some to love you, some must loathe you. I think that's very powerful. So you're right, we can't please everyone. Not everyone will notice it. But for some to love you, some must loathe you. Secondly, you said, not everyone would notice it. What I would say is almost everyone feels quality. I don't know if I'm saying it very elegantly, but the intention with which you work is felt by the people who consume your products. One of my favorite movies is Joker. If you look at the behind the scenes work, that's a piece of mastery. That movie is a piece of mastery.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  So people feel the quality and the intention that you're putting into anything that you do in terms of your craft. If you are mailing it in versus bringing it on, if you're doing it for the cash versus the magic. If you are doing it for FFA, fame, fortune and applause, people will sniff the sincerity in the product. Third thing I'd say, you talk about the grocery store. I remember reading that you're a nightclub impresario in your early days before your TV days.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  I had the center of the L A Lakers come to my, one of my live events a number of years ago, Pau Gasol, absolute gentleman. And I drove him to the airport after the event. And as we walked through the airport, I saw something absolutely fascinating. He was, he had to get to a gate to catch a plane. But every little kid who came up to him, he stopped, he listened, he took a picture. Every adult who came and said, can you sign this? Can you do this? I have a story to tell you. You inspired me. He had the time. And as we walked through the entire airport, he had time for every single human being who took the time out of their day to stop Pau Gasol.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  And at the gate, I asked him, I said, Pau, that's really quite amazing what you did. You had time for everyone. You were fully present with each human being. And Chris, he said something I've never forgotten, and I think it's a real truth. He said, Robin, it takes so little to make someone happy.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  You're at a, you, you were just here in Miami, staying at a hotel, go to a Starbucks, pick up another, pick up a couple of croissants for the people at the front door. Now you're on an airplane, you're, you're an author, someone's nice to you. You know what? I'd love to send you a book. Can you write out your address? Take a picture of it, send it to your assistant or your team or do it yourself. So you follow through on your promise and send them that. In the book, there's that story. When I was a little kid, I used to love this Canadian TV show called Mr. Dress Up. Mr. Dress Up was this man who used to talk about, you know, like, like Mr. Rogers, and he had these puppets. And here I was roughly six years old, a huge fan, so I wrote him a letter.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  About a week later, my mom brings me this postcard. It's a picture of Casey and Finnegan and Mr. Dress Up. And there's a handwritten note from Ernie Combs, the man who was Mr. Dress Up. All these years later, I still remember that act of humanity. So you're right. Craft is not only pushing magic and calibrating your skills to be a merchant of wow in this world where there's just so much mediocrity.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Craft is also delivering value by positivity and making those human connections. Last quick thing, if I may, I was in London and you're right, you know, a lot of taxi drivers, they see a job as just a job and they can't wait till they get home. And yet there was this one taxi driver, I walked up to his London cab and it was glittering. Literally, he was, he was rubbing the, the, the rubber of the tires as I was walking up with my luggage. And as we drove, he was like regaling me with stories and he was telling me this and I asked him like, deconstruct why you do this and there was still a sparkle in his eye and he goes, I love what I do and I meet interesting people and I practice the knowledge. I'm in a London cabbie and I take

• 46:50Speaker 01

  great pride in this. And as we pulled up to City Airport, it was really interesting. He goes, do you want to see what I do before everyone gets into my cab? I said, sure. He pulled out this Windex, he goes, I wash the windows and then he had an electric shampooer and he goes, and I shampoo the carpet that everyone puts their feet on before every guest comes in.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  I think that's a great example of craft and mastery. It's not about being famous. It's about the pride you feel on a job well done.

• 47:21Chris Williamson?

  That's one of the reasons why I've got such a distaste for cynicism on the internet because it's quite easy for someone, i- i- if that cabbie was a YouTuber and decided to post that video about you on YouTube, there would be an awful lot of comments saying, this is pointless. Like, why, what are you even doing this for? No one even cares. They're putting their feet on the floor. Why does it matter how clean it is? Like you're rubbing the side of the wheels. They're just going to get mucky in any case. And there is a, a culture of people doing things that are quaint and effortful being disparaged and uh...

• 47:58Chris Williamson?

  That would disincentivize someone from doing it. And yet, this taxi driver, who presumably isn't posting this stuff on YouTube, does it for the pure love of it. And I think that if I could turn down the internet's sort of critical cynical voice, I think that a lot of people would do a lot more great things. I think they'd lean into craft an awful lot more because craft is mostly what's hidden that doesn't really get seen. And yes, you're right, there is utility and beauty. And for the people who care about it, they will notice. Job well done, never wasted, et cetera. But I do think that it disincentivizes some people. I don't think, I think that enthusiasm around people doing hard things well and beautifully would help more people to do it.

• 48:42Chris Williamson?

  And I think that a beautiful world would be something that everybody could benefit from a bit more.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I totally hear you. And I don't think there's anything quaint about it. I think, I think doing these things is hard and heroic and brave and honorable.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  You know, I think about, you know, integrity is so much more valuable than money. And even if no one sees that taxi driver, you're the only person you're going to get to be with your entire life. And when your head hits the pillow every night, if you're alone or whether you're with someone, you feel good about yourself and you have self-respect, that's worth more than all the gold in the world. I need to say that again because I deeply believe it's important. Integrity is more valuable than money. And if you respect yourself and you take pride, that fourth form of well in the book, you see your, you see driving a taxi or digging graves or working in a coffee shop

• 49:40Speaker 01

  or writing books or being an astronaut or whatever it is, if you do it with honor and integrity and a love of mastery, it's not only what it does for the world, it's what it does for you.

• 49:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's beautiful.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, what's the point of having all these houses? Nothing wrong with it's the fifth form of wealth. Nothing wrong with these things. I want to be super clear. What's life all about? I think ultimately it's,

• 50:10Speaker 01

  you know, feeling good in your own skin, feeling you're being true to yourself. Maybe it's you. You started off the show, the interview, talking about, you know, peace.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  I think what we are chasing is not the things, it's the feeling we that the things will bring. I think that was your point, and I think that's very true. We don't want the jet. We don't want the portfolio. We don't want the 10 million followers. We want the feeling that we're craving and missing that we think those things will bring. And having been in this field 31 years and working with some very serious heavyweights in business mastery, athletics, I can tell you, nothing on the outside will ever feel those fill up those inner holes. Is there anything wrong with pursuing a Mount Everest? No, it's beautiful. We are a species that created the great art. We are the same species that created the Eiffel Tower and the internet and flight.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  I think we are meant to grow. We're happiest growing. Go to the science. The human brain craves novelty. Having said that, I think if we are addicted to accumulating, we could spend our best hours climbing a mountain only to realize at the end of this year, a career or a lifetime, we spent our finest moments climbing the wrong mountain.

• 51:31Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned money, the most obvious form of wealth, perhaps. What's the Howard Hughes money trap?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Long story short, here is a man who was a great inventor, a great visionary. I mean, he's the one who developed Vegas, as you know, he bought TWA. He launched a Hollywood movie studio. He was a man of great vision, great bravery, great charisma.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  But how did he die? He died.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  He died alone in a, from everything I've read, a filthy hotel room with needles in his arms. Naked.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  So that first chapter of that form of wealth starts with a cautionary tale, which is allow financial wealth to be your servant versus your master. And be super careful about the dangers. And I've seen this with my clients, the dangers that great wealth brings. I mean, a lot of billionaires spend their days defending and protecting the generational wealth that they've made. They don't enjoy it. Or they've made so much money, they've filled their life with complexity. I start off the book talking about one of the happiest people I've ever met, my ski instructor.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  I was trying to get a level one ski course so I could teach. It was one of my dreams in my 40s. This is one of the happiest people I knew. And one day we're going up a chairlift and here's this man with rosy cheeks and always smiling, super fit in his 60s. He said, Robin, as ski instructors, we're not rich, but we have rich lives. And I actually think he's richer than most of the billionaires in the world. And I would say the same for that taxi driver. And I would say the same for people who might not have a lot of money and a lot of things, but they have integrity or great family lives, or they paint, or they do work that they're, that lights them up. And they might not be heading a company or on, on the cover of a magazine,

• 53:43Speaker 01

  but they sure do have joy in their hearts.

• 53:47Chris Williamson?

  What role do you think scarcity and abundance as a frame that we view the world through plays in how people deal with their relationship to money?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Super question.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Generosity is how the financially wealthy make money. So money is a reflection of magic delivered in the marketplace. Another way to put it is, I'll use the words of the billionaire Ted Turner. The one who serves the best profits the most, and he was using the words of the founder Paul Harris of Rotary. But he said, "The one who serves the best profits the most." If you're coming from a place of scarcity, let's go to a restaurant. You've been in a lot of restaurants, I've been in a lot of restaurants. The room isn't beautiful. The culture isn't one where people are merchants of wow.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  It always comes from the top, so clearly the owner doesn't really care. The food might not be fresh, the food is not beautifully done. But what the owner seems to be trying to do is get as much money as possible while giving as little value as possible. I actually think that's the norm in business today. I believe we are suffering from the collective de-professionalization of business. It's very rare to see a master in action or a merchant of wow. I think all of this, let's give as little value as possible and put out a cheap movie to get as much money. Let's go to create a restaurant where our goods are not really mastery and will try to take money.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  I think all of that behavior is coming from scarcity. Coming from a place where there's not enough in the world, coming from fear, the emotion of fear. I better get as much money as possible because there's not a lot there. It's counterintuitive, but generosity wins. So let's say it's your podcast and all the value you bring to millions of people.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Let's say it's a restaurant where the food, I live in Italy, I see lots of restaurants like this. The mozzarella di bufala was brought up from Puglia at four o'clock that morning.

• 56:09Chris Williamson?

  You've gone native, Robin, come back to us, you've gone native.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Come on, no, you start talking about mozzarella di bufala and something happens to my brain, something, it's like my little Chorky, she got a new ball, a little ball, like I'm on the road, so Elle's sending me these pictures and our little, she bought her Chorky this little ball, because Chorkys are ratters, they love rats, and the ball not only squeals, but it lights up. And it's almost like too much for this dog's brain, she just goes berserk. And I start talking about mozzarella di bufala and cacio pepe and I, but there are restaurants in, in Rome where they just care so much. And you walk in and they treat you like you're a member of the

• 56:55Speaker 01

  family and the food is so great and the room is simple, but it's beautiful and it's coming from a generous heart. And people might say, you know, give us some strong business strategies, that is a strong business strategy. The more you can work with love, the more you can work from a place of generosity, the more you can say, how may I most deliver the greatest value for as many people as possible? That's a recipe for building a global movement around your products and services. That's why Apple under Steve Jobs was so amazing. He was not an entrepreneur, he was an artist. He wanted, before the iPhone shipped, he said, I want the icons on the iPhone to be so gorgeous, the users would want to lick the

• 57:37Speaker 01

  screen. He was obsessed not with the bottom line, he was obsessed with pushing beauty out into the world. You read Isaacson's book, Jobs, etc., etc. That's a great example of generosity that comes from the first form of wealth, growth. That's why personal development is so powerful. The more you can move through your scarcity issues, what I call in the book, your scarcity scars, the more you can be a servant leader, the more you can feel safe in the world. That's what allows you to do beautiful work that inspires people. And the byproduct is fame, fortune and applause.

• 58:13Chris Williamson?

  What's a way that people can deprogram those scarcity scars?

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Uh, starting with self-awareness. Awareness is the DNA of transformation. So journaling is a great tool for that. Just every morning, free flowing, start paying attention. Where may I be withholding being generous? Then also paying attention to how you feel. So what are the things that activate you that make you feel insecure or scared? Maybe it's buying something. Maybe it's you see someone on the internet having more than you have. Pay, don't, don't knock them down. Look in the mirror and say, what's, what's going on with me? Why do I feel jealous? Why do I feel bad? And the more you can start doing this practice, you'll, you'll build fluency,

• 59:00Speaker 01

  just like a chess master who practices builds fluency with their mastery. When you start doing this emotional healing and start paying attention, oh, here, this is what activates me. Here's who I'm jealous about. You start the process of releasing that. You become more aware and then you become at choice. Also, MVP, meditation, visualization and prayer is a great tool to release scarcity. Third thing, working with a healer, talk therapy, very, very powerful. Fourth, spending more time alone and just reflecting on that is, is incredibly powerful. And then I'd say the fifth thing, the practice of being a giver versus a taker. So, so practice being, how do you get to be generous?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  You practice being generous. Even if it's that chap, that story, um, value chain gratitude. You talked about being in the grocery store while you're waiting at the checkout, paying for your broccoli. You do a silent thanks to the cashier for the work she's doing or he's doing. And then you take a few moments and you're grateful for the stock person who put it on the shelves. And very quickly, you thank the trucker who brought it there. And then very quickly, you thank the farmer who made it. And imagine if every step of the way, even writing thank you notes to the grocery store owner or the grocery store cashier person. And you, I'm in a hotel right now. There's a nice, I made my, I'm not saying I'm some kind of a guru.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  But I made my bed today. I put the bath towels in the bathtub. And I'm making sure everything looks really clean because there's someone's family member walking into this hotel room after I leave. And so the practice of giving. If you do it consistently, you get really good at it, which makes you more generous. And then it becomes like any habit, any skill with practice, you reach what researchers call automaticity. And it becomes easier to practice the new skill than not to do it.

• 1:01:00Chris Williamson?

  It's crazy how you don't just see this in relationships with strangers, but in relationships with friends as well. And the community that you build around you. I've just got back from Miami. It's one of my best friend's birthdays. It was 12 of us out there. And all of those guys were happy to do like ridiculously over the top things just to make the rest of us happy. We were there for a birthday, so maybe everyone's kind of on their best form and being a little bit more generous than they would be usually. But it was just so nice. And I think that, you know, in the same ways, craft in your professional work is something that is, it adds value that doesn't necessarily have a, it doesn't appear on a balance sheet.

• 1:01:41Chris Williamson?

  Being generous in that way with strangers and especially your friends and your community adds value in a way that people maybe even can't identify. It's not necessarily even going to be a memory that's going to sort of stick up there, but it's going to uplift the way that they feel.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  A few things I'd say to, I totally agree with you. A gift given for the sake of a reward is not a gift, it's a barter. So the sincerity and intention of the gift is very, very powerful. I don't know if you've heard this, but there's a great Japanese word, it's called intoku.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Intoku is the Japanese word for the art of giving in secret.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  So I would actually say it's great. Your friends give gifts, you give gifts, we all do that. Amazing. I think the highest form of giving is anonymous gift giving. I think if you give a gift to have your name on a hotel wing.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Wonder about, not judging, just reporting, I wonder about the intention of the gift. But to give a gift in secret, where the recipient won't even know who gave it, is a real gift. Second thing I'd say.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Giving a gift is a gift you give yourself as well.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  So the recipient feels better about the world, but you feel better about yourself. Even something as simple as wishing people a great day. Again, I'm using travel metaphors because I'm on this trip.

• 1:03:17Chris Williamson?

  We know what we're doing, yeah.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Right, but imagine you're at a gate and you're giving the person the ticket slip or you know, they're doing the login code before you get on the plane. You just wish them a great day and you take the time to wish someone else a great day. Those simple acts of humanity are not only good for the world, they're good for yourself. They're good for your soul. And that is a form of wealth that money can't buy. And I think it's much more sustainable than money which can come and go or equities in the stock market that have dips as well as bull markets.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  So gift giving is a super powerful way to roll through a human life.

• 1:04:12Chris Williamson?

  What's the Stephen King lost letters rule?

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  So I was reading James Patterson's memoir and he wrote about an instance where he wrote a letter called, it was something like the, the, the death of Stephen King or something like that. And Stephen King's publisher reached out to James Patterson and said, please don't do that. You know, there's some issues with stalkers, et cetera, et cetera. And so James Patterson said, absolutely, I will remove the chapter. As a matter of fact, I will have my publisher remove the entire print run with that chapter in it. Thousands and thousands of books. And James Patterson, in his memoir, said, I never received a thank you from anyone. And the idea

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  from that chapter is simply the power of thank you notes and the power of appreciation and the power of acknowledging when someone, when you find someone doing good, take the time to acknowledge it. There's a Quaker saying that really speaks to me and it's something, to paraphrase it, it's something like, if you have any opportunity to thank someone for doing something good, do it now because you may not get that chance again. And I think that's worth thinking about. You see someone on the street or someone doing something nice for you. We're all busy. It's very easy to say, oh, I don't have the time to do it. But pressing the pause button and walking over to that person and just going, hey, I just want to appreciate you for

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  doing that. That's amazing. Or the way you do your work, it's really good. I want to applaud you for that. Or, you know, here's, here's a tip or here's a coffee or, you know, I want to write a letter to the CEO of your company. It doesn't take a long time, but it really does make a profound difference.

• 1:06:05Chris Williamson?

  What else haven't we said when it comes to curating and creating the community that people want? What do you think's missing?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  A mentor.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  My life changed because of my mentors. I've had some incredible mentors. When I was in my twenties, there was this gentleman who fascinated me. He lived a few doors down from me. Everyone else was working at three in the afternoon. I was coming back from university and I always see him in his backyard, sunbathing, reading. And I said, like, who is this fascinating person? Who is this fascinating person who is so unorthodox and such a contrarian who lives like this? So we became friends and one day we were walking along the ocean where we used to live in a city close to the ocean. And he said, "Robin, run your own race." Which, to me, has been so incredibly powerful. Like, "Robin, run your own race." We live in a world where a lot of us,

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  we define success according to the values and metrics society tells us we should define success by. But what's the point of living someone else's life? Leo Tolstoy did a short story, "The Death of Ivan Illich," and at the end of the story, Ivan Illich asks himself a fundamentally heartbreaking question. "What if my whole life was wrong?" So I think it's better to live your own life and be called a freak than to win at the world's life and find yourself being very empty. So a mentor is incredibly powerful and one of the ideas I offer is, if you can't find a live mentor, then look for a dead one. And the idea is recruit a dead board of directors.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  I find through their books. I mean, you can learn how Mahatma Gandhi, or Mandela, or Hedda Lamar, or Basquiat, or Orville Wright, Edison, Einstein, you can learn how history's great women and men of the world did it through their books. And so what I'm suggesting is not only build a great library in this world where a lot of people love entertainment versus education, but almost assemble a metaphorical dead board of directors so that when you have a big decision to make, you go into a quiet room and it's almost asking yourself on a on a moral issue. Here's a great question. What would Mandela do?

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  On a business question, what would Onassis do?

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  On an artistic question, what would Dubuffet do?

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  On a spiritual question, what would Osho do? Or whoever, whoever, you know, you respect. But assembling a dead board of directors, I think is very powerful. I also would say it's super important to release the energy vampires like I mentioned. But your community and your social network is incredibly important.

• 1:09:08Chris Williamson?

  What about adventure? What role does adventure have in our wealth?

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Seventh form of wealth adventure without a rich heart. Emerson, without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. Role does adventure play? I think we were born into genius and we get resigned into mediocrity. We are, as little kids, we have eyes that sparkle. We are curious, we are brave, we want to change the world. And then we experience micro trauma and macro trauma, along with the psychological programming to be reasonable and ordinary and average. And we're actually sold a bill of goods that the geniuses and the great ones are cut from a different cloth.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  And we hear it so much, we actually start to believe it. So we lose that sense of adventure. It sounds simple, but a lot of us want more joy. But we stopped doing the things that brought us joy when we were younger. And so there's a lot of chapters on adventure, but you know, one story comes to mind. It's be a perfect moment creator. So Eugenio Kelly was the former CEO of KPMG, the accounting behemoth. A tight enough industry, someone who was admired by so many people. And one day he went into his doctor's office for the results of a routine medical. And the doctor came back, Chris, with an expression you never want to see on the face

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  of your doctor when you get the results of your routine medical. And the doctor said, you have ninety days left to live.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  You have inoperable brain cancer. And sadly, he had roughly ninety days left before he did pass away. But he did something very interesting. He said, I'm going to use one of the techniques I used to build my business. And I'm going to reverse engineer the last ninety days of my life to create what he called perfect moments. And he realized on his reflection and confronted with his mortality that he had never taken his wife to lunch in all those years as a top CEO. He'd missed out on his daughter's Christmas concerts in many cases, and he'd never gone on long walks in Central Park with his friends. And he decided to become a perfect moment creator. And that idea, when I first learned it, was very powerful to me.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  I think the seventh form of wealth is adventure, and you don't need to go to Bali to do it. You can find perfect moments in every day. I mean, it caused me to take my kids to Mauritius and swim in the dolphins, which was one of the great highlights of my life. But just the other day, I was in Toronto on this trip. And it was the day the book was released, and it was a very intense day. The next day I woke up before getting on a plane. I sat alone in a dark hotel room. I had some good coffee. And I took maybe two minutes to just feel some grace and some gratitude

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  on the opportunity to do what I'm doing. And so, perfect moments, it could be fifteen minutes in a park where you notice spring flourishing. A perfect moment could be you put down your phone in the evening and you read the prophet by Khalil Gibran, or you're listening, listening to some beautiful music. And you're so present, it brings tears to your eyes. Could have a perfect moment where this Friday you take your significant other to this Italian restaurant. You eat some mozzarella di bufala and have some ketchup pepe. There I go again with my. But, you know, we're in a messy world right now. And online, you mentioned it, there is a lot of cynicism.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  I think it's really important to block out the noise and clean up your information diet and create a bubble. And people might say, well, that's not realistic. What's more realistic than creating a bubble of information and you're an ecosystem that allows you to be a possibilitarian? Where you literally say, okay, life is short. That's the power of connecting with your mortality. Life is short. I'm going to surround myself with people who fuel my joy versus degrade my joy. I'm going to follow people who inspire me and lift me up versus tear me down. I'm going to read beautiful books that nourish me at all levels. I'm going to eat great food. I'm going to be a minimalist versus a maximalist and I'm going to live life on my own terms. That's

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  one of the key elements I would say about adventure.

• 1:13:45Chris Williamson?

  What were Alexander the Great's last three wishes?

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Eighth form of wealth, service. Society doesn't say, you're helping people, you're lifting people up, you're doing your work in a way that pushes value into the marketplace to show respect for your consumers, and you're leaving people better than you found them, even in the smallest of ways. Wow, you know, you're a servant leader or you believe in service. You're rich, but it is a form of riches. When I was growing up, my dad used to say, Robin, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice. My dad will be 87, I mentioned that, but he'll

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  be 87 in a few weeks. And he's the humblest, most, one of the most decent, giving people I've ever, I've ever met. And so I've learned the power of helpfulness through my father and many people, my mother, my mom always goes, you always mention your dad in your work. What about me? You know, like, and so she's a titan. She's, she's a force of nature. She's, she really is very amazing. And so that gets me to Alexander the Great's last three wishes. He told his lieutenants, he said, Chris, when I die, I want you to do three things for me. He said, number

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  I want the world's finest doctors to be following my casket in the funeral procession. Number two, I want you to take all my jewels and shiny toys and treasures and litter them on the road that takes me to the graveyard. And number three, I want you to make sure my hands are open for all the people who have gathered to see. One brave lieutenant said, why explain these three wishes? And Alexander the Great said, well, I want the world's greatest doctors to follow me so that everyone realizes that even with the best physician, you can't cheat death.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  Number two, I want everyone to see the jewels. So people realize that money made on earth remains on earth.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Oh, how much of our life we spend chasing these shiny things, only to realize at the end, they made very little difference. And he said, the third requirement, we're born with nothing. And I want people to see that we die empty handed. So live richly versus be accumulating things most of your time if you want to live, let's say, a wealthy, fulfilling, happy and serene life.

• 1:16:29Chris Williamson?

  Robin Sharma, ladies and gentlemen. Robin, I love your work. I think your storytelling is fantastic. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with all of the things that you're doing and check out your new stuff.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Instagram, Robin Sharma, YouTube, lots of videos, robinsharma.com. The new book, The Wealth Money Can't Buy is on Audible, Amazon, good bookstores in about 50 countries right now. So I just want to applaud you, Chris, for the millions of people that you're enriching and the influence you're having on so many people. And it's been a real pleasure to meet you.

• 1:17:04Chris Williamson?

  I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.