#784 - Robin Sharma - Why $1,000,000,000 Won't Make You Happy

Chris Williamson
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Robin Sharma. He's a leadership expert, motivational speaker and an author. Often we tell ourselves, once I make x amount of money, then I'll be free to enjoy my life.

However, when we reach that milestone, the fulfillment we hope for often isn't there. So what is the key to finding happiness in life whilst also achieving material success? Expect to learn the types of wealth that money can't buy and how to cultivate them. What true wealth actually looks like. How to ensure you are choosing the path that's best for you personally and financially if you actually have to become rich before changing your focus to other leisure activities.

What you should be auditing every day to ensure that you're aligned in life and much more. You might have heard me say that I took my testosterone level from 495 to 1006 last year and two of the supplements I used throughout that were Fadogia Agrestis and Tongkat Ali. I first heard doctor Andrew Heumann talk about these really impressive effects that tons of research were showing, which sounds great until you realize that most supplements dont actually contain what theyre advertising. Momentous. Make the only NSF certified Fidoji agrestis and Tongkat Ali on the planet.

That means that theyre tested so rigorously that even Olympic athletes can use it. And that is why I partnered with them, because they make the most carefully tested, highest quality supplements on earth. Doctor Andrew Huben is actually the scientific advisor for mementos. So if youve ever wondered what supplements he would create if he could, or what he really uses himself, this is the answer. So if you're not performing in the gym or the bedroom the way that you want, or you just want to improve your testosterone, naturally, Fidoji Agrestis and Tongkat Ali are the best, most researched back place to start.

Best of all, there is a 30 day money back guarantee so you can buy it completely risk free. Use it and if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get 20% off everything sitewide with the code modernwisdom by going to livemomentous.com slash modernwisdom to see all the products I use and recommend. That's live momentous.com modernwisdom and modernwisdom a checkout.

This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. The best gym wear on the planet is from gymshark. So no matter what you are looking for, if you are spending more time in the gym. You will feel better if you've got cool new clothing and gymshark make the best men's shorts on the planet. Their studio shorts, in Dusty maroon, Willow Green, Onyx, Grey and navy were what I wore throughout all of my trip to LA, which you may have seen on YouTube recently.

Their crest hoodie is what I am flying in whenever I'm on a flight and their geo seamless t shirt is also what I train in every single day. All of their kit is unbelievably lightweight, sweat wicking, it's easy to wash and dry. I'm in love and the fit and quality of their fabrics are phenomenal. Plus, there is a 30 day free returns internationally and you can get 10% off everything site wide and worldwide if you go to gymshark.com and use the code mw ten at checkout. That's gymshark.com and MW Ten at checkout.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage to the first real life store stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Shopify is there to help you grow. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere, from their all in one ecommerce platform to their in person POS system.

Wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify has got you covered. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the Internet's best converting checkout 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. You would be amazed at how many massive brands you love use Shopify. Gymshark, perhaps one of the biggest independent sportswear companies in the world, uses Shopify. And if it is good enough for them, it is good enough for you.

So if you are looking to get started at selling something online, Shopify is the easiest, quickest and most convenient way to do it. Plus, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period@shopify.com. Modern wisdom all lowercase. Thats Shopify.com modernwisdom to grow your business no matter what stage youre in. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Robin Sharma.

Robin Sharma
What does true wealth look like to you?

Rich family life pursuing my craft even if there's no applause, serenity. I think the new luxury good, treating my readers with respect and honoring what I call the sacred bond.

Enjoying my portfolio of enthusiasms is a form of wealth and doing whatever I can do to make the world a better place. As idealistic as that might sound, it's a great source of joy, great source of happiness, to do whatever I can to make the lives of people better. I like the idea of a portfolio of enthusiasms as opposed to a portfolio of investments. It's really what the wealth money can't buy is about. I'm not saying a portfolio of investments financially is not important, but what's the point of worldly success with an empty heart?

So I think if you can make money and if you can be productive and achieve worldly success, but also do it in a way that sustains you and doesn't have the costs of getting to a mountaintop and then realizing you missed the most important things, I think that's the way to go. You work with a lot of very successful, well known people. How common is it for those individuals at the top of their industry to have got to the top of the mountain and then hated it all the way up and realized it was the wrong one when they got there? Is that just a meme or is that something that actually shows up in practice? Absolutely true.

I had one client on his way home from work. Things were so unsatisfying. Even though he had all the money in the world, he would pick up a case of beer and medicate himself every evening. There's one chapter in the book, the multi billionaire in the very empty mansion, which is. We received a call to mentor a very famous billionaire who you would know.

I decided to accept the engagement. I showed up in his country, showed up in his city. Went to this area that was populated by lots of embassies. Got into his driveway. Biggest house I've ever seen.

Met by one of his aides. Escorted past his art collection. Amazing. Walked past his car collection with a glass wall. Led down a set of stairs.

I heard metallicas for whom the bell tolls playing. I could smell cigar smoke, something out of a movie. And I walked down this hallway, and in the room is this mogul. We spent 2 hours. He talked about the businesses he built, the money he'd made, the beautiful toys he'd accumulated.

And then of course I asked him, well, who do you get to share this with? And he said, long pause. And then he said, I'm all alone. And so I think it's more common than we could imagine. People who we think have everything, who they're cash rich and their life poor.

And it makes me think of what Jim Carrey said. He said, I wish everyone could be rich and famous. To realize it will make a difference. There's another quote. I think it's from Tim O'Reilly, who said, try getting rich first and realize if you still need to become famous.

I think that's another level down, that a lot of people think that they want adoration, but what they really wanted was financial security and that there's a lot of prices that come with fame. Do you think this is something I've been thinking about an awful lot? Do you think that that is a lesson, that lots and lots of wealth won't fix internal insufficiencies, or a need for validation, or your mental pathologies, or your sense of aloneness, or the texture of your own mind? Being unhappy when you fall asleep on a nighttime, is that a lesson that people can learn without closing the loop of achieving some degree of financial success first? Well, first of all, you just offered a great quote on wealth and success.

And I'd love to reply with something I once heard. Someone once said, the ultimate amount of the perfect amount of fame is getting a great table in a good restaurant. And I think there's something wise in that, in that statement. So, yeah, I think the lesson is don't numb your productivity. I'm a huge believer in creativity and productivity.

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

We have these internal wounds. I mean, I can't tell you how many billionaires and celebrity tycoons that I've worked with, their father or their mother never told them they were any good. And so this world, in many ways has been built with people, by people with chips on their shoulder and unaware, and subconsciously they're accumulating and striving and gathering all these things because they really don't feel they have enough and they don't feel very good about themselves. And so I think the real key is still achieve and accumulate and build and achieve worldly success. But question your root intention.

Is the building an accumulation because you're overcompensating and you have these holes within, or is the building because you want to build monuments and you want to see how far you can go, and you want to realize your primal genius, and you want to make the world a better place. It's almost like when you see someone that has outlier results in life, whether that be with success or failure. You know, the person who is permanently chasing gambling losses, always in and out of jail, or the other end of the spectrum, the person that's got accolades and is adored by millions and lots and lots of money. There is something non typical about that person's makeup that's made them get to that particular place. Their composition has made their production very non typical.

And you have to ask yourself the question, well, do I want that? Like, what is the price that you have to pay to be that person? What's the price that you have to pay to be the gambling addict, criminal, kind of plain? No one looks at that, but nobody ever questions, okay, and what is it that's driving the person that went to the opposite end of the spectrum as well? I call that the upsides of your downsides.

What I mean by that is our curses are blessings and our blessings are curses. So a lot of these super rich tycoons, they're perfectionists. Nothing's ever enough. They're selfish, etcetera, etcetera. But they wouldn't be who they are but for these curses.

So what's often unhealthy, let's say, in our personal lives and in personal relationships, often serves people very well in business. So I think, what's the solution? That's why I've created this eight forms of wealth model. I've been teaching to my clients for 15 years with really strong results. Money is one of the eight forms of wealth.

But the first form of wealth, most people don't think about it. Personal growth, the first form of wealth, I call it growth. You wouldn't think that someone who each day is meditating and journaling, healing through insecurity, becoming wiser, stronger, more disciplined, more loving, has a currency worth celebrating. But that is absolutely a form of richness that's worth noticing. I mean, if we are each day, incrementally and steadily materializing more of our primal genius, what's a greater?

I think that's worth more than all the money in the bank, even if no one knows about it. What do you think most people get wrong when it comes to thinking about their own personal growth? I think a lot of people think that they will develop themselves once they're successful in the world without realizing that your income and impact always reflects your self identity, your relationship in the world is a reflection of your relationship with yourself. One of my clients, he said he had his best year financially when he spent 4 hours every morning on his morning routine. Your relationship with your family, your relationship with your neighbors, your relationship with strangers, your relationship with your money, your relationship with your craft, your relationship with the world, it all reflects your relationship with yourself.

There is where the, I'm channeling Mahatma Gandhi. He said, you know, the real devils live inside of us. That's where the work is to be done. So I think our society has caused us to forget that the doorway to success opens inward, not outward. And if we develop what I call the four interior empires, everyone talks about mindset.

Mindset's important. I don't think that's everything, as many pundits say, and I say that with a lot of respect. I believe our mindset is our psychology. But there's also the second interior empire, which I call heart set. Our emotionality.

We have emotional lives. And then there's our health set, which is our physicality, and our soul set, which is our spirituality. And all four of those are important. And someone I know, a lot of business builders and entrepreneurs follow you from across the planet. Chris, they might be saying, how is soul set relevant to me?

Soul set is not mystical, it's not religious. Soul set is simply your relationship with your higher or heroic self versus your egoic self. Your heroic self is the true part of you that you were intimate with before the world taught you to disbelieve in who you truly are. Your heroic self is good, it's brave, it's resilient, it's natural, it's loving, it's decent, it's generous. And as we go through life, we get hurt and we forget who we truly are and we start to contract and feel the world is an unsafe place.

So as we work on our four interior empires, we go out there in the world and we have this bravery and this true power versus fake power that creates all the outer results. Well, ultimately, presumably, what people are trying to do when they achieve worldly success is give themselves a good enough reason to be happy and satisfied and peaceful. So if you can shortcut it and actually get to the root of the problem, which is the inner work, this is something I'm hugely working on myself at the moment and thinking, is there a quicker route to the outcome that I want? The way that I feel, all it is is vibes and values, right? It's just how are you feeling in the moment?

And I genuinely believe that, yeah, focusing inward is probably a good place to start. You've got this idea about not becoming a resentment collector. What's that? That's in the first form of wealth of the book. The first form of wealth is growth.

And the chapter, you're right. Don't be a resentment collector. How many of us go through life and we get hurt? And rather than processing through it and metabolizing it and releasing it, we don't forgive the people who have hurt us in business or in our personal lives. And metaphorically speaking, it's almost as if we are carrying those people with us on our back.

It affects our creativity, affects our productivity, affects our our energy, creates inflammation, affects our longevity. So don't be. A resentment collector is basically understanding, then everyone who hurt you did the best they could do based on the level of consciousness they were at. And as Maya Angelou, the great american poet, said, if they knew better, they would have done better. It's also remembering that the people who hurt you are the very people who would introduce you to your strengths and your creativity.

I mean, I was once on an airplane sitting next to a poet, a painter, and he said, I pick relationship partners who break my heart. And I said, why would you do that? He said, well, when I'm suffering, I do my best work. And so I think we should remember that pain is a purifier, and difficulty, a bad day for the ego, is a great day for the soul. Difficulty actually serves our rise incredibly well, not just by making us kinder and gentler and wiser.

I found the tragedies in my life caused me to help my craft enormously. So don't be a resentment collector. Go through life, let go of the people, and don't suffer from toxic optimism. It doesn't mean that if someone hurts you, betrays you, you don't process through the anger or sadness. Do that part of it.

But then a time will come where you need to let that person go because. Because our past is not a prison to be chained in. Our past is a school to be learned from. Let's exploit the past for the sake of a more beautiful, brighter future. Why is deep growth meant to feel weird?

Well, one of my brain tattoos is all changes. Heart at first, messy in the middle, gorgeous at the end. And if change, whether it was joining the 05:00 a.m., club, launching a new business, finding the love of your life, starting a new spiritual enterprise, if it was easy at the beginning, it wouldn't be valuable change. So any form of change causes you to almost experience a little death. Chris.

I think a great life is a series of little deaths. Why do I say a little death? Because who you were yesterday must experience a crucifixion for the best part of you tomorrow to experience a resurrection. So whether it's a new habit personally, whether it's a new business innovation, whether it's a new way of operating out in the world, you need to. Who you were yesterday needs to die so the better part of you can emerge.

It's not easy, but I believe hard is easy, and easy is hard. I think it's a great principle to live by. Our society has said to us, choose the easy life, read the easy books, watch the easy videos, have the easy conversations, launch the easy business, take the easy workout. It's when we do difficult things that we grow the first form of wealth. But if you do those difficult things, have the difficult conversation, read the difficult books, do the difficult workout, launch the difficult project, and stay with it until you've pushed your project x out in the world, you end up having a much easier life, but also a strange.

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

Yes, I think it's like a lot of things in this world, things have gone extreme. So that chapter, I mean, hard work is a dirty word right now. You know, there's mastery is getting a bad rap right now. So I think self care may be going to an extreme. I think, I believe balance, Aristotle called it the golden mean, and I think it's a very wise way to live, I believe.

I'm not a subscriber to the hustle and grind culture at all. I've been writing about rest as a necessity, not a luxury, for many years. Having said that, too much rest is just as out of balance as too much hustle and grind. And so I really believe that self care is incredibly important. But I don't think it should come at the expense of creating something beautiful in the world, pushing your Taj Mahal, your Sistine Chapel ceiling.

That takes work. It takes drive, it takes bravery. And that's just as important as taking time to put on your mud mask and meditate at 05:00 a.m. In the morning. Nothing against mud mass, but both of those things are important.

Speaking of that, obviously you've spent a lot of time deconstructing morning routines, coming up with wellness practices.

What are the most impactful strategies that you find yourself relying on the most when it comes to a wellness perspective? Great question. MVP. Incredibly powerful MVP. As you know, in sports, I think you used to be a cricket player early on when you were in UK.

And so you know what an MVP is. An MVP is the most valuable player. Well, in my methodology, MVP is meditation, visualization, and prayer. And for years, I was, you know, I wrote a book, the 05:00 a.m. Club.

05:00 a.m. Was the time I'd wake up and I created that 20 2020 formula that I wrote about these days for the past eight or nine months. I'll begin up at 04:00 a.m. And I open my window and I listen to the Roosters crow in this old farmhouse I live in in Tuscany. I listen to the dogs bark and I do 45 minutes of MVP.

I meditate, I visualize, and I pray. And all I can tell you, and I say this with a lot of sincerity for you, Chris, and all your millions of followers and watchers from around the world. We're all looking for ways to become more truly powerful. We're all looking for ways to do beautiful work. We're all looking for ways to move through insecurity.

We're all looking for ways to become wiser in this world of Pauly crisis and to be more loving people. MVP 45 minutes of meditation, visualization, prayer every morning or even five days a week is so incredibly powerful to reprogram your mindset, heartset, health set and soul set. So that's a very powerful way to do it. Second question, part of my morning routine is journaling. Hear a lot about journaling.

I'd love to offer you five journal prompts that are helpful for me. Number one, what am I grateful for? We know gratitude is the antidote to fear. We know from the work of positive psychologists like Sonia Lubomirsky that the happiest people in the world practice deliberate gratitude not once a year on New Year's Day. Because what you do each day is so much more important than what you do once a year.

So I ask myself what I'm grateful for that reprograms the human brain's tendency to towards a negativity bias that served us well thousands of years ago. The negativity bias causes us to scan our environment today and look for threats. But gratitude causes us to look for the blessings. Second journal prompt is, where am I winning? So, if you can notice, the micro wins every day.

That will fuel your hope. It will protect your inspiration, and it will give you energy. Third question, powerful one. What will I let go of today? You don't want to be a resentment collector.

So asking yourself today, like, three or four lines, what will I let go of today? Oh, this person hurt me. Oh, I'm frustrated that this person doesn't get my vision. Oh, I will let go of what you said, not feeling like I'm enough. You start to process through and metabolize that, and you release a little bit of the resentment or frustration that you're holding.

Fourth, what does my ideal day ahead look like? One paragraph. Clarity breeds mastery. One paragraph on what your ideal day looks like. It gives you so much more focus than being reactive in chasing your day.

Fifth and final journal prompt question based on the importance of remembering the shortness of light. I mean, the fact of the matter is, you and I, no matter how long we get to live, before we know it, we will be dust. And I won't matter very much. I will be a bunch of dust on an urn above a fireplace, next to some little league trophies and maybe a few pictures. And so, asking yourself, this final journal prompt every single morning, what needs to be said at the end by the people you love, by the people you care about you fast forward to your last day.

You write one paragraph. What that's going to do is going to allow you to live to the point, focus on your priorities, and actually not to hold back. Because if you knew you only had seven days or 30 days left to live, you wouldn't care about rejection, and you wouldn't be busy being busy. You'd get what's most important done. Can you just go back through your meditation, visualization, and prayer process?

Someone that maybe hasn't spent a ton of time on visualization or prayer? What does that look like for you? Is this a guided practice? Is there an app that you use? Is there a book that you've learned from?

Sure, when I meditate. So 45 minutes, 04:00 to 445, do it whenever you want. 45 minutes, 20 minutes, might be the meditation. The meditation. I often focus on my breathing.

It might be, inhale peace, exhale fear, inhale generosity. Exhale scarcity, inhale humility, exhale, whatever. That'd be one way. Second thing, it might be a body scan. So mindset is not everything.

Mindset without heart set is an empty victory. Heart set is your emotional life. So 20 minutes off your meditation could be you scan your body and notice, and you build fluency the more you do it, like any practice. So I might scan my body and Chris, I might notice there's a tension in my solar plexus, which for me would be fear. You know, I'm on this big book tour.

I have this new book that's come out, a lot of expectations on my shoulder. It's been a year of my life on a devotion, almost boarding on an obsession to try to get it right. Now I'm finding what people think. So maybe if there's a contraction here, I notice, okay, that's a little bit of fear about what's going on in my life. By breathing into it, you release it.

When you take a shadow and bring it into the sunlight, it starts to dissolve. Carl Jung, the great eminent psychologists called it your dark side. We all have a dark side. By bringing light to it, by awareness, we start to move through that suppressed emotion. And then part of my visualization, then after the meditation, the visualization, I have this concept, your four beautiful projects every quarter set.

Four beautiful projects. So for a few minutes, I'll see myself on my four beautiful projects as if they were done beautifully, everything working out well, and I'll just spend time in that future image. And then prayer. I pray for my family. I pray for strength.

I pray for my 87 year old father, my mother. I pray for the world. I pray to be a humble servant as much as possible. So I just pray. And if you don't believe in religious prayer, absolutely.

Fine. Then practice scientific prayer and you can go to the science and see the power of visualization and the power of prayer. So MVP really works extraordinarily well. What is Omad? That was another acronym that I wasn't familiar with before I read your book.

Omad, one meal a day. So what I encourage this is the second form of wealth, which is wellness. I mean, come on, we have to. This world has programmed us into measuring wealth by how much money is in the bank or stock portfolio or our portfolio of houses and real estate. Yet in one wisdom tradition, they say when we are young, we would sacrifice all of our health for wealth.

And when we get old and figure out what life is all about, we sacrifice all of our wealth for one day of health. I was in Qatar once, and someone handed me a piece of paper and it said, health is the crown on the well person's head that only the ill person can see. So that second form of wealth is so precious and it's wellness. So what is Omad? Well, that's a chapter where I talk about the power of fasting, the power of autophagy.

We know from science the mystics have fasted for years. In Siddhartha, one of my favorite books, he said, the person who can fast cannot be beaten, so we don't have to fast every day. There's good science talking about caloric restriction and putting yourself into the state of autophagy, which is cellular cleaning. In that chapter, I'm recommending Omad one meal a day, once a week, and take the money you would have spent on the other two meals and go out there and give it to someone who needs some food. So you benefit physically and the person need benefits as well.

Yeah. Fasting appears to be going in and out of fashion very quickly. At the moment it was and then it wasn't, and I feel like it's coming back in again. So, yeah, I have to say I feel fantastic when I do fast mentally, mostly physically. I don't want to try and lift something too heavy if I'm on a one meal a day day.

But if it's a time when I need to be dialed in mentally, it is something that really, really helps. Talking about family again, one of the problems I imagine of the high performers that you deal with is the sacrifices they've had to make personally to achieve the successes that they've wanted professionally. What have you learned about choosing, developing and maintaining a healthy relationship with your significant other? First thing I would say is a red flag is a red flag. And if you think it's a green flag, you might spend 20 years of your life dealing with the mess.

What do you mean by that? Well, how many of us have entered into a relationship where we saw the red flags right at the beginning, intimately as well as in business? They were right there. But we're nice people and we hope for the best. I think hoping for the best without paying attention to reality is a recipe for misery.

And I didn't mean that to ride, but I think it's. But I think it's true. So when a red flag shows itself in a relationship, pay attention to it and wish that person well, love them from afar. But remember, one of the chapters in wealth, money can't buy. Your choice of mate is 90% of your joy.

And I think that is so true. And when our home life is doing well and stable and peaceful and we're not full of drama, watch what happens to, you know, this. Watch what happens to your mental focus, your creativity, your productivity, your relationships at work. So I would say a red flag is a red flag. Don't think it's green.

I'd say your choice of mate is 90% of your joy. And then one of the chapters is, ask the 10,000 dinners question. I know you're from the UK, and Ayesha Vardeg is the UK. One of the UK's top divorce lawyers. She represents a lot of the footballers and movie stars and multi billionaires.

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

And the interviewer said, 10,000 dinners? What do you mean by that? And she said, well, looks fade, lust dissolved. But if you see yourself having 10,000 dinners with that person, hold them close and fight for the love, because great love is hard to find. So what I'm saying there is find someone.

I don't believe opposites attract. Why? Well, you know, there's this, again, there. There's many ways to do this, but in my experience, I find when someone has different values and is. And there's incompatibilities because they're opposite and there's a lot of negotiating, like, you've got to do what they want to do.

And then you. Right now, my life partner, Elle, we just love so many of the same things. So a great evening for us is home chatting and reading. We see the world through a similar set of lenses. There's very little drama, so there's not a lot of negotiating.

We just love living life with one another. It doesn't mean it's perfect, but it's really very wonderful. So I don't think opposites attract. And I would. There's this idea, universes collide.

Find someone where universes collide. I'd rather have universes collide in the most serene, stable, loving, loving, loving way. You know, that's how. That's how I'd like universes collide. So I think find someone who sees the world the way you see the world, and it creates a lot less drama.

And, you know, that brings me to another through line in the book, which is you can change the world or be around toxic people, but you don't get to do both. And I want to go to some science here from Nicholas Christakis at Harvard University. And what he's realized is we are influenced not only by our friends, but by the friends of our friends and the friends of our friends as friends. And we could get into the science on that. It's mirror neurons, which cause us to mimic the people around us, and emotional contagion, which is the phenomenon where subconsciously we adopt the dominant emotions of the people we spend most of our time with.

And so if we allow energy vampires and dream stealers into our days, into our companies, into our home lives, over time, it dramatically degrades our creativity, our productivity, our happiness, and our serenity. So doing an energy vampire detox, let's call it, is really extraordinarily powerful. Then I always hear people say, well, you know, that person is my mother or whoever. I would say, well, then practice selective association. Maybe don't text them three times a day, do it once a week.

But in some cases, maybe it's a personal relationship, maybe it's a friend. You talked about it. If you're on a path of growth, very few people are on a path of growth. Friends who were your friends a few years ago might not vibe with you anymore. They might be bringing you down.

You've got to let them go. Or you could let them go, I would say love them from afar. Yeah. It's difficult with the family thing. I guess I'm maybe in some ways, I'm blessed.

I'm an only child and I've got mum and dad. So for me, the number of dice rolls that could have potentially thrown up a grenade in my life, I only had two. As long as mum and dad were great, which they were and are. I don't have that. But I understand that for people with bigger families, you've got five brothers and sisters and a ton of close aunties and uncles.

And, you know, Uncle Jim is always causing havoc, and it's a nightmare at Christmas and it's a nightmare at Thanksgiving, and you always need, there's phone calls and there's police calls, all the rest of it. That's. That's tough. You know, I, in some ways wish that family was a bigger part of my life, but in other ways, I can see how it can be a total curse as well as a blessing for people.

Totally agree with you. One thing. I mean, my father is going to be 87 in a few weeks. And as I put more years under my belt. You know, I do realize how powerful family is.

And, yeah, your parents, I've got great parents. You realize your parents and your family does their best, and I think it brings you an absolutely great source of joy. And that's why it's the third form of wealth. And if it's not family, it's friends. You know, we live in a world right now where we chase 20,000 digital friends, but I believe if you have three great friends, you're a very rich person indeed.

Three friends where when you see them after a few years, you start on the last sentence after you saw them last time. Three friends where you can be yourself and they still love you. Three friends where you're down on your knees and they're there for you. Three friends where you're in trouble in a foreign country and you call them at 03:00 a.m. And they say, hey, hang on for a second, Chris, I'm going to be on the next plane.

You know, that's a currency, I think, that money can't buy. Talk to me about this confusion between attachment and love. Well, I just think there's, I think there's a huge difference. I think attachment is born of fear. I think attachment is coming from a place where you don't love yourself enough so you can't be alone.

Blaise Pascal said, most, the french mathematician said most of a human being's miseries derived from their inability to sit quietly in a room with themselves. If you haven't done the inner work required to be comfortable in your own skin, then you're going to be attached to filling your life not only with relationship partners that make you feel better about yourself, but other drugs of choice, whether it's alcohol, whether it's digital toys, whether it's material things. So attachment, I believe, is coming from a place of fear. Love is very different. Love is not needy.

Love is truly wanting the best for the other person. Love is secure. Love is stable. Love is grounding.

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

There is no reason to take any more time than is required to deliver the minimum viable product to be able to get it to the market and ship it and make the money. Talk to me about how craft has sort of played a role in your life and how you advise it for other people. Well, two words come to mind. Van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh. A great movie to watch.

I'm guessing you love film, but please watch at eternity's gate with Willem Dafoe and he's playing Vincent van Gogh, and you'll see the troubles and the suffering Vincent van Gogh went through, and no one understood his art. There's actually one scene in the movie where Vincent van Gogh is in an insane asylum, and the manager of the insane asylum has one of Vincent van Gogh's drawings and shows it to him and says, vincent, do you actually think this is beautiful? And Vincent van Gogh looks at it and goes, yes, I really think it is. And Vincent van Gogh only sold two paintings in his entire lifetime, lived his life in anonymity, deep poverty, and yet he pursued his craft, not for the applause and the fame and the fortune, but he did it because he wanted to push beauty into the world. So I have all sorts of thoughts on the fourth form of wealth, of craft.

You know, even if no one sees your work, you're creating an app, you're writing a book or doing a screenplay, or you're launching a social justice movement. Even if you do it not for the applause you get, but for the person you're becoming in hot pursuit of what lights you up. Do it. Do it for doing hard, difficult work, creating what I call in the book your project x, your Taj Mahal, your great pyramid of Giza, your Sistine Chapel ceiling. Don't only do it for the fame and fortune, do it for what talents and strengths it introduces you to, within you.

Isn't that a priceless treasure? On mastery, I would also say generosity beats scarcity every day of the week. You're right. You go to most, get on most airplanes. I've been on so many airplanes on this book tour, you can't believe the food they're serving.

You can't believe the user experience, can't believe how many people are checked out.

Generosity is a deep value. Generosity is saying, how may I deliver outrageous value to as many people as possible? It's so rare. But in your work, in your mastery, whether you're writing a book, doing a podcast, creating a business, running a team. Ask yourself, how may I distribute magic?

How may I push extraordinary quality out into the world? And so many people, what they do is they push minimum viable product out in the marketplace. But I have this idea. I call it the ten x value obsession. Give your customers ten times the value they have any right to expect, and that's a formula for building a global base of fanatical followers.

And then another thing, if I may. I'd say about mastery is genius, love, solitude. There's a chapter which is, find your personal Goldeneye. We live in a world right now where we don't get in a flow state. We don't do our best work because we are constantly in the world.

But if you look at the great athletes, they had practice rooms. You look at the great scientists, they all had labs. You look at great artists, they all had studios. Winston Churchill had checkers, and Chartwell. Andrew Wyeth had Chad's Ford, Pennsylvania, this barn he would paint in.

And Cushing, Maine, where he would retreat to from the world to create his masterpieces. One of my favorite artists is Jean Michel Basquiat. He said, all medicine men live in caves. And so that chapter, find your personal goldeneye, comes from Ian Fleming, who created the James Bond novel. He found this cottage by the sea in Jamaica, and he called it Goldeneye.

And he would get away there, and he would retreat to do his most beautiful work. And he was so monomoniacally focused on creating what I call a tight bubble of total focus, free of distraction. The gardeners, when they would walk across his line of sight on the Atlantic Ocean, he would say, please don't ever do that. And so if you want to create, I think you can play with your phone or change the world. You can't do both.

And I think spending time each day alone is incredibly essential. We both agree that the no one will notice it statement that people have about Kraft is a lie. I think that, sure, maybe not everyone will notice it. Not everyone will notice the extra steps that you go to to try and add beauty or value or effort to the work that you put out into the world. But some people will.

And for the people that do, I think it's worth so much more.

I used to have an existential crisis at about 02:00 in the morning when I was coming back from nightclubs. So I ran nightclubs for a long time. And on my way home, I'd realize, I don't have any milk for tomorrow. I don't have any bread for tomorrow, whatever. And I'd stop off at the 24 hours supermarket on the way home.

And every time that I was in there, I would always regularly think, God, what am I doing? It's 230 in the morning, and I'm buying bread, and it's all quiet, and you're on your own. And I spoke to a friend, and he said, next time that you're in there, when you see the people that are stacking shelves that you're having to navigate around, just do something really nice, wish them a good day or hope that they're okay, or ask how their morning's going or whatever, because that's an opportunity for you to do something that's meaningful and that's like. I guess it's a little bit interpersonal, but it's also kind of like the craft of being a human, right? Like that degree of effort is something that someone else will take pleasure in.

And I've seen this in reverse. The reason I brought it up about the supermarket is that in reverse, everyone's had that one checkout assistant that's just been fired up to be there, and they don't need to. I don't expect you to sing and dance and put a performance on. For me, the goal is to get the stuff into the bags and for me to get back to my car. But someone's there asking how your day's going and being bubbly and just fired up about what's going on.

You think, I actually feel better leaving. And that's craft. They didn't need to. It's over delivering what they needed to in order to get the job done. But I've left feeling uplifted.

So how is that an effort that's wasted? Well, we're singing from the same songbook. A few replies to that. So JK Rowling said, for some to love you, some must loathe you. I think that's very powerful.

So you're right. We can't please everyone. Not everyone will notice it. But for some to love you, some must loathe you. Secondly, you said not everyone would notice it.

What I would say is almost everyone feels quality. I don't know if I'm saying it very elegantly, but the intention with which you work is felt by the people who consume your products. One of my favorite movies is Joker. If you look at the behind the scenes work, that's a piece of mastery. That movie is a piece of mastery.

So people feel the quality and the intention that you're putting into anything that you do in terms of your craft if you are mailing it in versus bringing it on, if you're doing it for the cash versus the magic, if you are doing it for FFA, fame, fortune and applause, people will sniff the sincerity, the product. Third thing I'd say, you talk about the grocery store. I remember reading that you were a nightclub impresario in your early days, before your tv days. I had the center of the LA Lakers come to one of my live events a number of years ago. Pau Gasol, absolute gentleman.

And I drove him to the airport after the event. And as we walked through the airport, I saw something absolutely fascinating. He was, he had to get to a gate to catch a plane. But every little kid who came up to him, he stopped, he listened, he took a picture. Every adult who came and said, can you sign this?

Can you do this? I have a story to tell you. You inspired me. He had the time. And as we walked through the entire airport, he had time for every single human being who took the time out of their day to stop Pau gasoline.

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

You're at a. You were just here in Miami, staying at a hotel, go to a Starbucks, pick up another, pick up a couple of croissants for the people at the front door. You're on an airplane, you're an author, someone's nice to you. Say, you know what? I'd love to send you a book.

Can you write out your address? Take a picture of it, send it to your assistant or your team, or do it yourself. So you follow through on your promise and send them that in the book. There's that story. When I was a little kid, I used to love this canadian tv show called Mister Dressup.

Mister Dressup was this man who used to talk about, you know, like, Mister Rogers, and he had these puppets. And here I was, roughly six years old, a huge fan. So I wrote him a letter. About a week later, my mom brings me this postcard. It's a picture of Casey and Finnegan and Mister dressup.

And there's a handwritten note from Ernie Combs, the man who was Mister dressup. All these years later, I still remember that act of humanity. So you're right. Craft is not only pushing magic and calibrating your skills to be a merchant of wow. In this world where there's just so much mediocrity, craft is also delivering value by positivity and making those human connections.

Last quick thing, if I may, I was in London, and you're right. You know, a lot of taxi drivers, they see a job as just a job and they can't wait till they get home. And yet there was this one taxi driver. I walked up to his London cab and it was glittering, literally. He was rubbing the rubber of the tires as I was walking up with my luggage.

And as we drove, he was, like, regaling me with stories. And he was telling me this, and I asked him, like, deconstruct why you do this? And there was still a sparkle in his eye. And he goes, I love what I do, and I meet interesting people and I practice the knowledge. I'm in a London cabbie and I take great pride in this.

And as we pulled up to city airport, it was really interesting. He goes, do you want to see what I do before everyone gets into my cab? I said, sure. He pulled out this Windex. He goes, I washed the windows, and then he had an electric shampooer, and he goes, and I shampoo the carpet.

Then everyone puts their feet on before every guest comes in. I think that's a great example of craft and mastery. It's not about being famous, it's about the pride you feel on a job well done. That's one of the reasons why I've got such a distaste for cynicism on the Internet, because it's quite easy for someone. If that cabbie was a youtuber and decided to post that video about you on YouTube, there would be an awful lot of comments saying, this is pointless.

Like, what are you even doing this for? No one even cares. They're putting their feet on the floor. Why does it matter how clean it is? Like, you're rubbing the side of the wheels.

They're just going to get mucky in any case. And there is a culture of people doing things that are quaint and effortful, being disparaged, and that would disincentivize someone from doing it. And yet this taxi driver, who presumably isn't posting this stuff on YouTube, does it for the pure love of it. And I think that if I could turn down the Internet's sort of critical, cynical voice, I think that a lot of people would do a lot more great things. I think they'd lean into craft an awful lot more, because craft is mostly what's hidden.

That doesn't really get seen. And yes, you're right, there is utility in beauty. And for the people who care about it, they will notice. Job well done, never wasted, etcetera. But I do think that it disincentivizes some people.

I think that enthusiasm around people doing hard things well and beautifully would help more people to do it. And I think that a beautiful world would be something that everybody could benefit from a bit more. Yeah, I totally hear you. And I don't think there's anything quaint about it. I think doing these things is hard and heroic and brave and honorable.

You know, I think about, you know, integrity is so much more valuable than money. And even if no one sees that taxi driver, you're the only person you're going to get to be with your entire life. And when your head hits the pillow every night, if you're alone or whether you're with someone, you feel good about yourself and you have self respect. That's worth more than all the gold in the world. I need to say that again because I deeply believe it's important.

Integrity is more valuable than money. And if you respect yourself and you take pride, that fourth form of wealth in the book you see driving a taxi or digging graves or working in a coffee shop, or writing books or being an astronaut or whatever it is, if you do it with honor and integrity and a love of mastery, it's not only what it does for the world, it's what it does for you. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. Like, what's the point of having all these houses?

Nothing wrong with, it's the fifth form of wealth, nothing wrong with these things. I want to be super clear, but what's life all about? I think ultimately it's, you know, feeling good in your own skin, feeling you're being true to yourself. Maybe it's you started off the show, the interview, talking about peace. I think what we are chasing is not the things, it's the feeling that the things will bring.

I think that was your point, and I think that's very true. We don't want the jet, we don't want the portfolio, we don't want the 10 million followers. We want the feeling that we're craving and missing that we think those things will bring. And having been in this field 31 years and working with some very, very serious heavyweights in business mastery athletics, I can tell you nothing on the outside will ever feel those fill up those inner holes. Is there anything wrong with pursuing a Mount Everest?

No, it's beautiful. We are a species that created the great art. We are the same species that created the Eiffel Tower and the Internet and flight. I think we are meant to grow. We're happiest growing.

Go to the science. The human brain craves novelty. Having said that, I think if we are addicted to accumulating, we could spend our best hours climbing a mountain, only to realize at the end of this year, a career or a lifetime. We spent our finest moments climbing the wrong mountain. You mentioned money, the most obvious form of wealth, perhaps.

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

But how did he die? He died. He died alone in a. From everything I've read, a filthy hotel room with needles in his arms, naked. So that first chapter of that form of wealth starts with a cautionary tale, which is allow financial wealth to be your servant versus your master.

And be super careful about the dangers. And I've seen this with my clients, the dangers that great wealth brings. I mean, a lot of billionaires spend their day defending and protecting the generational wealth that they've made. They don't enjoy it, or they've made so much money, they filled their life with complexity. I start off the book talking about one of the happiest people I've ever met.

My ski instructor. I was trying to get a level one ski course so I could teach. It was one of my dreams in my forties. This is one of the happiest people I knew. And one day, we're going up a chairlift, and here's this man with rosy cheeks and always smiling, super fit, in his sixties.

He said, robin, us ski instructors, we're not rich, but we have rich lives. And I actually think he's richer than most of the billionaires in the world. And I would say the same for that taxi driver, and I would say the same for people who might not have a lot of money and a lot of things, but they have integrity or great family lives, or they paint, or they do work that lights them up. And they might not be heading a company or on the COVID of a magazine, but they sure do have joy in their hearts. What role do you think?

Scarcity and abundance as a frame that we view the world through, plays in how people deal with their relationship to money.

Super question.

Generosity is how the financially wealthy make money. So money is a reflection of magic delivered into the marketplace. Another way to put it is I'll use the words of the billionaire Ted Turner, the one who serves the best profits the most. And he was using the words of the founder, Paul Harris of Rotary. But he said, the one who serves the best profits the most.

If you're coming from a place of scarcity, let's go to a restaurant. You've been in a lot of restaurants. I've been in a lot of restaurants. The room isn't beautiful. The culture isn't one where people are merchants of wow.

It always comes from the top. So clearly the owner doesn't really care. The food might not be fresh, the food is not beautifully done, but what the owner seems to be trying to do is get as much money as possible while giving as little value as possible. I actually think that's the norm in business today. I believe we are suffering from the collective deprofessionalization of business.

It's very rare to see a master in action or a merchant of wow. I think all of this, let's give as little value as possible and put out a cheap movie to get as much money. Let's go to create a restaurant where our goods are not really mastery, and we'll try to take money. I think all of that behavior is coming from scarcity, coming from a place where there's not enough in the world, coming from fear, the emotion of fear. I better get as much money as possible because there's not a lot there.

It's counterintuitive, but generosity wins. So let's say it's your podcast and all the value you bring to millions of people. Let's say it's a restaurant where the food. I live in Italy. I see lots of restaurants like this.

The mozzarella di bufala was brought up from Puglia at 04:00 that morning. Someone. You've gone native, Robin. Come back to us. You've gone native.

Well, I know. You start talking about mozzarella di bufala and something happens to my brain. Something. It's like my little chorkie. She got a new ball.

A little ball. Like, I'm on the road. So Elle's sending me these pictures and our little. She bought her chorkie, this little ball, because chorkies are ratters. They love rats.

And the ball not only squeals, but it lights up. And it's almost like too much for this dog's brain. She just goes berserk. And I start talking about mozzarella di buffalo and cacio pepe. But there are restaurants in Rome where they just care so much and you walk in and they treat you like you're a member of the family.

And the food is so great and the room is simple, but it's beautiful and is coming from a generous heart. And people might say, you know, give us some strong business strategies. That is a strong business strategy. The more you can work with love, the more you can work from a place of generosity, the more you can say, how may I most deliver the greatest value for as many people as possible? That's a recipe for building a global movement around your products and services.

That's why Apple under Steve Jobs was so amazing. He was not an entrepreneur, he was an artist. He wanted, before the iPhone shipped, he said, I want the icons on the iPhone to be so gorgeous, the users would want to lick the screen. He was obsessed not with the bottom line, he was obsessed with pushing beauty out into the world. You read Isaacson's book, Jobs, etcetera, etcetera.

That's a great example of generosity that comes from the first form of love, growth. That's why personal development is so powerful. The more you can move through your scarcity issues, what I call in the book your scarcity scars, the more you can be a servant leader, the more you can feel safe in the world. That's what allows you to do beautiful work that inspires people. And the byproduct is fame, fortune and applause.

What's a way that people can deprogram those scarcity scars? Starting with self awareness. Awareness is the DNA of transformation. So journaling is a great tool for that. Just every morning, free flowing, start paying attention.

Where may I be? Withholding, being generous, then also paying attention to how you feel. So what are the things that activate you that make you feel insecure or scared? Maybe it's buying something, maybe it's you see someone on the Internet having more than you have, don't knock them down. Look in the mirror and say, what's going on with me?

Why do I feel jealous? Why do I feel bad? And the more you can start doing this practice, you'll build fluency. Just like a chess master who practices, builds fluency with their mastery. When you start doing this emotional healing and start paying attention, oh, here, this is what activates me.

Here's who I'm jealous about. You start the process of releasing that, you become more aware and then you become a choice. Also mvp, meditation, visualization and prayer is a great tool to release scarcity. Third thing, working with a healer, talk therapy. Very very powerful.

Fourth, spending more time alone and just reflecting on that is incredibly powerful. And then I'd say the fifth thing, the practice stuff, being a giver versus a taker.

So practice being, how do you get to be generous? You practice being generous, even if it's that story value chain gratitude. You talked about being in the grocery store while you're waiting at the checkout, paying for your broccoli. You do a silent thanks to the cashier for the work she's doing or he's doing. And then you take a few moments and you're grateful for the stock person who put it on the shelves.

And very quickly you thank the trucker who brought it there, and then very quickly you thank the farmer who made it. And imagine if every step of the way, even writing thank you notes to the grocery store owner or the grocery store cashier person, and I'm in a hotel right now, there's a nice, I made my, I'm not saying I'm some kind of a guru, but I made my bed today. I put the bath towels in the bathtub and I'm making sure everything looks really clean because there's someone's family member walking into this hotel room after I leave. And so the practice of giving, if you do it consistently, you get really good at it, which makes you more generous. And then it becomes like any habit, any skill.

With practice, you reach what researchers call automaticity and it becomes easier to practice the new skill than not to do it. It's crazy how you don't just see this in relationships with strangers, but in relationships with friends as well and the community that you build around you. I've just got back from Miami. It's one of my best friends birthdays. There was twelve of us out there, and all of those guys were happy to do ridiculously over the top things just to make the rest of us happy.

We were there for a birthday. So maybe everyone's kind of on their best form and being a little bit more generous than they would be usually, but it was just so nice. And I think that in the same way as craft in your professional work, is something that adds value that doesn't necessarily have a, it doesn't appear on a balance sheet. Being generous in that way with strangers and especially your friends and your community, adds value in a way that people maybe even can't identify. It's not necessarily even going to be a memory that's going to sort of stick up there, but it's going to uplift the way that they feel.

A few things I'd say to that. I totally agree with you. A gift given for the sake of a reward is not a gift. It's a barter. So the sincerity and intention of the gift is very, very powerful.

I don't know if you've heard this, but there's a great japanese word. It's called intoku in. Toku is the japanese word for the art of giving in secret. So I would actually say it's great. Your friends give gifts, you give gifts.

We all do that. Amazing. I think the highest form of giving is anonymous gift giving. I think if you give a gift to have your name on a hotel wing, wonder about not judging, just reporting. I wonder about the intention of the gift.

But to give a gift in secret where the recipient won't even know who gave it, is a real gift. Second thing, I'd say, giving a gift is a gift you give yourself as well. So the recipient feels better about the world, but you feel better about yourself. Even something as simple as wishing people a great day. Again, I'm using travel metaphors because I'm on this trip.

We know what we're doing. Yeah, right. But imagine you're at a gate and you're giving the person the ticket slip, or, you know, they're doing the login code before you get on the plane. You just wish them a great day, and you take the time to wish someone else a great day. Those simple acts of humanity are not only good for the world, they're good for yourself, they're good for your soul.

And that is a form of wealth that money can't buy. And I think it's much more sustainable than money, which can come and go or equities in the stock market that have dips as well as bull markets. So gift giving is, it's a super powerful way to roll through a human life.

What's the Stephen King lost letters rule?

So I was reading James Patterson's memoir, and he wrote about an instance where he wrote a letter called, it was something like the. The death of Stephen King or something like that. And Stephen King's publisher reached out to James Patterson, said, please don't do that. You know, there's some issues with stalkers, etc. Etcetera.

And so James Patterson said, absolutely, I will remove the chapter. As a matter of fact, I will have my publisher remove the entire print run with that chapter in it. Thousands and thousands of books. And James Patterson, in his memoir said, I never received a thank you from anyone. And the idea from that chapter is simply the power of thank you notes and the power of appreciation and the power of acknowledging.

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

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

What else haven't we said when it comes to curating and creating the community that people want, what do you think's missing? A mentor. My life changed because of my mentors. I've had some incredible mentors. When I was in my twenties, there was this gentleman who fascinated me.

He lived a few doors down from me. Everyone else was working. At three in the afternoon, I was coming back from university, and I always see him in his backyard, sunbathing, reading. I said, look, who is this fascinating person? Who is this fascinating person who is so unorthodox and such a contrarian, who lives like this?

So we became friends. And one day we were walking along the ocean where we used to live, in a city close to the ocean, and he said, robin, run your own race. Which to me has been so incredibly powerful, like, Robin, run your own race. We live in a world where a lot of us, we define success according to the values and metrics society tells us we should define success by. But what's the point of living someone else's life?

Leo Tolstoy did a short story, the death of Ivan Ilyich. And at the end of the story, Ivan Ilyich asks himself a fundamentally heartbreaking question. What if my whole life was wrong? So I think it's better to live your own life and be called a freak than to win at the world's life and find yourself being very empty. So a mentor is incredibly powerful.

And one of the ideas I offer is, if you can't find a live mentor, then look for a dead one. And the idea is recruit a dead board of directors through their books. I mean, you can learn how Mandela, or Heidi Lamar, or Basquiat, or Orville Wright, Edison, Einstein, you can learn how history's great, women and men of the world, world did it through their books. And so what I'm suggesting is not only build a great library in this world where a lot of people love entertainment versus education, but almost assemble a metaphorical dead board of directors, so that when you have a big decision to make, you go into a quiet room, and it's almost asking yourself on a, on a moral issue. Here's a great question.

What would Mandela do on a business question? What would onassis do on an artistic question? What would Dubuffet do on a spiritual question?

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

What role does adventure have in our wealth? 7Th form of wealth? Adventure without a rich heart? Emerson without a rich heart. Wealth is an ugly beggar.

Role does adventure play? I think we were born into genius and we get resigned into mediocrity. We are, as little kids, we have eyes that sparkle, we are curious, we are brave, we want to change the world. And then we experience micro trauma and macro trauma, along with the psychological programming, to be reasonable and ordinary and average. And we, we're actually sold a bill of goods, that the geniuses and the great ones are cut from a different plot.

And we hear it so much, we actually start to believe it. So we lose that sense of adventure. It sounds simple, but a lot of us want more joy, but we stop doing the things that brought us joy when we were younger. And so there's a lot of chapters on adventure, but one story comes to mind, it's be a perfect moment. Creator.

So Eugene Okelley was the former CEO of KPMG, the accounting behemoth, a tight enough industry, someone who was admired by so many people. And one day he went into his doctor's office for the results of a routine medical, and the doctor came back, Chris, with an expression you never want to see on the face of your doctor, when you get the results of your routine. And the doctor said, you have 90 days left to live, you have inoperable brain cancer. And sadly, he had roughly 90 days left before he did pass away. But he did something very interesting.

He said, I'm going to use one of the techniques I used to build my business and I'm going to reverse engineer the last 90 days of my life to create what he called perfect moments. And he realized on his reflection and confronted with his mortality, that he had never taken his wife to lunch in all those years as a top CEO. He missed out on his daughter's Christmas concerts in many cases. And he never gone on long walks in Central park with his friends. And he decided to become a perfect moment creator.

And that idea, when I first learned it, was very powerful to me. I think the 7th form of wealth is adventure. And you don't need to go to Bali to do it. You can find perfect moments in every day. I mean, it caused me to take my kids to Mauritius and swim in the dolphins, which is one of the great highlights of my life.

But just the other day, I was in Toronto on this trip, and it was the day the book was released. And it was a very intense day. The next day, I woke up before getting on a plane. I sat alone in a dark hotel room. I had some good coffee, and I took maybe two minutes to just feel some grace and some gratitude on the opportunity to do what I'm doing.

And so, perfect moments. It could be 15 minutes in a park where you notice spring flourishing. A perfect moment could be you put down your phone in the evening and you read the prophet by Khalil Japan, or you listen to some beautiful music and you're so present it brings tears to your eyes. You could have a perfect moment where this Friday, you take your significant other to this italian restaurant, you eat some mozzarella di buffalo and have some caccio pepe. There I go again with my.

But, you know, we're in a messy world right now, and online you mentioned it, there is a lot of cynicism. I think it's really important to block out the noise and clean up your information diet and create a bubble. And people might say, well, that's not realistic. What's more realistic than creating a bubble of information? And you're an ecosystem that allows you to be a possibilitarian, where you literally say, okay, life is short.

That's the power of connecting with your mortality. Life is short. I'm going to surround myself with people who fuel my joy versus degrade my joy. I'm going to follow people who inspire me and lift me up versus tear me down. I'm going to read beautiful books that nourish me at all levels.

I'm going to eat great food. I'm going to be a minimalist versus a maximalist, and I'm going to live life on my own terms. That's one of the key elements I would say about adventure. What were Alexander the Great's last three wishes? 8Th form of wealth.

Service. Society doesn't say, you're helping people, you're lifting people up, you're doing your work in a way that pushes value into the marketplace to show respect for your consumers. And you're leaving people better than you found them, even in the smallest of ways. Wow. You know, you're a servant leader or you believe in service, you're rich, but it is form of riches.

When I was growing up, my dad used to say, robin, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice. My dad will be 87. I mentioned that, but he'll be 87 in a few weeks. And he's the humblest, one of the most decent, giving people I've ever met.

And so I've learned the power of helpfulness through my father and many people. My mother, my mom always goes, you always mention your dad in your work. What about me? You know? And so she's a titan.

She's, she's a force of nature. She really is very amazing. And so that gets me to Alexander the Great's last three wishes. He told his lieutenants, he said, chris, when I die, I want you to do three things for me. He said, number one, I want the world's finest doctors to be following my casket in the funeral procession.

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

Number two, I want everyone to see the jewels so people realize that money made on earth remains on earth. Oh, how much of our life we spend chasing these shiny things, only to realize at the end, they made very little difference. And he said, the third requirement, we're born with nothing. And I want people to see that we die empty handed. So live richly versus be accumulating things most of your time.

If you want to live, let's say, a wealthy, fulfilling, happy and serene life. Robin Sharma, ladies and gentlemen. Robin, I love your work. I think your storytelling is fantastic. Where should people go?

They want to keep up to date with all of the things that you're doing and check out your new stuff. Instagram, Robinsharma, YouTube, lots of videos. Robinsharma.com, comma. The new book, the wealth money can't buy is on audible, Amazon, good bookstores in about 50 countries right now. So I just want to applaud you, Chris, for the millions of people that you're enriching and the influence you're having on so many people.

And it's been a real pleasure to meet you. I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.

Thank you, mate.

#784 - Robin Sharma - Why $1,000,000,000 Won't Make You Happy

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Defining True Wealth

3: The Pitfalls of Wealth

4: Balancing Wealth and Well-being

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Companies

Books

Guest Name(s):

Content Warnings:

Transcript