Leo Babauta’s Mission To End Human Struggle — Ruminations on Suffering, Simplicity & The Power of Mindfulness

As longtime listeners know well, minimalism, mindfulness & sustainable living are favorite recurring themes of this show. Guests like Andrew Morgan and Joshua Katcher have elucidated our our cultural addiction to fast fashion. Andy Puddicombe, Jason Garner,Light Watkins,Dan Harris,Charlie Knoles,Guru Singh,WuDe and others have espoused the benefits of meditation. And people like Joshua Fields Milburn have shared the strategies and value of learning to live better with less. Perhaps you even watched Joshua and Ryan Nicodemus' documentary, Minimalism*. If you did, you may recall seeing Leo Babauta featured. A husband and father of six, Leo is the creator of Zen Habits, one of the largest single-author blogs in the world with a fanatic global fanbase in the millions. Named one of TIME magazine’s Top 10 blogs, Leo was indisputably one of the first prominent voices on the internet advocating the power and beauty of embracing simplicity and mindfulness to transcend the chaos of our daily existence. Through his writing, he has taught millions how to clear mental, emotional, financial and physical clutter so we can focus on what’s most important, create something amazing, and find contentment, purpose and meaning in our lives. Count me a fan. Today finds Leo with a new goal: to end human struggle. Audacious? Sure. Naively optimistic? Maybe. But Leo is no ordinary human. Uniquely extraordinary, he might just have what it tales to help birth a new age of consciousness. Despite the fact that we had never met in person prior to this podcast, I can't overstate the extent to which Leo's work positively influenced my personal transformation and continues to this day to inspire my path. An authentic example of the powerful ideals he espouses, it was a personal thrill to finally meet him. More importantly, our exchange exceeded all expectations. This is a conversation about how to create healthy, personal boundaries. It's about the distinction between greed and ambition. It's about combating our consumerist programming through meditation, yoga, and mindfulness practices. And it's a conversation about his vegan lifestyle and why he unschools his children. But overall, this is a potent conversation about the path to self-mastery. It's about how to let go of negative habits and adopt positive practices with staying power in service to your highest, most authentic self. Because if you ask Leo, life is for living, not for productivity. Present, gracious and wise beyond measure, Leo is a rare voice worth heeding. And this is a podcast you're going to want to listen to more than once. I sincerely hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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

• 0:44Rich Roll?

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

• 1:05Speaker 01

  The year of changing my life was the result of a place of real struggle and not knowing how to change my life and wanting to and like starting all kinds of exercise programs. I was sedentary, not being able to stick to them for very long, trying all kinds of diets. I was overweight, probably like 60 pounds heavier than I am now, not being able to stick to that, trying to like, you know, get out of debt, and I was deeply in debt and not being able to do that. So I was just trying to quit smoking. I tried seven times and failed each time. So it was a place of darkness and I found a way out. That's Leo Babauta, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:54Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:58Rich Roll?

  If you're a longtime listener to this podcast, then you know full well that topics like minimalism, mindfulness, and sustainable living are favorite recurring themes of this show, from Andrew Morgan, talking about our cultural addiction to fast fashion, to people like Jason Garner, Dan Harris, Charlie Knoles, Guru Singh, WuDe, and many others, talking about the potency of meditation, to my conversation with Joshua Fields Milburn, who espouses the virtues of minimalism, living more with less. Perhaps you even watched Joshua's documentary, Minimalism, and if you did, you may recall seeing Leo Babauta featured in that film. Leo is a husband, a father of six, and creator of the wildly popular Zen Habits blog, which

• 2:43Rich Roll?

  is one of the largest single-author blogs in the world with over a million readers. It was named to one of Time Magazine's top 10 blogs for a few years running. And Leo was and is one of, if not the, first major blogger or prominent voices on the internet to advocate the power and the beauty of finding simplicity and mindfulness in the chaos of our daily existence, how to clear the mental, emotional, financial, and physical clutter so that we can focus on what's most important, create something amazing, find contentment and meaning and purpose in our lives. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host.

• 3:27Rich Roll?

  And this week, I sit down with Leo, who is an extraordinary human, whose work was absolutely instrumental in influencing and impacting my personal transformation, and continues to this day to significantly inspire my path and the path of multitudes of people all over the world. I've got a few more things I want to say about Leo and this conversation, but first, a couple of quick announcements.

• 4:01Rich Roll?

  Okay, so I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Leo. He's just so thoughtful, so present. This is a guy who really walks his talk and is a true, living, breathing example of the powerful ideas that he espouses. So this is a conversation about creating personal boundaries. It's about greed versus ambition. It's about combating our consumerist obsessions. It's about, of course, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, veganism, homeschooling, unschooling. But mostly, it's about self-mastery. Not only how to create and sustain new habits that serve you, but how to effectively utilize

• 4:46Rich Roll?

  certain tools and strategies to optimally deal with stress, anxiety, guilt, shame, remorse, in effect, the perils, the beauty, and the general gestalt of the human condition that we collectively share. So I absolutely love this talk, and I hope you do too. So without further ado, I give you Leo Babauta.

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  All right, man, let's do it.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  All right.

• 5:11Rich Roll?

  So good to talk to you, good to finally meet you in person. It's been many, many, many years in the making, and it's an absolute thrill, man. I'm so glad to have you here today.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing. It's really an honor to be sitting here in front of you.

• 5:25Rich Roll?

  So I thought it would be fun to kind of kick this off with a little story.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:29Rich Roll?

  I think you know the story. But I had mentioned earlier, when we were in the kitchen, that your work, your writing, your blogs and habits has been formative in my journey. I was reading your stuff. When did you launch the blog initially?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  2007.

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  2007.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Ten years ago.

• 5:47Rich Roll?

  So that was right around when I was beginning to kind of shift my lifestyle. So I don't know that I was a day-one reader, but I was pretty early on.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:56Rich Roll?

  It was incredibly helpful to me to be able to have your voice in my ears as kind of a lighthouse and a guiding force as I was navigating some pretty treacherous uncertain waters. And so I appreciate you for that. Like you've been a big behind the scenes person who's been crucial in kind of catalyzing my personal growth. So I wanted to thank you for that.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  No, that's amazing to hear. And it's an honor to be a part of your journey. In fact, now that I know that I'm going to take all your credit for all your success.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm giving it to you. You earned it and you're welcome to take it. And a funny thing happened when we had never met, we'd never communicated. But when Finding Ultra came out in 2000, it was spring of 2012. And I knew that our mutual, I knew that my friend Matt Fraser knew you, Matt Fraser of No Meat Athlete. And I just wanted to get the book into the hands of like, people that I respected. Not, I didn't want anything in return. I just wanted to like, be able to gift it as a way of saying thank you to people that had been helpful and been like, like yourself, a guiding force in my story. And so I reached out to Matt and I was like, Hey, Matt, I really want to get like a copy of Finding Ultra to Leo. I don't know how to get in touch with them. Like,

• 7:12Rich Roll?

  I know you know him. Can you like, bring it up? Or he's like, Yeah, I'll ask him, you know, but you know, he's weird about stuff like that. I don't know if he's gonna, and I don't know, a week later or something like that, Matt emailed me back and he's like, you know, Leo said to thank you very much, but, but he's gonna decline accepting the book because he doesn't, you know, accept bringing new things into his house. And so I had a moment of like, a like, the briefest moment of disappointment. And then I was like, that's so baller. Like you actually walk your talk in the most profound way. Like you're actually living. The way that you espouse and, and, you know, in line with what you write about. And so I actually thought it was really cool because it proved to me that you actually are who you are

• 7:57Rich Roll?

  and hold yourself out to be. Uh, and I figured, oh, at some point we'll cross paths.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Well, if I had known you were gonna make the world-

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  Five or six years later.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  The world's best podcast. And I, you know, if you're gonna go on to do that, I would have taken the book. No, no, it was, you know, that's actually a really hard thing for me is to say no to everybody. Um, but, uh, and then in the beginning of the blog, I answered everybody's emails and I loved getting those emails. And I answered every single comment, uh, but as the blog grew, it was just became too much. And I had to like, for my own self-protection and sanity, you know, set some gates basically so that I can be able to focus on the, creating the work that I want to create. And, um, yeah, I mean, as you know, it can be overwhelming.

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  Well, saying no, or having a healthy relationship with saying no is absolutely essential to living a minimalist lifestyle.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:49Rich Roll?

  How did you kind of cultivate a healthy relationship with doing that? For me, like, I'm a people pleaser, like, I don't want to bum anyone out. And I end up saying yes to a lot of stuff I probably shouldn't and then resent it later. And I'm always like, okay, next time say no. I'm getting better, um, but I still have like, you know, a boulder, I gotta push up a mountain when it comes to that.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Well, a couple of things. One is, uh, I, I learned that if I don't say no, I'm, and I'm saying yes to everything, then it's just overwhelming. So that yes started to become, I started to associate that with overwhelm and stress and pain. So like I, I, and then I started associating no with simplifying and just having some space. So no became a positive thing for me and I actually started to cherish saying no to everything. Like, no to you, no to you. No, but it wasn't about no to people, but it was more about saying yes to the life that I wanted and the space that I needed for my own sanity. So.

• 9:46Rich Roll?

  I would imagine you get offered really cool stuff though. Like a lot of those opportunities are probably things that would be fun or would be broadening, you know?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  That's, that's the other thing is that once you start to like, set up these walls, not walls, but like- You know, these limits, you know, like I'm only gonna have this many things in my house or whatever. Those are like kind of artificial external things, but you start to see your own instinct to the urge to connect with everybody that you can, because there's so many amazing things out there and you just wanna do it all. Like, I'm sure you're like me. We're both people who want to like experience life to the fullest and have all these amazing experiences, meet the most amazing people. And so saying, you start to see that urge in yourself to like go and do everything and say yes to and have so many meetings and

• 10:34Speaker 01

  to say yes to all these projects. And so I started to examine that urge in myself and I now think of it as greed, which is a Buddhist term for that feeling of just wanting more, wanting everything. And it's definitely very alive in me. And I see that now that I can, I have those limits that I've artificially set and it really helps me to see my own proclivities towards wanting more.

• 11:00Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, when you were, you couch it as greed, I was thinking ambition. And I think there's healthy ambition and there's unhealthy ambition. So how do you split those hairs?

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And greed is a, in our language, it's a very negative word, but it really just describes this wanting of everything you can, you know, having more, doing more, like rushing and just.

• 11:24Rich Roll?

  Searching outside yourself for that answer.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Right. And it's like, oh, like, you know, good vegan food. I'm here in LA. I'm not, I'm not from here and I don't get this like incredible richness of amazing vegan restaurants. And so I'm here, I'm like, I wanna try every vegan restaurant. It's impossible. I can't possibly fit them all in, but there's an instinct in me to want all of it because it's all so good. And I feel like I might miss out on some amazing ones. So that's what, what greed is. And it's, and it's actually a really human and like positive thing. And so I don't want to like make it painted in like this horrible, like evil light, but it's definitely this thing in you and, and it can lead to, like, I think we both have addictive personalities. I know you've, you've struggled with that.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  I definitely do.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I do too. I mean, I, where I came from, my darkest place was, was addictions to a number of different things. And I still deal with those urges today, but that's where that comes from. It's just this wanting. Wanting that more, wanting everything.

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  Right, as a means of shifting how you feel in the moment.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:32Rich Roll?

  It's a, it's a way of getting out of the present.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Right. And so how do you, you said, like, how do you choose between the one, the, the good opportunities and the, you know, the ones that are gonna be maybe too much? Um, and for me, it's just like being able to see that, that tendency towards wanting more, more, more, more. And, and letting that go. So it's a letting go process. And then what are you left with when you don't want more and more? It's the like loving intention. And so when I say yes to you, um, like I'm here with you. So I obviously said yes to something. It's like, I, I feel like this is in alignment with my mission in life. And, um, I, I feel like you embody some of the values that I, that I want to spread in the world.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  And so coming here with you is a merging of that. And so that's a loving thing. It's not necessarily based on that desire of like, I need to be on every amazing podcast. In fact, I haven't been on any recently, but, uh, this one felt in alignment with that love that I'm trying to offer to the world.

• 13:33Rich Roll?

  That's cool. I appreciate that. And, uh, and the feeling is, is definitely mutual. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's tricky. You know, I, you wrote a blog post about this also with respect to travel. Like when you go and you want to have all the experiences, you want to make sure that you see everything. And having that understanding that that's not going to be possible and kind of playing that out and seeing yourself strung out. Because, you know, you, you've set up this goal that you can't achieve of like checking all these boxes without actually ever just being present with where you're at and having a comfort level with knowing that you can't do it all and that that's okay.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, I mean, it, it shows up very strongly in travel. Like you said, like it's hard to be here when you're like, oh, I need to go to the next great place because there's so many great places.

• 14:20Rich Roll?

  Rushing around to get the, the snapshot and then moving on.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  But that's actually what we do in our everyday lives. Well, most of us, I'm not, obviously Rich is enlightened. Um, and he's rich, rich Nirvana. But.

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  If anyone's enlightened here, it's you.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  But most of, no, I mean, I definitely am pretty far myself. But you're like, most of us, like, instead of being present with the email that I'm reading, we're trying to like, get through our entire email box so that we can then go on to do the next task on our list and then go on to meeting so and so. And it's like, you're never fully present because there's that tendency to want more, to get to the next thing, to do more. And it's actually never ending, so you have to really just stay present with that urge, which is a natural one, and practice letting go.

• 15:08Rich Roll?

  It's so uncomfortable that you do that. It's so hard because you're also letting go of those little dopamine hits that you get also, like, oh, I cleared my inbox. Oh, like, I checked my this or my that, which is just not really necessarily directly related to moving your life forward, or making you more content, or more grounded, or more successful. It's the illusion of, of moving forward without, without the actual truth of it.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, I mean, we're all addicted to that, I think, is those little dopamine hits, you know, of, of, okay, I checked off that box, I did all of these things, and moving on to the next one is just, it's hard to break free of that.

• 15:48Rich Roll?

  So what are the daily practices that you've cultivated to manage all this?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Um, well, I'm obviously perfect, and I do them all every day.

• 16:00Rich Roll?

  Perfectly, yeah. You have a three-hour morning routine.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And I've found it ultimate.

• 16:06Rich Roll?

  That you adhere to perfectly every day.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  And it's the perfect routine, so I'm gonna share it with you guys now, and you'll, you will have enlightenment after doing it.

• 16:13Rich Roll?

  And if you do this, you will become Leo.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I'm gonna give you all but the last one, and that one you can buy from my website.

• 16:19Rich Roll?

  Ah, okay.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  So, no, I, I'm still in search of that answer, honestly. But what do, what do I do? My daily practices, I, I meditate, and it's nothing, not a, like, amazing, you know, advanced meditation, I just meditate on the breath mostly.

• 16:40Rich Roll?

  Right, so there's no specific approach, or?

• 16:44Speaker 01

  I follow the, generally, I follow the Zen Buddhist style of zazen and the, or like, the, just, just sitting kind of thing, but lately, I've been returning to the basic practice of just counting the breath. Which is something that I started with and then thought I was like moving on and beyond that and I realized that I've, uh, there's actually a lot of profoundity, profundity in that. Um, and so I'm rediscovering just counting breath. Um, and that's like something that when you start out and you probably have had this experience like, okay, when do I move beyond counting breath?

• 17:22Rich Roll?

  I need to get, you know, behind the velvet rope into the next B I T room of meditation.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, what's the next level? And so you're always looking for that. And that's actually really good to see that tendency in your mind to want to go beyond that. Um, which is again, that greed coming into play. But so if you return to that, which is such a basic practice and it's like so boring, right? Or at least that's how our minds usually read it. But actually you're just, it's a practice of just fully being there, fully embodied with each breath and realizing that that is all there is. And it's like that breath is unique and not like the next breath and it's never going to come again. And that's exactly what we want to do is just in each experience, each moment

• 18:09Speaker 01

  to see that that's, that's unique and it will, we'll never have this moment back. This one that we're having between me and you right now, we're never going to have it again. And if we can just fully be here in this moment as we are looking into each other's masculine eyes, we, like, this is an amazing experience for me. And if I'm not fully here with it, I'm looking to the next thing. Okay. What, what's, what's the next level thing that I can be doing? I'm going to be missing out on this amazing experience.

• 18:36Rich Roll?

  And there's nothing more profound than anchoring yourself completely in the present moment.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 18:41Rich Roll?

  Right? So the idea, I think our minds are always looking for the advanced program or am I progressing, you know, with respect to meditation? And ultimately it's so simple.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so simple and yet so hard.

• 18:53Rich Roll?

  There's complexity within that simplicity, I suppose. But there's no, you could plumb the depths of it for the rest of your life.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and anyone who's practiced breath counting knows that it's a simple practice. Like the instructions you can take in one minute, but actually doing it is, is pretty tough because of our minds, like, you know, wanting to get away from this moment. Like, this is boring, why am I counting my breaths? So you want to like, and you start to think about what else you have to do for today. And that conversation that you had yesterday that's still sticking with you and all of these, you know, ego driven things. But if we can just let go of that ego and just stay with the breath in it, it's transformative. But like I said, it's pretty hard because of our minds tendencies.

• 19:38Rich Roll?

  And it's fleeting.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:40Rich Roll?

  Right. All right. So how long do you do that for?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  It varies. Lately, it's like when I, I feel rushed, I should be doing it longer. But I actually do it shorter. I was like, okay, I don't have time because I have so much to do. And so when I notice myself just doing it for like 10 minutes a day, I realize like my mind is, is doing that, like wanting to like just get through the meditation and just check it off the list, which is not really fully being there with it. So that lately it has been that, which is a public confession, really.

• 20:15Rich Roll?

  How dare you?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  My, yeah, my mind is definitely rushing off to the next thing. And especially when I travel, it's like, I have so much that I, that I want to do again. It's that greed tendency. Like, I want to do all of this stuff here in LA and meet all these amazing people. I'm not doing that, but it's, that's my mind's tendency. So it's like, okay, I only can do 10 minutes of meditation. But I, you know, ideally, and I don't really hold to the ideals, but you know, 20 to 30 minutes would be amazing.

• 20:39Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:40Rich Roll?

  So that's right when you, that's upon waking ideally?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:45Rich Roll?

  And then what follows that?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't have a magic formula. So let's see.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Normally, well, so I, I mean, before that, I wake up, I have a glass of water and I take a couple, I take like an omega three kind of thing, vegan omega three. And I, then I meditate and I, I have coffee. And lately I've been trying to now do a yoga practice, just a short one, just some sun salutations, which is not something that I've been doing for a long time. So I don't want to pretend that I, I'm an experienced yogi. But I, I find that really useful. And I used to, I used to work out in the morning, whether that's a run or weights or something like that. I, I've been pushing that back to the afternoon and more focusing on my like most important task.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  So that's, that's basically it. Nothing magical.

• 21:42Rich Roll?

  Right. And are you still doing the, you know, check email twice a day kind of thing? And restricting like your online time so that you can focus on, you know, mission worthy work?

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And imperfectly. So like

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  So hard.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, like for me, what, one thing that I've noticed from so many habits, when I say like, say no to this, and if you just say yes to one little one, it's, you know, that slippery slope. And I discovered that when I first started my journey, like when I was trying to quit cigarettes, it's like, okay, when I, I'll just have one puff, you know? And then it's like, all of a sudden I'm just smoking cigarettes again, you know? So that's the same thing. I like, I'll just check email real quick because, you know, I want to see if Rich emailed me.

• 22:23Rich Roll?

  Right. Or it could relieve my stress because I have anxiety. There's this thing hanging out there that's unresolved and I just, if I can, if I can check and know that it's all okay, then I can actually be present with what I'm doing right now.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Which is, yeah, totally, totally fine. Like, you know, I don't need to rigidly hold myself to these rules, but having that line of saying, okay, I'm only going to do it this time and this time helps me to see when I'm, what I'm doing. So when if, if I do it because it's going to be, it's going to free my mind up, then, you know, that could be an amazing thing. Or if I'm doing it just because it's easy to slip into email habits, old email habits, then I can see that better now.

• 23:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, but I have been slipping a bit, so yeah, I have to admit that.

• 23:07Rich Roll?

  You're a human being.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but yeah, generally I've been checking email way less, mostly twice a day, sometimes even once a day. And I find that very freeing.

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:19Rich Roll?

  It's tricky, man. It sneaks up on me. It's definitely like a war that I'm waging that I'm trying to figure out.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  So let me ask you this, to turn the microphones around a bit. When you you find that slipping in on you and just waging that war, is it because you need to check them and this is an important part of your mission? Or is it because you're running from a difficult thing that you don't really feel like doing right now?

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  It's both. You know, it's both. I'm trying to carve out time to work on this new book.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:51Rich Roll?

  And so I'm much more vulnerable to distracting myself.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:59Rich Roll?

  Because I have fear and I have I have resistance, you know,

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  to coin Pressfield's War of Art language. So I think unconsciously and maybe even on a conscious level, like I'm seeking out distractions so that I don't have to do the hard thing. You know what I mean?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Every writer knows what you mean.

• 24:20Rich Roll?

  And yeah, and so there's that. And then there's also like, there's a lot of stuff going on and you know, I've got a lot of unread emails and they all need responses. So there's a responsive, there's a responsible aspect of that as well that I can easily justify.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  So when you say they need responses, are these like actual ones that need responses? Or is that like your feeling of like, this is undone?

• 24:39Rich Roll?

  Probably a little bit of both. I mean, I've let go of the dream of inbox zero, like this is not going to happen, you know, and let go of the shame of, you think, you know, I have this thing like I'm a bad person.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:51Rich Roll?

  I can't answer all these emails, but it's just not, like, if I was gonna do that, I would just be traffic copying and emailing all day long and never do anything else. And so that's not a benefit to anybody.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, neither is the shame.

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  No, yeah, and then I beat myself up because I can't get to all this stuff.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's not your core mission is answering emails. You're not, you know, Rich the email master.

• 25:12Rich Roll?

  But, you know, I've had, I've had to weather, you know, some, some negative consequences because sometimes, you know, like loose ends don't get tied up when they should be if you're being more responsible. I'm, I'm trying to figure it out. I have help and, you know, I'm trying to solve it, but

• 25:26Speaker 01

  There's never a perfect answer.

• 25:27Rich Roll?

  There's no, like, if somebody in technology could, like, solve this email, we, we all suffer from it. You know, we all have this, we have this cultural, you know, cultural epidemic of like dealing with email. Like, if somebody could innovate our way out of this and find a new way for us to communicate more fluidly.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:46Rich Roll?

  That would be a game changer that I think would resolve a lot of people's anxiety.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  So, well, yeah, I thought, it's interesting because my, my view on that now is like, it would be great to have this answer and yet this is like our practice ground, you know?

• 26:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like

• 26:05Rich Roll?

  We have to be with what's happening now.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  I mean, and, and it's really good because we see our tendencies. Email only just brings out the tendencies.

• 26:11Rich Roll?

  Right, it's a mirror. It's a great mirror for where you're at.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  So let me ask you this. You're writing your book.

• 26:16Rich Roll?

  Your journey is only a year round.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  No, actually, this is exactly what I like to talk about. So you're, you're writing your book and we'll, we'll go back to me in a minute.

• 26:26Rich Roll?

  Don't worry, I know we will.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  You can cut this out if you want to.

• 26:29Rich Roll?

  No, go for it.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Um, so you're writing your book and you have a chapter to write today, right? And there's fear coming up. Can you describe that fear, like the physical feeling of that fear?

• 26:43Rich Roll?

  The physical feeling is

• 26:44Speaker 01

  In your body?

• 26:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's an antiness and it's a fear of, um, not being good enough or not being able to

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Well, how does that feel?

• 26:54Rich Roll?

  Sum the words.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Not being good enough?

• 26:56Rich Roll?

  Uh, anxiety.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, um, where is it located in your body?

• 27:03Rich Roll?

  Probably like in my chest.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  And how would you describe the energy that's there in your chest?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  The feeling of fear of not being good enough?

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  It's like a vibrating, like quickly vibrating energy that makes it difficult to concentrate.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's vibrating in your chest. Does it feel like shooting out, pulsing? Is it hard? Is it tight? Is it a like, like a gas, like gaseous? Is it solid? Is it liquid?

• 27:35Rich Roll?

  It's a, I would say it's shooting out and tight.

• 27:45Rich Roll?

  Like radiating, radiating out through the limbs.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:49Rich Roll?

  Just, just general sense of like dis-ease, you know, that makes it difficult to just relax. And I think it's bound up in like an unhealthy relationship with trying to be perfect. You know, like if, if I'm, if the words that are coming out aren't exactly what I have in my mind or how I envision this playing out, then you know, what am I even doing? And how dare you even write a book and who do you think you are? And then that's a cascading waterfall of like negative impulses.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you have like this, and what you're describing is what every single writer, just in general, experiences and also every single person, human being on earth. But like you have this idea, like you want to make an impact on the world. You want people to think well of you and you're attached to that idea, which is very natural.

• 28:39Rich Roll?

  Very unhealthy attachment. Yeah. Because the, the, what I should be attached to is just trying to express myself as honestly as possible and to communicate an idea that I think would be helpful to other people as imperfectly as I, you know, as it may be.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that would be way healthier, but also another thing that I've been working with is even that, like expressing yourself as, you know, perfectly as you can, that's even a, an ideal that you can get attached to, you know? So anyway, I'm not trying to lecture you or anything like that.

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  So what is your, what is your strategy?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  To run usually?

• 29:14Rich Roll?

  Well, running helps, you know, running helps resolve a lot of that anxiety. And also it helps clarify my, my, my thinking.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:22Rich Roll?

  So a lot of these ideas start to congeal.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, you're talking about physically, like going out for a run.

• 29:28Rich Roll?

  Right. Are you talking about just running away?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Just running to email.

• 29:32Rich Roll?

  Running to email, yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  No, no, but actually, you know, running to running is, is a good, um, good way to work with that for sure. That energy that's in you, right?

• 29:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Um, so my, my practice with that now, this is actually what I consider my life's mission is what we're just talking about. Um, so that's kind of why I turn the microphones around.

• 29:52Rich Roll?

  No, I appreciate that. That was really helpful. So if you had to articulate your life's mission, what is that?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  It is to help people with that energy that's in your chest. It's the, the way that I phrase it, um, and I'm still working on the phrasing of the, uh, Leo version 2.0 TM. But by the way that I phrase it right now is I would like to help people with struggles. And this is a struggle, but there's so many versions of this, so many, I mean, everything that we struggle with in our lives, even the ones we don't acknowledge is a version of this that you're talking about. Um, and then the bigger, when I want to get big and bold, my mission is to end human struggle.

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  That is an ambitious mission.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Right. But you, what you're describing there, that energy in your chest, and it's different for each person. And in fact, that energy, in my experience, and I'm not going to tell you what yours is, but my experience is actually that energy changes. Like if you just sit there watching it, it's not.

• 30:51Rich Roll?

  Well, it moves. It's, it's the same with physical pain. When you would, when you draw your attention and get really specific with what's, what color is it?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:00Rich Roll?

  What, you know, what is the nature of it?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:02Rich Roll?

  And where is it now? And you notice as the more you kind of like laser in on the locus of it, it will move around. And then, you know, ultimately, if you do it long enough, it will like dissipate.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  So you could do that with a headache or, you know, whatever is ailing you.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly the practice that, that I've been trying to do. And but the, the problem is that we run.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Or we, we need to do something about that energy. You know what I mean? We need to fix it because it's uncomfortable, like just like physical pain is. And actually, I think it's a version of physical pain. It's in your body, right? So we run, we go to email, we go to Twitter, we go to all these different things that we feel are productive, but we're running from that energy because when we go to email, it's very, there's a lot of, like, it feels more doable.

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  Release. Yeah, you get, because you feel like you're accomplishing something.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Right. You're getting that dopamine, like you said, and you're running away from that uncomfortable feeling. And that uncomfortable feeling is actually there in all these moments in our lives throughout the day, where you're feeling like you might not be good enough. You have that fear. Or you feel like, you know, something, you know, bad might happen, you know, you get some anxiety. Or you're, um, a lot of times it's frustration with other people. And that's a, that's a kind of energy, or resentment with your wife. Or, you know, there's all these different ways that we run from this energy that's in us. And so my mission now is to help people just to stay with that energy and stay with it. And it's not something that I invented. I'm stealing it from Buddhism.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  But you stay with it and then you learn to become comfortable with that feeling of groundlessness or feeling of, you know, uncertainty and fear. And actually, you can just stay with it. And like you have as a physical athlete, you've learned to stay with that discomfort when you're out on a run. Like, you face it every single day. There's physical discomfort and you stay with it. And you actually can give it mindfulness, instead of like trying to tune it out with your, you know, music or whatever. If you just stay with it with mindfulness, like you said, it can dissipate and you can just keep running. But it's the same thing with anxiety and stress and frustration and all of that, feeling bad about yourself,

• 33:12Speaker 01

  is you can just stay with that energy and train in staying and train in just letting it be there and being okay with it. And then, like you said, it can dissipate and you're okay.

• 33:22Rich Roll?

  It's so true. I mean, that's what you just described is really the nature of sobriety, like true sobriety. Because I think as human beings, we all suffer

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:33Rich Roll?

  in some respect from this very condition. And we suffer on a spectrum. So at the very far end of the spectrum, you have people with addiction problems, whether it's substance or behavioral, right? So when you become sober, you start to realize the relationship between that discomfort and the external thing that you reach for

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:54Rich Roll?

  to take you out of that discomfort. So whether it's a drink, or a drug, or going shopping, or watching television, or answering an email, or gambling, or pornography, or whatever it is, it is a quick fix to medicate an emotional state that for a lot of people is only, is very unconscious. They're not even consciously aware that they're making that choice in response to that, that feeling that's creeping up that is throwing them off balance.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're exactly right. That's exactly right. And the addiction, what it is, is for me, at least, this is my experience of addiction, is you do that, you run to something away from that energy, and you find that external, you know, fix, which is obviously very temporary and not really a fix. But you do that, and then if you do that a number of times,

• 34:45Rich Roll?

  It starts to

• 34:45Speaker 01

  it starts to harden into habit, and then harden into addiction. And so what we have to do is unharden those addictions and habits that we have built up to run from that energy. And we've, we've spent so much energy in our lives running from it. Every procrastination, you know, every moment of procrastination is running from that. Every time we reach for the, you know, you and I both like coffee. Every time I reach for coffee, a lot of times it's, it's to fix that. You know, I mean, there's so many things that we do in our lives to run from that one thing. And if we can just stop running, and just stay still, and stay with it, like all of a sudden, it just doesn't become the end of the world. It's not something to panic about. It actually becomes okay. And you're like, oh, this is

• 35:28Speaker 01

  just another energy in me. And it will go away. It will change. It's not the worst thing in the world. And you learn to become comfortable with that discomfort.

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  The fear of the discomfort. Is more severe than the discomfort itself.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:41Rich Roll?

  And I think it's about developing a relationship with emotions in a way that allows you to kind of bifurcate your higher consciousness from the kind of emotional and physical symptoms of what is underlying that, right? So that you can get to that place and say, yeah, I feel like crap, or I feel like I'm sad, or I feel anxious. But they're just feelings, man.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:06Rich Roll?

  It feels like they might kill you, but they're actually just feelings. And every single feeling in the history of humankind can be relied on to do one thing. And that's change. Like, if you just stay with it, it will morph into something else. But you have to get comfortable with being in that place of discomfort in order to experience that and get to the other side and say, oh, my God, like, I weathered that and I didn't have to reach out for that external thing to fix it.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:35Rich Roll?

  And I'm OK.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  That's absolutely right.

• 36:38Rich Roll?

  Right? But it's hard because we don't want to be uncomfortable. And we're in a culture that reinforces this idea that we should never be uncomfortable, that we should always be, you know, in some kind of luxurious state, you know, at ease and relaxed.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:54Rich Roll?

  And so we're kind of conditioned to avoid these things that actually would make us happier and more content ultimately.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that conditioning that you're saying, that's something that we've been training in for our entire lives. It's like running to TV, running to porn, running to every, you know, all of our social media and our phones and everything. It's just, we've been training ourselves. Every single moment is mind training. And we've been, we've conditioned ourselves because of that.

• 37:19Rich Roll?

  We're asleep at the wheel. You know, we're on autopilot and we're just reacting. We're bouncing around like a ping pong ball, responding to impulses that are being thrown at us culturally or by family or whatever. And they have their own history of programming behind them.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:36Rich Roll?

  Until you kind of realize, like, The extent to which you're actually exercising free will isn't quite what you thought it was.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 37:46Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 37:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 37:47Rich Roll?

  So how do we, how do we begin to untie this knot?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  So if we see the conditioning that we've already had and we see how that's not serving us, right? All of this conditioning, it's nothing to feel bad about, it's just, that's human nature is to be conditioned. But to see that it's not serving us and actually can be really hurting us in a lot of ways. Whether it's addiction or anger or, you know, just all of procrastination and not creating the work that you're meant to create. See that it's not serving you and then start to unravel that conditioning. And the way you do that is that training of staying. So that's the, to me, that's the main training is the staying. But actually you can, as you said, you can actually go deeper. You talked about the higher consciousness and not letting yourself just be driven by the emotions that are coming up, the feelings.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  So one of the things that I do in addition to that, and again, I'm not inventing this stuff, but I'll take credit though.

• 38:43Rich Roll?

  I'll give you credit.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  So yeah, there's the staying. And if you can really learn to stay with that energy and be curious about it and be open to it and explore it. There's a Buddhist teaching where Buddha invited the demon Mara into the cave for tea. Instead of trying to do battle with Mara, he said, come on in with tea and have tea with me. And this is the demon that causes all of our anxieties and, you know, the, the, the one that causes all of our disruptions in life. Come and have tea with me. And so you're going to invite this energy in your chest to have tea with you and just welcome it and say, you know, just come in. You're, and be a good friend to it and give it some unconditional friendliness. And that's a hard thing to learn how to do, but you can turn your attention to it and say,

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Like you would to a good friend. Like if you were, if you were my good friend and every time you came into my life, I ran away from you, like that wouldn't be a good relationship, right? So instead, what if I, what if I said, hey, let's, let's have some tea? You know, I'm glad you're here. How are you doing? We can do that with that feeling that's inside of us and invite it to tea and just be welcoming and curious about it. What's going on with you, you know? And that's the next part of it is just to really explore it. So train to stay, train to explore with welcome and friendliness and a warm heart and compassion. And then the next thing you can do is actually go underneath that energy. And if you can go underneath that energy, there's, that energy is there in you, but

• 40:15Speaker 01

  under that is the, is this tenderness in your heart. And that's the tenderness that wants to get away from the discomfort and is, is afraid of being unloved. Like you're, you're talking about the fear of not being worthy or being, not being good enough. We all have that and that's, comes from that tender place in your heart that wants to be a good person and wants to be loved and respected. And that's actually a really, that's goodness in you. Um, and it's a tender place that we don't often access. But this, so this energy comes from that. It's like, oh, it's like a scared little child saying, I want to be loved, but I don't want to be hurt. And so the energy is from that place in our heart.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  And if we can learn to go under it and see that tender place and just stay with that, put our hand on that.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  It's tapping into, I think, is our basic goodness, which some people call our birthright. It's always there. And if we can learn to tap into that, we can start to learn to trust that that basic goodness is there all the time, even if we're afraid, even if we're angry, frustrated, resentful, all of these things, there's this, that goodness there. And if we learn to tap into that, then we have a trust in that goodness that we can be okay, even if we feel anxiety, even if we feel resentment, even if our, you know, spouse is yelling at us, like we can be okay through this difficulty.

• 41:39Rich Roll?

  Like as a center point, like you can always go back to that place.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  And it's a place you can come to trust.

• 41:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was just, when you were describing that, I mean, that was beautiful, what you said. But I was thinking like, okay, well, what's a practical example of, you know, an experience that an average person has? And I was thinking, all right, well, most people like dread doing their taxes. Like, they put it off to the last minute, or they file an extension. And then before they know it, it's like, oh, God, I still haven't done it. And the amount of energy that goes into that dread, like, that you're carrying around, like, this low-grade kind of anxiety in the back of your mind, like, you know you gotta do that thing.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:22Rich Roll?

  And you're just avoiding it day after day, after day after day.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  And it can cause knots in your stomach.

• 42:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And then to face it, and then, so what's behind that? Oh, well, oh, my God, when I do it, I'm gonna realize I owe all this money. Or, you know, whatever's behind that, like, fear of financial institutions, or financial insecurity, or that, and then even beneath that, like, I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'll never, I'll never be able to be financially stable. Whatever, like, fears are fostering that.

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  But then to kind of like, okay, finally do it, and see your way through it, and go, actually, that wasn't that bad, you know? And, and then to reflect back on the amount of energy that you expended over the last six, or eight, or nine months, trying to avoid it, it's insanity, right? But in order to get over that, to like, transcend that paradigm, and develop a healthier relationship with obligations, or experiences that trigger you in that way, is this journey of like, finding that center point in yourself, or cultivating a relationship with that.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it starts from just not running. So like, you know, the email two times a day, it's not about me being super productive, or super zen, or anything like that. It's more like, that's a practice container for me of, like, when I, if it's 8:00 a.m. and I'm running to email, I know that's not in my container. And so it's very easy for me to see that I'm running. When you can see you're running, then you can start to practice with it. But we don't normally see ourselves running.

• 43:49Rich Roll?

  See, I have, I have this experience of seeing myself running and doing it anyway.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:54Rich Roll?

  Which makes it worse because it makes the shame spiral that much more intense. Cause you're like, I know what I'm doing and I know I shouldn't be doing this and I feel powerless to stop it.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  You're so human.

• 44:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Boy, um, no, I mean, we all, we all have that, like, we can see ourselves and we're like, we know we're harming ourselves right now. We know we're running, we know we're eating the Doritos or whatever it is. And we're like, I don't care. Like, it's like, I don't give a crap right now. I, I want to run anyway. And, and you know what that is? It comes from this, this very human, uh, desire to relieve yourself of this discomfort. Which is, there's nothing wrong with that desire and, and the, the shame that comes up from that, like, oh, I'm, I'm, I just ate a whole bag of Doritos or, you know, vegan Doritos. But like, I just ate a, a really unhealthy thing and I just ate a whole bunch of it. And then you have the shame. That's actually also another feeling that you can sit with.

• 44:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  The shame afterward. Um, but yeah, I mean, what do you do when you see yourself?

• 44:54Rich Roll?

  And then you feel, you feel even worse because you feel ashamed. You're building this house on top of, it's like you compound the damage.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Layers and layers of guilt and shame. Yeah. And regret and remorse and all of this stuff. And so this is our human condition. We're constantly layering crap on top of crap. And, and we don't need to. So, once we start to see it, that your awareness now, you've taken, going from like not being aware that you're running, to an awareness that you're running, your awareness of that, and then you can be aware of the shame that you're putting on top of that and the shame of having the shame and, and all of this other stuff. That, that is where it starts. Because if you start to see yourself doing it over and over, you're like, okay, how much energy am I going to keep expending? I see myself doing it and eventually you just get tired. Like, I'm tired of hurting myself.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  And that's when you can start to like, say, okay, let me just take a breath here. Instead of running, maybe I can try something different. But you have to just watch yourself do it for a while.

• 45:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the trying something different, though, is the key. It's the action that will shift it because, you know, there's an adage in sobriety, like self-awareness will avail you nothing. So you can listen to all this and like me, develop an awareness. So I know that I'm doing this. I'm checking out again. Here I am doing this behavior. But you will, you're never going to transcend it until you alter your behavior. Behavior is the path forward.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  There's a, um, another Buddhist practice, which is renunciation. I'm sorry if you, you know, all this stuff already.

• 46:24Rich Roll?

  Please explain.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Uh, preaching to the, to the choir, but so renunciation is just-

• 46:30Rich Roll?

  My super cluttered, I was like embarrassed how cluttered this office is.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  It's wonderful. You guys should see it. We, uh, but it's, it's a wonderful office. I feel like I'm in the place of magic. But anyway, um, so yeah, the, the, the practice is renunciation and it's simply just seeing you're, you're aware when you're running. And you let yourself run anyway. And just afterward, just reflecting, maybe you can do it at the end of each day. Maybe after, just right after you do it, um, after you run and allow yourself to run. But it's just saying, I was in discomfort. I ran from it. It actually didn't help me. Uh, like you can kind of just reflect on that and just say, I renounced that action. And that doesn't, that's not a feeling of guilt.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Uh, it's not, uh, beating yourself up about whatever you just did, but it's just saying, I'm letting that go. It's a, like, I don't think it was helpful and I'm not going to, I'm going to try and do better.

• 47:31Rich Roll?

  Right. But do it in a neutral, you're doing it in a neutral frame of mind.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Right. You're not, you're not hurting, you're not being harsh on yourself.

• 47:37Rich Roll?

  Right. And is that something you would verbalize out loud or write it down in a journal or just make a mental note to yourself?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Any one of those is is great. Any way that that works for you. Um, I personally just say it to myself. I just like make them just take a pause and this could be like a two second meditation, just like I saw what I just did there. And that's my, that's my pattern. It's my tendency. And there was a good hearted. Maybe more longer than two seconds now, but it happens faster in my head. But like that was a good hearted intention behind that. And yet it did not come to a good result. And I I vow to do better from this point on. And I can continue to vow each time. Um, and it's just a letting go of what I just did. And a intention to do better to to practice with this in the future.

• 48:28Rich Roll?

  It's one of those things where you're like, is it really that simple? Can't be that simple.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:34Rich Roll?

  The human brain, at least my human brain is always like, tell me the super secret answer that no one knows that, you know, I want the the special, you know, the special answer.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:44Rich Roll?

  And the truth is, and this is a core of Zen really, is that these simple ideas are so much more powerful than we understand them to be, that we can actually, um, we could spend the rest of our lives trying to get to the bottom of how profound they are.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And and honestly, it's as as you constantly say, this is a journey, right? So it's it's a simple practice, but actually it's just something that you used along the the way and you get better at it. And still, you know, you're you're like 50 years into the journey and you're still eating the bag of Doritos.

• 49:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Vegan Doritos.

• 49:21Rich Roll?

  Well, let's uh, let's step it back a little bit and create a little context for this journey. I thought it would be fun to kind of explore, you know, how you got to this this place. You have a really interesting backstory.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:34Rich Roll?

  So maybe, uh, you know, walk us through that a little bit.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, so, um, you know, I I created Zen Habits in 2007 and just took off that year. And so I've been a blogger for 10 years, but before that, um, The the blog was really the result of more than a year of changing my life. And before that was the the year of changing my life was the result of a place of like real struggle um and not knowing how to change my life and wanting to and like starting all kinds of exercise programs. I was sedentary, not being able to stick to them for very long, start trying all kinds of diets. I was overweight, um probably like sixty pounds heavier than I am now, not being able to stick to that.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Uh trying to like, you know, get out of debt and I was deeply in debt and not being able to do that. So I was just trying to quit smoking. I tried seven times and failed each time. So it was it was a place of darkness and I found a way out. Um so I don't know if you want me to go into any of that.

• 50:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so this was happening, this was like early two thousands, you're living in Guam.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's where I'm from.

• 50:42Rich Roll?

  And you're already you're already married at this point?

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a messy story, but yeah, I I was, this is my second marriage.

• 50:49Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Uh I had been through a divorce. I had two kids from the first one. She had two kids. We came together, got married, had two more kids. So we have big brood.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  Six kids.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Six kids, a Brady Bunch situation, three boys, three girls. Um and so I'm on Guam, I'm working a day job that I'm I didn't love.

• 51:07Rich Roll?

  And you grew up there?

• 51:09Speaker 01

  I, yeah, I grew up also uh back and forth, all over the place, like Bay area, Seattle, born in Portland, Oregon.

• 51:15Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Uh but mostly on Guam. My entire adult life was in Guam.

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, married, um and it just things started to like like snowball, like just constantly running from the discomfort, really.

• 51:30Rich Roll?

  Right. And what was your profession at the time?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Um, at that time, I was working for the governor of Guam as a speechwriter, but I'm a writer by profession.

• 51:40Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Um I had worked, been a journalist since high school, basically, a a editor, writer. And then um worked for the Guam legislature, then the governor of Guam and um, yeah, not not excited about it.

• 51:56Rich Roll?

  So how does this all like come to a head for you?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  So again, overweight, couldn't stick to anything, smoking, deeply in debt, working in a job I didn't like, but working long hours, not able to be there for my family. And I just realized my life is entirely upside down and I was completely out of control and I didn't know how to get out. Like, you know, like for me, it felt like rock bottom, you know, obviously there's always deeper rock bottoms, but for me, it felt like I'm like, this is not working and there's something, I need to get control of my life. And so I, I tried lots of different things. They weren't working and I finally decided to start with one thing. Just narrow it down and put everything I had, because I felt like I was saving my own life. And I had to just put everything I had into that one habit

• 52:43Speaker 01

  and do whatever it took to make it work. So I did all kinds of research, read books, you know, even research papers, all kinds of online sites, and tried everything to make it work and it, it did, it stuck. It was quitting smoking.

• 52:57Rich Roll?

  Quitting smoking was the one thing. And so how, how did you, after failing, you know, seven times or whatever, as you said, what was the thing that you did that actually made it work?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  It was actually a set of things and that's, that set actually worked for the next thing, which was running and then vegetarianism and debt and decluttering and so forth. That's actually, that set is something I discovered through repeated trying of it and then it worked. And that's why I wrote Zen Habits was to share that set of things. But so

• 53:28Speaker 01

  the set of things were, um, number one, making a big commitment. I basically told everybody I knew that I'm quitting smoking because before that I, I would just say, okay, I'm, I'm going to quit today to myself because I didn't want people to know. And so

• 53:43Rich Roll?

  Then you're always having out.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Yep. And then later that day I took a puff and then was smoking by the end of the day. So it wasn't a big thing. It was like a minor commitment in my mind. So I had to make it, this is something I'm committing to. And I made it publicly. I asked for support. I, I found a support community, which was accountability, but also like when I'm, when I need support, I'm going to reach out to you before I, before I smoke and ask for your help. And these are people who were going through it with me.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  So that support and accountability and community was really important.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  And then meditation was, that's when I discovered meditation, actually, was when the urge to smoke was arising and it was very uncomfortable and I would normally not even notice it, I started to just sit with it and watch it rise and get strong and strong and like so powerful and then let it go. That's a

• 54:40Rich Roll?

  Quick question.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  How, what was your relate as a writer?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:44Rich Roll?

  Like you can develop, you know, the relationship between smoking and like creative writing or writing is a tricky one, right? So did you experience like having to figure out new strategies for how to sit down and write?

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's actually why I started running was, was because I realized that smoking was actually a crutch for so many different things in my life from stress to, yeah, just like a social lubricant and all these other things. So I had to figure out what my triggers were with smoking, like what triggered me to start smoking? And I started to, actually I carried around a little piece of paper and made tally marks every time I had the urge to smoke. And I would allow myself to smoke at first, this is before my quit date, and I would just go around with that thing and it was, it was allowing me to number one, see when the urge was arising, develop mindfulness around it, and number two, to start to see the triggers. Was it stress? Would I just get into a fight with somebody?

• 55:44Speaker 01

  And so I made a list of all these triggers and I said, for this, I'm going to do this instead and running was one of those.

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  Right, so creating alternative behaviors to fill in the blank when you would experience that stressor or that trigger.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, so they're replacement habits and they're coping, ways to cope with usually stress, really. And feeling bad about myself was another one and things like that, fear. I don't know if that answers your question about creative writing.

• 56:13Rich Roll?

  No, I got it, yeah, yeah.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  So that was, that was another big one was understanding my, my triggers and creating replacement habits for each, each one.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are probably a few others, but I, what I did was like, well, that worked. And, and maybe I can try that with running. Maybe I can create the running habit. I couldn't even run 10 minutes at first, uh, like so out of shape. And I started using that same thing. And what I did, I ran my first 5K and it was like so exhilarated. I'm like, ah, I can run a marathon. So I made a big public commitment to running a marathon. Um, and I wrote a newspaper article, a column in the newspaper on Guam every other week about my training for my first marathon.

• 56:54Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  And that big public commitment, just to the support of the community from reading this and like cheering me on, got me to the finish line.

• 57:01Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Even though I was totally not prepared for a marathon.

• 57:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you got it done, right?

• 57:05Speaker 01

  I did.

• 57:05Rich Roll?

  So you're kind of canonizing these principles that have been effective in your life, right?

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Um, and so when do you have the impulse to like, start sharing this online or create the blog? It was right after the marathon. So the marathon was done. Um, I had already gone through a whole year of change and I had been done, doing a whole bunch of other things. And I learned about that power of public support and accountability, um, and commitment. And so I'm like, okay, I did the marathon. My column is done now. And I'm like, what, what can I do now to like, get some, you know, public support and accountability commitment? And so the blog was my answer. And so there was really just like, it was supposed to be just my friends. You said first reader. My first readers were my wife and then my mom.

• 57:46Rich Roll?

  Right. So Zen Habits, you launch it and you create this, you know, beautiful minimalist template for it, which was unusual because this was the era of, you know, banner ads and, you know, just super cluttered.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Well, confession time. It's, it's, uh, uncluttered right now. When I first started it, January 2007, it was cluttered. I put banner ads. I didn't know what to do.

• 58:08Rich Roll?

  Right. It just looked like every other blog. Right?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  And I wanted, I honestly like, uh, when I, as soon as I discovered that this is something I really loved doing, and I love that connecting with the readers and, and helping them and then learning from them as well, as you know, um, that was so powerful in my life. I'm like, this might be my calling. And once I did, I'm like, okay, well, how do I pay for this? And so I slapped a bunch of ads on there.

• 58:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  And made like 30 cents the first month.

• 58:35Rich Roll?

  So how was there a moment where the blog like caught fire and blew up? Or was it like a organic progression of growth?

• 58:42Speaker 01

  It was probably a few months into it. And it just caught fire like, and then I.

• 58:48Rich Roll?

  Did somebody share it? Or like, how did that?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:50Rich Roll?

  How did that? Can you? What are the forensics behind that?

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know how they discovered it. There was a site called dumb little man. And they're still around. But at that time, they were, they had like 80,000 subscribers and I had again, two. And so I don't know how they found me, but they found one of my posts and it was like top 10 ways, like one of my list posts, which I became famous for in that first year.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Top 10 ways to motivate yourself or whatever. And they shared that. I remember going, looking at my stats that morning and seeing the spike. It was like, you know, where did this come from? And how did this happen? And I just like complete, not my, nothing I did different that day than, you know, I had been doing the month before. And it was just overwhelming and then gratifying to see all these readers come in. And there was another site called lifehack.org, which is still around too.

• 59:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  And they had a hundred some thousand subscribers and like to get links from those sites was just an amazing thing for a blogger like me.

• 59:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  And yeah, like I said, I caught, I caught on fire. And one of the things I did was I wrote, I started writing guest posts and becoming a freelance blogger. So I would write blog posts for other blogs and it, I was probably writing five, for five different blogs every week and another five to 10 guest posts a week. So I was writing probably, and I was writing every day on my blog.

• 1:00:13Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  So I was probably writing 20 to 25 blog posts a week for a year.

• 1:00:17Rich Roll?

  Oh my God. And writing for your job.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, that, that's, I quit my day job at the end of the first year. So the 2007, by the end of that year, I had written my first ebook and got on, gotten out of debt. I got 27,000 subscribers. I got a book deal from an actual publisher and an advance and I quit my day job. But yeah, the first year.

• 1:00:38Rich Roll?

  And that all happened in one year.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was an amazing.

• 1:00:41Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Amazing year for me.

• 1:00:43Rich Roll?

  That's crazy. Wow. Like, I didn't realize it was such a compressed period of time where all this happened.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and then there was a lot journey beyond that, but that first year was was transformative. And like you said, I was, I had a day job. And so there's a couple of things I did was was I actually started waking up early, which I had been doing for marathon training, but I was waking up early just to write a bunch of blog posts. And I would do it during my lunch hour. And then I worked for the government. And on Guam, there's a joke about how little they work. I won't get into that.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  So I was there.

• 1:01:18Rich Roll?

  You could carve out free time during the day to get more blog posts done?

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Everyone else is playing solitaire and I'm writing blog posts for, for, yeah, a bunch of different sites.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  I was super motivated.

• 1:01:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it was also a really interesting time in the kind of culture of blogging, right? Like, it was a moment where you could have a bust out blog. Like, like, looking at it now, like, I'm interested in your thoughts now, like, it would be a lot harder now, it seems to me, to distinguish yourself as a blogger. Like, this blogger culture seems to have changed.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  I, that is true. There is some truth to that. And yet, that's what I told myself at the time. There were already big bloggers around. And I said, well, there's no way I can make a dent in this. Everyone, there's so, they're all established and they had it easy because they started earlier than me in 2005 or 2004 or whatever. And so I couldn't do it. And yet it worked for me. And then I've had so many people say that to me over the last 10 years, like, oh, it was easier for you when you started. And yet, I've seen people rise just in the last year from nothing to stardom as a blogger. And so the, for, you know, I've seen amazing writers rise up because they're consistent, they can, they offer value, they're authentic, and they've got something amazing to share. And so that's still possible today.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  And it might be a little more crowded, but really, the, you know, in a crowd, if you can just be your, like, you always say your authentic self and give amazing value to the world. And if you're on a mission that resonates with people, you know, you can find your tribe.

• 1:02:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's true. I think being prolific and being consistent is huge and being authentic and honest to who you are and providing content that is actually going to be useful and helpful to other people.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Rich Roll?

  In a real way. There's always room for that. That's never going to go out of style. No matter what.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. It totally, and it could be in a different way. Maybe it's video, you know, maybe it's virtual reality when my kids do it.

• 1:03:19Rich Roll?

  But those are just different, you know, distribution methods for the same idea.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Same thing.

• 1:03:24Rich Roll?

  Right. But you, I mean, you are, you know, when you talk about prolific, I mean, how many you've written like five or six or seven or 10 or 12 books like, like you look on Amazon, it seems like it's an endless stream of titles. I mean, I know some of those are eBooks and they're shorter than others and things like that, but I mean, you're, you're putting out like a tremendous volume of content.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  One little note, that is true and I can speak to that. But one little note about the Amazon books, a bunch of them are not published by me. I uncopyright my work, so people will collect a bunch of blog posts and then put it into an eBook.

• 1:03:57Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Which is fine with me. I, I, I wanted to go out in any way that people want.

• 1:04:01Rich Roll?

  It is interesting, but to put a pin in that, like the, the, the decision to uncopyright your work and, and allow it to be shared freely and repurposed, however anybody chooses. What is the, I mean, that's a very Zen thing to do, right? Like was that a, what is, what was the decision making or the, the sort of thought behind that?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  It was, it was inspired by the open source copyright movement, the free software movement. I mean, they're the beauty of that, how they just let the source be free because they want this to be shared and they want people to build upon it. And they don't really believe that ideas should be owned by anyone. And honestly, that resonated so much with me because as I just shared with you, I steal stuff from Buddhism, I steal stuff from Taoism and, you know, the Stoics and, you know, like

• 1:04:51Rich Roll?

  There is no original idea.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Definitely not for me and I'm remixing it, just like we all are, right? And I'm, and I'm, I'm sharing it with the world in a way that is accessible in my own voice. So like, yeah, I didn't invent any of these, these ideas, but I build on it and I merge them together in my own unique way. So, but I didn't, I didn't, I stole it from other people and I want people to steal it from me. So it was actually a really scary thing for me to announce that. Scary and yet super exciting. And I have found actually for me, I coined a term called joy fear because the best moments in my life are filled with joy and fear, like this blend of both of them and at such heightened levels that like I, it's, I've now come to realize that that Those are the pivotal moments of my life.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  When I quit my day job, when my kids were born, when I met my wife, when I do anything good in my work, when I feel like on a purposeful mission. And that was one of them was this fearful thing of releasing control over my work. Like, I don't know what people are gonna do with it. They'll sell it for a thousand dollars and I won't get any of that money. Maybe I'll go out of business because of this. So it was very scary and also very liberating because one of the things that we do as content creators, if we hold tightly to our copyright, is we have to then protect that copyright. And it's so much energy to spend to protect something, like I said, that's not even mine. And to let it out free into the world and let people remix it in their own beautiful

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  ways is, I think, a liberating thing.

• 1:06:25Rich Roll?

  And ultimately, I think it gives wings to that content and allows it to spread more seamlessly and more broadly than perhaps it would have otherwise.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that said, I still sell stuff. Like, it's uncopyrighted and yet people will still pay for it. Because they want to support me. And I love that. I love that I'm being supported by this community of people making their lives better and learning mindfulness. So I just feel so gratified.

• 1:07:00Rich Roll?

  When did you create the super-clean, minimal aesthetic for the site?

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  It was an evolution. I've always been my own site designer. So I basically just go in and like mess with the WordPress stuff and start stripping stuff out and break the site. And then eventually I decided I'm gonna make my own theme. But it's been like that, probably like five years now.

• 1:07:26Rich Roll?

  When you first did it, it was radical. Because I was so used to seeing so much nonsense on every website that you would visit and it would just be this clean white page. And there was like, nothing non-essential was there whatsoever. I was like, how's this guy making a living? Like, how does this even work? Like, I know you're like, supporting six kids.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  And now that I think about it, it's actually more like seven years or eight. But anyway, um, yeah, you know, that was actually, again, I rip stuff off from others. So I, I stole that from, um, a read later service called Instapaper. I don't know if you've ever seen that, but it's one of those. Yeah, you like save web content and read it later on their site. And they take the, just the essential content and save it. And, and take away all the ads and all the other things that you don't want to see. And only the stuff you want to see. And so you read it on their site or on the app. And it's just text in a beautiful readable, readable form. And I'm like, that's the pure reading experience that I want to create. I don't want to give people ads or all these like sign up for my whatever. Um, that's not why they're there.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  They're there for, to read this article and make their, connect with it and make their lives better. And so if I can create that pure experience, that's what I want when I go to someone else's site. So I'm creating that for them. That's just like giving what I want to receive. And, um, I love it. I, it's just my favorite thing that I've done. One of my favorite things I've done is just create this site that is a pure reading experience.

• 1:08:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. Um, well, I mean, you are, you know, at the tip of the spear or the vanguard of what has turned into this huge cultural phenomenon of minimalism, living more sustainably, living more mindfully. Again, these are not new ideas.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Rich Roll?

  Uh, but for whatever reason, by whatever cultural alchemy is at play, they have percolated to the surface of mainstream consciousness in a really profound way.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  Um, and it's so, it's gotta be cool and gratifying for you. You know, now 10 years, you know, nine years after you launched and habits, to be kind of in the mix of what everybody is talking about.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  So gratifying. I mean, I'm sure you know, you know, this feeling too. Um, that's why I feel a connection with you is when you put your stuff out there, you don't know what's going to happen with it. Like, you know, you, again, you have this fear, maybe people won't, will judge it as unworthy. And then they take it and not only think, oh, this is good stuff, but they change their lives with it. Like, how profound is that to be?

• 1:09:59Rich Roll?

  Incredibly, there's nothing, there's nothing.

• 1:10:03Rich Roll?

  More profound that you can experience as a human being than to have that kind of impact on another person.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so, I mean, so you get it. That's, that's how I feel. And I feel such a privilege to be a part of people's lives in that way. And that they take it and use it in their own way, at whatever level they want to use it. And sometimes it's way deeper than I would have imagined. And that's, like, that's amazing. And then, to be a part of a community of people, like yourself, and other bloggers, and other podcasters, and people making YouTube videos. Like, we're all connected in that way, in, in spirit, but also in, I show up here in your studio, and we, we do this together, or I link to somebody on my blog.

• 1:10:42Rich Roll?

  And I feel like I know you already. We can just pop in and, and have a shorthand.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  And here's the thing, you and I, the people, the, the men who are sitting here today in this room, we are who we are because of each other. Like, you have influenced my thinking and my life, and, and, and you've told me the same thing. And so, we have kind of co-created each other. And, like, I wouldn't be who I am right now if it weren't for you. And, and vice versa.

• 1:11:10Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's a crazy, that's crazy to think about that.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  And that's like, and it's in a very real way.

• 1:11:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, totally true.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  And like, there are people who are vegan in this world because of you. You created that, the version of, of human being that they are right now. And there are people who have changed their habits, or learned mindfulness because of me. They've created who they are. And, and vice versa, by them taking in that to their lives, and supporting me financially, but also, just reading my stuff and paying attention, giving me the gift of their attention, they've created who I am. Like, I wouldn't be who I am right now, if it weren't for everybody reading my stuff, if it weren't for other bloggers supporting me, and the community of like-minded, like-hearted individuals who are trying to create this. I, I just feel such a privilege to be a part of this. And it's not just the

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  reader blogger relationship, it's the, all the other bloggers and podcasters and creators.

• 1:12:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. But why do you think? Now, like what's going on now in the world that created this confluence of circumstances that made these ideas that you've been talking about for a while and others have been talking about so relevant and so applicable to people's lives and what they're looking for?

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's an interesting question. I don't, I don't have the full answer, but I'll tell you this. When I started writing about simplicity on Zen Habits, it's one of the first things I wrote about, simplifying your life, leading, leading a simple life. I thought I was weird. And so I had been reading books on simplicity, some little known ones now, but they influenced me. And so I'm like, this is really amazing stuff and I want to write about it. But I didn't think anyone would care because no one in my personal life cared about it. So I shared it.

• 1:13:01Rich Roll?

  Not only, not only that, it's, it's actually quite the opposite. Everybody's looking to accumulate as much as possible. Like their, their attention is on, diametrically opposed to what you were becoming more and more interested in.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  It's so counter to our culture that like no one even, it's not on their radar. But here's the, the strange thing. People who read my blog, they just happened upon it. However, they, they might've been exposed to it for the first time. Maybe it was the third time they ever exposed to idea of simplifying your life and having less. There was something in it that spoke to their hearts and it just ignited. And that's how my blog took off was because I think of, of mindfulness and simplicity and also changing your habits. But there was something in that simplicity and mindfulness message that just resonated with people and made them like want to change their lives and then share it with others. And I wouldn't be here if that didn't resonate with people. And I didn't realize that it was going to.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  So it was complete shock to me. Like, whoa, this message speaks to people. And it, it was a two, three years of me just reflecting on like, why is this speaking to people? And as I started to hear from readers and of ways that it changed their lives, I started to understand what you're asking about with like how, why now, right? And it's because of what you're saying, our entire culture is geared for more. Um, and you know, obviously advertising and consuming, that's what we do. Um, and that's like, everything is about that. And we have like vending stuff in schools now. So kids are learning to be consumers and they have the iPads where they're buying, buying stuff. So we're learning to be consumers at a very young age.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  But there's also just the more, more, more aspect of online stuff and your phones. And what we talked about in the beginning is that, that tendency to greed has been triggered so much more now because of technology and the culture that we're in, advertising, TV, all of that stuff. Um, it's, it's just taking our, our normal human tendency that's been there since caveman days and amplified it. It's given it this microphone and like a megaphone, basically. And, um, and there's something in us that realizes that it's crazy. And we want some sanity in our lives and it's out of control and we want a feeling of control. Now, I don't think you're actually going to get a feeling of control by doing the stuff that I tell you.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Um, but what you learn through the journey is you don't necessarily need it.

• 1:15:29Rich Roll?

  I think there's a level of control, control in the sense that you are becoming more masterful in your decision-making process about what you're allowing into your life and into your home.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Rich Roll?

  Right. And so there's, there's control over that. And I think that that feels good in a world that spins out of control. You know, that's spinning out of control with our, you know, insane consumer habits.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  Right. No, what I, what I, and you're absolutely right. Like the control is over your own mastery, your internal stuff. But what I think people, when they first come to it, they want is the external mastery, like the external control. Like there's no stuff in my life, you know, no clutter, my email box is down to zero. Like I have a perfect system in the morning and perfect productivity system.

• 1:16:14Rich Roll?

  Therefore, nothing bad will ever happen to me in my life.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  You insulate yourself from discomfort.

• 1:16:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Like that's, that's not gonna

• 1:16:21Rich Roll?

  As opposed to getting, getting, being okay with the discomfort.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And so you can build all of the external like systems of control and you're still going to run from writing that chapter. Yeah.

• 1:16:35Rich Roll?

  Right. Because you might have one email, right? You know, your inbox isn't at zero.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're very good at telling ourselves these stories that rationalize us running for sure.

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:16:48Rich Roll?

  Minimalism isn't really like we talk about, like you just mentioned, you know, cleaning out the closet or donating all your stuff or, you know, declining to accumulate additional things, but it's not really about the stuff, right? So when you have to define minimalism, how do you give words to it?

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  It's, yeah, it's not about the stuff. It's, um, the way that I normally define it, and I'm going to change it up here because of, because of your presence here that's influencing me.

• 1:17:27Rich Roll?

  Better or worse?

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, taking me down a dark path. No, so normally I say is really it's about trying to understand what's essential to you. And this letting the rest kind of fade away, like kind of saying no to the rest, that that's saying no that we talked about. So like, what's essential in terms of stuff, right? Like, is everything that we own essential or is it just adding more clutter to our lives? Is adding beauty and joy to our lives or is it draining us of energy and also finances? You know? So like, there's, there's a lot of, um, of reflection on that. And by understanding what's essential, what you're really doing is, is understanding what's, who you are and what's important to you, what your values are.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  And so that's, it's, it's an internal thing. So to me, minimalism is starts with the clearing out your cluttered closet. And that's where the journey starts. Just like your journey might have started by putting on a pair of running shoes or, or whatever, you know?

• 1:18:29Rich Roll?

  Or, you know, clearing out the liquor cabinet first. You know what I mean? Like years before the running shoes.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. But it was, it was really just the start of the journey, you know? And so, um,

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  You know, that's where it starts, but when you, when you start to say, okay, well, if I'm gonna like, if I want to get down to a hundred things, let's say you set some external limit like that, it's completely arbitrary. Like, what do I keep? Well, what do I want my life to be? Like, who am I? What's important to me? And then you even like, think of people, like, is this person giving me energy in my life and making my life better, or are they just dragging me down?

• 1:19:05Rich Roll?

  But just the fact that you're asking yourself those questions, you know, is huge.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah, no, you, that's, you hit on minimalism. It's really just allowing yourself to ask the questions because most people in our culture are not asking those questions. They go along with their, their normal conditioning. Um, and so pausing and saying, huh, is this the way I want to live my life? It's, it's a start of a conscious life. So that's, that's what minimalism is to me, is just a conscious life. And it's letting go, also, it's a letting go process, letting go of not only possessions, but of the things that, like, of not being able to do everything and saying, I can't, and so I need to let go of some things that I think are important. And the ones that I've identified as absolutely important.

• 1:19:51Rich Roll?

  As well as ideas and thoughts about yourself.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it can get as deep as you want it to get.

• 1:20:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  Um, and, and really, even if you just cluttered out the closet, I think you're already, um, you've already achieved something amazing. Uh, because most people don't even take a look at that and say, there's any, there's even a question there, you know?

• 1:20:16Rich Roll?

  What it does for me, and I go through, you know, it's like, I, I clean it out and then for whatever reason, it seems like it's full again, like a couple of, I mean, now like, people send me stuff in the mail. I get all these boxes all the time, stuff I don't, I'm not even asking for. And I, I don't know what to do with it. It finds its way into my closet and then, then I have to give it away or, you know, I don't know.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  You live such a hard life getting all this free stuff.

• 1:20:37Rich Roll?

  It's like, people must send you stuff too. Or maybe they know better.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  They find my address somehow.

• 1:20:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like, it, it's such an ironic thing to send you something.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  And you're who you are.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  I got a book on minimalism that someone sent me.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  It's not cluttering my closet.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  But for me, like when I do that purge, um, there's a, it feels incredibly good. Like whatever, whatever I'm trying to, you know, avoid, whatever, like I'm trying to medicate myself with.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:04Rich Roll?

  That's a better feeling. I'm sure triggering the same, you know, receptors or whatever, but it's an amazing feeling. And, and it, and it does get you into the habit of like, being, just being discerning, like what is this versus this? Do I need this? Do I not need this? Just that calculus, you know? And the more you can make that a habit, you see it spill into other areas of your life. So when you say, look, if all you do is clean out your closet, for me, I think what that does is it, it catalyzes a, a perspective.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:33Rich Roll?

  You know, that I think if you kind of plant that seed will continue to grow and show up in other areas of your life.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:40Rich Roll?

  That will get you asking questions about what is meaningful to you. And I think the more you're asking that question of yourself, that's how you develop, you know, that's how you connect with who you are. That's how you figure out what it is that you're here to do. That's how you express, you know, bring life and voice to that authentic person that is probably, you know, more dormant than you would like to believe.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  I couldn't have said it better. I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal that, um, and just put it on my website.

• 1:22:08Rich Roll?

  I'm not copyrighting it.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  You know, and the other thing, um, that I found is, is turning to the clutter closet and you start to, you know, get rid of stuff. It's, it's liberating because you don't realize how much stress your stuff is causing you, what a burden it is until you start to face it.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I mean, it can be a profound experience just clearing out your closet from all the inner stuff that you're talking about. And just from a point of relief from the burden, you know?

• 1:22:38Rich Roll?

  How do you, uh, conceptualize or think about the relationship that you have to living simplistically, living minimally, uh, with Zen, right? So it's like, the blog is Zen Habits. Zen infuses your work and your perspective on the world. So, you know, talk a little bit about that.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, first it was, it was more of an aesthetic thing, to be honest. When I first started, I saw pictures of like Zen temples and they're so minimalist and beautiful. Like I want that. And so I started simplifying my life to get that external aesthetic thing.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  And then, as I started doing it, you know, like, like all of these journeys, you started to go, you know, it starts to open you up to other things. But the Zen aspect of it is,

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  it's about letting go. So, you know, it's about having a flexible mind. And a flexible mind means you have to let go of whatever you're fixating on. And so, yeah, just clearing out your stuff is, is letting go of, you know, like, am I have a pair, like, like some kind of exercise equipment that I had thought that I was gonna hold, like, that I was gonna make me better, you know, it's gonna make me into an ultra athlete or something like that. And I, and it's been sitting there gathering dust. And so I am holding on to the possibility of that. And letting go of that means letting go of the attachment to that possibility. And it doesn't mean it won't actually happen, like, maybe I will become an ultra athlete,

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  but I don't need to hold on to all of these, these things that are representing that possibility. So it's a letting go practice, which is absolutely, for me, what, at least what Zen is a lot about, is just letting go of all of these urges of running, of attachments to things, attachments to self-image. Yeah, it's, it's a, we're attached to a lot of things, more than we, even Zen masters are attached to stuff. And so it's just a constant, like noticing the attachment and learning to let go of that out of love for yourself and others.

• 1:24:45Rich Roll?

  So when you write, are you trying to, are you making a conscious effort to contextualize how you think about these ideas, you know, minimalism, et cetera, in the context of Zen? Or is that just a byproduct of your general interest?

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I don't normally put Zen as the context. And the reason I do that is because

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  I think there are some things about Zen that can be appealing to people. And so like if I said, oh, this is the Zen way to declutter your house, people might, might, you know, go to it for that because of that, like they want Zen in their life, right? And it's a false promise. It's basically marketing Zen and which is my blog is named Zen, so I've already done that. But it's, it's not what they're going to get if they run to the Zen way to declutter, right? So I don't do it because of, of that. I don't want to give in to people's tendency. I already, I've done it enough with just my blog title. And they, when you use the word Zen or Zen Buddhism, or just the context of it, people who don't know it,

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  they think they're getting something and then they don't get that. And the other thing is Zen can also be off-putting to people. So that's the other way, like you run towards it because of its appeal.

• 1:26:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  And so I, what I, what I try and do is put it into very simple, like everyday terms that, you know, like you know exactly what I'm talking about because you and your wife are such interesting contrasts. There's such great merge of the, of both of your energies, but she's very, very spiritual, right? And there's beauty in that.

• 1:26:29Rich Roll?

  Are you saying I'm not?

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Oh, you are in your rich way, right? But there's beauty in her, you know, spirituality. And yet there's things that she can say that people won't get, right? And it might make them like back away, right? And so I, I feel that with Zen. You can go into a Zen temple and to meditate with them. And it's like, there's all this chanting and you don't know what to do. And there's incense and an altar and like, what the hell is going on here?

• 1:26:58Rich Roll?

  It's dripping in costuming and artifice that for a lot of people creates a barrier to them.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:27:06Rich Roll?

  Their ability to actually just see the core idea behind it.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  So if I can boil it down to just doable ideas that people can, can get, and at least to the extent that I'm able to, then that is me bringing the Zen message out there, at least in my limited understanding of it and the way that I can deliver it. But, and honestly, like, I don't want to.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  Frame the Zen way of like, you know, customary and all of that stuff as in a negative way. It is off putting to people and it is a barrier, but the way that they do things is actually very supportive of their practice. So that there's a reason for it all. We just won't understand it.

• 1:27:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. There's beauty to it, but if somebody's been raised in the Catholic Church their whole life, or you know, it's just, it's because they have no frame of reference, it's foreign to them. So then, you know, it, it, there's an uphill sort of, you know, mountain to climb to get to that place of understanding that. So if you can remove that gate and just communicate, you know, super clearly.

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:04Rich Roll?

  In a way that anybody can understand it.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  And they're

• 1:28:07Rich Roll?

  On that beautiful white page.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's, that's what I try and do. So that's, that's exactly why I don't do it. I'm in the Zen context. I do sometimes introduce Zen words or concepts, but it's not like

• 1:28:19Rich Roll?

  You've spoken, I mean, your influences are, you know, Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh and, you know, people like that that are known from that.

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Suzuki Roshi, yeah. Yeah, I'm, I'm stealing and I'm heavily influenced. Let's just put it that way, in a kinder way.

• 1:28:36Rich Roll?

  Who are some of the other big influences on you?

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  So I have a, a teacher who doesn't write much. And her teacher, his name is Reb Anderson. He's with the San Francisco Zen Center. I was there like head abbot for a long time. And now he's just like this honored teacher. I'm profoundly influenced by him and, and her. Her name is Susan O'Connell. She's a Zen priest as well. The Tibetan Buddhists are very influential on me. And then just, I mean, all the

• 1:29:14Rich Roll?

  Have you been to Tibet?

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  I have not.

• 1:29:16Rich Roll?

  Gotta go.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  I want to. Have you?

• 1:29:18Rich Roll?

  No, I haven't.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Yeah. I've been to Japan, but not Tibet. Yeah, no, I want to a lot.

• 1:29:25Rich Roll?

  That's a trip you need to do.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  Yes. And I need to meet Pema Chodron someday. I feel like she's my, one of my spiritual teachers and she doesn't know it.

• 1:29:36Rich Roll?

  Where does she live?

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  She has a monastery in Nova Scotia. Yeah. But she's in seclusion. It's her 80th birthday this year and she's in complete like seclusion with one teaching in New York. And I tried to sign up for it and It's full.

• 1:29:49Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  So it's not meant to be yet.

• 1:29:51Rich Roll?

  Not yet. You're not, you're not ready, grasshopper.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's so many people who've influenced me and like I was telling you before this that I've been taking up yoga and I'm now being influenced by the yogic philosophy. And there's a lot of merge, merging of the two.

• 1:30:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it overlaps quite a bit, I think.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:14Rich Roll?

  So how do you, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about how you,

• 1:30:19Rich Roll?

  how you convey these ideas in your own household. You got six kids, some of them are grown and out of the house. You've got all ages, you're married, you're very much living in the world. You're not like a single guy living in, you know, Ted Kaczynski style in the woods. Like you're, you know, you got real life obligations and pressures. So how do you instill these notions into your children? What is your, you know, I want to talk about education and parenting and how you kind of navigate all of that because it's super interesting.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  I, I think I was listening to a podcast where the two of you, you and your wife talked about veganism with your kids. And we have a similar philosophy is that they're on their own journey. So with veganism, we, we went vegan, like in the middle of my kid's journey. So I'm still in the beginning, but like they're, they're already meat eaters.

• 1:31:12Rich Roll?

  And what was the impetus for you to go vegan?

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  I wish I could say it was you because that would be so cool.

• 1:31:19Rich Roll?

  By the way, I'm not fishing for that, but like genuinely interested in what it was.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  I feel like saying that right now, but it's not true.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  It was just a bunch of things. I went into it as a vegetarian to become healthier. I was overweight and then I started reading about like educating myself and of course, looking for inspiration. And then, then you learn, as everyone knows, you learn about animal welfare and horrible stuff that we do to turn them into food. And it's just like, You know, once you are awake to that, it's really hard to turn it off. So that was, it was, it was a progress, it was a progression.

• 1:31:59Rich Roll?

  But you can apply the minimalism calculus to it, right? Cause you can say, well, is this serving me?

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:05Rich Roll?

  Is this not serving me?

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  Is it necessary?

• 1:32:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what are the implications of making this choice on my life and the life of others?

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's just, the, one of the things was like, oh, I thought I needed this stuff. Like I needed cheese or whatever. And then that was like my 99%, I was 99% vegan, that was my 1%. I would eat cheese once in a while. And then I like, let go of it and I realized I didn't need it all along. Like I don't miss it at all, although I'm looking forward to your wife's.

• 1:32:34Rich Roll?

  The cheese book.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  Cheese book, yeah, vegan cheese. I actually, I just had some nut-based vegan cheese and it was delicious. But I haven't missed it at all. And so, yeah, it's like that letting go, like I think I need this as an attachment. I thought I needed meat and then I let go of it and it's like, oh, I don't need it anymore. And for health reasons too, like I often thought, like you need this stuff to be healthy. And I, it turns out like you can, I know it's a big surprise to you, but you can actually be completely healthy as a vegan. And like, if you, if you can be completely healthy as a vegan, then what's the justification for putting the animals through that kind of suffering? It's like your pleasure, basically. And so like, I just, yeah, started to turn that spotlight on that, just like I did with, with minimalism.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  And it was like, actually it's not necessary and I'm just gonna go with what is necessary for my health and it's plants. So that's, that's, that was my journey. And of course, it was actually supported by other influences of people on me. And then two friends who we met in London, who are vegan. One of them runs a vegan site now called plantshift.com, it's a little plug there. But they came and visited us and we spent a week in San Francisco, taking them around to different vegan restaurants. And that was an influence on us, was just having this vegan experience with two people who are very strongly believing in veganism and. Yeah, when when you see that influence that you have on each other, like I said, we create each other.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  We co-create each other and they created us who we are today because of that influence.

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  That's really cool.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  It's amazing, right?

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  It's cool.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  We have, we are all influencing each other all the time, even sometimes without knowing it. And we're just creating the people that we are with this huge network, this mesh of influences and.

• 1:34:18Rich Roll?

  It's all one consciousness.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. No, no, don't, don't, don't tell them that. No, but that's, that's my belief is that we're all, that we're all constantly co-creating each other. Um, and we wouldn't be the people we are without each other. And we're completely enmeshed in this network of human hearts.

• 1:34:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, there's no question about it.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:39Rich Roll?

  Now, now more so than ever because of podcasts and blogs and all, you know, everything that the internet avails us of.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  We're so intertwined.

• 1:34:47Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  But yeah, that's, that was my vegan journey.

• 1:34:50Rich Roll?

  So you do that. And then you talked a little bit about your basic philosophy with your kids is similar to ours.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:55Rich Roll?

  Allowing them their own journey. And then, and then where does the, the homeschooling and the unschooling?

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:01Rich Roll?

  Come into that.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Again, influenced by my, by someone, it was my sister who was homeschooling her kids and, and our kids were in school. One of them was being punished by his teachers because he was reading in class. Like a novel and he was supposed to be doing something that he already understood and like was, was bored with already. And I was like, that school is not meeting our kids' needs. And, and of course, there are amazing teachers in the world. I'm not saying all teachers are like that, but that, it was just like, oh, we, we can actually meet his needs probably better. And my wife decided to like quit her job and unschool our kids. Actually, it was homeschooling at first and then we went along the unschooling route a couple of years later.

• 1:35:45Rich Roll?

  Explain unschooling for people that might not be familiar with what that is.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  It's a version of homeschooling. So you do it at home, but homeschooling often is doing school in the house. Just like, okay, we're doing reading, we're doing math, we're doing history. And often you're following a curriculum with textbooks and you're doing exactly the same activity, but just at home. And which is a great experience, not knocking that at all. But unschooling is like, what if we? Wiped this entire board clear and started from a clean slate and like, what would it be if we didn't school our kids? And it's just like taking a new look at teaching like education philosophy and like, do our kids need to learn X by this grade and X by this grade and Y by this grade and so forth? And like, who came up with that curriculum? Some like, you know, someone with a degree, obviously, but like in the education system

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  who doesn't know my kid at all. And they've like decided the perfect route for them to, to do what? To become ready for college, to become ready for a day job. And so it's like a factory that it puts, and again, I don't want to make people who are putting their kids through school feel bad about what they're doing because everyone is being the best parent that they can. But for us, it was like, we didn't quite, we, once you start with a blank slate, you throw out those goals. Like actually what we want to do is make them become good human beings. And how do we do that? And one of the things, one of the problems with school, it's going to sound like school bashing, is it's a top-down approach. Like the teacher has the wisdom, they teach you. And unschooling is about you becoming your own teacher and deciding what your curriculum is.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  What are you excited about? Like you and I are doing every single day. And it's actually preparing them to be like passionate creators and human beings and learner, lifelong learners, because you know, no one is telling us what to learn these days, but we keep learning. And that's exactly what kids do naturally. And if we can just get out of their way and not like force them to learn certain things in certain ways, they'll learn naturally. And they'll learn what's important to them and they'll learn how to motivate themselves to learn if like they want to build a TP or something like that, like, how do you do that? Well, I gotta go figure it out. And then you learn to be motivated and you learn to find resources and support and all of the things that we do as adults, that's what kids would naturally do if you get out of their way. So that's what unschooling is.

• 1:38:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's amazing. It's a, we unschooled, we unschooled our daughters until about a year ago. So we had a very similar journey. They're in, they're in school now.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Which is, I want to say, you can be an amazing parent, kids can get amazing experience in school.

• 1:38:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this is not, again, this is not about school bashing. I've had a bunch of amazing educators on the podcast and we've explored all these subject matters. So, but I think it's, it isn't, it is, I think it is important to.

• 1:38:33Rich Roll?

  Stop for a moment and think, use discernment and really think about like our educational system, like it's a system that was really erected in the, you know, the

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  Industrial

• 1:38:44Rich Roll?

  Industrial Revolution.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:46Rich Roll?

  You know, eighteen hundreds, organized around creating a productive workforce.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:50Rich Roll?

  And it's essentially remained unchanged since then. And yet, our culture and our society has changed so dramatically, so radically. And the acceleration of that change is something that I don't think we fully appreciate. And I think it's important to take a look at that and, and understand that maybe it's not for every kid. And that's not such a bad thing.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  And the

• 1:39:12Rich Roll?

  And, and to ask that que- it's like, it takes a lot of courage because you're stepping outside one of the most reinforced systems of our culture. And for you to say, actually, I'm, I'm gonna, and we all wanna, nobody wants to do wrong by their kid.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:30Rich Roll?

  We all wanna do the right thing.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  It's scary.

• 1:39:31Rich Roll?

  It's very scary.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:33Rich Roll?

  It takes a lot of faith and courage to step outside that and say, you know what? I don't know that it matters for my child if they're at this certain reading level or math level by this certain age. Like, that rule was established, but I'm going to like, look at it from a different perspective.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's super scary and there's immense uncertainty. And that is the same exact experience of becoming minimalist and simplifying your life, letting go of the normal, the norms of the culture. The same thing as becoming a vegan. I mean, there's, I, for me, I feel a little more certainty with veganism, but, I mean, it, it's, anytime you step outside of the cultural norm, these institutions that you talked about, it's scary. And you'll feel a lot of resistance from family members, friends, people who are, you know, like, if you're doing unschooling, people who are, who are sending their kids to school, they become very defensive every time I talk about this. Maybe because it sounds like I am bashing schools. But, uh, you know, so you have to fight against all

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  of that in addition to your own uncertainty. And that's on top of, you know, doing stuff for your kids. So, yeah, it's tough.

• 1:40:42Rich Roll?

  Like, understanding that you are innately a flawed human being.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46Rich Roll?

  Right? And you're sitting on, you know, in charge of this, you know?

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what we are as parents. We're in charge of some fragile, and we're gonna screw them up somehow.

• 1:40:57Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. But when you put them in school, at least there's comfort in that if you're screwing up your kid, you're screwing up your kid the way everyone else is screwing up their kid. You know what I mean? So how long have you?

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  You and I know that like doing the same thing as everybody else isn't necessarily, it's not the path that we want.

• 1:41:16Rich Roll?

  It didn't work out for me.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean, sometimes swimming against the stream is, is hard and yet it's so rewarding. So I'm really happy we've made all the choices we've made.

• 1:41:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you've been homeschooling for how long then? Or unschooling?

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  Uh, gosh.

• 1:41:33Rich Roll?

  I mean, you have a, you have your oldest, your oldest is your daughter and she's a journalist?

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  She's 24.

• 1:41:38Rich Roll?

  24.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  She didn't, she wasn't unschooled.

• 1:41:40Rich Roll?

  So she was a product of a more standard education?

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. She, she decided on her own to, to stay in school. And I have another son who's 19 also decided.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  I would say at least 10 years.

• 1:41:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:52Rich Roll?

  And if you could like

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Nine years maybe.

• 1:41:54Rich Roll?

  encapsulate like what that experience has been like for your kids, how would you?

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Um, filled with uncertainty. And actually, oh, that's actually one, one of the best things about unschooling is that they have no certainty that they're going on the right path. And that's what we want because, you know, school can give you some artificial sense of certainty. Like you follow this path and you're going to become some amazing human being.

• 1:42:20Rich Roll?

  Everything will be well in the world.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're gonna have, you're gonna get a job, you're gonna be fulfilled and get a dream house and the perfect spouse. And of course that does work out normally. But with, with unschooling, you have no certainty. There's no one holding your hand. You're holding your own hand.

• 1:42:36Rich Roll?

  You have to take personal responsibility. You have, there's agency, right? So I think the child learns earlier that, you know, what's up to them and what's not. Like they become self-directed.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  In a more conscious way. Actually, kids deal with uncertainty in school too, and in everyday life. So yeah, I mean, but in, uh, unschooling, it's, it's a conscious choice to be, put yourself in that, in that certain uncertain place.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  I forgot the original question, but.

• 1:43:04Rich Roll?

  Just how do you, you know, how, how have your kids responded to it?

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  Oh, it's been their

• 1:43:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What is their experience been?

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, um, it's a tough thing, you know? Um, I, I would say that I think they are glad that they did it. And that, that's not, um, The truth is, they are glad they did it. They've told us. So at the same time, they deal with all kinds of doubts put in, usually put in by their family members about, oh, you're not being socialized, or you're not learning math, you know, all these things.

• 1:43:33Rich Roll?

  The socialization thing is the thing you get the most, at least that we've gotten the most.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:43:38Rich Roll?

  And that's the thing I'm the least concerned about.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  Well, you're an enlightened human being.

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, just, there's a lot of people that come through this house, you know, all the time, like, our kids are exposed to all kinds of interesting people.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:50Rich Roll?

  Because of, you know, the people that we tend to invite over, right? And so they're seeing and meeting and eating and communing with all kinds of people from all different walks of life. And I've noticed that, you know, our older boys, like, they're so comfortable sitting down and having, like, really intense dinner conversations with people that are like 20, 30 years older than them. There's not, they don't do the navel gazing thing. And I'm not taking credit for that. Like, they're just-

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that's who they are.

• 1:44:20Rich Roll?

  Human beings, it's who they are, but-

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  But you've influenced that.

• 1:44:22Rich Roll?

  But I think, I think sort of taking them out of the structures allowed some of that to blossom in them.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, and that's, the truth is, that is how people have been socialized for entire human history. The, the socialization in school is, like you said, a recent development. We've only decided all five-year-olds need to go in one classroom, and all six-year-olds-

• 1:44:46Rich Roll?

  Be just with people their age.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that was never the, from the tribal days, when you're, you're there with the old people and they're teaching you how to weave and hunt and all that stuff, to like, you know, the medieval ages, where you're in a village, you know, like, that's always been a communal thing, is socializing kids. And it's not, you're just the parent and, and the father and mother who are doing that. It was always the entire village who cared for the kids. And-

• 1:45:12Rich Roll?

  We've moved so far away from that.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what you're, what you're talking about, you've, you've gone back to human nature, you know? I mean, I'm not saying you can't have great socialization in school. There's some amazing schools and amazing, amazing educators, but it's not necessary for, to, to make a good human being.

• 1:45:31Rich Roll?

  Right. And it's, you know, it's, it's dependent on each individual, I think.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:35Rich Roll?

  You know, if you want to be a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer or a scientist, you know, like, it's probably, you probably might be better off in a traditional school system that's ran it around, you know, working you towards that goal.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  Definitely possible, especially in those ones where you need to get a certain degree and certification. But you can go, you can be unschooled until college and then just dive into college the normal route. And we have a niece who did that, my sister's daughter, she's in a normal college now, but she wasn't schooled during her high school years, for the most part, yeah.

• 1:46:10Rich Roll?

  Right, that's cool. All right, well, we got to, we got to wind this down here.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:46:14Rich Roll?

  But before I let you go, I want to, I want to kind of go back to something we touched on a little bit earlier, which is, you know, which you related in your own personal journey. But I think would be helpful for somebody who's listening to this, who's like, you know what, I'm like, I'm ready for a change. Like, I'm digging what Leo has to say. Like, how do I get off the dime here? Like, what's the first thing that I do? Or what's a strategy that I can take away from this that I can immediately put to work in my own life and start to shift my, whether it's my relationship or perspective with, you know, the material world that surrounds me, or whether it's how I'm communicating with my kids about education, or whatever it is, like, you know, what is, you know, what is something that you could leave people with?

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  Some concrete first steps. Yeah. So, the thing that we did with you, where you're feeling that energy and sitting with it, I think that's the most important thing that they can do. And yet, that can be a difficult thing. So, having some kind of practice container for that, whether it's sitting for five, 10 minutes of meditation, and actually, I recommend people, as a habit building thing, start with two minutes of meditation. And I know you used to use, I don't know if you still do the Headspace app, that's a great one. There's, I use Insight Timer, another great meditation app. There's some good ones on there that just can give you some guided meditation to start with. I found that meditation to be one of the

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  best, like, fundamental habits that, that helps you to build other habits and helps you along all of these journeys. So yeah, I would start with that. And if you can, if you are a procrastinator, I'm actually doing a whole thing with a program that I have on procrastination this month. And it's just like watching your patterns. And the way that I, you can, instead of doing meditation, if you want to work on procrastination, it's the same exact thing. But say, okay, before I check my phone, before I check email or Facebook on my computer, all I'm gonna do is set aside five minutes, maybe 10 minutes a day, depending on where you are. If you're a super procrastinator, do five minutes.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  So five minutes a day before I check anything, and I'm gonna set myself a task, one little task that will take like five minutes of writing my chapter, right? So write five, five minutes of this chapter. And I'm gonna set a timer, and I'm gonna set an intention to stay with my discomfort. And you set that timer, and you stay with it. And you're gonna watch yourself wanna run? Like, oh, I'll start the timer in a minute because I'm gonna go do my dishes or whatever, you know? And you wanna stay there. So you're, you're, you have two choices. Sit there and do that task, or just sit there. And you can't let yourself run. And this is a intentional, like kind of corralling yourself in and just watching that urge.

• 1:49:08Speaker 01

  And then practice with that urge. So just sit there and watch the discomfort. Where is it located in your body? Not your, your thinking like, oh, you know, there's always stories that are going on, like, am I gonna fail? Like, are people gonna judge me? All these stories. But what you wanna do is go into that body feeling that we, we talked about. Where is it located? What does it feel like? Describe the energy, the physical energy in your body, and then stay with that. And then when you feel like that's, you know, gone to a point where it's not, not overwhelming, go back to the writing your chapter.

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna try that.

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:49:41Rich Roll?

  That sounds good.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  And if you are a master at this already, do 10 minutes. And if you're even better than that, do 15 minutes. And if you want, if you get to that level where you can do 15 minutes straight, take a break, have some tea, as Rich likes to do, and do another 15 minutes after that. So it's like interval training. And you don't have to do like, you know, 20 intervals. You can just do two or three. But build up to that. Start with the five minutes.

• 1:50:07Rich Roll?

  Right, it's like a workout for your brain, for your consciousness.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  It's training and staying with uncertainty and discomfort.

• 1:50:14Rich Roll?

  And because you want to, you're rebuilding those, you're rebuilding those pathways and then trying to reinforce them.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the side benefit is you'll do your taxes.

• 1:50:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Exactly, right? Unless you want to be the guy who just sits there and does nothing.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Hey, that's a practice too.

• 1:50:31Rich Roll?

  Right, I guess so, right? Alright, well, cool. Well, this was amazing. Thank you for your time.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I feel so honored.

• 1:50:39Rich Roll?

  To be able to sit down and talk to you. This was great. Will you come back and do it again?

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  I will come back anytime you want me to.

• 1:50:44Rich Roll?

  Alright, cool. And next time I come up north, maybe I'll ring you up. We could do it again there.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, we will have tea.

• 1:50:50Rich Roll?

  Cool, awesome. Well, again, you know, thank you for the work that you do. It's a gift to humankind. And my only wish for you is to continue to do what you do and continue to spread your message. And to the extent that I can help facilitate that or help spread it, please consider me a resource.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  I really appreciate that.

• 1:51:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a beautiful, authentic expression that is profoundly helping a lot of people. And it's great to be able to talk to you a little bit about it.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  That means a lot to me. It's very gratifying. And the feeling goes both ways. I hope you keep doing what you're doing.

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, thanks, man. So if you want to connect with Leo, Zen Habits is the website. That's the best place. You can find him on Twitter, @zen__habits, right?

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  The regular Zen Habits was taken.

• 1:51:39Rich Roll?

  It was? What, who took it?

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  I don't know, it's just... Send underscore habits is right, yeah.

• 1:51:44Rich Roll?

  And you have an online course, right? Sea Change?

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  Sea Change is actually a members- monthly membership program where I do online courses. And this month, um, I don't know when this is coming out, but we, we do a different one every month. Um, and it's all about what I'm, what we just described, but in different contexts, whether it's eating a plant-based diet to exercise to, you know, uh, mindfully procrastinating.

• 1:52:08Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Really cool. All right. So you could check that out. And also you have a retreat coming up, April 21th through 27th?

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  23rd. Uh, it's, it's two and a half days. It's my first one. And it's, it's a key part of that mission that I, I talked about of, of ending human struggles. Um, and uh, it's, it's going to be something that I do over and over. Um, so you can catch me when I've refined it to, um, brilliance. Or you can catch me now and it's raw state and being on the ground floor. So I recommend you get the raw stuff because it'll be fun.

• 1:52:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Awesome. Well, I'll put up, uh, links to all that stuff in the show notes. Uh, but you can find out about all of that at Zen Habits, right?

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:52:50Rich Roll?

  Awesome. Well, enjoy the rest of your time in LA.

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  Thank you, Rich.

• 1:52:54Rich Roll?

  You gonna hit a, uh, any more vegan restaurants? Where do you eat? Where do you want to go?

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Uh, I just did my first breakfast at Cafe Gratitude. I've been there before, but the breakfast was amazing. Uh, we've done-

• 1:53:05Rich Roll?

  That's like my commissary.

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:53:08Rich Roll?

  Eat most of my meals if I'm not eating at home.

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  You guys are so lucky down here.

• 1:53:12Rich Roll?

  Well, Cafe Gratitude started in the Bay Area.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  And they closed it. The original locations.

• 1:53:17Rich Roll?

  But they have Gracias Madre is still open in the Mission.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But the original one was in San Francisco. They closed it. Then they closed the Berkeley one. Anyway, so we're down here. We're just taking advantage of this beautiful stuff. There's Plant Food and Wine. We went to last night.

• 1:53:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  Uh, loved it. Um, and, um, we're going to Crossroads tonight.

• 1:53:34Rich Roll?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there's some amazing ones.

• 1:53:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Well, enjoy, man.

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:53:40Rich Roll?

  All right. Peace.

• 1:53:55Rich Roll?

  I absolutely love that talk. It was so cool to talk to Leo. I can't wait to have him on again. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Be sure to check out zenhabits.net for all of Leo's writing on his blog, as well as his many books, his many offerings. As always, please make a point of checking out the show notes on the episode page at ritual.com for a ton of links and additional resources related to today's conversation to help take your edification and your infotainment beyond your ear goggles. And if you would like to support this show and my work, there's a couple of ways to do that. First, just share it with your friends and on social media. I love that. You can leave a review on iTunes. Also, make sure you subscribe. When you're on iTunes, click that subscribe

• 1:54:38Rich Roll?

  button. Really important. And then, if you're going to buy something on Amazon, it would mean a lot if you would click through the Amazon banner ad at ritual.com first. You can find that banner ad on most of the episode pages, all the episode pages as a matter of fact. Or you can just type in ritual.com/Amazon. You can bookmark that to your browser. Next time you need to go to Amazon, click through that. And it won't cost you anything extra on your purchases, but Amazon enriches us with some commission change, and that really does support what we're trying to do here. In addition, we have a Patreon. If you want to take that extra step and support my work financially, many people have been doing that, and I'm so thankful and grateful for that. So, thank you for that. The Patreon

• 1:55:20Rich Roll?

  banner ad is also on every episode page on ritual.com for this show. If you would like to receive a free, short, weekly email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call. It's basically five or six tips, tools, resources that I've come across over the course of the week, generally a couple of articles I've read, a podcast I've listened to, a documentary I've watched, a product that I've stumbled across that I'm enjoying, just things that inspire me that I find useful. Never any spam. There's not any affiliate links in this. I'm not trying to make any money. It's just a way for me to connect with you guys in a new and different way, more directly. So, you can subscribe to that on my website, anywhere where you put your email in, you can find that anywhere. Also,

• 1:56:01Rich Roll?

  on my site, we have signed copies of Finding Ultra and The Plant Power Way, our books. We've got t-shirts, we've got tech tees, we've got cool plant power merch and schwag. So, check that out as well. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, for production, for help with the show notes. Shawn Patterson for help on graphics. Theme music, as always, by Analemma. So I'm going to leave you with this. In the wake of today's conversation, how can you be more mindful about how you're living your day-to-day existence? Where is the emotional, physical, mental, and financial clutter in your life that is sort of harboring space in the back of your mind, creating a low-grade anxiety?

• 1:56:44Rich Roll?

  How can you address that and begin to clear it so that you can focus on what's most important in your life, to create beauty, to more fully express your actualized self? So meditate on that, make a list, start putting things into practice, and I'll see you guys back here next week. Thanks for the love. See you soon. Peace. Bye.