Guru Singh On Positivity — Why Receptivity Is The Better Path

Welcome to yet another edition Guru Corner featuring Guru Singh, my favorite teacher on all things mystic and metaphysical. Fusing Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism, Guru Singh is a celebrated third-generation Sikh yogi and master spiritual teacher who has been studying and teaching Kundalini Yoga for more than 40 years. He is the author of several books, a powerful lecturer and behind-the-scenes guide to many a luminary, including Fortune 500 CEOs, athletes, and artists. A peer of rock legends like Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, Guru Singh is also an accomplished musician who began his recording career on Warner Bros’ Reprise label in the 1960's. When he isn’t laying down tracks with people like Seal, he’s bringing down the house on the daily at Yoga West, his Los Angeles home base. Today we spin the wheel on positivity. Not your typical disquisition on the benefits of adopting a positive mental attitude, we take a more nuanced approach to self-awareness. Focusing on receptivity over repression, it's a call to embrace the power of both negativity and positivity as important forces to be experienced without getting lost in either extreme. And we discuss how to break free from the entrenched, looping stories we tell ourselves about ourselves that don't serve the lives we aspire to lead. Note: If you missed my previous conversations with Guru Singh, start with episode 267 and then enjoy episodes 332,368, 393, 400 and 418. Final Note: You can watch our conversation on YouTube at bit.ly/gurucorner434b and the show is also now available on Spotify. I love this beautiful being. It's my privilege to once agains share his wisdom with you today. So let the master class resume. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:04Guru Singh?

  Imagine going into a situation that we don't just go, "Oh, I gotta be positive." That we maybe go, "I gotta be receptive. I have to find out, is the negativity that I'm feeling in that moment going to be a stimulant so that I can make change and make a change that I really want, an outcome that I really want? And is positivity in that moment going to mask the true appearance so that I'm not able to actually engage change? Sometimes, what appears to be negative is the most positive thing you can do.

• 1:45Guru Singh?

  What appears to be safe is sometimes the most dangerous thing you can be doing for your life.

• 1:52Rich Roll?

  That's Guru Singh, and this is another Guru Corner edition of the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:12Rich Roll?

  Greetings, good dwellers of Planet Earth. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome. And today, we have another awesome, amazing addition of Guru Corner with, you know who it's with, right? My favorite wizard of the mystical forces and spiritual arts, the master of mindfulness, Kundalini Yoga, and basically just general holistic awesomeness, Guru Singh. Of course, right? Most of you are familiar with this man and his work, so I'm gonna dispense with the long introduction, but check him out on our many previous conversations. I think he has appeared on, I don't know, five or

• 2:50Rich Roll?

  six episodes, 267, 332, 368, episode 400, episode 418. And for those that are new, I'll just say that Guru Singh is a celebrated master, spiritual teacher. He's an author, musician, father, and somebody who has been teaching and studying and mastering Kundalini Yoga for the past 40 years. And the focus of today's conversation is positivity. What does that word mean? It's a word that's thrown around all the time, but what are we really talking about? When is it beneficial to be positive? And when is it just simply being delusional? Well, this is the rabbit hole that we're gonna dive down today, and

• 3:34Rich Roll?

  that's coming up in a couple few. But first...

• 3:44Rich Roll?

  Okay, so Guru Corner, Guru Singh. Positivity, negativity, the tension between the two, the duality. Is one better than the other in every situation? When can a negative situation be used to fuel a positive change? And what are the benefits of just remaining neutral throughout? We discuss the importance of self-governance through enhanced awareness, and the benefits of looking at things like positivity and negativity, not through the prism of our inherent judgments and values, but just as forces that simply are.

• 4:27Rich Roll?

  This is a beautiful conversation with a beautiful man, one of my favorite humans. And it's an exchange I think is very much needed right now. So without further ado, this is me and Guru Singh.

• 4:45Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of negativity out there, Guru Singh.

• 4:48Guru Singh?

  Yay.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  How are we gonna stay positive through all this craziness?

• 4:53Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Guru Singh?

  There is no answer to that.

• 4:59Rich Roll?

  Should we just, are we done? The podcast is over?

• 5:01Guru Singh?

  That's it, man. The podcast is over. We're in, we're in, we're in deep, deep trouble here. I would say that every moment is an opportunity. And as long as you're doing more than 50% of them in the positive, you're contributing to the solution.

• 5:22Rich Roll?

  First of all, why is it important to be positive? Do we need to be positive? What is the power of positivity? There's a lot of, you know, self-help shenanigans around the power of positivity. What is the, what's the truth?

• 5:37Guru Singh?

  Are you talking about the woo-woo section of the bookstore?

• 5:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's a lot of that, but it's like, just stay positive, you know? And that'll solve all your problems.

• 5:46Guru Singh?

  False positives are not a good idea.

• 5:49Rich Roll?

  No.

• 5:50Guru Singh?

  The discerning mind, you know, which can be negative, is very important. I mean, I would really want to have some negativity towards the idea that I might be able to cross the yellow line and pass the truck when there's too close of an oncoming car, right? The negative mind keeps you...

• 6:10Rich Roll?

  Your positive mental attitude is not gonna help you out?

• 6:13Guru Singh?

  "I can do this," is the last thing he said. So there's, there's times for positivity and there's times for negativity. I just believe that there's also an opportunity to be positive in negative times when, you know, everything is collapsing. Everything is being, speaking of gravity blanket, everything is being controlled by gravity, which is that negative force. It's just a natural force negativity. It's not a thing that's bad. And positively is not necessarily a thing that's good. But to be able to be levitative as opposed to gravitative,

• 6:56Guru Singh?

  right, as opposed to always having to go down with that flow, being able to be exuberant is really important in particular times to balance things out. Otherwise, it gets pretty grim.

• 7:10Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Well, there's, there's sort of performative positivity, like looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, you know, I can do it versus truly inhabiting a positive attitude, like in its, in its most full expression, like really owning positivity, like being positive and speaking positive words are two different things.

• 7:36Guru Singh?

  What did you call it? You called it?

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  Performative positivity.

• 7:40Guru Singh?

  Wow. What a great expression. I mean, I'm sure you have to do that oftentimes when you're running, when you're bicycling, when you're swimming.

• 7:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, talking yourself into something.

• 7:55Guru Singh?

  To do that all the time would be a real false positive. To do that some of the time is a real advantage. And to be able to have that tool that when you need it, you can use it is something that is very important. How did you develop that tool? So that when you really had to talk your way through a place at whatever 14 miles or 20 miles or whatever it is, how did you develop that tool? So it could kick in?

• 8:32Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it's a combination of two things. There's a little bit of fake it till you make it, which I have issues with that philosophy in general.

• 8:43Guru Singh?

  In general, but impartial, I can go with it.

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  It's helpful at times. I don't think it's a good idea to walk around faking it till you make it with everything. I don't think that's a great life philosophy, but it comes in handy from time to time. And that's something I learned in recovery. They say it in the rooms all the time, like fake it till you make it. Like if you, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program, but a lot of people come in with a ton of baggage around God and spirituality and religion, et cetera. And they have a hard time accepting the spiritual component of that particular program. And so what is said is fake it till you make it. Like just, okay, so you don't put, that's fine. Just, you know, pretend until you can kind of get on board.

• 9:31Rich Roll?

  And I think that works for certain things and in other areas of life. But like I said, is not great all the time. So I think for me, there's a little bit of that in the training and the racing. Like if you think you can't do it, just what would somebody who is capable of doing that tell themselves and what would they do? And trying to mimic that, I think is a powerful tool. But I think the more powerful tool and what gets me through those particular moments that you're referring to is experience. Like I know when I'm on mile whatever of whatever race, that I'm going to be able to do it because I can think back to a particular training session that was harder than whatever moment I'm in at the moment.

• 10:14Rich Roll?

  And hang on to what I did in that moment, or just the pure memory of that is enough fuel to tell me, oh, I've done this before. I've been here before. I got through it before. I know I can get through it this time. That's the antithesis of fake it till you make it because I've actually done it in the past. And I can leverage that memory and that visceral experience in my consciousness to fuel whatever I'm in the midst of in that moment.

• 10:45Guru Singh?

  I just captured a great metaphor when you were talking from what you were saying.

• 10:51Guru Singh?

  You know, when you're running a car, let's just say that we're not all electric cars. And when you're starting a car, you use the battery, which you only use for a few moments and then you're not using the battery. And then you use the starter motor, which engages and once the engine is turning over, then you're not using that. And so these battery starter motors could almost be parallel to that fake it and you'll make it, until you get something really happening. And the really happening is sometimes the memory of a previous happening. In my life,

• 11:34Guru Singh?

  the idea of being positive and the negative, I've been fortunate enough to know that there was reasons for both, right? So being negative, it's a fuel. Being positive, it's a fuel. Being positive in a negative situation is almost like a match striking against an abrasive surface, you know? It can ignite something. And so the idea of these opposites play out. Sometimes when you're in a negative situation, it's time to dive even deeper.

• 12:11Rich Roll?

  I mean, into the negativity.

• 12:13Guru Singh?

  Into the negativity.

• 12:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think, I think what happens is sometimes positivity gets conflated with denial. So what I mean by that is,

• 12:26Guru Singh?

  Good point.

• 12:26Rich Roll?

  You could be, you know, 100 pounds overweight and you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're like, don't worry, it's okay. You look great, you know? It's like, no, you don't look great. You're 100 pounds overweight, like, maybe negativity is the wrong word, but how about just honesty? How about snapping that denial and just being truthful with yourself? Like, no, I'm overweight. Like, I need to address this. It doesn't feel good to be this overweight. This is a negative physical state for me and it feels negative in my body. Then you can leverage that negativity as fuel, as you mentioned, to catalyze change. But if you're just walking around with a blind positive attitude about everything,

• 13:08Rich Roll?

  then you're missing signals to make changes in your life that could make your life better.

• 13:15Guru Singh?

  What is it they call, Pollyanna?

• 13:17Rich Roll?

  Pollyanna, yeah, that's perfect. That's exactly what it is, being Pollyanna. So that's positivity and Pollyanna, positivity and denial. These are different things.

• 13:26Guru Singh?

  I'm really touched by the word denial.

• 13:32Guru Singh?

  And I also would think that if we wanted to realize that some positivity is a state of like, what did you call it again? You called it a

• 13:44Rich Roll?

  Performative?

• 13:45Guru Singh?

  Performative, yeah. Sometimes positivity is pure denial. Imagine that we don't think of negative as bad and we don't think of positive as good. We just think of them as like hot and cold water on a shower. You walk into a hotel, there's a reason why the thing when it turns on in the hotel shower starts out cold is so that nobody burns themselves. You know, anybody can get cold water, won't cause permanent damage, but the hot water could. And so imagine going into a situation that we don't just go, oh, I gotta be positive.

• 14:27Guru Singh?

  That we maybe go, I gotta be receptive. I have to find out, is the negativity of being 100 pounds overweight, right? Is the negativity that I'm feeling in that moment going to be a stimulant so that I can make change and make, make positive change? So that I can make change and make a change that I really want, an outcome that I really want? And is positivity in that moment going to mask the true appearance so that I'm not able to actually engage change?

• 15:02Rich Roll?

  Right. The idea that positive, positivity and negativity are opposite charges, right? To allow yourself to feel that negative influx of emotion that comes with breaking the denial that you're 100 pounds overweight is good as long as it catalyzes that opposite

• 15:21Guru Singh?

  Spoken by two people that are definitely not overweight.

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  Not anymore. If it can catalyze that opposite positive charge to say, okay, I have this problem. I'm gonna own it without any denial. I'm gonna be honest about where I'm at right now, but I can solve this.

• 15:39Guru Singh?

  Think about it. We run our entire world on negativity. Electrons are negatively charged.

• 15:49Rich Roll?

  So meaning like all electronics?

• 15:51Guru Singh?

  Yes, all electronics are negatives. And that means not bad, right? There's a lot of advantage in gravity. The gravity of a situation. There's a lot of advantage in gravity. There's also advantage in levity. And I think really knowing when positive and when negative is going to be of greater value in a moment is a good thing to aspire to.

• 16:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, in the same way that using your, like sort of extending on your analogy of the starter, the battery and the starter engine. Negativity could then set in motion a chain of events that leads you to a perspective of defeat and victimhood, right? Which would be the gasoline engine churning on the charge created by the negative impulse.

• 16:46Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Rich Roll?

  Or the negative impulse could create a positive chain of actions that set you in a different direction. So they all have their place.

• 16:57Guru Singh?

  Really good, yeah.

• 16:58Rich Roll?

  But what you, but

• 16:58Guru Singh?

  In sequence.

• 16:59Rich Roll?

  But the engine, the gasoline engine, to use the analogy, that you want to be churning on is the positive one.

• 17:06Guru Singh?

  And what if you look in the mirror and you say, "Man, I look like shit, you know? I look horrible." And letting that be a stimulant, which is the starter engine, stimulant to starting up the main engine, trying to stay away from the word gasoline, carbon free, you know, the gasoline engine, which is the plan that you're going to do, that you're going to run this far, you're going to eat this way, you're going to do this stuff, and eventually you're going to drop that excess weight. So you have to hit the negative in order to get into the positive. And you have to use the positive to get you through all of the negatives that are going

• 17:46Guru Singh?

  to be attacking you as you're striving to not eat so much, you feeling hungry, that's a negative feeling.

• 17:54Rich Roll?

  Or to weather all the setbacks and the obstacles that are going to get thrown in your path on the, on the, on the trajectory towards achieving that goal.

• 18:01Guru Singh?

  So it's really about navigation, huh? Being positive in a negative world, it's really about navigating the negativity and knowing when to use which.

• 18:11Rich Roll?

  Well, it's easy to say, okay, this is how you should be. This is how you should react. This is how you should look at something. This is the disposition that you should inhabit on your goal towards losing 100 pounds or whatever it is. But that's very different than the doing of it.

• 18:30Guru Singh?

  And in the doing of it, you're going to have to get really negative at sometimes and you're going to have to get really positive. But being able to know how to switch back and forth.

• 18:41Rich Roll?

  So this is what I'm getting at. Like, how do you do that? If you're somebody who has been in a victim pattern or somebody who has a negative disposition or looks at, you know, the world like the glasses, you know.

• 18:58Guru Singh?

  Got a hole in it.

• 18:59Rich Roll?

  Which one is it? Half empty? Half full?

• 19:02Guru Singh?

  Got a hole in it like glass did earlier.

• 19:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. Has a crack in the glass. If those are the lenses through which you perceive your reality, how does one shift that?

• 19:15Guru Singh?

  Gently. Because usually those kinds of deep-seated perspectives are genetic. They come from what happened in your parents' life, what happened in your grandparents' life, what happened in your great-grandparents' life.

• 19:35Rich Roll?

  Epigenetic.

• 19:36Guru Singh?

  Epigenetically, it's in your, it's, it's in your DNA. And I mean, I know that I had a sort of a knee-jerk response to certain things that would occur that for decades I was dealing without actually diving in, you know, dealing with rather than diving into. And this was controlling my world, not at a macro level, but, you know, on a micro level of what I was experiencing when I was, when I was working in the, in the world that we all live in. And then I got to, in my meditation, I got to a place where I said, you know what? I actually start to see the pattern.

• 20:21Guru Singh?

  Let me actually work on that a little bit every day. And that's why I say gently. Let me work on it a little bit every day, a little bit like a game of pickup sticks, a game of cosmic pickup sticks. Let me move a stick every day so that the whole thing doesn't collapse. And then let me move another stick the next day. And I had to work my way through this really deep seated, which is often nonverbal, even non-visual, non-auditory. It's just this sensation that you have of being of a particular modality. I'm sure you felt it throughout your life as well.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. I mean, I have, you know, I've had a historic kind of tendency to catastrophize. And

• 21:09Guru Singh?

  You too?

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 21:11Guru Singh?

  Get footer there, man.

• 21:13Rich Roll?

  This is the worst thing that could ever happen to me.

• 21:16Guru Singh?

  I love the word catastrophize.

• 21:20Rich Roll?

  So the way that I've tried to claw my way out of that preset is to two different things. First of all, it comes with experience. Like, some of the things that have happened to me in my life that I thought were the absolute worst possible things that could ever happen to me have turned out to be the best things.

• 21:42Guru Singh?

  Teachers.

• 21:42Rich Roll?

  So I've learned the hard way to not prejudge situations and circumstances because we lack the necessary evidence to make that judgment. We don't know whether something is good or bad.

• 21:56Guru Singh?

  Evidence.

• 21:57Rich Roll?

  Especially when we're in the midst of it occurring. We're not qualified to make that judgment.

• 22:03Guru Singh?

  In the midst.

• 22:04Rich Roll?

  It just is.

• 22:04Guru Singh?

  In the midst.

• 22:05Rich Roll?

  Right. It just is. It's only

• 22:08Guru Singh?

  It's what the, it's Sanskrit, translated from the Sanskrit. It's called viewing the what is. Very, very simple.

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  What is the Sanskrit word?

• 22:16Guru Singh?

  The Sanskrit word is pratihar. And it's just basically viewing, being so much in your calm that you're just viewing the what is without any attitude.

• 22:29Rich Roll?

  Right. So the practice is

• 22:32Rich Roll?

  Can you be neutral?

• 22:34Guru Singh?

  Hmm.

• 22:35Rich Roll?

  We're not even talking about being positive or negative. If your preset is to catastrophize or to perceive a certain situation when it arises as a bad thing, as a negative thing, let's start with just trying to be neutral. Can we not judge it? It's harder than it sounds.

• 22:52Guru Singh?

  Well, look at the, look at the, yes, it is. Look at the expressions that have governed life. Don't get your hopes up. You don't want to be disappointed, right? And being full of yourself was considered to be a bad thing. Even the word ego, don't you, are you in your ego? Right? And even spirituality has made this ego thing, you know, just like taboo. But think about it. Anybody who has ever achieved anything positive in their life has had to be a bit full of themselves, has had to be somewhat self-centered, has had to be in their ego.

• 23:34Guru Singh?

  Think of it as you're in the psychological form of Carl Jung and your ego is basically the glue that holds your being in your body, your, you know, your conscious, spiritual, soul body, whatever you want to refer to it as, the energy that's in your body. The ego, the expression is what keeps you in. And when you're losing that, it's when you are depressed, right? So thinking along the lines of the negative is going to be a teacher and the positive is going to be an opportunity, being able to work with both. It's a little bit like that car metaphor we've been using, jumping into a car that's got a great battery, a great engine, a great accelerator and no brakes.

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  But on the tip of the ego, sort of, you know, celebrating the good aspects of the ego, the countervailing measure against that always has to be humility.

• 24:31Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Rich Roll?

  Because the ego unchecked will take you down every single time.

• 24:36Guru Singh?

  Yeah, well, I would, I would say this. I would say that you're absolutely correct, but learn how to go down gracefully. Because if you are afraid of using your ego, it's, it's, and I'm not saying that this is what, in any way, shape or form, that you are indicating. But it is what is out there in the world. And it's definitely what's out there in the world, more so on paths of consciousness. And so on paths of consciousness, everyone is afraid of, you know, being in your ego. And I say err on the side of being too much in your ego,

• 25:17Guru Singh?

  rather than err on the side of being too little of your ego. And then find yourself not having humility and get trashed, you know, blow it, and then learn from that. Because, and that's what is ultimately, even if it's negative, is ultimately super positive in the negativity of this world. It's like, it's like a plant-based diet in a carnivorous environment, right? It's like a carbon clean attitude in a very, you know, carbon dioxide-filled atmosphere. I would say that we should encourage people

• 26:01Guru Singh?

  to err on the side of being in their ego more than not.

• 26:07Rich Roll?

  That's a very counterintuitive perspective.

• 26:09Guru Singh?

  Oh, I'm glad.

• 26:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I would have expected you to come from that view.

• 26:18Guru Singh?

  I come from that view because I've seen too many people in the false positive, which was what you were talking about earlier. Am I, am I doing the right thing? Am I being the right way? Am I, you know, am I? And I want to blow off the, you know, the shell so that I can fully expose myself, being positive in the negative. And I think that that requires ego. I don't think that, I don't think that you could be the elite athlete that you are. If your ego wasn't stimulated positively.

• 27:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would grant you that, but I think there's a difference between somebody who moves forward in the world with a deep, profound sense of their personal self-worth, somebody who's coming from a perspective of

• 27:16Guru Singh?

  That's it.

• 27:16Rich Roll?

  "I have something to say, you know, my perspective is valid, you know, I believe in myself and I'm here to stake my claim," versus somebody whose ego is being fueled by insecurity and lack and fear, who's saying, "You know, all these people are doing all these things, so I'm gonna make a big, brash show of everything to convince everybody that, you know, I should be here, but deep down, I know that I probably shouldn't."

• 27:48Guru Singh?

  Well, I just thought of a great expression. So ego is what I'm talking about. E-stop is what you're describing, you know, the brash, you know, not humble person is an e-stop. We need to have that. That's a negative. Ego is positive. And you should, and like you said, you didn't expect that, but I would say err on the side of making too much and then learn how to dial it back.

• 28:23Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:24Guru Singh?

  Because then you're actually riding on the point of the wave, on the point of the crest, so that your effort is a bit effortless. You gain momentum, all of those important physics expressions of how to ride the wave of time.

• 28:45Rich Roll?

  I get that.

• 28:53Rich Roll?

  I think on the path there, we have to still overcome whatever negative presets we have. So back on that subject of catastrophizing. I love that. The other technique that I would use, that I still use, is to play it out. So if your perspective is, oh my God, this thing happened. It's the worst thing ever. I can't believe it. It's terrible. My life is over. To just go, all right, well, this happened. So then that means that this next thing is going to happen. And then this next thing is going to happen. So you're playing it out. Yeah. And then you're like, okay. In your mind. Right. Like, oh, my car broke down on the way to the most important interview I've ever had. This is terrible. I'm not going to get the job. Then nobody's going to hire

• 29:38Rich Roll?

  me and I'm not going to be able to pay my rent. I'm going to be homeless and I'm going to starve and I'm going to die.

• 29:45Rich Roll?

  But it feels that real. That is catastrophizing. So to then break that down into its pieces and say, all right, my car broke down. So what happens if, okay, so I'm going to be late for the interview. Worst case scenario is I don't get hired for this job. Like, well, maybe I'm not supposed to get hired for that. Maybe that's because there's a better job. Like, let's live in the reality of, okay, now you've just lost this job opportunity. How does that feel? Well, I'm still breathing, still here, you know? That's beautiful. It's not great, but to live in all of those eventual potential realities is helpful to me to then say, no matter what transpires, like, I'm not going to die. Like, I will

• 30:29Rich Roll?

  be okay. And it's almost like pushups for developing a more neutral and ultimately a more positive perspective that will provide you with the strength to crawl out of the catastrophizing hellhole. Catastrophizing has got to be.

• 30:55Guru Singh?

  A word that we use a lot of from here on forward. I've been using it for a long time. Have you? Yeah. Well, you know, a great teacher, Yogi Buzan, once said, "Make up words. Every word was made up at some point." And That's true. We sort of think that all words just existed, preordained. That's crazy. So the idea that you have this neutrality, the positive and the negative, is also a part of the actual makeup of the human brain. We've got negative mind, which is the part of the brain that is going to look for the pitfalls and the danger points and all of that.

• 31:34Guru Singh?

  We've got the positive mind that is going to project, "I can do this," or whatever it is in any moment. And then we've got the one that sits in between that is neither negative or positive. It's the neutral mind. And because the world is so, you know, sort of fixated on surviving, and we have this idea of the enemy and that which is dangerous, or, you know, so many industries are just governed by this idea that our, the way we use our brain has very much gotten into the negative side of that trilogy. Well, because it's being stoked by fear.

• 32:19Guru Singh?

  It's being stoked by fear. And so the nature of infinity is that infinity can't be measured, there is no location, and it can't be multiplied or divided. It's very much like the zero.

• 32:35Guru Singh?

  And in infinity, every moment and every point in space is infinite. So what that means is that in every moment, in every place that you are, there is an infinite amount of opportunity. But what happens is that negativity, as you say, stoked by fear, is governing the way in which our brain is relating. And epigenetically, we are being programmed. We're being programmed in school. We're being programmed. Look at this. We go to school and we're told we have to hide our work. We can't collaborate with anybody on a big test. And we go out into the workplace and it's all about collaboration.

• 33:17Guru Singh?

  So we haven't really been trained in school as to what we're going to be using going forward. And I have a diagram for this. All right, the PowerPoint. The PowerPoint. Is coming out. And here. So. For those listening, he just pulled out a placard with like magic marker arrows on it. Yeah. And one is really big, and that's the all-inclusive position, which includes the red arrow, which are all the danger points that we really want to keep our eye on, the negative mind. And all the blue are all the positive points that exist, like you were saying, "I'm still breathing," you know, "your car broke down, I'm still breathing, "I won't get this job, but maybe I'll get a better job." Right?

• 34:02Guru Singh?

  And so what happens is that the sympathetic nervous system goes, "Oh, man, this is a worse thing, we catastrophize with it." The parasympathetic nervous system goes, "Okay, that's real, it doesn't ignore that, "but it also realizes that there's a lot around that that are opportunities." And so what, you know, being positive in the negative is sometimes just an opportunity of being able to do a breathing exercise that kicks in that parasympathetic nervous system. To override the fear impulse, the negative impulse. Yeah. Catastrophizing. You say that that was a part of your world?

• 34:44Guru Singh?

  Uh, yeah, it's like hardwired into me. Wow. I had an interesting thing hardwired into me, and that was that when something was going to be really great, uh-oh. What's the downside? And I suppose they're kind of similar.

• 35:05Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:06Guru Singh?

  Because, and I had to really work to embrace that.

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or like, when's the, when's the other shoe gonna drop?

• 35:15Guru Singh?

  Exact expression.

• 35:17Rich Roll?

  Like, as soon as things are going well, well, it's just a matter of time before it's all gonna fall apart.

• 35:22Guru Singh?

  Isn't that, isn't that, these horrible expressions that people were trained with? And I know where these-

• 35:29Rich Roll?

  So what did you do to overcome that? Because I think that's pretty common.

• 35:33Guru Singh?

  I sat with my victim, right? Because that's what it is, right? When things are really great, something is gonna happen. And, you know, what is it? Wait for the other shoe to drop. And I had to sit. What I did was I sat with who that was. And then I found out where that was in the past of my family tree. And I found that this was not something that was an experience of my lifetime. This was something that was an experience, not only of my, of my parent, but my grandparent's lifetime. And I'm sure that it went back farther than that.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 36:12Guru Singh?

  And so, you know, a lot of these things that govern us, like the microbes, right? The microbiome. Not only is that microbiome governing our ways in which we express and feel and think and talk, but also those experiences outside of time, those experiences from our genetic past, are governing how we view. So you and your catastrophizing, and me and my other shoe is gonna drop. We had to walk through, you know, those years where that was our governing, you know, attitude.

• 36:52Guru Singh?

  And it carried us through certain times that gave us the opportunity to learn some lessons.

• 36:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And these things are very, I mean, I'm asking you because they're very difficult. To even confront, let alone overcome. So whether you're somebody who's a constant victim, the world is against you, whether you catastrophize, whether you have imposter syndrome, that's another thing that I have to wage war with.

• 37:19Guru Singh?

  That's the fraud factor.

• 37:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the idea that, you know, they're going to find out, they're going to come in here, Guru Singh, and they're going to take these microphones away.

• 37:26Guru Singh?

  Do you know, do you know that anyone who is being positive to override is feeling that?

• 37:37Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:38Guru Singh?

  And it was really good for all of your listeners to realize that you too have that sensation when you're being, because a lot of people could look at you, just like you said, a lot of people could look at me and say, well, Guru Singh, of course, he's born that way, you know, but not really.

• 37:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, I mean, this is something I deal with all the time, you know, when I was a lawyer, like, who does he think he is being a lawyer, then when I become this athlete, well, who does this, who does this lawyer think he can do this athlete thing? Now he's going to be a podcaster? Come on. Like, this is, this, this is never going to work.

• 38:11Guru Singh?

  So important.

• 38:12Rich Roll?

  Who does he think he is?

• 38:13Guru Singh?

  So important for people to hear this because neither you nor I nor anyone else that has made any kind of a brand for themselves got there without a lot of need to be positive in the negative or to use the negative to be able to gain momentum like the starter engine and the, and the, the battery, to gain momentum to get the whole thing rolling.

• 38:38Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. One of the other tools that I use, I think we might've talked about this before, but in addition to, you know, maintaining neutrality and then also walking through all the steps and feeling what it would feel like in a worst case scenario, a third tactic that I found very helpful. Is to understand that we're all living in this story that we've constructed about who we are. And that story is based on isolated incidents that we've selected for some reason in our mind and then strung together to create a narrative that coheres around a principle. Like, things never work out for me.

• 39:22Rich Roll?

  See, this happened, and then when I was 12, and then when I was 17, this happened, and then when I was 21, you know, I got left at the altar. You know, whatever it is that informs that story then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. But to understand that that story is fundamentally untrue, yes, there's, these certain things happen to you. They happen to you amongst the untold trillions of things that have happened to you over the course of your life. You just made a decision to, you decided that these were important, but you can just as easily make a decision that other things can hold that level of significance and hang

• 40:03Rich Roll?

  your hat on them to forge a new story about what should or could happen when you're in a particular scenario.

• 40:11Guru Singh?

  I see what you're saying is, what do you choose to hardwire in?

• 40:17Rich Roll?

  Right. And first of all, do we have a choice?

• 40:20Guru Singh?

  We do have a choice. And our memory is obviously selective, based on our emotional attitude and an overriding agenda.

• 40:33Rich Roll?

  And some of it is unconscious, like if a trauma occurs, it's gonna anchor itself.

• 40:37Guru Singh?

  Correct. It's gonna anchor and be hardwired in. But the bottom piece that I work with in, both in myself and in advising others, is pick a time every day in which you're gonna actually dedicate

• 40:54Guru Singh?

  Some of your life to rewiring some of the hardwiring. Because it is that hardwiring that's either epigenetically involved, or if you've suffered a trauma in this lifetime, it's there. And that is what you are basing memory off of, because the memory is constantly relating back to those key points and saying, is this an additional component that's like this? And if so, I need to remember this. Because the brain will always be going along with viewing through the lens of what's hardwired in that's forming that lens. And so, being able to not be a false positive,

• 41:38Guru Singh?

  but being able to be positive in this world. Julie and her friend Tamara were, you know, on me one time when we were at a gathering at your house. And, you know, I had just come in from, you know, being out there in the world and experiencing all of these things. And of course, I'm not, you know, blind to what's going on in media and news. And, you know, and I was thinking, you know, well, the race is really on. And I was using that negativity to be very stimulating. And, and your, and your wife and her good friend were looking at me and they were like working me over, you know, at this gathering saying, no, come on, man, back to your, back to your positive self. And it was really beautiful because what I saw later was,

• 42:22Guru Singh?

  all right, they saw me in very rough water. And they threw me a life, a life ring. And they said, grab onto this because you're in some really rough water now. And you want to have this as, you know, an extra security. And I really loved that. And that was being positive in a negative, where I knew I had to dive in and experience the negative. Because if I didn't experience it, I wouldn't know what it was. I wouldn't know how it was affecting people.

• 42:55Rich Roll?

  The key is not getting lost in it, though. Right? And that, that requires a certain level of awareness. I mean, I think, you know, all you have to do is go on Twitter and just scroll. And you, the level of negativity is unbelievable.

• 43:10Guru Singh?

  The level of, the level of childishness is...

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's a lot of that. Yeah. So.

• 43:17Rich Roll?

  The point I'm trying to make is, there's a lot of people, like you, you have to have a little bit of awareness to go, okay, I'm being negative, I gotta pull back, or I want to experience this negative impulse, so that I can use it as recall to fuel my positive disposition moving forward, or whatever it is. But without, without that awareness, you're just gonna be lost. And I think there's a lot of people who, who are lost in their negative thought patterns, their, their victim consciousness, whatever it is, and they're not even consciously aware that that's how they're proceeding through life. Like, if you sat them down and said, "Look, on 30 occasions today, you said, you know, it never

• 44:00Rich Roll?

  works out," some version of like, "It never works out for me," I think most people who kind of fit that mold would be surprised to hear that. Because they're running on this loop that is triggered in an unconscious way.

• 44:15Guru Singh?

  And not even noticed.

• 44:16Rich Roll?

  Because it's so deeply embedded in who they are. So, for that personality type, how does that, how does one begin the process of, of deconstructing that?

• 44:27Guru Singh?

  How does that get you? Where does that take you? These are the kinds of questions that a mirror needs to reflect. A partner, a friend, and then ask of the world around it, "Call me too. Call me out too." You know, how, how does that protect you? How does that attitude protect you? How does that statement work for you? Those are not attack phrases. Those aren't even rhetorical questions, in fact. They're actually honest questions. And when you come up with an answer to those things, and you go, "Well, it does this, and

• 45:12Guru Singh?

  it makes me..." And then go a little deeper, "Well, and, and where does that go?"

• 45:19Guru Singh?

  And I find that if, what my wife and I do with each other is that we won't say, "Hey, man, you're being this way right now." We'll just say, "Hmm, how's that doing? Is that, is that something that you're consciously choosing?" Or, and we start to key each other. And so I would advise people that are listening or watching that you need to have a buddy system. You also need to have a buddy system within yourself. You talked about, either on this or a previous podcast, about your experience of seven years with the Artist's Way.

• 45:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or just doing inventory.

• 45:58Guru Singh?

  Doing inventory, doing morning pages, doing a journaling practice, and finding out, how does that work for you? Either have someone call you on it, or call yourself on it. Because I find that if I get trapped in an unconscious pattern, I can go on for a very long time. And if that pattern is helpful, constructive, productive, it's a good thing.

• 46:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It requires rigorous honesty. Rigorous honesty from within yourself, and honesty on behalf of the buddy, if you're in the buddy system, to give you the uncomfortable feedback.

• 46:37Guru Singh?

  Gotta be fearless.

• 46:38Rich Roll?

  People, people, a lot of people don't like that.

• 46:41Guru Singh?

  Fearless.

• 46:41Rich Roll?

  But you've got to get comfortable with that level of honesty if you wanna, if you wanna graduate out.

• 46:48Guru Singh?

  What you gotta get comfortable also with is the level of reaction to your honesty. And then you'll get more aware of how to deliver the honesty, because honesty delivers...

• 47:01Rich Roll?

  If you're the buddy, you mean?

• 47:02Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 47:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Guru Singh?

  Or even if you're your own buddy. You know, how do you, how do you tell yourself that, "There he is, you did it again"? How do you tell yourself that you just did it for the umpteenth time, and you knew you were gonna do it, and you knew you were doing it, and you knew you did it, and blah, blah? You gotta be your friend. You gotta be able to be gentle in your corrections.

• 47:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think what happens in real life is that people who have a negative disposition or play the victim card generally aren't on the receiving end of a lot of honest feedback. If they are, they push that person away, and most people just won't say anything. They'll just kind of slowly move backwards until that person becomes very isolated and alone.

• 47:54Guru Singh?

  And this is...

• 47:55Rich Roll?

  Because no one wants to be around that person.

• 47:58Guru Singh?

  You used a good word, honesty, because this is a form of dishonesty, isn't it?

• 48:06Rich Roll?

  What is?

• 48:08Guru Singh?

  To move back and not to say anything, not to be that mirror.

• 48:13Rich Roll?

  I suppose. I think people just, they get uncomfortable and they're just like, "Well, I just don't..." You know, for some people, it's setting a healthy boundary. Like, "I just don't, I don't want people like that in my orbit, so I'm moving in another direction." It's not malicious, it's discretionary.

• 48:29Guru Singh?

  Dishonest, too.

• 48:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I guess. Well, do you have it, is it incumbent upon you to tell that person they're being a certain way? That feels like a transgression as well.

• 48:41Guru Singh?

  Yeah, that is a sort of modern interpretation. I think it's the way in which it's done and the point at which it's done.

• 48:53Rich Roll?

  And the kind of relationship that you have with that person.

• 48:55Guru Singh?

  But I even think that there's ways of stepping into, and I'm not saying dishonesty in a condemning way, but I think there's ways of stepping into honesty, stepping into honesty in a neutral way.

• 49:21Guru Singh?

  That isn't going to be conflicting with the sanctity or the appropriateness of a situation. I think you have to be able to be very conscious, very intuitive as to how that plays out. And also be able to have a, you know, step three and four after you've taken step one and it didn't go so well.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 49:51Guru Singh?

  You know, be able to have a, um, an apology in place so that if you've stepped on a toe too harshly, that you can, you can, you know, move to the apology as your step two. But I'm, and then I think what will end up happening is that you will, um, like the birds of a feather that flock together. I think that you will end up attracting those who want to know and be moved away from those who want to hide.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 50:27Guru Singh?

  And I don't say hide, meaning that they're wrong or bad. I just mean that they, they don't want to have that much information in that moment.

• 50:37Rich Roll?

  I think the crucial thing with somebody who's trying to grow or overcome these kinds of habits is that you have to be open and willing to receive information about your behavior that could be perceived as critical in a way where you understand it's not personal.

• 51:02Guru Singh?

  Do you realize that we've just turned the title around?

• 51:05Rich Roll?

  What?

• 51:06Guru Singh?

  Because we started out by, you know, positive and the negativity, right? But now what we're talking about is how to successfully be negative in the positivity. That's beautiful. I love it. Because it is, you know, we're revolving positives and negatives around a neutral center. And sometimes it's appropriate to be positive, sometimes negative and sometimes neutral.

• 51:33Guru Singh?

  I mean, you've raised children, you've raised beautiful, creative. I've taken long drives with them. I know who they are. I've met them. I've heard them, you know, in their creative moments. And I've done the same. And so we know that there is a great deal of time when you have to be negative in the positive and you have to be positive in the negative. And then there's other times when you have to be completely neutral, which is kind of what you and I were working over, you know, maybe three minutes, five minutes ago. Is it, what about that neutrality? You know, you said, when you said, "I never expected that to come out of you." You know, yeah, there is that that needs to come out of each one of us.

• 52:18Guru Singh?

  And then there are those times when, what'd you say, transgressing? Then there are those times when you really have to be that neutral person, that you will see that right now, there is no way in hell that any statement from me is going to have any beneficial effect.

• 52:39Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to understand that. Explain that to me a little bit more.

• 52:44Guru Singh?

  Well, when you're raising children, there's a time for positive and there's a time for negative. And then there's also those times, particularly when they're in their adolescent stage, when neutrality is a little better way of moving the game forward.

• 53:00Rich Roll?

  Right, I get that. It's, to me, it feels more like non-reactivity. Like, I try to, I think, I think having neutrality in how you deliver a message, whether that message is inherently negative or positive, is important. So I think neutrality is kind of the overriding, overarching theme with which one should aspire to communicate in terms of providing feedback on somebody else's behavior.

• 53:29Guru Singh?

  You think?

• 53:29Rich Roll?

  In an appropriate, yeah.

• 53:31Guru Singh?

  Really?

• 53:32Rich Roll?

  You've got to detach your own emotional baggage from that.

• 53:35Guru Singh?

  I love it.

• 53:36Rich Roll?

  Otherwise, you're projecting your own bullshit on somebody else.

• 53:39Guru Singh?

  You're right.

• 53:39Rich Roll?

  Which is what we're all doing all the time, anyway.

• 53:43Guru Singh?

  What is it that the yogis said?

• 53:45Rich Roll?

  I don't know, what did the yogis say?

• 53:47Guru Singh?

  The only sound of-

• 53:48Rich Roll?

  Many things.

• 53:49Guru Singh?

  The only sound of truth is the sound of your inhale. If you add anything to the exhale, it's your opinion.

• 53:56Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's beautiful. I like that. I'd never heard that before.

• 53:59Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 53:59Rich Roll?

  Who said that specifically?

• 54:01Guru Singh?

  Oh, goes back-

• 54:02Rich Roll?

  Unknown yogi.

• 54:03Guru Singh?

  Goes back so far, it's unknown, you know? But that was what they would say, that the sound of your inhale is

• 54:12Guru Singh?

  and that's why they said satt is the sound of that truth, that nourishing inhale. And then-

• 54:20Rich Roll?

  Everything after that.

• 54:21Guru Singh?

  Everything after that is an opinion.

• 54:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right. And then what are we even talking about?

• 54:28Guru Singh?

  There you go. But hey, you can't go to that state of neutrality. You would just sit and do nothing, which is what the Buddha had to do. It's what Jesus had to do. It's what Krishna had to do for those lengths of time. It's what the yogis did in the caves where they would sit. It's what the deep meditation is, is to sit in the total neutrality, sit in the total darkness, sit in the total, you know, encapsulation in order to come up with that innovation.

• 55:09Rich Roll?

  I was talking to a close family member and this person was saying that, uh, that he was borderline despondent, like having a really hard time, like just swimming and drowning in negativity. And I said, well, what are you doing? Like, how do you spend your time? He's like, well, I watch tons of news.

• 55:36Rich Roll?

  Like, basically, this person was saying, politics is what has him completely been out of shape. And I'm like, well, why do you? You don't have to watch the news. You don't have to be subsumed by the daily discourse and drama.

• 55:51Guru Singh?

  Good word.

• 55:54Rich Roll?

  But this person felt like- They couldn't hit the off switch on that. I think it gets more complicated because despite the awareness that that this person has, that this consumption of this kind of content leads to this kind of negative disposition, the inability to hit that switch and course correct is in part fueled by the fact that there's something about that negative influx of of information or drama or whatever it is, that on some level is doing something for that person. Otherwise, they wouldn't

• 56:39Rich Roll?

  do it. So there's something that's working for them.

• 56:43Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 56:43Rich Roll?

  In the same way that drugs and alcohol work for an alcoholic or an addict. It's not a it's not a great thing to do, but there's something about it that's functioning for them.

• 56:53Guru Singh?

  You know.

• 56:55Rich Roll?

  And I think in order to really deconstruct this, you have to acknowledge that.

• 57:00Guru Singh?

  Yes.

• 57:00Rich Roll?

  And get to the bottom of what it is that that is serving in order to figure a way out that's healthier.

• 57:08Guru Singh?

  What it serves in part at times not to create a gross generality is safety. If I know what's happening in that world. I mean, when did politics become the obsession? Right? It evolved over time. It's now a competitive sport. This team and this team, right? Who got the win today? But it's goes way back. It's attached to our physical body and our need to survive calamity.

• 57:52Guru Singh?

  If we know where all the danger points are, and the news will definitely feed that, because the news is, for the most part, bad news. Or at least, there is some bad in the news. I will know the danger points in my world, and I will then, because I've got my eye on those danger points, don't take your eye off the ball. And if the ball is the danger points, and I've got my eye on it continuously, then I am safe. And that is what that obsession does for people. People feel that if they keep their eye on that ball, they will be safe. And that's why we've created these opportunities

• 58:37Guru Singh?

  for these charlatans, these hucksters, to rise to the top of all of these positions globally, because that was a ripe, fertile field for them to become the most demonstrative. There's a reason why the word demonstrative and demon have the same root.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, there's definitely something to that. I think it's also informed by our deep desire to belong to a certain tribe. So this sport of politics plays into that base drive, and then paying attention to it allows us to shore up our membership in whatever respective camp we are allegiance to.

• 59:34Guru Singh?

  Yeah. Good word, tribe, because it is a very primitive function in the human psyche, and the psychoemotional apparatus being tribal, right, being very, very, it's a very primitive, very brutal also. It can be very brutal, this one tribe against another tribe. It's where it is really important for us to be positive in the negative, so that we can at least lift ourselves out for a moment to see, okay, is this a tribal activity that I am consciously choosing to engage in? Or is this a tribal activity that I have been swept into?

• 1:00:15Guru Singh?

  So to be positive, to be to be levitational in the gravity of a situation is important so that you get some distance and you can see before the fact what is happening in fact. Yeah. What's the solution? Solution, in my estimation, is to take time out, time out every day. You could take time out while you're preparing your food. You could take time out when you're relating to your children. You could take time out on a morning walk or a... I wouldn't take time out on a drive because you'd better be paying attention to the road. But you

• 1:00:56Guru Singh?

  can take time out in so many different ways. I take time out in deep meditation, deep, deep meditation, going into a dream time where I'm not even aware of my physical surroundings, at least two or three times each week. I have to get into that state for an extended period of time. And when I say an extended period of time, I mean at least thirty minutes, an hour. And what is the experience when you come out of one of those sessions? Fresh, refreshed, reboot. It's kind of like, you know, turning off your computer view or turning off your phone because things were jamming up and then all of a sudden it's kind of like new again. And that's what happens when I come out of it. I don't...

• 1:01:41Guru Singh?

  and this is good because I'm glad you brought into the title and that neutral position and then, what did you say, nonreactive. Because when I come out of that, I may not be neutral, but I'm definitely nonreactive. Yeah. And that becomes like a superpower. Superpower. Isn't that interesting too? In today's world, the probably the most the most profitable media company right now is Marvel. And all they're doing is making things about these super realistic, sometimes very unrealistic... Not always that realistic.

• 1:02:21Guru Singh?

  Yeah. Just these people with superpowers. Because coming out with a fresh view of what's going on in this world is being positive in the negativity, being refreshed in the negativity, not denying the negativity.

• 1:02:42Guru Singh?

  But being able to at least be able to survive the negativity long enough to identify what the negativity is, and then going into your creative factors, coming up with a solution, that's wrong, and you fail, and you forgive yourself, and you come back, come up with another solution, that may or may not be right, and you have to keep, you know, trial and error until you come up with a pathway through to navigate. So I would say that was perhaps one of the most important reasons why I try to maintain positivity in the negative, is to be able to navigate.

• 1:03:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think with that, developing that acumen to be nonreactive, that's superpower, the more finally you can hone that over time as your practice matures, it's that nonreactivity that gives you that space to objectively assess not just your environment and the stimuli that's coming at you, but also your own behavior, so that you are more apt and able to catch yourself falling prey to one of those negative, looping, you know, behaviors, or actions, or phrases that come out of your mouth, to have the awareness and say, oh, I did it

• 1:04:03Rich Roll?

  again, look, I just did it, as opposed to being on autopilot where you're doing it and you don't even know that you're doing it.

• 1:04:09Guru Singh?

  Yeah, as you were telling that, I was just thinking about some scenarios in my world where I would repeat patterns, right?

• 1:04:18Rich Roll?

  We all do.

• 1:04:19Guru Singh?

  And know that I was gonna get into that same hole, so I, at one point in time, there was this pattern that when I'm in a meeting that has, you know, more than three or four people in it, you know, it's like a, it's like a board meeting, or a group meeting, or an organizational meeting, and I just see the whole thing going stupid, and I'm thinking, look, and I can't be the only smart person in the world, in the room right now, but what I see is really ridiculous, and I would come out with what I thought was a solution to the ridiculousness, and then the whole room would turn on me. And I would go, okay, I did it again, you know, and I kept, and I kept working this

• 1:05:01Guru Singh?

  for year after year, decade after, because, you know, we've been through a few meetings, right, at this age, and finally I just said, you know what?

• 1:05:12Guru Singh?

  This is an unsolvable riddle. So I'm just gonna go for it. And so the last meeting that I used this technique in, I used it to the nth degree. I said, I really came to the point where I just turned to the whole room and said, are we really gonna be this ridiculously stupid? And go down this path? And I was raising my voice and I was standing up and sitting down. We were all sitting around a big circular table. And I, afterwards, people just sort of like, what the just happened? And I thought, this is good.

• 1:05:56Guru Singh?

  I no longer have to be in these rooms. I graduated.

• 1:06:02Rich Roll?

  So then you're out? They're like...

• 1:06:06Guru Singh?

  I am out. If I find myself in a situation in which I am reacting, and no matter what I've done over years and years, I'm still not improving on that, I say, Guru Singh, you better listen to what's here. Because you have this perspective that you think that that activity or that attitude is wrong. You've never been able to change it. And so now, let's go in the opposite direction. And what I found was, I am now where I'm supposed to be. And I'm no longer finding myself in those rooms. I'm in rooms, I'm in groups, I'm with people.

• 1:06:50Guru Singh?

  But for some reason, I was holding myself in those kinds of settings that would just totally aggravate me. Until I realized, I didn't have to put up with them. I didn't have to go nice with them. I didn't have to be that tolerant voice with them. I just had to blow myself up in the middle of them so that I would never get back into the middle.

• 1:07:18Rich Roll?

  Well, that's one, that's one way of going about it, I guess. I mean, what is the, what's the takeaway from that?

• 1:07:25Guru Singh?

  If your body is telling you, if your gut is telling you that the negativity that you're feeling and the positivity that you're trying to display in the midst of that negativity isn't working and hasn't been working, then you need to go with your gut. And you need to, not necessarily like in an abrupt way and telling everybody that they're totally messed up way, but in a gentle way, you need to start moving yourself out of the orbits that you're currently in. And give yourself, if it's a work setting, give yourself some runway. If it's a social setting, give yourself some runway. And allow yourself to gently work your way out of

• 1:08:10Guru Singh?

  those situations in which you feel like being a positive force in a negative situation is never appreciated.

• 1:08:18Rich Roll?

  I like that. It sounds like you just blew the whole thing up, though.

• 1:08:22Guru Singh?

  I did.

• 1:08:23Rich Roll?

  And then you're like, no, I never have to go back there again.

• 1:08:25Guru Singh?

  No, no, I didn't blow it, I didn't blow it up.

• 1:08:28Rich Roll?

  You blew up your place in the...

• 1:08:30Guru Singh?

  I blew its receptivity to me being a part of it. And I had to do this not because they were unable. I had to do it because I had been unable for all those decades to step out of that. Not, I'm not talking about a specific setting, but to be able to step out of that kind of setting and not subject myself to it. I mean, people all the time are saying, you know, well, I should put up with it. I should be neutral, right? I should be even, I should be non-reactive. I should just not cause waves.

• 1:09:13Guru Singh?

  No, at some point in time, the most positive thing you can do is to be super negative.

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  What I get out of that is, is the negativity, the frustration, the depression, whatever kind of negative impulse related emotions arise, often come from situations in which we feel powerless, right? So we can, we can rage against politics, or, you know, your sports team that never wins, or whatever, whatever it is, something that we fundamentally can't control or direct, right? Is a source of pain and frustration and all of these emotions that I just said. And a way forward is to try to release your attachment to those things, to fundamentally understand that you don't have control over them.

• 1:10:05Rich Roll?

  It's kind of a relief if you can connect with that. And instead, focus on the things that you can control. You can control whether you're going to be a member of that meeting, that board, or whatever it is, and you have control over whether you attend or not. You don't have control over the group consensus. You can attempt to influence it, which you did many times. It caused you consternation and frustration until you like had these outbursts. So the thing you can control is your involvement, right? Similarly, we can't control politics. We can control how much politics we consume, to use that example.

• 1:10:46Guru Singh?

  Yeah, it's a good example.

• 1:10:47Rich Roll?

  Right? We can control how we move our body, what we put in our mouths. We can control our various behaviors. We can't control other people, scenarios, situations. There's actually very little that we can control. But the more energy we place and invest in those few things that we can control, I think is a, is a positive path forward to cultivating the positive mental attitude that we all seek to embody.

• 1:11:18Guru Singh?

  So every time we eat, putting the right food in our body.

• 1:11:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we have a choice. Are we going to put high vibration food into our body? Or are we going to eat junk food that we know is going to make us depressed?

• 1:11:29Guru Singh?

  And every time that we have a moment that we could exercise or slouch, we have a choice. It doesn't mean that you have to exercise every moment, that you have a free moment. And it doesn't mean that you can't eat a bit of junk, you know, that really tastes good every once in a while, not to be fanatic, but you've got to have a majority of your time consuming, whether it's eating, or listening, or seeing, positivities. Otherwise, you're going to be just another contributor to the negativity.

• 1:12:03Rich Roll?

  And would result that in the situation of stimuli coming at you, you have a choice to react impulsively, or to respond mindfully.

• 1:12:17Guru Singh?

  It's like, don't be, don't have your mouth open in a food fight. Make choices.

• 1:12:22Rich Roll?

  Easier said than done.

• 1:12:24Guru Singh?

  Easier said than done. But the idea that, and one of the things that I would like to get across to the listeners and viewers, is that sometimes, what appears to be negative is the most positive thing you can do. What appears to be safe, is sometimes the most dangerous thing you can be doing, for your life.

• 1:12:48Rich Roll?

  And how do you develop awareness over what is the correct move?

• 1:12:54Guru Singh?

  What we were just talking about are some of the fundamental small moves, the small initial moves. Eat right, sleep right, exercise right. Sleep right is really important. Trying to bait you with a...

• 1:13:09Rich Roll?

  We're not going to go down the gravity blanket, Ravel, again.

• 1:13:12Guru Singh?

  I love it.

• 1:13:14Rich Roll?

  I do love it.

• 1:13:15Guru Singh?

  I was trying to bait you, I said, and there we go. But eat right, sleep right, exercise right, and then, you know, start to monitor, start to discipline your think right, your speak right, you know, and every once in a while, just blow it all up, and see if it comes back together in a natural, I don't mean, you know, literally, but just, you know, rock your boat. Every once in a while, rock your boat, don't be all, you know, held together, and get creative.

• 1:13:48Rich Roll?

  I think that's a good place to end it.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Rock your boat.

• 1:13:51Rich Roll?

  Rock your boat. Is that the name of the song you're gonna play for us right now?

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  Oh, hey.

• 1:13:55Rich Roll?

  You're gonna take us out again, right?

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  I'm gonna take you down another path.

• 1:14:00Rich Roll?

  Right on, brother.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  And this one is, um, in the, this one is the, is, is a bit of the non-reaction.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  That we were talking about, the bit of the neutrality. And the word confidence means confidence, fidence means faith. To be confident that the infinite will take care of it. We're so fortunate to be confident that the infinite will take care of it. We're so fortunate. God is the boat, God is the boatman.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  And by that grace, we're gonna cross this ocean. Learn our lessons from the sun. You know it shines down equally on every wall. When the sun doesn't shine, we learn from the rain. Falls down equally on every one the same. So be confident that the infinite will take care of it. We're so fortunate.

• 1:15:56Rich Roll?

  Much love, my brother.

• 1:15:58Guru Singh?

  Much, much love. Bless you.

• 1:16:01Rich Roll?

  Let's do it again next time.

• 1:16:02Guru Singh?

  Do it again soon.

• 1:16:03Rich Roll?

  All right. Peace, plants, namaste.

• 1:16:07Guru Singh?

  Sadhana.

• 1:16:13Rich Roll?

  "Let me count the ways I love me my guru Singh." Always great spending time with that human being. Hope you guys enjoyed it too. Please hit him up on all the socials. Let him know what you thought of today's conversation. He is @GuruSingYogi on Instagram and @GuruSing on Twitter. And for more information on his universe, go to gurusing.com. If you're listening to this podcast on the date that it was released, April 11, 2019, then you still have two days to take advantage of our big discount on our annual membership to the Plant Power Meal Planner. $20 off when you use the code POWER20 at checkout. And I implore everybody to learn more about this platform.

• 1:16:56Rich Roll?

  We worked really hard on it, and it basically answers a very simple question. How do you make healthy, nutritious, delicious eating affordable, accessible, and always at arm's reach? And I think we succeeded. When you sign up, you get access to thousands of plant-based recipes, easy to prepare, totally customized based on your personal preferences. We have unlimited grocery lists. We have grocery delivery integrated right into the system in most metropolitan areas. And you get access to a team of nutrition coaches there on the ready to answer all of your questions seven days a week. It's really fantastic. Super proud of it. So to learn more and to sign up, meals.richroll.com

• 1:17:39Rich Roll?

  or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. If you'd like to support our work here on the podcast, just tell your friends about the show. It's as simple as that. It's that one-on-one interaction, the recommendation from a trusted friend that really... I think creates that grassroots awareness. You can share the show on your favorite social media platform. Make sure to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, on Spotify. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. That's very helpful. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Guru Singh for providing beautiful music. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and much more.

• 1:18:21Rich Roll?

  Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing the show and editing it for YouTube. Jessica Miranda for beautiful graphics. DK David Kahn for advertising relationships. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thank you for your attention, your love. I do not take it for granted. And I will see you back here next week with Mark Ganey and Michael Horvath, the co-founders of one of my favorite social media platforms, Strava. It's a great conversation. Until then, peace, plants, and positivity, or maybe neutrality.